Lincoln

by Gore Vidal

  “Mr. Lincoln seems,” said Tilden, thoughtfully, “a man of good will.”

  “Oh, Mr. Tilden!” Seward exclaimed, “I can testify to that! Mr. Lincoln’s will is very good indeed. In fact, his will is all that we have here.”

  PART III

  ONE

  ON A COLD gray afternoon, David reported backstage at Grover’s Theater. He was suffering, so Mr. Thompson had been told, from the smallpox, which was now sweeping the periphery of the city, particularly in the Negro sections and around the Navy Yard. Actually, David was in excellent health; but he had decided to reserve for himself the month of October. He had saved a certain amount of money. He was now living at home again, a quieter place since two—or was it three?—of the sisters had moved out of the house and into matrimony or its appearance. Although the ham-lady was angry with him, Sal Austin could always be counted on to give him odd jobs to do around Marble Alley, where he was paid in kind. He also worked at Mr. Ford’s theater from time to time; as well as at Mr. Grover’s new establishment, which had opened with much excitement the previous week, a brand-new theater fashioned from the ruins of the old National Theater in E Street between Thirteenth and Fourteenth Streets. Mr. Grover was a pleasant man, though a Yankee from western New York. He knew David by sight—as opposed to Mr. Ford, a Marylander, who knew him by name.

  The backstage entrance was in a narrow alley just back of E. The scenery for the next night’s play was still in its wagon. E. L. Davenport and J. W. Wallack, two actors David admired, were embarked upon a season, whose highlight would be a single charity performance by Charlotte Cushman as Lady Macbeth in Macbeth, a play that David disliked almost as much as he did the famous Miss Cushman, a tragedienne who looked like an elderly mare; and always stayed with Mr. Seward when she was in Washington. Had she been less hideous and he less old, there would have been a scandal. As it was, no one at all cared.

  Backstage, the manager shouted to David to help out with the third-act set, which was yet to be assembled. A dozen stagehands were arranging tables and chairs and putting scenery in order. The painted flats suggested a production both opulent and exotic. Kerosene lamps lit the back of the theater to reveal a jungle of ropes and high, perilous walkways, of furniture and scenery flats. Expensive gaslight was only used during performances.

  As the curtain was now up, David could just make out the newly remodelled interior of the theater, ghostly in the dim light from backstage. There was the usual smell of glue and wood shavings and cheap paint; later, during performance, there would be the heady smell of sweaty actors and perfumed actresses and the acrid burnt-oxygen odor of calcium light mingled with that aromatic dust which seemed to cover everything during a performance. David could never get enough of the theater backstage or, for that matter, out front in the audience.

  To David’s surprise, he found himself working with Edward Spangler, one of Mr. Ford’s regular stagehands. “But the boys needed some help back here tonight, so Mr. Ford looked the other way.” Spangler was a slow-talking Marylander; although red of face from drink, he was highly reliable and much in demand.

  David helped Spangler assemble an arbor of green paper leaves glued to a fragile wooden trellis. “What’s the play?” asked David, who almost never read newspapers; and had not been near the theaters in a week.

  “The Pearl of Savoy, whatever that is. Nine scene changes, I think. And they want a horse in this act but I don’t think Mr. Grover’s going to let them after what happened last week.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, what happened was what always happens when you let a horse up on a stage.”

  David giggled, appreciatively. “I saw that when Forrest was here, in Shakespeare.”

  “Well, they don’t want to see it tonight. So the heroine will say, ‘Lookee, now, there’s yonder white steed in the gloamin’! I must go and mount it.’ Oh, you should see this one.” Spangler whistled.

  “Who is she?”

  “Davie, I don’t know, never know, their names. I just like their looks, or not, as the case may be. You want some work at Ford’s?”

  David nodded; carefully, he put the arbor right-side up. “I’m taking time off from Thompson’s. He thinks I’m sick, which I am—of that drugstore of his.”

  “Don’t ever give that up,” warned Spangler to David’s annoyance. Apparently, a life spent as a prescription clerk in the back room of a Fifteenth Street drugstore seemed perfection to everyone that he knew. At least his secesh friends knew that he had another life, but Spangler, though himself secesh, knew nothing of night-riders and the Colonel, of Mr. Henderson and Surrattsville. He simply thought that David Herold had a good job, suitable to his station in life; and should keep it.

  “What’s at Ford’s?” asked David, not wanting to go into the sore subject of his current employment and limited prospects.

  “Old Junius Brutus’s boy is going to play for two weeks, starts first of November. I was pretty fond of his father. Fact, I built most of his house for him near Baltimore, at Cockeysville, when Johnny was a boy.”

  “Is he really the youngest star in the world?” asked David. They were now carrying what looked to be a moss-covered stone wall to its place at stage right.

  “Danged if I know, Davie. Why?”

  “That’s what the sign said when he played here last spring. I saw him in Richard III. But I couldn’t tell how young he was, with the whiskers and the nose and all.”

  “Well, he’s a star, I guess. Not like his father. Now old Junius Brutus Booth was the greatest actor I ever saw and certainly the craziest, while young Junius Brutus is the greatest tightwad as a manager I ever saw. Edwin’s the real actor of the family, while Johnny’s just—Johnny. I reckon he’s twenty-three or four now.”

  Suddenly, David felt his usual pang when he thought of what he might have been. The pang was sharpest whenever he thought of actors, particularly the young, handsome ones, because they not only knew and worked with actresses but all the girls looked up to them. In April, at Grover’s, John Wilkes Booth had been a success, and for weeks the young ladies of the city talked of no one else, as they bought his photograph in the shops.

  But Spangler preferred to speak of old Booth. “There was no one like him on the stage; or anywhere else. He was an Englishman who settled over here forty years ago, not far from Baltimore. He had ten children; and never killed a living thing.”

  Spangler reached into his back pocket and removed a flat bottle of homemade com whiskey. David took a polite sip; but even that made his throat bum. Spangler drank deeply. Although he was never not drinking, he was never drunk at work. “Old Junius Brutus kept every sort of animal on his farm but never killed even a chicken. Once when he was west he found a stack of dead birds in a field, and he hired a gravedigger to fix them a grave, and got a preacher to say a funeral service.”

  “Was he crazy?”

  Spangler frowned; then pushed David to one side as a huge gate almost ran them down. David looked about to see which of the principal players had arrived. But so far, only the old character people were behind the canvas in the wings, making up.

  As the two men put together an Italianate fountain, Spangler said, “Well, he was crazy some of the time. But he was a noble soul. He believed in this old Greek Pie-thuh-gorus, who said you shouldn’t kill things because they might haunt you or something. Now when he was drunk in the theater …” Spangler chuckled.

  David recalled a story of old Junius Brutus. “Wasn’t he the one who died for a long time on stage, and then got up and said to the audience, ‘How did you like that?’ ”

  “Othello.” Spangler nodded. “Then there were times when he’d have his sword in his hand and he’d go after the other actor and he’d really try to kill him; and they’d all have to go and sit on him to quiet him down.”

  “I thought you said he never killed anything.”

  “That was sober. Drunk he was a terror. Once he was so bad that they went and locked him in his dressing ro
om, raving from drink. But he had a friend who would come and bring a bottle and stand outside the locked door while old Junius Brutus put a straw through the keyhole and slurped up the whiskey from the other side.”

  “Was he as good an actor as his son Edwin?”

  “Well, he was a lot stranger, I guess. Once, he befriended this horse-thief in Lexington, Kentucky. But he couldn’t save him. So after the man was hanged, old Junius Brutus got ahold of the body and gave it a Christian burial, after first taking off the man’s head, which he went and cooked to the bone. Then always, ever after, he used that skull whenever he played Hamlet in that scene with the skull.”

  David shuddered with delight. “That is downright ghoulish.”

  Spangler nodded. “It’s also kind of ghoulish that to this day when Edwin plays Hamlet he uses the same horse-thief’s skull.”

  In the foyer of Grover’s Theater, Hay and Kate Chase (Sprague-to-be in less than two weeks’ time) held court beneath the hissing gaslights. Ladies in vast crinolines promenaded up and down. This season the colors were vivid but deep—mostly burgundy reds and forest greens; and deepest black for widows not yet merry but no longer in full mourning. Kate wore green velvet; and a frown. Hay had been pleasantly surprised when she had proposed that he take her to the theater; and then to Harvey’s Oyster Saloon. “My bachelor days are almost over,” she had somewhat startlingly said. But then, as Hay told Nicolay in an exuberant moment, “She is her father’s son.”

  Hay and Kate stood against the wall beneath a copy of a copy of the celebrated painting of Mrs. Siddons. As people came up to pay Kate their compliments, she was her usual regal self. Hay also received a good deal of deference from men twice and three times his age. All in all, it was a very fine thing to be the second secretary to a president during a war when everyone in the nation wanted something from the government. The tidal waves of money that Chase had sent forth into the world from his printing press at the Treasury were now, like the tide at full moon, sweeping back into the capital, where decorous honest-faced gentlemen with gray hair and beards and kindly smiles had forgathered to scoop up in their buckets as much of the green paper sea as they could. Simon Cameron, the first lord of corruption himself, approached them. “Ah, Miss Kate, what a union it is!”

  Kate gave him a sidelong smile. “Surely, General Cameron, with eleven states gone out of it …”

  Cameron laughed. “You know which union I mean. How fortunate Governor Sprague is!”

  “You will not be at the reception?” Since Kate was now a full-time political manager, invitations to Sixth and E were sent out in a spirit of perfect calculation. Alone of the enemy camp, Hay was invited regularly. But Kate liked to tease him; and he her. She also liked to quiz him about the President; but he never told her anything of the slightest use. In fact, he often let slip an occasional false fact in order to confuse the Chase faction, which was now headed by a corrupt Kansas senator named Pomeroy; and, of course, the brothers Cooke and Senator Sprague.

  “I am only here,” lied Cameron in his thin whispery voice, “to celebrate your nuptials.”

  “How good you are!” Kate gave him the full radiance of her eyes, now pale as agate by gaslight.

  “What news,” asked Cameron of Hay, “from the West?”

  “I was there only two weeks,” said Hay. He had been sent to Ohio and Illinois by the President to keep an eye on the state elections. Neither Lincoln nor Stanton had made the same mistake that had been made in the disastrous November elections of the previous year. Regiments from the doubtful states were sent home on furlough to vote. When General Grant refused to send his forty thousand Ohio troops back home to vote, Stanton had arranged for them to vote in the field; something without precedent. Needless to say, the forty thousand voted almost unanimously for the Republican Party; and Ohio state was once again Republican. Except for New Jersey, the states were now all Republican. But Congress, reflecting the previous year’s election, still had a strong Democratic opposition.

  “Well, Mr. Hay, I’m glad the President followed my advice on bringing some of the troops home to vote. We would’ve lost Governor Curtin back home, if we hadn’t. Not,” and Cameron glowered, “that that would be any true loss in itself.” Cameron disappeared into the crowd.

  General Dan Sickles, on crutches, paid his compliments. Lately, he and Hay had become most friendly. Sickles was very much enjoying himself as the hero of Gettysburg. “I won’t be able to dance at your wedding, Miss Kate,” he said, eyes bright. “But I’ll be stamping one leg during the quadrilles.”

  “I shall be cheering you, General Sickles. And weaving you a wreath of laurel.”

  As Sickles stumped off, Hay said, “It is amazing the change in his character since he lost that leg. It’s as if all the scandal had been washed away, and he’s reborn, a hero.”

  “But he has always been a hero. Any man who kills his wife’s lover is a hero to me.” Kate held up her fan to hide the lower part of her face so that Hay could not tell if she was serious or not.

  “But everyone says that Mr. Key was not her lover.”

  “It is the thought, Mr. Hay, that excites me.” They were then joined if not by lovers by a young man and a young woman visibly enamored of him. Though Bessie Hale was still in her twenties, she looked middle-aged. She was plump; had more than one chin; blushed easily but not evenly. The young man was none other than the youngest star in the world, John Wilkes Booth. Both Kate and Hay had seen him in the spring at Grover’s, where he had played, most athletically, Richard III, a play in which his father and two brothers had distinguished themselves. Everyone thought it daring of Wilkes, as he was known, to compete with famous father and older brothers. Devoted theatergoers felt that he had not really competed, as he was not of their class. But the theater had been sold out during his engagement. If nothing else, the combination of famous name and extraordinary beauty had indeed made him if not the youngest world star, at least a popular performer.

  “Oh, Katie!” Bessie was red and white in the face with excitement. Of all Washington’s girls, it was she who had netted this longed-for beauty. “You know Mr. Wilkes Booth. We saw him here together. Remember?”

  “How,” said Kate, demurely, “could I forget the handsomest man in America?”

  Booth bowed low over Kate’s hand. He was handsome, thought Hay, irritably. The hair was dark and curly—storm-tossed, romantically, like Lord Byron’s. The skin was pale and smooth, while the moustache was like Hay’s, but where Hay’s was somewhat gingery and wiry, Booth’s was smooth and dark and silky. The brow seemed carved in ivory, while the lustrous eyes were the color of palest honey. The hand that shook Hay’s hand was surprisingly large and muscular for so short a man; but then Booth was as muscular as an acrobat, as anyone who had seen him cavort about the stage could testify. In Richard III, he had leapt some fifteen feet from stage-mountain to stage-field in search of a horse to exchange for his kingdom. Hay had never so much disliked anyone on first sight. But Booth was a charmer; and charmed Kate, easily; and Hay, gradually. He spoke of the play they were to see, The Pearl of Savoy. “If acted well, it has its moments. I saw it in Richmond when I was playing there.”

  “Richmond?” Kate’s eyes widened. “You play in the enemy capital.”

  Booth’s teeth were white and even; was he all perfection? Hay wondered. “That was two years before the war. I was only nineteen …”

  “The youngest star …?” Kate was inquiring.

  “Well, I was young. And I was a lead. But it was Mr. Grover who made up that billing for me last spring. Anyway, I liked Richmond because they put up with me. It’s not like New York, where everyone says that I am raw and crude and not as good as my father or brothers. Apparently, I’m supposed to wait until I’m old; or my brothers stop. Anyway, it is true, Miss Chase, that you are the most beautiful young woman in Washington. As Miss Hale,” he turned tactfully to Bessie, “warned me.”

  “Are they not the most beautiful couple?” breathed
Bessie. “Katie and …”

  “Me?” asked Hay, innocently.

  “No, Mr. Booth. Not,” added Bessie, whose father was hostile to Lincoln, “that Mr. Hay hasn’t his own wholesome charm.”

  “Wholesome,” murmured Kate. “The very word.”

  “Perhaps Mr. Barnum should put the two of you in his circus,” said Hay, unable to control himself. “You could stand side by side on the stage, like statues, and everyone would worship.”

  “Do you think they really would?” asked Kate with every appearance of seriousness.

  “Oh, yes!” Bessie was all seriousness and without jealousy. “What a sight!”

  “Pay to see us?” Kate was persistent.

  “Mr. Barnum can get people to pay to see absolutely anything,” said Hay, noticing that Booth’s physical perfection was marred by his own initials crudely tattooed in ink on the back of one hand.

  “I am willing, Miss Chase.” Booth’s eyes gleamed. “We shall appear all in white, like Greek gods.”

  “As reproduced in marble or in plaster?” Hay was benign.

  “Oh, Mr. Hay, like clouds from Olympus,” said Kate, well pleased with her conceit—and conquest.

  Hay and Kate took their seats in the so-called presidential box, also occupied by Lord Lyons and members of his staff. Lyons made much of Kate and saw to it that she sat in the presidential rocker, with the best view of the stage, though even the best view from the box was none too good. In order not to appear monarchial, both Grover and Ford had built, to the left and right of the stage, in the first gallery or dress circle, large boxes that could be divided into two if necessary. These boxes were so angled that the occupants were not visible to the audience since curtains screened whoever sat in them; only the actors on stage had a good view of who was in the box, while the occupants’ view of the stage was somewhat skewed. Lately, since Madam’s mourning had ceased, the Lincolns had become devoted theatergoers. Madam preferred opera; the Tycoon Shakespeare—and farce. So sometimes he went alone or with Hay to his Shakespeare, while she went with friends—often Senator Sumner—to her Italian operas and German operettas. Usually, at the last moment, Lincoln would ask Hay to see if Grover or Ford would allow him to slip, unnoticed, into the theater; usually, both managers were delighted to be of service. Lincoln would wait in a side street until the curtain had gone up. Then he would hurry upstairs to the box, a policeman at his side. Lamon was often in attendance.