Authors: Dan Simmons
Suddenly Helen raised her wine glass. “We’ve toasted other things, but we haven’t toasted Uncle Harry returning to the United States!”
“Hear, hear!” cried John Hay, and everyone drank to Henry James’s return.
“I hope and trust that Mr. James will be staying in America this time,” said Theodore Roosevelt. The younger man’s eyes were bright but James had noticed all through the meal how very little wine the Civil Service Commissioner had drunk.
James smiled his appreciation at the comment, but said, “Alas, I must soon return to my modest little flat in London at De Vere Gardens. I scribble for a living and ever more rarely can find time to enjoy delightful nights out such as tonight. A true delight, Clara. John.”
Clara Hay flushed pink and smiled and her husband nodded.
“No, I mean it,” said Roosevelt. “This new American Race needs its writers. America needs its expatriate writers to come home and to write about America. Don’t you agree, Mr. Holmes?”
Holmes, who had been listening in silence for so long, showing no reaction other than a polite smile, merely nodded recognition of Roosevelt’s misplaced question. Perhaps Roosevelt hadn’t noticed that he was English.
“But Uncle Harry
does
write about Americans,” protested Helen.
“So much so that my publishers and literary agent all but despair,” said James with a smile.
“Did you read
The Portrait of a Lady
?” Helen asked Roosevelt. “It is an amazing word-portrait of an American woman.”
“And published more than a decade ago, about the last time Mr. James was here in the United States,” said Roosevelt. “I say again—America needs its writers to come home from Europe or other decadent and comfortable hiding places and to re-learn America and its people.”
Hay leaned forward as if to intervene, but James, smiling, said, “I would wager, Mr. Roosevelt, that you did not write every word of
The Winning of the West
while you were
in
the West. Your notes and memories and research certainly prepared you to continue writing that valuable tome when you were in New York or Washington or, I would assume, even aboard a steamship bound for somewhere far away.”
“Of course,” said Roosevelt and pumped his fist in an odd gesture for dismissal. “But I had lived in the West. Hunted game in the West. Tracked and captured bad men and faced down murderous Indians in the West. I was
in
the West and
of
the West before I began writing the first page of my book about the West.”
“And I was
in
America and
of
America for many years before I went to Europe to write about many topics, but often about Americans encountering Europe,” James said softly.
“But you left thirty years ago, sir, and have returned only for visits . . .” ground on Roosevelt’s high, insistent voice.
“For more than visits, I’m afraid,” James said sadly.
“You were of age to join the army during the Civil War but you never did,” said Roosevelt with an oddly triumphant tone, a chess master moving his knight to a threatening position.
Henry James’s usually cool gray eyes flashed heat. “My younger brothers Wilkie and Bob were both wounded in that war, sir. Wilkie served under Colonel Shaw in the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment, mostly colored soldiers, and was terribly wounded during the attack on Fort Wagner. Terribly wounded, Mr. Roosevelt . . . he was found, by pure chance, amongst the heap of dying soldiers by our family friend William Russell, who had gone hunting for his own son—Cabot, who died at Fort Wagner—and Wilkie was not expected to live and for many weeks he had to be left on the filthy cot they brought him home on, just inside our front door. My brother Wilkie suffered the pains and disabling effects of those wounds until his death ten years ago in November of eighteen eighty-three. I knew the Civil War, Mr. Roosevelt. You were . . . what? . . . eight years old when the War ended?”
“Seven,” said Roosevelt.
“So many served and suffered in so many ways,” said John Hay. “The Civil War was a nightmare from which an entire nation—an entire people—could not awake.”
James turned to his left to look at Hay. He found the comment interesting, coming from a man who had just made a fortune co-authoring a book about Lincoln and who had been at the center of that terrible vortex of war at the age of twenty-two then for more than four years.
“I do not worry about a dearth of American writers,” said Henry Adams. “Look at this table. Almost everyone here writes for publication or aspires to and soon will . . . yes, I’m looking at you, dear Helen.”
Hay’s daughter blushed prettily.
“
I
do not write nor aspire to,” said Clara Hay.
“You wrote a cookbook, my dear,” said John Hay.
“My point,” continued young Roosevelt, who simply would not be deterred, “was that America, emerging into the world’s limelight as it is, simply cannot accept or tolerate the kind of undersized man of letters—all present company excepted, of course—who flees his country because, with all his delicate, effeminate sensitiveness, he finds that he cannot play a man’s part among men, and so goes where he will be sheltered from the winds that harden stouter souls.”
There was an audible intake of breath around the table. John Hay closed his eyes for a second, touched his forehead with his long white fingers, and was about to say something when James silenced him by raising two fingers of his left hand.
“Mr. Roosevelt,” said James, his piercing gaze never leaving the younger man’s double-barreled steel-spectacled stare, “first of all, I believe that the preferred word is ‘sensitivity’, not ‘sensitiveness’. Secondly, I have to believe that the Civil Service Commission must be a truly ferocious habitat indeed to house and feed such lions as yourself. My respect for government bureaucrats has just risen exponentially.”
Roosevelt opened his mouth to respond but Henry James continued in the same smooth purr as before.
“But, alas, the value of your roars this evening, my dear sir, is impaired for any possible intelligent precept by both the truly wonderful incoherence of their observations and the puerility of their oversimplifications.”
Lizzie, Nannie, and Helen laughed. Del looked in a sort of wondrous, concerned confusion from Roosevelt to James and back again. John Hay steepled his fingers, his lips thin and white. Clara Hay looked from face to face in confusion as her beautiful dinner party was shredded like a regimental banner under heavy musket fire.
“Your sentences, Mr. James,” said Roosevelt through his huge, gritted teeth, “are as incomprehensible and unparsable in person as they are on the page.”
Henry James smiled in an almost beatific manner. “On that issue, my older brother William agrees with you, Mr. Commissioner.”
“So we’re definitely all going to the Chicago Columbian Exposition in May?” asked Helen.
“I can’t wait to see Daniel Chester French’s Statue of the Republic goddess—sixty-five feet high, I understand—right in the center of the White City and lagoons,” said Lizzie Cameron.
“I admit to being eager to see Saint-Gaudens’s statue of Diana, goddess of the hunt, perched, I hear, at the very top of McKim, Mead and White’s agricultural hall,” said Nannie Lodge.
James looked to his left. As far as he knew, Henry Adams had never mentioned Clover or her death, but would he discuss Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s already famous statue overlooking her grave in Rock Creek Cemetery? Or would the mention of the sculpture bring on a long Adams silence?
Adams looked at James and, as if reading his old friend’s mind, he said, “Harry, you’ve never seen Saint-Gaudens’s sculpture at Clover’s grave in Rock Creek Cemetery, have you?”
“No, Henry. I haven’t been back since it was completed.”
“Then we must go together to look at it tomorrow,” said Adams. “Would you like to come with us, Mr. Holmes?”
“Very much.”
“It’s settled then,” said Adams, as if he were unaware of the Lodges, Camerons, and Hays staring at him in something like shock. “I’ll come for you at Mrs. Stevens’s in my open carriage around ten a.m.”
“Good,” said James, for once not knowing what else to say. He had not the slightest clue as to why Henry Adams would suddenly be willing to take two people, one of them a stranger, to see his wife’s grave and mourning sculpture.
John Hay rose. “Why don’t the ladies retire to the parlor while we gentlemen retreat to the library for brandy and cigars or cigarettes?”
“I second the motion,” said Senator Lodge. Everyone stood.
Roosevelt’s fierce gaze had never left James’s bearded face. “Overstuffed mass of emasculated inanity,” he murmured under his breath as servants pulled back chairs and the beautifully dressed men and women began to move in opposite directions.
James turned back toward Roosevelt, smiling slightly, and remained fixed as John Hay whispered something in the author’s ear. Henry James spoke in low tones but loud enough for Holmes to hear from across the table and presumably Roosevelt at the end of the table. “ . . . perhaps expecting something more than this mere monstrous embodiment of unprecedented and resounding noise.”
The four women bustled out of the dining room. The eight men headed toward the library at a more leisurely pace. Only Sherlock Holmes was smiling as they left the dining room.
M
onday morning, April 3, was the beginning of what promised to be an almost perfect spring day. The air was cool and fresh after night-time showers but the warming sun promised temperatures in the low seventies. Every street showed trees leafing in, cherry and dogwood blossoms, and flowerbeds coming into color.
James and Holmes were waiting outside Mrs. Stevens’s home when Adams showed up in his beautiful old open carriage pulled by two large, perfectly groomed horses. A footman jumped down from the box and held the half-door as Holmes and James stepped in and sat opposite Adams, who had both hands resting on his walking cane. He was smiling. “I’m so glad you were both free to do this with me today.” To the driver, he said, “Back around Lafayette Square, please, Simon.”
Holmes exchanged a glance with James. Lafayette Square was only a few blocks away. Was Adams taking them back to his home—or Hay’s—for some reason?
No. When they reached Lafayette Square, the driver kept going, the clop-clop of their horses’ massive hooves echoing back from the buildings surrounding the wooded and open space. The grass in the square looked very green today. Holmes glanced at the equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson in the center of the square.
Adams saw the direction of the detective’s gaze and said, “My wife, Clover, always referred to that statue as ‘Jackson on his rocking horse’. She wasn’t far from the truth . . . it was the first bronze statue ever cast in America and the first equestrian statue to have a horse rearing back on its hind legs. Alas, the sculptor, a certain Clark Mills, had never seen an equestrian statue before and I fear that this shows in the finished product.”
Holmes smiled but was aware of a quick look from Henry James. It was well known that Henry Adams never—ever—spoke of his dead wife, yet he just had.
“Actually,” continued Adams, “I asked Simon to bring us back this way before we head out to Rock Creek Park and the cemetery because I didn’t know whether Hay had told you the history of some of these homes facing the square, Mr. Holmes. The events here might be interesting to someone from your profession.”
“No,” said Holmes. “No one’s mentioned the other homes besides yours and Mr. Hay’s.”
“This narrow house here . . .” said Adams, pointing with his cane, but subtly, the point of the cane never rising above the height of the carriage door. “It was rented by General George McClellan during the Civil War. John Hay tells the interesting story of one night when President Lincoln—with twenty-three-year-old Hay in tow—went over to confer with the general . . . Little Bonaparte, he liked to be called . . . but McClellan was out. Lincoln and Hay sat down in the parlor to wait. Almost an hour later, the diminutive General—diminutive in stature only, I assure you, since McClellan felt that he should be Dictator and had the habit of referring to Lincoln as the ‘Original Gorilla’—came in, saw Lincoln waiting, and went up the stairs. About half an hour passed, according to Hay, and Lincoln finally asked a servant when General McClellan might be coming back down. ‘Oh, the General’s gone to bed, sir,’ reported the servant.”
“Incredible,” said Henry James.
Adams smiled. “That’s what Hay said to President Lincoln as they were walking back to the White House in the dark and rain. He suggested that Lincoln—that no President of the United States—should tolerate such insolence. Mr. Lincoln’s response to John was—‘I would hold the man’s reins if he can win this war for us.’ ”
“Fascinating,” said Holmes, “although I’m not sure I see the connection to my profession.”
“True,” said Adams. “But here . . .” The cane pointed to another house just a few doors down. “Here lived Colonel Henry Rathbone who was stabbed by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre on the same night that the president was assassinated there.” Adams paused and looked at Holmes. “I thought that might interest you, Mr. Holmes, since you seem especially interested in assassinations.”
“Did the colonel survive?” asked Holmes.
“Yes, yes . . . yes, he did. Colonel Rathbone wrestled with Booth after the actor had shot the president in the back of the head, but Booth had come equipped with a dagger as well as his pistol and the assassin slashed Rathbone cruelly in the arm and head before he—Booth—leaped to the stage and shouted his melodramatic
‘Sic semper tyrannis’
.”
“Didn’t I read somewhere about Colonel Rathbone blaming himself for not stopping Booth?” said James.
“Precisely,” said Adams. “His wounds healed, but his agony at not preventing the assassination weighed heavily on poor Rathbone. A decade ago, when he was serving as U.S. consul in Germany, the colonel killed his wife Clara—both shooting and stabbing her multiple times—and would have killed their three children if someone hadn’t arrived in time to stop him. He told the police that he was innocent, that the real murderer was hiding, along with others, behind the pictures on the walls.”