WASHINGTON, LATE MAY 1803
The president received them in the oval parlor. Distress over war didn’t keep Dolley from noticing how shabby it was, the walls a uniform dull oyster, nothing to set off molding and wainscoting, streaked where the leaky roof had dripped in little rivers right down the walls to strain the floors, the blue-covered furniture pedestrian at best.
Then Mr. Lemaire wheeled in a handsome cart—two kinds of tea, coffee, clever little sandwiches, and, to her surprise,
a plate of fresh scones. And she understood all at once that the chief steward was fond of her—in a terrible time, he had offered her the only comfort in his power.
The president sighed and she was struck by an infinite sadness in his expression. “I suppose I’m naive,” he said, but somehow the magnitude of sending young men out to die hadn’t quite struck me before. General Washington knew all about this; I imagine he’d be amazed by a successor who came to understand with—well, surprise.”
She wanted to pat his hand. “He wouldn’t be amazed. I think he felt just the way you do, the way we all do, sad and horrified and not quite believing, even now.”
“Yes,” he said, “not wanting to believe. But you know, we’ll leave widows and orphans at home, and some of the men who do get back will be minus arms or legs and how will they tend their farms?” He gazed from the window for a long moment and then said in a voice so low she barely caught it, “I’m learning the truth of the old cliché, that war means old men sending young men to die. Beside that, perhaps the death of a great movement loses some of its importance.”
But that stirred a deep resistance in her and she said, “No! It’s just a different kind of death, death of hope, death of a chance to build something new in the world. The French strangled their hope at birth, and we stand alone in the world, and now we’re caught in a whirlwind that is none of our doing.”
She was on the edge of her chair. “This
robs
us—steals hope and glory and possibility. And when the day comes that we have a nobility, name more important than intellect, when who you are depends on who your father was, then we’ll see—” She stopped; she was telling them what they knew perfectly well and suddenly she felt foolish and she didn’t like the feeling at all, even though what she’d said was the truth and worth pounding into everyone’s head with a mallet. Wildly, she looked about. “Tom, why don’t we make this house beautiful? You can see how much it needs loving care.”
He and Jimmy were both smiling and she had the curious sense that in some obscure way they were proud of her, which pleased her and yet diminished her somehow on this very confusing day, and then Tom said, “Well, we did put on a new roof.”
“Oh, really,” she said, voice softening, “fixing the roof isn’t loving care.” But then the door opened and Mr. Wagner stepped in. He bowed to the president. “Begging your pardon, sir, but there’s a message from Mr. Livingston I think the secretary will want to see … .”
She watched Jimmy open the packet as Wagner retreated. His eyes widened and with odd formality he said, “I believe you’ll want to see this, Mr. President.”
Tom scanned the first page, shuffled the others, and looked up. She saw a rush of emotion in his eyes. “Why don’t I read this aloud,” he said.
For once Dolley couldn’t divine her husband’s expression, let alone the president’s. She knew they were surprised, but were they pleased, displeased, alarmed, excited, dismayed? She started to ask, but Tom was reading in a slow, measured, somehow relishing voice and she settled back to let her imagination give form to the villa on the rue Tradon that served as the American embassy and to the palace called the Tuileries, which she knew only from drawings, and the streets and the villas and the rustle of carriages at night and the crowds and the hint of music always in the distance. Paris as she dreamed it.
A great tension obviously has grown in Mr. Livingston, cold awareness that the last grains of sand are tumbling from the glass. He is growing desperate. His whole mission is to make the single man in the French government who matters see that he can only lose in Louisiana. But how to crack through arrogance?
All he can do is ingratiate himself in French society, at the salons and dinners and receptions where all diplomatic business is done, and he works with a will. His command of the
language has improved sharply, and his honest affection for Paris and its people wins them over. The very fact that he is well accepted tells him he is not out of imperial favor, for society would drop him if he were.
So it’s to Madame de Forza’s on Monday and receptions at the second and third consuls’ on Tuesday and at Monsieur de Talleyrand’s on Wednesday and a grand circle at the second consul’s on Thursday and on Friday a reception at his own legation. He’s with the minister of war on Saturday and the next day plays chess at General Berthier’s, and always he talks in his mild way of the growing power of America. Lord Whitworth, the austere British ambassador, tells him that Britain is America’s friend. Rumor says that Whitworth has offered Talleyrand a huge bribe to press ahead in Louisiana to give Britain further breathing space before war resumes. Still, the last year has taught Mr. Livingston that all is fair in love and diplomacy.
He hires a fine chef and builds an excellent cellar; his dinner invitations are rarely declined. Sooner or later he guides the talk around to America and its surging growth, three states beyond the Appalachians and more forming, the rivers crowded with traffic, factories springing up in Massachusetts and Connecticut that will make the United States a selfsufficient.
Bears on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, madam? He raises her hand to his lips. No more likely than on the Champs-Elysèes. But further west—he glances around the table—the people themselves are bears, for the men who commit themselves to wilderness life are hard, strong, brave. Their table manners are weak, but they are devils on the barricades. There is no coercing them; you must kill them to control them. The table is silent. He sees Marbois nodding in confirmation, the Treasury minister remembering the happy time long ago when he had the French legation back in the days when New York was the American capital.
So Mr. Livingston rams his head against the stones of
French indifference. He peppers the first consul with memoirs incorporating all Mr. Madison’s points with imaginative twists of his own. He dilates on the American fury when their route to the sea was closed, on Senator Ross’s speech, on the ominous bill to raise eighty thousand men, on the unanimity between Federalists and Democrats in their determination to resist the French, on the natural fit between the British and Americans, two seafaring peoples, on the enthusiasm in much of America for such alliance if the French press madly forward.
Mr. Livingston makes sure all this reaches the first consul. What he can’t tell is whether the great man listens. His carefully drawn memoirs disappear unacknowledged into a bottomless well of silence, but he knows from the way he is received that he is respected and he knows that Napoleon, blinded by pride though he may be, is not a fool. And so he pounds and pounds. The great man is known to do much business while in his bath, lying there three and four hours a day in a marble tub as servants pour in more hot water scented with attar of roses, and it is to this scene that the gentleman from New York believes the message from the United States finally will penetrate.
But will it penetrate in time?—that is the question keeping Mr. Livingston awake at nights, for the crisis obviously is approaching, General Victor ready to sail before long, the occupation of New Orleans an apparent certainty, all their diplomatic efforts for naught.
Then
Le
Moniteur
publishes a stunning article by one Colonel Sebastiani, whom Paris seems to regard as an oracle. It creates a sensation. The colonel says that Egypt, which France once held and was forced to vacate, is again ripe for the taking, and from there he sees the route open to the east clear to India, that British pearl. To that end France must have the island of Malta on the Mediterranean route to Egypt. But the British still hold Malta despite having agreed to give it up, and there is much gnashing of teeth and beating of drums for war. Lord Whitworth becomes haughty; Britain
won’t even discuss Malta so long as France continues to occupy Holland, where General Victor’s fleet is boarding troops for Santo Domingo and Louisiana.
He predicts that by the time they read this, Britain and France will be at war again.
Listening here in Washington, a sparrow pecking hopefully on the terrace outside, the impact of this was startling. It was like awakening from a dream; so deeply had she imagined herself into the story that it surprised her to remember the letter had been written nearly two months ago.
Yet with the next words the narrative swept her back into the story. At the next reception, Mr. Livingston positions himself near Lord Whitworth, and he hears Napoleon say to the Briton, “I find, my lord, your nation wants war again!” “No, sir,” says Whitworth, “we wish for peace.” Napoleon draws himself up. “We will have Malta or we will have war!” He stalks away. The story radiates across Europe and the nations prepare. Can they really think of Santo Domingo and Louisiana at such a time? General Victor is ready to cast off, but Britain fears that the talk of Louisiana is a ruse and that Victor’s real aim is invasion of Britain. The Royal Navy throws a blockade across the English Channel and locks his fleet in Holland.
That is something, at least; the fearsome general and his troops won’t be going to New Orleans, at least not now.
Napoleon is said to be the most brilliant general since Alexander, which Mr. Livingston has no reason to doubt, but even he will have his hands full at war with the British. This is no time to embark on American adventures that are sure to be fatal. Mr. Livingston rallies new arguments, papers, assessments, reports of America’s growth and its arming itself, and the fury for war possessing the American people and hurls them over that stone wall to the great man in his rosescented bath. Blow by blow, paper by paper, he believes they are penetrating.
So he stands on the cusp of success when the diplomatic packet from Washington delivers a staggering blow: James
Monroe of Virginia has been named envoy extraordinary and dispatched to Paris to support him.
Support! How perfectly outrageous!
The most casual glance between the lines makes Mr. Livingston’s feelings clear. The plain fact is that alone he has piloted the ship of state to within sight of the dock, and then they send a new pilot to seize the success for himself. Why, this would enrage a saint! Doesn’t it speak to that old rivalry between Virginia and New York that is so evident in the way they abused Aaron Burr? Not that he cares much for Burr, but can anyone believe that two Virginians sending another Virginian to take New York’s triumph is just an accident?
But lamentations are beneath a man of his caliber. He came to serve his country, not himself. Yet serving his country is the point of his dismay too, for step by step he has built the American case, he has made the haut monde of Paris respect him, he has shown American reality to the dictator in his tub—and now Monroe will have to start over. Everything will stop for another year while the newcomer establishes himself. And this at just the moment when crisis could open the door to success. Nor is it all that clear that Monroe can establish himself, for he’s hardly popular here. He’s a radical Democrat when democracy is newly out of fashion in France. On a prior tour he was a rapt enthusiast of the French Revolution, an attitude drawing chilly frowns in the current imperial climate. In short, forgetting personalities, the appointment is an American disaster.
Unless …
yes!
If he can strike now, generate movement, bring this to conclusion, win his case
before
Monroe arrives, he can yet save his nation. And drop a memorandum of agreement into the Virginian’s hand when he arrives … .
But Talleyrand throws renewed overtures back in his face. No word comes from the great man’s tub. Napoleon’s brothers, Joseph and Lucien, cut Mr. Livingston on the streets. He scents British gold wherever he turns. March bends into April and Mr. Monroe is due soon. A message flashes by semaphore telegraph: The new envoy has reached Le Havre.
Then, on the morning of the day before Mr. Monroe is to arrive in Paris, a message from Talleyrand: See me at once. Mr. Livingston presents himself and ignores the usual sarcasms. The minister limps to the window, foot dragging, adjusts the glass, and stands looking out, talking over his shoulder. Meaningless chat for a quarter hour, Mr. Livingston still seated, and then with no change of inflection, Talleyrand says, “On New Orleans, now, you’re always harping on the subject. I suppose you know how tedious you are? No? Ah, well, be that as it may—”
Afterward, Mr. Livingston will have trouble remembering how it struck him, so momentous, so sudden a turn, so swift the switch from dark to light, despair to hope. For Talleyrand, who has sneered at the idea of selling an inch of New Orleans, who had laughed at the thought of American rights, now says without the slightest change of inflection, “Would the United States want the whole of Louisiana?”
Mr. Livingston is struck momentarily dumb. His throat feels swollen, his tongue out of his command. “The whole?” he croaks. “All of Louisiana? You mean … all?” Even to himself he sounds stupid. He flounders on. “No, not really. We seek to buy New Orleans, the island, the town, you see. All? West of the river too?”