A Passionate Girl

by Thomas Fleming

  The third reporter, a bald-headed, snub-nosed man named William Colby, from the Chronicle, was openly skeptical. He asked me a number of sharp questions, such as whether I believed the bullet was preferable to the ballot in determining political issues. I was not aware that he was using a quotation from the martyred Lincoln to trap me, and said I thought the bullet was preferable when the ruling tyrants were indifferent to the ballot. The reporter for the fourth paper, the Republican, took notes dutifully and then sought out Colonel Roberts and O’Neil, who were conferring with some congressmen in the next room, and demanded a hundred dollars to print the story. We gave it to him.

  Mrs. O’Neil and I spent the afternoon touring Washington. As a nurse, she was anxious to see the hospitals. One of the largest was in a vast ramshackle series of sheds to the west of the Capitol. As we approached, a sickening odor of putrefaction surrounded us. I had to seize my handkerchief and muffle my face. Mrs. O’Neil, used to such vapors, scarcely noticed it. A soldier guarding the outer gate readily admitted us. Mrs. O’Neil had had the forethought to provide us with a basket of fresh fruit to give the soldiers.

  I thought the war was over, and with it the suffering. Margaret O’Neil knew better. She knew how long it took the body to recover from the terrible violation of a bullet. Unlike me, she was not shocked to discover a hall filled with hundreds of beds, stretching for what must have been three city blocks. On each bed a man lay still or twisted and groaned or sat staring listlessly. Those last were the most dangerous cases, she told me. So often a wound depressed the mind, and in the end infection spread like an evil flower to consume the victim’s life.

  She met a man in his shirtsleeves, who she correctly guessed was a doctor. “How many in this hospital?” she asked.

  “Two thousand.”

  “How many still in the whole city?”

  The doctor, who was scarcely thirty, pulled at his brown beard for a moment. “Over thirty thousand,” he said. “But we’re sending them home as fast as possible. They’ll have a better chance at home than in this over-heated pigsty.”

  The sun beat on the flat roof, making the inside of the shed an oven. Margaret O’Neil asked who would make the best use of her basket of fruit. “The amputees,” the doctor said. “They’re at the far end. We find they do better when we keep them apart from the others.”

  We walked the length of the building and found ourselves surrounded by men with missing arms or legs, and some with both. “Is anyone here from Ireland?” I asked as we began handing out the fresh fruit.

  A dozen raised their hands. Only one was from Kerry, and one from Limerick, our home counties, and they came from villages neither Margaret O’Neil nor I knew well. We were strangers meeting in this strange place, offering mute testimony not so much to our Irishness as to our common humanity. The more I looked about me, the more I felt ashamed for having asked the question. I think it was there in that hospital, surrounded by the awesome sight of the suffering caused by a war, that I felt the first stab of doubt about the goodness, the wisdom, of our cause.

  The feeling passed as quickly as it came, largely because of the reaction Margaret O’Neil tried to force upon me as we left the hospital. “Doesn’t that sight make you wonder?” she asked.

  “About what?”

  “About starting a war to free Ireland.”

  Without warning she launched a violent denunciation of the Fenians. She would never have left the hospital and her vows if she had known John O’Neil was to become a convert to this cause. Her father had been a disciple of the great Daniel O’Connell, the man who had preached moral force and peaceful persuasion as Ireland’s only recourse. Coldly I told her I had heard these arguments from my own father and learned to despise them. What a strange combination I was in those days, cold as the grave inside and fiery anger on the surface.

  Margaret O’Neil now viewed me with disapproval and disappointment. She had hoped to make an ally of me from that hospital visit. For my part, I felt sorry for John O’Neil if he had to listen to such sermons in his bedroom.

  Partly to change the subject, I suggested a visit to the Capitol. We toiled up the hill and soon found ourselves within the spacious dome. The place was filthy. There were piles of refuse behind the statuary and in the corners. It reeked of unpleasant human odors as well. The walls were covered with scribbles of writing, initials of earlier visitors, some with brief messages for posterity. But the sweep of the dome was grand in its ambitious breadth, and the statues had a heroic Roman nobility to them.

  “Ladies, good afternoon. Can I be of service to you?” It was Congressman Fernando Wood, looking as urbane and elegant in a suit of dark blue as he had looked last night.

  “We’re mere tourists,” I said, “ready to be interested by anything you suggest.”

  “There’s no point in gazing at these marble monuments to the dead,” he said. “Or at that Italian Renaissance painting up there,” he added, gesturing to the panels on the dome. “They can’t amuse, and amusement is the only possible reason for visiting Congress.”

  He led us briskly up a broad marble staircase to the visitors’ gallery of the Senate chamber. It was a most impressive room, with a lofty cast-iron ceiling, paneled in stained glass, each pane bearing the arms of the different states. The walls were a glowing gold, the doors a bright emerald green. The senators were supposed to sit in three semicircular rows behind small desks of polished wood, but only a few of these were occupied. Most of the salons were sitting offstage, as it were, in the cloakrooms, their feet up on chairs, smoking. Others strolled the aisles, munching apples, whispering to colleagues. The presiding officer, who sat on an ornately carved dais, was writing a letter. Through all this inattention a senator was speaking. He was a burly man with a huge head and a snarling mouth above a massive stubborn chin.

  “Mark him,” Fernando Wood said, “he’s one of your enemies. Ben Wade of Ohio.”

  “We know we have a drunkard in the White House,” Wade roared. “I’m beginning to think we may also have a traitor. Where does this pseudo-president get the power to pardon rebels in arms, to restore the right to govern to the very men who have forfeited it forever by their treasonous murderous acts?”

  “I can see he’s the president’s enemy,” I said. “Why is he Ireland’s?”

  “Wade is part of the Radical Republican machine,” Wood explained. “A minority. They can only stay in power by preventing the Democrats in the Southern states from returning to Congress. They want to make the South a conquered territory, a military district, for the next century, while they rule here and pick things clean. They’re Sassenachs, as you call them, and despise Irishmen even more than they hate rebels. If they win the game, you can say good-bye to your hopes of American support.”

  Wade went on abusing the president in a style I found hard to believe, even though I was hearing it with my own ears. He bid fair to continue for hours, and we finally left him and crossed the great rotunda to the House of Representatives. Here, much the same performance was being enacted by a man speaking while the rest conducted other business. This orator was also from Ohio. His name was James Ashley, and he was, Fernando Wood told us with offhand contempt, a former drugstore keeper. He was a short fat man with a large shock of bushy light hair, which he wore over his forehead in a frowzy bang. He had a rather high-pitched voice, and he was using it to denounce President Johnson shrilly. “From this day forward,” he cried, “this house must begin collecting evidence to remove this man. Our one hope of saving the nation lies in our constitutional right to impeach the traitor in the White House.”

  On and on Ashley ranted. Mrs. O’Neil listened with apparently complete attention. In my right ear I heard Fernando Wood’s cool voice. “You must know you’re very beautiful. I’m something of a connoisseur of beauty—as well as of political intrigue. Would you come to my room at the National Hotel tonight? We might have some things to exchange over a bottle of champagne.”

  “We have an appointmen
t to see the president at nine.” I said.

  “I seldom go to bed before two,” he said.

  “I’ll think about it,” I said.

  My lack of feeling shocked me. I should not have been surprised at it, but I still wanted to believe I was the same passionately sincere patriot girl I had been when Dan McCaffrey walked through the door of our farmhouse in Ireland. I did not want to admit another very different woman was living in that girl’s flesh.

  At dinner that night we dined on expectation. We scarcely tasted the food, spread in the usual American profusion. We were in our hired carriage by half past eight and rode through the darkening streets to the White House. There was no letup in the heat, even with the shadows of evening. It surmounted the city in a great smothering blanket.

  We waited for the president in the East Room of the White House. The room looked like it had been fought over by opposing armies. The cushions on the chairs were ripped and torn, smeared with the dirt of a hundred boots. Couches sagged; draperies dangled in shreds. Someone—we later learned it was President Johnson’s daughter—had tried to disguise the damage of the previous four years by filling the room with fresh flowers. But it was impossible to hide the results of the mansion’s war service as the Union’s headquarters, crowded with grimy dispatch riders and mud-splattered aides-de-camp from the battlefront, day and night. The place was a wreck.

  The president met us with a broad smile. He was a square-shouldered, clean-shaven man of middle height, with a broad brow and ruddy complexion. He embraced his friend O’Neil. “By God, John,” he said, in a drawl even broader than Dan’s, “seein’ your ugly face is almost as good as a visit to Tennessee. How are you, anyway, you miserable Irish possum?”

  O’Neil said he was fine, now that he had married his nurse. He introduced his wife and then me, Colonel Roberts, and Dan. As he finished, a husky, dark-bearded young man joined us. The president introduced his son Robert. Behind a stiff, jutting beard, he had the president’s rough features but a far smoother manner. He took my hand and murmured something about being charmed to meet a genuine Irish beauty. He had dined with the reporter from the Star, who had told him about me.

  “I got to warn you about this fellow, Mr. President,” Colonel O’Neil said, pointing to Dan. “He’s a Tennessee man and one hell of a soldier, but he took the wrong side in our little contention.”

  “So did most everybody in Tennessee,” Johnson said with a grin. “Where did you fight, son?”

  “With Stuart’s cavalry,” Dan said.

  “I can respect that,” the president said. “I can respect a soldier who stands to his arms with honest conviction and risks his all on a hundred battlefields. It’s the bushwhackers and outlaws who ran wild in Tennessee that I wanted to hang—and I did hang my share of them. Now you’ve lost in a fair fight and you want to rejoin the United States. Is that how you see it?”

  “Yes, sir,” Dan said.

  “Robert,” the president said to his son, “put this boy’s name at the head of our pardon list tomorrow.” He threw his arm around Dan’s shoulders in the same affectionate gesture he had used with O’Neil. “You’re the kind of rebel we want and need to rebuild this country. But those hungry wolves from Ohio and Massachusetts want to feed on your flesh. To the victor belong the spoils, that’s their battle cry, but the skunks ain’t honest enough to admit it.”

  The president stormed away on this theme for a good five minutes, and I began to wonder if we would ever have a chance to mention Ireland. But O’Neil, who knew him well, let him wind down and then introduced the purpose of our visit.

  “Although I’m still wearing my Union uniform, Mr. President,” O’Neil said, “I’m about to change it for another color—the green of Ireland. I have the rank of colonel in the Fenian army, and McCaffrey here is a major. Colonel Roberts is a member of the council of advisors. You’ll read about this young lady’s exploits in the papers tomorrow. We’re here to ask America’s help, to revenge both America and Ireland for Britain’s crimes.”

  “You’ll have all the help this honest heart can give,” Johnson said, striking himself dramatically on the chest. “What are your plans?”

  Quickly, O’Neil outlined the proposal to conquer Canada and hold it as hostage for Ireland’s freedom. “I like it,” Johnson said, springing up to stride excitedly back and forth before us. “Those damned royal skunks let the Rebs use Canada to send a thousand spies and bushwhackers across our borders. Secretary of State Seward told me just the other day that for the damage those built-in-England Confederate sea raiders like the Alabama did to our merchant fleet, we should get two hundred million from the Bank of England. That’s twice what Canada’s worth. Just this afternoon I was talking to General Rawlins, Grant’s chief of staff, about it. He said we could take Canada with one corps of the Army of the Potomac. Twenty thousand men. But why not let you people take it? Then we offer you membership in the United States, like Polk did with Texas. If Queen Victoria yells, we’ll just tell her that we’re fair and square now. If she don’t like it, come on over and try to take it away from us.”

  “It’s in the great tradition of the state of Tennessee,” Robert Johnson said. “It will make you a president as famous as Andrew Jackson.”

  “Now hold on, son, nobody can equal that man, least of all this old stump speaker,” President Johnson said. “But I like what you said about Tennessee. I’d like to redeem the honor of the state. What better way than to point to this man and say: Remember Sam Houston? Here’s the Sam Houston of Canada. Both from Tennessee.”

  The president pounded John O’Neil on the back and literally roared with excitement. “What do you need, John? Tell me, and by the eternal I’ll move the Treasury and the War Department around on my back to get it.”

  “We need guns, ammuntion, the right to sell bonds to raise the money to buy uniforms, and when we attack—recognition as belligerents.”

  “The way the English recognized the Confederacy. You’ll have it. You’ll have the chance to buy guns and ammunition from our armories at cost. You’ll have everything you need or want.”

  We left the White House walking on air. Back at the hotel, it was champagne all around and a toast to Ireland’s freedom before the year’s end. Red Mike Hanrahan rushed off to prepare a report for the Fenian council and telegraph a story about our warm White House reception (minus the explicit promises) to the Irish-American. How easy it is for men with power in their hands to infuse the powerless with dizzy hope. I believed President Andrew Johnson as much as the others.

  Suddenly I remembered the whispered invitation of that connoisseur of beauty and politics, Fernando Wood. It was dangerous to go near him, I knew, but it might be equally dangerous to stay away.

  I went to my room, pretending the champagne made me sleepy, changed to a light blue evening dress, and descended to the street. In fifteen minutes I was at the National Hotel. I had to nerve myself to ask for Mr. Wood’s room, but the clerk did not seem in the least surprised. “Miss Fitzmaurice?” he said. “He’s expecting you.”

  I found him in formal dinner dress, with a silver service for a late supper laid on a tablecloth of crisp Irish linen. A bottle of wine cooled in a silver bucket. It was a champagne more delicious than any I had yet tasted. “I discovered it in Paris,” he said. “It comes from a small vineyard near Rheims. They let it age twenty years before selling it. I understand it’s Napoleon the Third’s favorite.”

  He showed me around his suite, which he had decorated himself, with furniture from Paris. Paintings by Corot, David, and other masters hung on the walls. The golden-yellow wallpaper, alive with shepherds wooing scantily clad shepherdesses, was copied from a room in Versailles. “You must sit here,” he said, placing me on a rose-colored couch. “It matches your dress. Did you choose those colors? You have taste to match your beauty.”

  “Don’t you want to hear about my meeting with the president?”

  “No. I simply want to sit here and drink champagne a
nd look at you.”

  I had never met a man like him, so self-possessed, so calm. I decided that he had to be perfectly empty or perfectly surfeited. I inclined to the latter. He had lived a tumultuous life. He had penetrated and mastered his world, seen it from the inside, and was beyond surprises. I felt a great wish stir in me to do the same thing.

  “I looked at you and said, This is no ordinary girl. She wants to attempt great things. I was that way once. It’s the only way to live.”

  “Don’t you wish to attempt them still?”

  “My chance came—I made the attempt—and it ended in failure. I have no regrets, only disappointments. I did everything a reasonable man might expect. But history had other ideas about the future.”

  “That won’t be my way. I’m prepared to die for what I believe.”

  “Don’t say that. I won’t hear it. Not tonight. I won’t preach you a sermon against fanaticism. Simply believe me when I tell you it’s the world’s greatest sin. It’s the sworn foe of beauty and intelligence, the deadliest enemy of love.”

  “You may call it fanaticism, but what great thing has ever been accomplished without passion?”

  “Well said,” he replied. “But the fanatic goes beyond passion. He drives his feelings into an arctic zone where they freeze into weapons of destruction. Passion is human. Fanaticism is its extreme, the attempt to transform the human into the superhuman, the real into the ideal. It always ends in disaster.

  “More important,” he said, “fanaticism is a passion gone political. I say passion must remain personal, if we are to remain human.”

  As he said this, he took me by the hand and led me to the table. On plates full of ice were Chesapeake Bay crabs, shrimp, and oysters, the finest in the world, he avowed. At the ring of a bell, a black man emerged from another room to replace the champagne with a cold white wine from Austria.