1876 (6 page)

The man’s hoarse cry still sounds in my head: “Here’s your nice hot corn, smoking hot, smoking hot, just from the pot.” I used to collect such “songs” of the street.

“What sort of corn does he find in December?” I asked as we turned into Fifth Avenue.

“From Florida. The railroads, Schuyler, the railroads! They have changed everything. For the good, for the bad.” He took my arm. “Do come and see our new quarters. We moved last summer to the corner of Fulton and the Broadway—a ten-story building—a terrible expense, frankly, but convenient. Also, the presses are hidden away at the bottom, and we even have a perpendicular railway which I refuse to set foot in. One must always walk! Walk, climb, walk, climb.”

Touching his hat to those who recognized him, Bryant walked briskly south toward Washington Square Park. As best I could, I kept up with him. Each morning Bryant walks the three miles from his house to the
Evening Post
.
Like a fool, I agreed to accompany him.

Now, several hours later, as I sit in the parlour of this hotel suite, waiting to take tea with John Bigelow, there is a thunderstorm in my ears whilst my fingernails have exchanged their usual healthy pink for a most disagreeable mauve tint.

I am drinking rum and tea, and hope not to die before teatime.

Assuming that I survive my gallop down Broadway with Bryant, I did do the right thing, for not only is he an editor to whom I am beholden but he knows more about the politics of the city than anyone outside prison, saving Mr. Tweed.

On every corner newspaper posters proclaim the true story of Tweed’s escape from the Ludlow Street jail. Apparently, the Boss was allowed each day to go for a drive with two keepers. Yesterday, after a tour of the northern end of the island, he was allowed to pay a call on his wife in their mansion at Forty-third Street and Fifth Avenue.

Just now my hack driver pointed out to me this sinister palace—brownstone again!—built with stolen money. In the course of yesterday’s visit, Tweed went upstairs, and vanished. Obviously, he is a great rogue, but popular—at least amongst the lower orders, whom he gave, from time to time, small commissions, as it were, on the vast sums of money that he and his ring were stealing from the public at large.

During our walk Bryant showed me the new Court House. “I calculate that the money Tweed and his people stole while building that temple to Mammon could have paid off the national debt.”

“But
how
did it happen?” I was genuinely curious. Most of the city’s officials have always been moderately corrupt, as the younger Gallatin assured Governor Tilden; but it is not usual for the same group to remain in power year after year stealing millions in full view of the public.

But I was not to be instructed, for just then we were ambushed in City Hall Park by what at first looked to be an enormous green umbrella with no one attached to it. But then the umbrella was raised and its attachment became visible, to my astonishment and to Bryant’s dismay.

The man introduced himself to us, in a piercing voice: “Citizen Train, Mr. Bryant! Your nemesis! Yours, too, sir.” He gave me a courtly bow; and I noted that he was wearing a sort of French military greatcoat crossed with a broad scarlet sash.

Citizen Train indeed! The story of George Francis Train is well known to us at Paris. A New Englander, he became a millionaire in his youth from shipping. Later he helped to found the Union Pacific railroad; to finance that project, he created the infamous holding company known as
Cr
é
dit Mobilier
which set about in the most systematic way to bribe most of the Congress, including General Grant’s first vice president, Schuyler Colefax.

Happily for Mr. Train, he had gone mad before all these bribes were given seven—eight?—years ago. Forced out of the Union Pacific, he went to Ireland and tried to expel the English, who put him in jail for a time. Train then moved on to France in 1870, and became a Communard; he helped organize those horrors that took so many lives—as I have described at length elsewhere.

Why am I writing
journalism
?
In a moment I shall be explaining and explaining all sorts of things to you, dear reader, when none of this is meant for any eyes but mine. These notes are to be the quarry from which I hope to hack out a monument or two to decorate the republic’s centennial, as well as to mark my own American year—a year that is beginning in a most helter-skelter, breathless way: literally breathless, for I am still breathing with some difficulty despite the rum and tea.

Anyway, there in the midst of the cold windy park was mad wealthy Train with his red sash and green umbrella and all-consuming passion to be the president! Yes, after the slaughter of the Paris Communards, Train came back to the United States and ran for president in ’72 as an independent—that is to say, a communist. His campaign was unusually eccentric and gave much pleasure to almost everyone. The workies were particularly amused at the spectacle of a millionaire communist whilst the press will always write at length of anyone so entirely mad as to want the vote for women, the right for labouring men to strike, and the price for a postage stamp never to exceed a penny.

“Dear Mr. Train,” Bryant was uncharacteristically nervous as he backed away from that menacing green umbrella.

Train suddenly turned to me, and with an unexpected smile, said, “Forgive me, citizen, for not offering you my hand but I make it a general rule never to shake hands with anyone over the age of twelve. Intimate physical contact of that sort causes one to lose psychic energy. And vital energy, citizen, must be hoarded in these terrible times. Now, Mr. Bryant, explain yourself.”

The Moses-like Bryant suddenly resembled that patriarch confronted by a bush more than usually ablaze and angry. “Explain myself?” There was a trace of stammer in his usually deliberate voice. “In what way, sir?”

“Tweed!”
Train was becoming agitated. Nurses pushing perambulators fled our corner of the park. “I said he should be hanged! I wrote you that at the
Post
.
But was my letter ever published, was it?”

“So many letters, sir ... I mean, Citizen Train.” Bryant regained a degree of composure as with a swift sidestep that would have done credit to a youthful gallant of the ballroom, he got himself round the wealthy communist, who stared at him fiercely from beneath the green umbrella (to protect him, I have been told, from malignant star rays).

“Now you can see what happens when my letters are not printed, and sensible advice is not followed ...”

But by then Bryant had pranced—no other word—to the edge of the park with me in tow, and soon we were safely in Broadway, now filled with morning traffic.

“That man ...!” Bryant was, comparatively, speechless. “A perfect nuisance. Normally, he sits in the park at Madison Square, and I can avoid him. Fate obviously instructed him to come and wait for me here at, ah, Trivium.” The classical reference did Bryant good, and gave me the occasion to congratulate him with some insincerity on his recent translations from Homer. Actually I could not get through them, but they are much admired by those who have no Greek and the wrong English.

Note: Must do something with George Francis Train. The French papers would certainly be interested. But they pay too little. The English press? Possibly. Must inquire.

Two large new hotels dominate Broadway just below City Hall, the St. Nicolas and the Metropolitan. Then, at Barclay Street, I insisted that we pause a moment to look at the façade of the Astor House. “I left when it was half-built.”

“Most showy.” Like me, Bryant disdains New York’s attempts at grandeur: he under the impression that they succeed and I because they fail—at least what I have seen so far. But I do rather like Mr. Tweed’s Court House, which would not be out of place in Paris.

Then I looked for the Park Theatre; could not find it. “What happened?”

“Dear Schuyler, it burned to the ground! Everything here burns up sooner or later. You know that.”

I felt real anguish. “I used to review the plays there ...”

“For me, yes. I know. What did we call you?”

“Gallery Mouse.”

“Well, Gallery Mouse has a wide range of new theatres to attend if he so chooses.” A sidelong glance at me. “But surely you don’t want to write about our theatre.”

“No. No.”

“Because I do admire your reports from Europe. You deeply understand that wicked old world.”

I cannot think why I
deeply
resented Bryant’s smug puritan tone. After all, our wicked old Paris has never come up with a thief on the scale of Boss Tweed.

“I had thought I might perhaps do some American pieces. You know: what it is like to come back after so many years.”

“A latter-day Rip Van Winkle?”

The phrase that I have myself been using for two days became on his lips indescribably boring and obvious. “Well, yes. I suppose that such a comparison is unavoidable.”

“And our newspapers do not avoid much ...”

“Except the truth of the matter.” To my horror, this savagery escaped my lips; but Bryant took it well enough.

“Half-truths are the best we can manage, I fear. For a moment you sounded like our late friend Leggett.”

“That is indeed a compliment.” The passionate Leggett burned out his mind and lungs for the truth—or at least for something not unlike that elusive absolute.

Finally, we stood in front of the
Evening Post’s
new building.

“Schuyler, you have endured nobly the three miles.”

Although my face was stiff from the cold, my body was leaking sweat from every pore.

“Now you must come in and meet the staff.”

I entrusted myself to the compartment of the perpendicular railway whilst Bryant climbed the stairs.

The Negro operator was admiring. “There’s no one like old Mr. Bryant in all New York. He’ll be up there before we are.”

And so he was. As I stepped onto the landing, I saw Bryant hanging from the lintel to his office door. Very slowly he chinned himself, and dropped to the floor.

“You will give
me
a
heart attack.” I was firm. “Just watching you is bad for
my
system.”

This flattered him, and in the best of humours he took me into his new office which was simply a larger version of the old one—the same desk, chairs, open bookcases crowded with his own works; my sharp author’s eye noted two books by me.

The literary editor was summoned. George Gary Eggleton is pleasant, young: “Admire
Paris and
[sic!]
the Commune
more than I can say, Mr. Schuyler.”

“Would that you
had
said it, Mr. Eggleton.” I seldom resist so obvious an opening. “I looked in vain for a notice of it in the
Post
.”

“Is that true?” Enthroned at his desk, Bryant was Jehovah on the mountaintop.

“I must say ... I don’t know ... perhaps ... I shall look ...”

That disposed of the literary editor. I was then introduced to a Mr. Henderson, the business head of the paper. The two men spoke of business. I proposed that I go.

“No, Mr. Schuyler.
I’m
the one who’s going.” And Mr. Henderson did go.

“Would you like to write something for us on the Centennial Exhibition?” I had forgotten how swiftly Bryant comes to the point when he is at his desk, at work.

“Why, yes. I would.”

“It opens in Philadelphia. May or June, I’m not certain. Anyway, there will be time to prepare yourself, to think through all the changes you will have noted ...”

“Not least, amongst them, let us hope, the rates of payment at the
Post
?”
How impossible it would have been for the young Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler to mention money to William Cullen Bryant. But I am old, needy, triplebound with brass, and would that it were gold. I managed to get him to agree to a flat payment of five hundred dollars for no less than ten thousand words, an excellent price for the
Post
, though hardly in the
Ledger
class.

I rose to go. “I am to take tea with our old friend John Bigelow.”

Bryant was interested. “I’ve not seen him since the election and his ... uh, elevation.”

“What does the secretary of state of New York do?” Bigelow was elected to the post last month.

“Whatever it is, let us say that some do less of it than others. I presume
this
secretary of state will be very busy trying to elect Governor Tilden president ...”

“That is my impression. I assume you will support Tilden.”

The deep-set eyes almost vanished beneath the noble brow as he turned his head away from the window. “The
Post
is a Republican newspaper. Governor Tilden is a Democrat ...” And so on. But Bryant’s tone was pensive, tentative. This means that he is not decided; must mention this to Bigelow.

Bryant accompanied me to the office door, from which he had so recently hung. “Tilden is my lawyer, you know. A splendid man. But not perhaps strong enough for the highest place. I speak of his physical health—not mental, of course. And then, of course, he’s not married. This may disturb the electorate.”

“But Jackson, Van Buren, Buchanan—any number of presidents have been bachelors in the White House.”

“But they once
had
wives. Saving the egregious Buchanan, they were widowers, while Samuel Tilden has never married, nor, one gathers, even contemplated matrimony. If elected, he would be our first ... our ... our first ...”

“Our first
virgin
president?”

Bryant was taken aback. Then, almost shyly, he laughed through that enormous waterfall of a beard, in itself a suitable subject for ode-making.

“Dear Schuyler, you have been too long in Paris! We are simple folk in this republic.”

On that amiable note we parted.

I was so exhausted from the morning’s hike that I had more energy than ever: a phenomenon that Emma’s father-in-law used often to remark upon as he would tell us for the thousandth time about the retreat from Moscow.

I was drawn irresistibly to the Astor House despite its decline—which is relative only to the new grandeur of the uptown hotels.