by Gore Vidal
For an instant, David could not believe his ears. He, David Herold, a great man?
“How did you do it? What did you use? Or is that a secret? If it is, I shall respect it and ask no more.”
David started to tell the truth; and then saw no reason to alter his usual policy in these matters. Since last he saw Booth, there had been only one opportunity to poison the President. Two days before Lincoln went up to Gettysburg, Old Edward had come over to Thompson’s with a list of prescriptions for the Lincoln family. David had already decided that the taste of cyanide, added to the blue mass, would be barely detectable, and swift-acting. He would, of course, vanish from Washington as soon as the poison had crossed the avenue. But Old Edward had said, “No more blue mass, Mr. Thompson. Mrs. Lincoln has decreed castor oil to make himself’s bowels move. So castor oil it is.” At such short notice, David could think of nothing that could be added, safely, to that clear viscosity. Admittedly the taste of castor oil would have neutralized even arsenic’s bitterness, but the clarity of the mixture would have betrayed the presence of a granulated poison. So pure castor oil had gone to the President. Then, a few days later, when the President became ill, David assumed that now his time had come. But he was not allowed to prepare any of the medicines for the White House because Lincoln’s own physician chose to work with Mr. Thompson in the back room. Together they had prepared a number of mixtures in the hope of curing what was, at first, a mysterious disease, involving high fever and a body rash like scarlatina—or poisoning. The mystery was solved when the symptoms changed to those of smallpox. Needless to say, the White House would not admit what it was that the President had. There were already sufficient rumors that he was dying to depress the sale of war bonds and inflate the price of gold. So scarlatina was the official illness.
“I can’t really say just what it is … what it was I used,” said David, taking the cigar that Booth offered him. “But, like you see, he didn’t take anywhere near enough of the medicine. If he had, he would’ve been dead on the way up to Pennsylvania.”
“There will be other chances. You are unsuspected?”
David nodded, with what he hoped was a secret sort of smile in spite of the bucked teeth that made even his subtlest smile turn into a silly grin. “No one’s got the slightest idea I’m involved because the medicine was a patent one, which means none of us mixed it. Also, the symptoms are pretty much like the smallpox, which half the town has got. I did hear his doctor talking to Mr. Thompson,” David was inspired to invent, “and there’s still a chance he’ll die.”
“My God, Davie! You are a treasure. There will be statues to you one day, and that is a promise.” But then Booth frowned. “If we win, that is. I’m going up to Pennsylvania tonight. I’ve got some oil fields that I mean to sell. Then I go to Canada to talk to the Confederate commissioners. If Lincoln dies meanwhile, you are to go straight to Richmond, where I will join you. But if he lives, stay here and wait for orders from me—or the Colonel.”
“Do you really know the Colonel?”
Booth nodded. “I think I know him. Anyway I know how to reach him, and he me.” Booth leapt to his feet. He always leapt. But then David had noticed, with admiration, that offstage Booth was the same as on. “Come on to the bar. We must celebrate.”
There was no celebration at the White House. Hay worked on the presidential message to Congress, which Lincoln and the department heads had more or less assembled. Technically, it was a report on the Union’s state during 1863. But as a result of Lincoln’s illness, the Tycoon had not been able to pull together all the strands. So Stanton’s report on the war was a separate message, while Usher’s report on the Interior had to be rewritten. The only new note was Lincoln’s first intimation of how he would go about reconstituting the South. In the teeth of such radicals as Wade and Sumner and Stevens, he would admit to full citizenship anyone who swore an oath of allegiance to the Union. When a tenth of the voting population of any of the rebel states chose to accept the Emancipation Proclamation, they could send a delegation to Congress. On this point, the radicals were prepared to fight Lincoln. For them, eleven states had ceased to exist when they left the Union. Once defected, those eleven states were to be treated as occupied enemy territory; and their leaders punished. In Lincoln’s view, as they had once been part of the Union and would be so again, it was a somewhat metaphysical waste of time to fret over just where it was that they had been in the meantime. Once the rebellion was crushed, he stood on Article Four of the Constitution, which empowers the president to grant protection to the states in the Union. Seward had objected to this construction on the ground that as everyone, including Lincoln, had been so free with the Constitution lately, this was hardly a tactful argument since it raised yet again the delicate question of in versus out. Unhappily, Lincoln agreed to forget about Article Four.
While Hay assembled the message with help from Seward and Bates, Nicolay was again the de facto president, receiving supplicants, answering mail, sparing as much as possible the Tycoon, who could do business for no more than an hour or two at a time.
Stoddard was now in command of the newspaper cuttings, an important matter since the election year was at hand. Although the Tycoon had said nothing publicly of his plans, he was now set to run again on the ground that, for all the faults of his Administration, it was probably better not to go and swap horses in midstream—an image that Hay had thought somewhat lacking in majesty.
But then the absence of majesty much concerned Lincoln’s numerous critics in the press. Stoddard read aloud to Nicolay and Hay from some of the newly arrived newspapers. From England, Charles Francis Adams had sent a copy of the London Times, which described the dedication at Gettysburg as a ceremony that was “rendered ludicrous by some of the sallies of that poor President Lincoln.”
Nicolay put down his pen. “Was there anyone there from the London Times?”
“Who knows?” said Stoddard.
“They make it all up, anyway,” said Hay, suddenly aware that, as President and Cabinet were all lawyers, the three secretaries were all journalists; and yet they were hardly able to control, as they should, the press, short of actually arresting editors—Seward’s peculiar delight.
“ ‘Anything more dull and commonplace it would not be easy to produce’ says the Times of the President’s speech.”
“What does the Chicago Times say?” asked Hay.
“What don’t they say?” Stoddard picked up a cutting from the table. “ ‘The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat, and dish-watery utterances of the man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States. And neither he nor Seward could refrain, even on that solemn occasion, from spouting their odious abolition doctrines.’ ” Stoddard looked up. “Did Governor Seward speak?”
“No,” said Hay. “But he ought to have spoken and if he had spoken, that is what he ought to have said, according to the Times.”
“Well, the Chicago Tribune says, ‘The dedicatory remarks of President Lincoln will live among the annals of man.’ ”
“That is fair comment,” said Hay. “Did you know that Edward Everett was a friend of Lord Byron?”
“What has that to do with anything?” Nicolay placed the last of the letters for Lincoln’s signature in a folder.
“I was interested,” said Hay, who had been most surprised when, the night before the ceremony, the old man had sat before the fire of a Gettysburg magnate and regaled visitors with unusual memoirs. “He knew him at Venice, fifty years ago. He said he was charming but immoral.”
“Here is something interesting,” said Stoddard, who had no interest in Byron. “The Ohio State Journal …”
“Henry D. Cooke’s paper?” Nicolay turned to Stoddard. In disarray, Nico’s beard was like that of a goat in the wind, thought Hay, trying to think like Byron, tragically (from the Greek word for goat song).
“The same. And of Captain Hurtt, now in prison. The
present editor, one Isaac J. Allen, writes: ‘The President’s calm but earnest utterances of this brief and beautiful address stirred the deepest fountains of feeling and emotion in the hearts of the vast throng before him, and when he had concluded, scarcely could an untearful eye be seen, while sobs of smothered emotion were heard on every hand.’ Is that what happened?”
“No,” said Nicolay.
“Actually, if it was on every hand that sobbing was heard, the sob then got smothered, and no one could hear,” said Hay, pedantically. “Anyway, I’ll bet he’s consul at Bangkok before he goes to prison.” Late the previous night, Seward had regaled Hay and a number of cronies with the high misdeeds of the proprietors of Ohio’s leading newspaper.
“Gentlemen.” In the doorway stood the President. The clothes hung from him as if they contained not flesh but a wooden framework. The cords in the neck were like ropes. The face was sallow and sunken. But the eyes were cheerful and alert. “I have risen, as the preacher said, when he left the widow’s house.”
The secretaries greeted their employer with much warmth. He had been so seldom in their office during the last three weeks that the business of the presidency was beginning to overwhelm even Nicolay, who ordinarily quite liked governing the United States.
“The doctor says that I can move around, but I must remember that I am made out of glass. So I will keep visitors to the minimum. Mr. Nicolay, bring me the message to Congress.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have you all been vaccinated?”
“Yes, sir,” said Hay.
“I wonder if it does any good.” Lincoln took the lengthy message from Nicolay. “By the way, I did not have the smallpox but varioloid, which is the same thing but doesn’t sound quite as bad. Anyway, it was nice, for a change, having something that I could give everybody.” Lincoln started to go; then paused.
“As you know, Mrs. Lincoln’s half-sister, Mrs. Emilie Helm, is here in the house. As she is the new widow of a … of a Confederate general”—this was the first time that Hay had ever heard the Ancient use the word “Confederate”—“I would simply not let on anything to the press, if they ask you about her.”
“We haven’t, sir,” said Nicolay.
“She is a comfort to Mrs. Lincoln,” said the President; and left the room.
But at that exact moment Emilie was something less than a comfort. Although Mary had had few visitors during the President’s illness and Emilie’s visit, she had made an exception in the case of her old friend Dan Sickles, who had just come stumping into the upstairs parlor, accompanied by the senator from New York Ira Harris. Mary had received them graciously; and introduced them to Mrs. Helm, who was now looking almost healthy again.
The previous month, Emilie Helm and her young daughter had arrived at Fortress Monroe, where she had asked for a pass so that she could go home to Lexington, Kentucky. As the law required, Mrs. Helm was told that she could have the pass if she would sign the oath of allegiance to the United States. When she refused, the commandant had cabled the War Department, which in turn had asked Lincoln what was to be done with his rebel sister-in-law. “Send her to me,” he had said. Mary had been delighted. The two women had now wept a great deal together; spoken of their common dead; avoided politics. Mary had begged Emilie and her daughter—Tad’s age—to stay on through the summer at the Soldiers’ Home. Emilie had been tempted.
Now Sickles was eyeing the young woman most curiously, while Harris glowered. Mary realized that she had made an error in presenting Sickles to Emilie, while Sickles had compounded the error by bringing the uninvited and unsympathetic New York senator into the private rooms.
“You must have had a most difficult time, Mrs. Helm,” said Sickles, arranging his stump on a footstool.
“It is not easy,” said Emilie, politely, “travelling with a child in wartime. But then Brother Lincoln insisted that we stop off here on our way home to Lexington.”
Harris said, “I believe your husband served under my old colleague Breckinridge.”
Emilie nodded. “Yes, General Helm was with Cousin John—to the end.”
“Are you a cousin of Mr. Breckinridge, too?” Harris seemed surprised.
“My mother is, yes. I don’t know,” said Emilie, mouth beginning to set, “about the ‘too.’ ”
Mary intervened. “Cousin John was a great figure in all our lives, always. It was a tragedy when he …” Mary stopped herself. There was now nothing that she could say which was not, potentially, embarrassing, one way or the other.
“I thought very highly of Mr. Breckinridge,” said Harris solemnly. “We were friends, even. How is he, Mrs. Helm?”
“I would hardly know. My husband was killed three months ago, and I have heard nothing more of those who served with him.”
“I suppose,” said Harris, “life is very hard now at the South.”
“I have not noticed any particular change.” Emilie was much calmer than Mary would have been under such questioning.
“Well, the blockade must stop you from getting all sorts of goods …”
“Oh, our ships always seem to get through your blockade.” Emilie smiled, sweetly. “Charleston harbor has never been so busy.”
“How is dear Mrs. Sickles?” asked Mary, quickly—too quickly, since by common consensus the lady was never mentioned in polite company, not so much because her husband had killed what may or may not have been her lover, but because he had then returned to her and, worse, she to him.
“Oh, Teresa is blooming. She’s in the Ninety-first Street house. In New York.” Sickles was airy. “How is the President?”
“He is up and around, and recovered. He held one Cabinet meeting last week, which tired him out. It was not the smallpox as the papers say. Only varioloid, and general tiredness.”
“It’s a pity,” said Emilie, “that you can’t take him away to Lexington for a week or two of good air.”
“I don’t think he could leave the Telegraph Room for a day. He wants news of the war almost before there is any.”
“Well, he must have been pleased about Chattanooga,” said Harris. He looked at Emilie, challengingly. “The rebels ran from us like so many rabbits.”
Emilie responded in swift kind. “If that is true, Senator Harris, it must have been the example that you set them at Bull Run and Manassas and Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg …”
Mary felt the beginning of a severe headache. Senator Harris’s mouth was now ajar, while Sickles’s pale eyes glittered dangerously.
“We do not dwell on such things here, today.” Mary was babbling; and continued to do so until she thought that the moment had passed.
But it had not. Abruptly, Senator Harris turned on her. “Why isn’t your son Robert in the army? He’s old enough and fit enough.”
“He is finishing at Harvard …”
“He should set an example,” said the senator, inexorably.
“He will, sir, in due course.” Mary was beginning to feel faint. “He has wanted to go for some time.”
“Well, all he has to do—” began the senator but Mary broke in, “Sir, he is not a shirker as you seem to imply. It is true that I have only recently lost one son …”
“But not to the war, Mrs. Lincoln,” said Harris. “Now I have only one son, and he is fighting for his country, with my blessing.” He turned to Emilie. “If I had twenty sons, they would all be fighting the rebels!”
Emilie rose to her feet. “If I had twenty sons, Senator, I promise you that they would defeat all twenty of yours, with my blessing.”
Mary stood up. “Gentlemen, it was good of you to call,” she said. She did not offer her hand to either man. As they withdrew, Mary turned to Emilie. “I am sorry, Little Sister. It is so bitter here.”
“It is bitter everywhere.”
But a moment later, Sickles was again in the room. “Can I see Mr. Lincoln for a moment?”
“Isn’t he in his office?”
“They said he is lying down.�
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“If Mr. Lamon will let you into the bedroom, you can see him, of course.”
As Sickles stumped down the corridor, Emilie said, “I cannot stay, Sister Mary.”
“You must! Don’t take this seriously. It will be different at the Soldiers’ Home, where we aren’t exposed to everyone. It will be just us and Willie and Aleck and Ben, too, though I’ve not seen him yet. But the others have seen him and told me.”
Emilie shook her head, as if she had for a moment lost her hearing. “What was that? About Ben and Aleck?”
“Willie comes to me every evening. He stands at the foot of my bed. He is so … so full of light. He smiles at me and he tells me about all the others who have joined him. He has seen your Ben, who is well and happy. Sometimes Aleck comes with Willie, and little Eddie’s been twice to see his mamma. He remembers me. Imagine, Emilie! After all these years he remembers me, and he so young when he crossed over.”
Emilie took Mary into her arms as if she, Mary, were the youngest sister—indeed, the child. “I am glad for you,” she whispered. “I am so very glad that they come to you like this.”
But Dan Sickles was not glad. As he hurtled about the President’s room on his crutches, he described Emilie’s conversation to Lincoln, who lay, fully clothed, on his bed. When Sickles had finished both talking and hurtling, Lincoln observed, “The child has a tongue like all the rest of the Todds. It is unwise to take on any of them in a dispute.”
“Sir, it is unwise of you to have that rebel in this house!” Sickles struck the bed’s carved footboard with the flat of his hand.
Lincoln sat up as if he himself had been struck. “It is not your place, General Sickles, to advise or assist my wife and me in whom we choose to invite to our house, as we have invited you, despite criticism.”
“I am sorry, sir. I should not have spoken like that, but …”
“No, you should not have.” Lincoln was icy. “Anyway, it’s no fault of the child that she’s here. That was all my doing, as so much is.”
