Read Online 1876 by Gore Vidal - Free Book Online
Authors: Gore Vidal
Tags: United States, Fiction, Historical fiction, Historical, Political, United States - History - 1865-1898
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Even so, I fear that I shall be bored to death by “court life,” by all those senators who take money from railroad tycoons at the dark of the moon. After all, that is the custom of the country and I am no reformer. But I daresay I shall find something of interest to write about—if only Mrs. Grant’s celebrated cross-eyes.
All in all, I’ve not done too badly for one morning. I have acquired the Centennial Exhibition for the Evening Post ;unfortunately, that won’t be until May or June and we will be penniless by then unless I can contrive an advance payment. Also, I am to begin in February or March—Jamie is not certain—my analysis of “Washington City in the Age of Corruption,” as editors melodramatically put such things.
Jamie and I have not yet agreed upon a price. He is celebrated for his generosity (none of which has ever come my way, but then I’ve not come his way except as an occasional correspondent since old Bennett’s death). I ought to be able to get five thousand dollars for five pieces—no, that’s just a dream. Ten for five ...?
I must stop this or I shall soon be writing imaginary numbers in the margin: gleefully adding that which each day I glumly must subtract.
On my way back to the hotel, I stopped by Brentano’s bookstore at Union Park or Square. The clerks recognized me and showed me a great number of my books on sale in secondhand .Yet nowhere a copy of the Paris Under the Commune , which is, after all, only two years old. I must speak to Dutton about this.
Just received a message from Mr. Dutton himself, asking if he might call. Also a note from someone at Harper’s New Monthly (signature impossible to read) to tell me that the copy of my article on the Empress Eugénie has arrived and is even now being read with the pleasure that all my works give, etc. Enclosed, a copy of Harper’s December issue, containing a perfunctory discussion of Darwin, an amusing comment from the popular playwright Dion Boucicault, saying that all he wants is money and glory now and posterity be hanged. A regular feature called the Easy Chair makes a curious reference to Winant’s Hotel on Staten Island, and remarks that it was there that Colonel Aaron Burr died.
Colonel Burr has been a good deal on my mind today. Particularly when I looked into Reede Street, where his office was—and is no more. But then: “Never brood upon the past, Charlie!” he used to tell me when I was—so ineptly—pretending to be his law clerk. “Think always of the future, and how much worse it is bound to be!”
I must have dozed in my chair in front of the fire. A discreet servant has come, drawn the curtains, and gone. It is almost five. Time for tea with John Bigelow.
My fingernails are no longer mauve but the flesh is still pale. Must move with care, as if made of glass; and easily broken.
4
SLOWLY I WALKED the several blocks from the hotel to Gramercy Park, which turns out to be a homely little square on the order of London’s Hanover Square but smaller, less impressive, with a tiny bleak garden at the center surrounded by a perfunctory ironwork fence and the usual narrow houses sprayed with chocolate. Apparently, no one of any pretension to respectability will live behind walls of any other shade; so unlike the vivid red-brick houses and tenements of the poor or those occasional wooden shanty houses one sees in the side streets, all smeared with bile-yellow or poison-green paint.
John Bigelow was waiting for me in his pleasant study on the second floor. In front of a cheerful fire, tea was ready for pouring. From other parts of the house I could hear the sounds of family life.
“Charlie, how are you?” Bigelow is one of the few men alive who still call me by the name of my youth.
“And you, John? or your Excellency. Just what does one call the secretary of the state of New York?”
“Unfortunate.”
“A title you share with many.”
“But curiously, peculiarly mine. Have you read the Times
All in all, I’ve not done too badly for one morning. I have acquired the Centennial Exhibition for the Evening Post ;unfortunately, that won’t be until May or June and we will be penniless by then unless I can contrive an advance payment. Also, I am to begin in February or March—Jamie is not certain—my analysis of “Washington City in the Age of Corruption,” as editors melodramatically put such things.
Jamie and I have not yet agreed upon a price. He is celebrated for his generosity (none of which has ever come my way, but then I’ve not come his way except as an occasional correspondent since old Bennett’s death). I ought to be able to get five thousand dollars for five pieces—no, that’s just a dream. Ten for five ...?
I must stop this or I shall soon be writing imaginary numbers in the margin: gleefully adding that which each day I glumly must subtract.
On my way back to the hotel, I stopped by Brentano’s bookstore at Union Park or Square. The clerks recognized me and showed me a great number of my books on sale in secondhand .Yet nowhere a copy of the Paris Under the Commune , which is, after all, only two years old. I must speak to Dutton about this.
Just received a message from Mr. Dutton himself, asking if he might call. Also a note from someone at Harper’s New Monthly (signature impossible to read) to tell me that the copy of my article on the Empress Eugénie has arrived and is even now being read with the pleasure that all my works give, etc. Enclosed, a copy of Harper’s December issue, containing a perfunctory discussion of Darwin, an amusing comment from the popular playwright Dion Boucicault, saying that all he wants is money and glory now and posterity be hanged. A regular feature called the Easy Chair makes a curious reference to Winant’s Hotel on Staten Island, and remarks that it was there that Colonel Aaron Burr died.
Colonel Burr has been a good deal on my mind today. Particularly when I looked into Reede Street, where his office was—and is no more. But then: “Never brood upon the past, Charlie!” he used to tell me when I was—so ineptly—pretending to be his law clerk. “Think always of the future, and how much worse it is bound to be!”
I must have dozed in my chair in front of the fire. A discreet servant has come, drawn the curtains, and gone. It is almost five. Time for tea with John Bigelow.
My fingernails are no longer mauve but the flesh is still pale. Must move with care, as if made of glass; and easily broken.
4
SLOWLY I WALKED the several blocks from the hotel to Gramercy Park, which turns out to be a homely little square on the order of London’s Hanover Square but smaller, less impressive, with a tiny bleak garden at the center surrounded by a perfunctory ironwork fence and the usual narrow houses sprayed with chocolate. Apparently, no one of any pretension to respectability will live behind walls of any other shade; so unlike the vivid red-brick houses and tenements of the poor or those occasional wooden shanty houses one sees in the side streets, all smeared with bile-yellow or poison-green paint.
John Bigelow was waiting for me in his pleasant study on the second floor. In front of a cheerful fire, tea was ready for pouring. From other parts of the house I could hear the sounds of family life.
“Charlie, how are you?” Bigelow is one of the few men alive who still call me by the name of my youth.
“And you, John? or your Excellency. Just what does one call the secretary of the state of New York?”
“Unfortunate.”
“A title you share with many.”
“But curiously, peculiarly mine. Have you read the Times
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