A Passionate Girl

by Thomas Fleming

  “What’d I tell you last night?” Dan said. “That old boy’s worn out. He’s a good old dog, but he’s worn out.”

  “He’s given twenty years of his life to Ireland,” Michael said. “Living here in a hole in the wall, on charity most of the time. I haven’t the heart to turn him out because he’s old. Nor do I think he’s so wrong about what he says, that we must wait and plan before we strike.”

  “You don’t keep an army waitin’,” Dan said. “Waitin’ rots an army.”

  “We don’t have an army. We have detachments scattered here, there, and everywhere. Most of them without guns,” Michael replied.

  “You’ll have an army soon enough,” Dan said. “If we do what Roberts says.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Take Canada,” Dan said.

  There it was, the wild, daring idea that was to tear apart the Fenian movement and leave behind it a legacy of betrayal and hatred. Struck by its novelty, I listened while Dan told me why he favored it. There were fifty thousand Irish-American veterans of the Civil War armies in America, spoiling for a chance to strike a blow against England. To be brutally realistic, there was not much hope of getting them to Ireland as long as Britannia ruled the seas. Canada was a different proposition. There was not so much as a fort on its long border with America. Already inside Canada were a million Irish who were ready to rise and cooperate with an invading army. The Canadians themselves were divided. The Catholic French hated the English and would welcome the Catholic Irish as liberators. There was no central government. The various provinces were ruled from London. All the Fenians needed was the cooperation of the American government. To get that cooperation, they needed help from politicians—which no doubt explained Colonel Roberts’s sudden change of mind about Dick Connolly.

  Michael kept frowning and saying he had grave doubts about the whole scheme. I left them arguing and retired to my bedroom to dress for dinner. There I was delighted to discover that the seamstress had finished two of my new dresses and delivered them. One of them was a dinner dress, which I promptly tried on. It was a rose-colored satin, brocaded in white velvet with a deep flounce of blond lace, a half yard wide. There was satin on each side below the waist, and the whole thing was lined throughout body, skirt, and sleeves with white silk. I strolled into the sitting room and displayed myself to Dan’s admiring eye.

  “Hey,” he said, “you’re ready for Fifth Avenue in that number.”

  Facing myself in a mirror inset in one wall, I liked what I saw. I was not as beautiful as Annie, but I was certainly more than passable. Then I thought of those ragged Irish in the Sixth Ward and felt a terrible, confusing guilt, to be standing here in satin and silk. Knocking on Michael’s door, I pretended I wanted to show him the dress. I sat down and told him where I had been, what I had seen this afternoon.

  “We’re in a strange country, that much is certain,” Michael said. “For the time being we must follow its customs. When in Rome, as the saying goes. But the more I see and hear, the more I think the Irish and the Americans are deadly different. This scheme to oust O’Mahoney is an American thing from start to finish. ’Tis too much trouble and difficulty to help Ireland, so we’ll all go up and rob land in Canada instead. O’Mahoney tells me the Americans have been smacking their lips over Canada since the century began.”

  Then he dropped politics and asked, “How is Annie? As beautiful as ever?”

  “More, if possible,” I said.

  “What’s this fellow Connolly to her?”

  “Her man. She’s married to him—in all but name.”

  “And he’s married in name to someone else?”

  “Don’t blame her, Michael, until you know a bit more of New York and what’s happened to her.”

  I told him about Leonard Jerome. His eyes bulged in his head. “She made that up,” he said. “She made it up to justify herself. Just as you’ve used the Fenians to justify throwing yourself into McCaffrey’s bed.”

  “I have not thrown myself anywhere,” I said. “If you had a brother’s heart, instead of the head and tongue of a canting monk, you’d rejoice that Annie’s found herself a protector. As for me, it’s simply a matter of you minding your own business.”

  I stormed through the sitting room past Dan without looking at him and burst into tears when I reached my bedroom. Dan came to the door and knocked. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You sure?”

  “Yes. Go away.”

  It was a thoughtless phrase. I would soon regret it.

  A Good Old New York Bender

  We waited in the lobby of Sweeney’s for Annie and Dick Connolly. They arrived at seven, as promised. Our Tammany sachem had hired an open carriage, perfect for a warm summer evening. Michael and Annie exchanged enthusiastic kisses. I had warned him that if he said a word to spoil the evening I would kill him. Dick Connolly gazed approvingly at my gown and said in his dry way, “The Fenian girl has become the Fenian lady.”

  We drove uptown for a drink at the Louvre, the concert saloon where Dick and Annie had met. A stroll through it was equal to a visit to Versailles. Never have I seen so many crystal chandeliers and marble columns. The walls were paneled in gold and emerald. There were baskets of fruit and bouquets of brilliant flowers on the marble-topped tables. The grand hall had a mirrored bar at least two hundred feet long. In the quiet lounges off this hall sat some of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. Many of them smiled winningly at Dick Connolly, and one ran over to give him a message for “Peter.” No wonder Annie felt threatened by her own sex.

  We drank a bottle of excellent French champagne, and Dick Connolly talked of the happy day he walked into this room and met Annie. “I looked at her and thought, ‘There’s a true Irish beauty to warm an exile’s heart,’” he said. “But would she be interested in a spavined old politician like me?”

  “I took pity on him,” Annie said. “He was so lonely, only surrounded by a dozen or so of his pals.”

  “I got rid of them the moment you smiled at me,” he said.

  “You mean most of these women are hired by the management?” Michael asked in his most severe moralist’s tone.

  “Some are,” Annie said.

  “They had a wedding here only last week,” Dick Connolly said. “An Astor nephew married a girl he’d met in this very room.”

  I noticed Dan was staring at one woman, a tall blonde, with uncommon interest. “We may have another,” I said, “if Dan keeps looking at that girl over there.”

  “The countess?” Dick Connolly said with a smile. “You need a loaded wallet and a loaded gun to play games with her. She’s German. Claims her father was lord of the bed-chamber to King Ludwig of Bavaria.”

  Dan gave me a glower. My Donal Ogue was in a surly temper, and I did not know why. He drank his champagne and said nothing while Michael drew out Dick Connolly. He had been born in Banta, not far from Cork. A few years before the famine of ’47 he was brought over by an older brother. He soon saw that there was no way for an Irishman to rise but by politics. But he also determined that when he rose, he would know where and when to challenge the Sassenachs. He entered a bank and acquired enough knowledge of that arcane business to become an officer. Every spare hour, night and morning, he devoted to politics, and soon was a Tammany sachem and a leader of the Twentieth Ward. He and men we would soon meet had spent the last five years eliminating from the topmost posts in Tammany what he called “croakers,” men who complained and quarreled and divided the ranks. Now Tammany was united for the first time in a decade. “Which means,” he said in his wry way, “if all goes well in the elections this November, we’ll be ready to reap the harvest.”

  “A harvest of what?” asked Michael.

  “Dollars,” Dick Connolly said. “We’re going to get our money out of City Hall the way the Sassenachs get it out of Wall Street. We’re going to use it to do what they did—buy real estate, start banks. We’re going to ow
n our share of this city. Maybe own it all, before we’re through.”

  We listened, amazed by his boldness, too ignorant of American life to know that we were hearing a plan that would bring disgrace and ruin on Dick Connolly and many others and smirch what little reputation the Irish had in America. Dan was as silent as me and Michael. The ways of New York were as strange to a man from Tennessee as they were to us. If we had any doubts, Annie stilled them for us with her wild enthusiasm. She raised her glass and said, “A toast. To the conquest of New York.”

  We drank heartily to it, though it occurred to me that we ought to be drinking to the conquest of Ireland. Matters were becoming extremely confused in my head. Having finished our champagne, we strolled across Madison Square to the corner of Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street and entered a formidable building, fronted with marble. “This is the Blossom Club,” Annie said. “Where the big-shot pols relax.”

  “And potshot each other,” Dick Connolly said.

  We entered an elegant reception hall. The Turkish carpets were so thick, you could have struck a sledgehammer on the floor without making more than a faint thud. Paintings hung from the oak-paneled walls. Dick Connolly pointed to one in particular. It was on our right beside the entranceway. Frame and all, it was at least ten feet high. The subject was a man with a huge head and vast front, wearing an expensive brown suit. In his tie glittered a magnificent diamond. His mouth and chin were covered by a mustache and beard, but a small smile was visible on his lips, and his eyes glittered with a mocking humor. Dick Connolly took off his tall black silk hat and bowed low before the portrait. “We must pay obeisance to the ruler of the universe,” he said.

  “Who is he?” Michael asked.

  “That is the Honorable William Marcy Tweed, member of the Board of Supervisors of the City of New York, deputy street cleaning commissioner, and grand sachem of Tammany Hall. If you wish to shorten these titles, simply call him God,” Dick Connolly said.

  “It’s a good likeness,” Annie said. “When did they hang it?”

  “Only a day or two ago.”

  “The hell with being God. He never has time to enjoy himself,” roared a voice behind us.

  We confronted the man himself. He was almost as mammoth in the flesh as he was in his portrait, the same vast front, with a more pronounced paunch and the chest and arms of a wrestler. He weighed at least three hundred pounds and stood over six feet. He swept Annie off her feet in a tremendous hug and called her his favorite Irish princess. “And this is the Fenian girl?” he thundered, turning his attention to me.

  “None other,” said Dick Connolly. “And her brother, Michael Fitzmaurice, and Major Dan McCaffrey of the Fenian army.”

  “I salute you all,” roared Bill Tweed, bringing his hand to his balding head. “The Blossom Club is at your disposal. Consider yourselves my guests. Except this Irish Scrooge here, who will pay for everything he eats and drinks, or else.” He prodded Dick Connolly in the chest with an enormous fist.

  “Or else what?” Dick Connolly said.

  “Or else I’ll pay for it, as usual. Come along, let’s have a few drinks.” He opened his arms wide and literally swept us before him to the bar, on the left of the reception hall. Dozens of well-dressed men were standing at a long, gleaming crescent of dark wood, glasses in their hands. “Gentlemen,” boomed Bill Tweed at the entrance. “We have a guest of honor tonight. The Fenian girl and her compatriots.”

  The room exploded with cheers, and a hundred glasses were raised to toast us. In the midst of the uproar, I heard Dick Connolly say to Tweed, “Has Sweeny seen Roberts?”

  “He’s talking to him now, upstairs,” Tweed said.

  We retreated to a corner table and a bottle of French champagne was speedily placed before us. Bill Tweed drank a toast to us and cheerfully asked us how much of my story was true. I told him none of it and pointed to Dan as the real hero of the adventure. “Where are you from, Major?” asked Tweed.

  “Tennessee,” Dan said.

  “You’re a long way from home. Were you in the war?”

  “Stuart’s cavalry.”

  “A rebel. Or should I say Democrat? Here’s to you and your gallant cause.”

  Tweed began talking of the Civil War as the South’s greatest mistake. Once they had fired on the flag, the Democrats of the North had to go against them. If they had forsworn the gun, they could have ruled the country in alliance with the Northern Democrats.

  “We could have kept the nigger in his place forever,” Tweed said. “And given honest Irishmen a chance to earn their bread.”

  “It seems to me, sir,” said Michael, “that an honest Negro and an honest Irishman should have the chance equally.”

  “Ho? What’s this?” roared Tweed. “An idealist? Go down to the Sixth Ward and preach that doctrine to your fellow Irishmen. I’ll guarantee to pay for your funeral.”

  “Bill’s a Scotsman,” Dick Connolly said. “But he’s learned to love Irishmen.”

  “I love them for the way they vote. Often,” Tweed said. “Without them I’d be nothing. Did you ever hear of Big Six? That was my fire company. John Reilly, God rest his soul, and I organized it. Seventy-five stout boyos we had in it, every one of them ready to swing an ax or club for Bill Tweed on election day.”

  “I don’t understand,” Michael said. “What does a fire company have to do with elections?”

  “Is this schnoozer bingo?” Tweed asked Dick Connolly, using New York slang to ask if Michael was drunk.

  “He’s just off the boat, Bill. Green as grass.”

  “I think it’s growing between his ears.”

  Patiently, the grand sachem of Tammany explained that a fire company was a phalanx who remained loyal to their leader, not only casting their votes for him on election day but beating black and blue those who tried to vote for anyone else.

  “There’s not many of them left now,” Tweed said, with a sudden throb in his rumbling voice. “Most of them joined the 69th Regiment or the Irish Brigade. They’re pushing up grass in Virginia while the goddamn abolitionists who started the war are riding around New York in coaches and fours on the money they made from selling soldiers rotten food and cheap uniforms. I tell you, the Democrats have got some scores to settle with those buggers. And settle them we will, eh, Dick?”

  “And how will Ireland be helped by all this?” Michael said.

  “That takes a bit of crystal-ball gazing,” Dick Connolly said. “When Bill Tweed here becomes the most powerful politician in America, a man who can go to the Democratic national convention and nominate the next president, he won’t forget he started with Irish muscle and rose on Irish votes. He’ll tell that president that America must help Ireland—or else.”

  “When will that be?” Michael said.

  “The next presidential election is 1868. That gives us plenty of time to work and plan,” Dick Connolly said.

  “Didn’t I tell you he was an Irish patriot?” Annie said, gazing worshipfully at Dick.

  “Bill Tweed never forgets a friend—or an enemy,” Tweed said. Something flashed in his eyes that made me believe the last part more than the first.

  Glancing at his gold watch, which he wore on a chain across his paunch, just below a diamond that looked even bigger than the jewel in his portrait, Tweed announced it was time for supper, if we wanted to catch the show at Tony Pastor’s. We went up the wide carpeted stairs and were met at the top by our old friend Colonel Roberts. Beside him was a stumpy, beetle-browed man with a brush mustache. He had a round Irish face and dark, uneasy eyes. Roberts and Tweed pounded each other on the back in familiar style and introduced us to Peter Barr Sweeny. “Call him Brains for short,” Tweed said.

  “How do you do,” Sweeny said, taking my hand and bowing low to kiss it. “I am honored to meet you.”

  In that needling spirit that I gradually realized was the standard mode of address for politicians, Tweed guffawed at Sweeny’s manners. “When are you going to stop acting like a goddamned frog
, Sweeny?” He turned to me and explained that Sweeny had taken a trip to France a few years ago and had been vastly impressed with Napoleon III, the ruler of the Second Empire.

  Sweeny flushed and glared at Tweed with something like hatred. I suddenly wondered if all was as jovial as everyone pretended. “I wish I could do as much for Ireland as this young woman has done,” he said.

  “Maybe we’ll give you a chance,” Tweed said. “We’ll make you a general in the Fenian army. How would that go down, Bill?”

  “Name your price,” Roberts said with a laugh. “A healthy contribution could work wonders.”

  “You’re already soaking our contractors and aldermen. Fatso McGlinchy told me he coughed up ten thousand dollars last night, after a dinner with the Fenian girl here,” Tweed said.

  “I’m not a general,” Sweeny said. “But I would be ready to serve Ireland as—say, her first president.”

  Michael stared in astonishment. It was plain that Sweeny was serious. The presumption of the American Irish was amazing.

  We entered a private dining room where a squadron of waiters served us a feast. The cooking was mostly French, heavy with truffles and cream sauces. The dishes were as plentiful as an American dinner, ranging from beef to roast duck. The wines were superb, each bottle introduced with a flourish by Sweeny, who seemed to have supervised the menu. He discoursed on their age and flavor, until Tweed interrupted him in his brusque way. “Pour it, Brains, for Christ’s sake, and let it speak for itself.”

  Beyond talking wine, Sweeny said little. Studying him, noting his restless eyes and twitching hands, I concluded he was mortally shy, a strange handicap for a politician. Annie later confirmed this to me. In 1857, Sweeny had become district attorney of New York. When he rose to speak at his first trial, he had lost the power to make a sound, fled the courtroom, and resigned the office. He was a graduate of Columbia College, a persistent reader of books on history and philosophy. Tweed and Connolly never made a political move without consulting him.