Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule (37 page)

Within a few weeks the White House began to assume some semblance of order, and by autumn the house was in excellent shape, the private family chambers comfortable and cozy, the public rooms elegant and magnificent enough to impress foreign dignitaries and heads of state. It was by any measure an Executive Mansion worthy of the president of a powerful, bountiful, and rising nation.

•   •   •

As the years passed, Jule followed her former mistress’s rise to the pinnacle of Washington society via the press, marveling at her transformation from a bashful belle of St. Louis to a confident, celebrated society hostess to the nation’s elite. Time and distance had softened Jule’s anger and whetted her curiosity, so she read with interest—and perhaps even a measure of fondness—of Julia’s obvious delight in her role as First Lady. The White House had become a magnificent stage for glorious balls and receptions, levees and state dinners, where Julia entertained foreign ministers, princes, emperors, heads of state, and the most distinguished gentlemen and ladies of her own country.

In January of 1870, President and Mrs. Grant received their first royal guest, Prince Arthur of England, Queen Victoria’s third-eldest son. A twenty-seven-course dinner was served in the state dining room, which was elaborately decorated with evergreen wreaths and boughs, a portrait of Queen Victoria, and the American and British flags. The center of the table was adorned with a magnificent floral arrangement surmounted by the royal crown of England and surrounded by nine bouquets representing the queen’s most precious jewels, her nine children. “The toilets of the ladies were extremely rich,”
The
New York Herald
reported. “Mrs. Grant wore a dress of white satin, trimmed with Valenciennes lace and pearly and diamond ornaments. Miss Nellie Grant wore a blue satin, trimmed with puffed lace, and a broad sash of deep blue.” Jule could not help wondering who had arranged their hair, and how—thinking, somewhat jealously, that she would have done better.

Whenever she read of such grand occasions, Jule would imagine Julia dressed in fine silk gowns amid distinguished company in gilded and marbled halls, and then she would remember Julia in a faded calico dress pulling weeds from the kitchen garden at Hardscrabble. “What a strange world it is,” she would murmur, shaking her head in wonder.

Jule’s indignation rose whenever she read the occasional catty mockery of Julia’s cross-eye and dumpy figure, but she felt an unexpected surge of pride if a reporter praised the First Lady’s kindness, modesty, and friendly charm. “Mrs. Grant possesses a wonderful power of conciliating all distracting elements which helps to unite social and political society,” one lady reporter wrote warmly. It was little wonder, Jule thought, considering how throughout most of her life Julia had been obliged to reconcile intense contradictions within herself. She was the daughter of a slave owner wed to the son of abolitionists. She was generous and empathetic, and yet she had never felt a twinge of conscience as she enjoyed the comforts that had come from exploiting other human beings—Jule, Gabriel, Annie, Dinah, and too many more.

Jule was satisfied for the nation’s sake and happy for Julia’s when President Grant was elected to a second term in November 1872, for she approved of several measures he had enforced to secure rights for people of color. He certainly could do more, Jule and her friends and neighbors agreed, but life was much better for their race under Grant than it had ever been under Johnson. Even so, Jule was less than confident in his position on woman’s suffrage, which had become one of her most ardent causes. The General Grant she remembered had been courteous to ladies, but he had never treated them as his intellectual equals. He had listened when his wife expressed her opinion on political and military matters, but to Jule he had always seemed to do so with an air of amused indulgence, as if entertained by the prattle of a precocious child. Jule could not imagine that he would trust Julia, and by extension, other women, with the vote.

Rights for people of color, the vote for women, the care of colored orphans—those were to Jule the most pressing matters of her day. Her business had thrived in postwar New York, and with her success had come prosperity, respect, and a certain amount of fame. She had bought a comfortable home in Brooklyn, and with no children of her own to cherish, she had found fulfillment in supporting asylums for colored orphans. She had made many friends through her congregation, the Bridge Street African Wesleyan Methodist Episcopal Church, and when she realized her home was too large and quiet and empty for one lone woman, she adopted two children, a brother and sister. Charles and Dorothy were sweet and smart and curious and funny, and when Jule fed them breakfast and walked them to school and heard their prayers as she tucked them into bed at night, her heart swelled with happiness and gratitude. She had never expected to be a mother, to have any family but Gabriel, who had been gone so long.

But as thankful as she was for her little family, it felt incomplete.

Over time she had learned the merits of advertising. Her lotions, balms, and tonics had become popular throughout the cities of the East, not only because of recommendations from satisfied customers, but also due to the notices she regularly placed in newspapers. And so she began running “Information Wanted” advertisements in the press—first in New York, then in St. Louis, and after Texas was readmitted to the Union and communication became easier, in Dallas and Houston—seeking information about a man in his late forties called Gabriel, russet skinned and golden voiced, born in Missouri, last known whereabouts in Texas, possibly working as a groom or a minister.

Each notice ended with the same quiet, urgent plea: “Any information concerning this gentleman will be gratefully received by Madame Jule of Brooklyn, New York.”

•   •   •

Julia’s darling Nellie was but eighteen in 1873 when she met the handsome, Oxford-educated Algernon Charles Frederick Sartoris at sea while returning from a European tour, and her heart was swiftly captivated. Soon thereafter, Algernon, a twenty-two-year-old English officer assigned to the British legation in Washington, strode into Ulys’s study in the White House and declared, “Mr. President, I want to marry your daughter.” Ulys demurred, arguing that Nellie was much too young and the two had not known each other long. Unsettling rumors suggested that the young Mr. Sartoris would not be a suitable match for the president’s daughter—and more troubling yet, his own parents had written to warn Ulys that Algernon had given them much trouble and they were not optimistic about the marriage. But Nellie was thoroughly in love and swore she would never have another happy day without her Algy, and Ulys and Julia, mindful of their own parents’ objections to their betrothal, eventually gave their blessing.

Nellie and Algernon wed in the East Room of the White House on a gloriously beautiful May morning the following year. Flowering trees filled Washington with shade and perfume, and seventy carriages brought two hundred guests to the Executive Mansion—generals, statesmen, diplomats, wealthy businessmen, and their elegant, beautifully attired ladies. Nellie was breathtakingly lovely in a heavy white satin gown trimmed with point lace, the Marine Band played soft, romantic music, and the banquet was a culinary triumph. Their distinguished guests enjoyed themselves tremendously—although many observed that President Grant was silent and tense throughout the ceremony and reception. Later, after Nellie departed on the arm of her bridegroom, Ulys was nowhere to be found. After most of the guests had gone home, Julia went in search of her husband and found him in Nellie’s room, sitting on the bed and weeping without restraint.

Five months later, Fred, a lieutenant colonel on General Sheridan’s staff, married the lovely, enchanting Ida M. Honoré—not at the White House, but at the Honoré country home near Chicago. Julia and Ulys agreed that Ida was as amiable as she was beautiful, and they delighted in Fred’s wedding day as they had been unable to enjoy his sister’s. Not quite two years later, Ida gave birth to a beautiful daughter at the White House, and Julia was moved to tears when the happy couple announced that the child’s name would be Julia Dent Grant.

But the family witnessed tragedy as well as happiness during their time in the White House. Nellie’s first child, a son named Grant Grenville Edward Sartoris, died before his first birthday. Consumption eventually claimed the life of the long-suffering Rawlins, who had served in the Grant cabinet as secretary of war, and two years later, his lovely wife, Mary Emma, perished of the same dread affliction. Jesse Root Grant died in Covington scarcely four months after Ulys’s second inauguration, and in December of that same year, Papa passed away at the White House, opinionated and curmudgeonly until the very end.

Nor were all of their tragedies personal, for Ulys’s administration was plagued by scandal—the gold conspiracy crisis that culminated in Black Friday, the Delano affair, the Whiskey Ring, the Belknap scandal—and too many others, each with its own odious moniker for the press to bandy about in blistering editorials. Charges of nepotism were so copious that Julia did not even try to keep track of them, but waved them off like so many swarms of irritating, biting flies. Julia staunchly believed that Ulys ran his administration as he had run his armies, with tremendous force of will, great honor, utmost integrity, and steadfast faith in the men he appointed to serve him. But far too often, his trust was betrayed. Time and again Ulys was exonerated of the crimes committed by his subordinates, but that did not quell the grousing of his critics in Congress and the press.

But whatever obstacles appeared before him, Ulys regrouped and moved ever forward, refusing to retreat or retrace his steps. The people had made him president, but nothing could transform him into a politician. He was, and would ever be, a general.

•   •   •

In early spring of 1875, more than a year before the Republican delegates would meet to choose their nominee for the next presidential election, fervent speculation that Ulys would seek an unprecedented third term filled newspapers and drawing rooms and front porches across the country. Julia reveled in her role as First Lady and eagerly looked forward to another four years, but whenever she asked Ulys about his intentions, he evaded her queries with jokes or noncommittal replies.

“I suppose when you finally make up your mind,” Julia lamented, “the press will know before I do.”

“They’ll probably know before either of us,” Ulys remarked, ever calm and reticent.

Finally, one Sunday afternoon at the end of May, Ulys informed her that he had written to the chairman of the Republican State Convention at Philadelphia to announce that he had no intention of running for a third term. Profoundly disappointed, Julia sank down heavily in a chair. “Was that kind, to send the letter before telling me? Was it just?”

“You would have tried to talk me out of it, and I’ve made up my mind.”

He was right, of course, but Julia still wished he had given her the chance to persuade him.

Ulys came to her and rested his hands on her shoulders. “I don’t want to be here another four years,” he said simply. “I don’t think I could stand it. Don’t lament over this, I beg you.”

She placed her hand over his and sighed, too unhappy to speak. She did not like his decision, but she understood it.

If Ulys had pursued a third term, he almost certainly would have spared the nation a great deal of controversy and turmoil. After election returns in southern states were contested and returning boards held recounts, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was declared the victor over Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, but only after the Supreme Court intervened.

In the last week of February, with the nation still hotly divided over the outcome of the election, Julia passed through the home that had become so familiar to her during her years as First Lady, rooms that had witnessed births, deaths, and a bittersweet wedding, glorious public occasions and private family moments she would cherish forever in her memory.

Soon it would be their home no longer.

On Saturday, March 3, Ulys and Julia hosted a state dinner for the president-elect and thirty guests at the White House, and it was on that day in the privacy of the Red Room that Mr. Hayes took his oath of office, amid threats upon his life and concerns that various angry factions would prevent the peaceful transition of power. Mrs. Hayes kindly invited Julia to accompany her to the public inauguration two days later, but Julia could not bear the thought of attending and politely declined. Instead, as her last act as official White House hostess, Julia arranged a sumptuous luncheon for the Hayes family and their companions, and she was waiting in the foyer to welcome them after the inauguration.

All too soon it was time to depart. Mrs. Hayes, sturdily competent and self-assured, graciously escorted Julia to the door and told her she was welcome to visit anytime.

“Mrs. Hayes,” Julia said, fighting back tears, “I hope you will be as happy here as I have been for the past eight years.”

Mrs. Hayes inclined her head, and with nothing more to say, Julia took Ulys’s arm and allowed him to lead her on to their waiting carriage, and a new home, and whatever else might come after.

J
ANUARY
–O
CTOBER
1884

J
ule had intended to let the anniversary pass unacknowledged, but as she and Dorothy sat down to supper together one January evening, she heard herself say, “Today I am twenty years a free woman.”

Dorothy’s eyes widened. “Oh, Mamma.” She reached across the table and clasped her hand. “I wish you had never been a slave. I can’t bear to think of you subjected to such cruelty.”

“But I was,” replied Jule, without bitterness. “I and countless millions of others through the generations. I survived. Maybe enduring slavery made me stronger.”

Dorothy pressed her lips together, waiting for her to say more, but Jule merely smiled fondly and took up her fork, and after a moment, Dorothy did too. Jule disliked talking about slavery times, and in this she was not unusual among folks her age. Dorothy and her brother had learned to listen carefully and quietly whenever she allowed them rare glimpses into her past before her flight to Washington City, before her transformation into Madame Jule, before she became their mother.

Charles—twenty years old, tall, sober, sharply insightful—would have insisted they mark the occasion with a cake or small glasses of sherry, but he was off at his second year at Howard University, studying to become a lawyer and perhaps someday a judge. Dorothy, recently turned eighteen, eagerly anticipated finishing school come spring. “You could go to the university too,” Jule had told her, or rather implored. She could not bear for her children to squander any opportunity for self-improvement, for advancement in a world that remained adamantly opposed to colored folk rising too high.

“I want to work with you,” Dorothy would remind her pointedly. “I enjoy it—and be honest, you need me.”

It was true. Jule had worked hard all her life and was ready to slow down, and Dorothy—a confident, clever, briskly efficient young woman with an excellent head for business—was the person she trusted most to succeed her. For the past two years Dorothy had gradually taken over many of the sales and accounting tasks in the Madame Jule Company, freeing Jule to concoct new products and promote them to the great many clients who regarded Jule as a genius of beauty and grooming.

Jule still earned a significant portion of her income from wealthy white ladies, but in recent years, her interests had turned to creating balms and tonics suited for the unique needs of women of color. Skin of all tones could be soft, smooth, and luminous, she had told a much younger Dorothy whenever she had tearfully lamented that her lighter-skinned classmates mocked her deep sepia hue. African hair could be glossy and radiant with good health, and needn’t be blond or straight or fine to be beautiful. “We should strive to be well-groomed, dignified, and comely, not lighter,” Jule asserted, unable to refrain from bitterly twisting the last word.

Once, in a rare moment of self-doubt, Jule had asked her pastor if her profession was inherently sinful, if it encouraged vanity and pride. The reverend had sat silently for a moment before responding. “Taking pride in one’s appearance is not the same as being prideful,” he said. “For too long our brothers and sisters have been taught to despise their dark skin. You teach them instead that it deserves admiration and care. I cannot believe this is sinful.”

Jule’s own skin had taken on a few lines that deepened when she smiled, and her tight curls had become a glossy, silvery white. She doubted anyone who knew her from her slavery days twenty years before would recognize her if they passed on the street, not even Julia.

Winter softened into a balmy spring. Dorothy finished school and gladly came to work full-time for the Madame Jule Company. Jule found herself with more time to read, to attend lectures, to serve on the board of the orphan asylum where she had discovered her children, and to be active in her church. The Bridge Street Church advocated for many causes dear to Jule’s heart, and often they invited eminent speakers from across the country to address the congregation.

One Sunday as services were ending, the pastor mentioned that the following week, he would be joined in the pulpit by a renowned minister, former slave, and advocate for civil rights for people of color, the Reverend Gabriel Brown. A frisson of shock and hope ran through Jule, pinning her to her seat long after the rest of the congregation began to file from the church.

“Mamma?” asked Dorothy worriedly, standing in the aisle, studying her from above. “Is something wrong?”

“I need to speak to the pastor,” she said, rising, trembling, steadying herself on the back of the pew.

Dorothy accompanied her outside, where the pastor stood on the front stoop bidding his flock good-bye. “Do you know this Reverend Gabriel Brown?” Jule inquired, breathless from excitement and renewed hope. She had ceased placing advertisements years before when nothing had come of them, and part of her had accepted that she was in all likelihood a widow. And yet his name, his profession, his history—this minister could be her Gabriel.

“I’ve never met him,” the pastor replied, “but I’m familiar with his writings, and we have mutual acquaintances.”

“Has he come from Texas?” asked Jule urgently. “Do you know if he sings? Do folks remark about his wonderful voice?”

“He’s been called a powerful orator, but no one has mentioned his singing to me. And he comes from Virginia, not Texas.” The minister’s brow furrowed. “My dear sister Jule, is something the matter?”

Virginia, not Texas. “No, Reverend.” Jule wrenched her frown of bitter disappointment into a semblance of a smile. “I thought I might know him is all, but I was wrong.”

She turned quickly to hide the tears gathering in her eyes—and yet hope did not leave her entirely.

Never did a week pass more slowly. “Mamma,” Dorothy told her gently one evening as she stared unseeing out the window, lost in thought, “this minister is probably not your long-lost husband.”

“I know that,” Jule replied. “But the sooner Sunday comes, the sooner I’ll know. The sooner I can stop hoping.”

Through the years, waiting and not knowing and always wondering had tarnished all the bright silver of her happiness. If this Gabriel Brown was not her Gabriel, Jule resolved to accept that he was lost to her forever. Acceptance would change nothing about how she spent her days, but perhaps she could finally bring herself to mourn him properly and leave the past in the past.

She had intended to arrive a half hour early on the chance that she might be able to meet the illustrious guest before services, but her anxious nerves got the better of her and she arrived ten minutes late. Murmuring apologies to those seated around them, she and Dorothy slipped into their usual pew just as Reverend Brown was introduced. Jule stared at him as he came forward and shook hands with the pastor, desperately searching his face for features reminiscent of the young man she had loved—and finding them. And when he spoke, his voice resonated as her husband’s had, less pure in tone but richer with dignity and gravitas.

She became aware of Dorothy beside her, glancing from her to the minister and back, her eyes widening as she sensed the intensity of her mother’s response. “Is it he?” she whispered.

Jule felt as if she were illuminated from within as she nodded, as the tears began to stream down her face. It was Gabriel, her Gabriel.

He knew her too.

Their eyes met as he preached, and for one long, radiant moment, he fell abruptly silent, staring at her, shocked and disbelieving, but then he caught himself and resumed his sermon, faster than before, as if he could not wait to reach the end. When the choir sang, he bent his head close to the pastor’s and they conferred briefly, urgently. By the last chorus they were both looking straight at Jule, the pastor utterly astonished, Gabriel as if he dared not look away for fear she would vanish.

The service ended, and although church deacons and respected dowagers gathered around to meet their renowned guest, Gabriel nearly leapt down from the pulpit to come to her, to take her hands, to pull her to her feet.

“It’s you,” he said, his voice full of wonder. “It’s you. My Jule. My love. My wife.”

“Gabriel,” she choked out, smiling through her tears. “Oh, praise be to God, at last.”

Swiftly the story spread through the congregation, and all around them the people erupted in joyful cheers and songs of thanksgiving. Surely the grace of God had descended upon their church that day.

“I tried to find you,” Jule told him later, at home, when they were alone, Dorothy having kindly gone out to visit a friend to give them time alone, together. “For so many years, I tried.”

He clasped her hands so tightly that she imagined they might fuse to his, ensuring that they would never be parted again. “And I tried to find you.”

He had stayed in Texas less than a fortnight before running away, he told her. He assumed Jule would be with Miss Julia, so he tried to reach military headquarters, only to be caught up in the waves of contraband following General Grant’s army. Months later, when he heard that Julia had joined her husband at City Point, he had made his way there, only to discover that Mrs. Grant’s favorite maid had fled long ago. With no other home to return to, he had settled at Freedman’s Village, a contraband camp established on part of General Lee’s captured estate in Arlington, Virginia. There he had tended horses for the Union army and had preached the Holy Gospel until the end of the war, when a benevolent society had sponsored him for the seminary, allowing him to formally continue the studies he had begun in secret as an enslaved child at White Haven.

“You were so close,” Jule said. “All the while I was in Washington City, you were so close, and I never knew.”

“I’m closer now,” he said, pulling her into his embrace, kissing her cheeks, her forehead, her lips. “And if you still want me after all these years, I’ll stay.”

“Of course,” said Jule, laughing at the very idea that she would ever let him go. “Let us never be parted again.”

“I swear we never will be, while we both live.”

She kissed him, and as they laughed and cried and held each other, she felt as if she had been a long time traveling and had finally reached the end of the road, only to discover that a new one lay before her, a smooth path, bright with promise and newly beginning, one she never need travel alone.

•   •   •

When Ulys bit into a peach one lovely day in early June of 1884 and complained of excruciating pain, Julia felt no shadow of foreboding that it marked the beginning of the end.

There was no reason she should have, not when she and Ulys were distracted by what seemed to be more serious concerns. A month before, the brokerage firm managing their finances had gone bankrupt, and they had lost every cent of their investment. Their entire fortune, scrupulously earned and saved over many years, was gone.

The calamity struck with a force as utterly unexpected as it was swift and devastating. Buck—Ulysses S. Grant, Jr., as he was known to all but family and friends—had attended Exeter and Harvard and had earned his law degree from Columbia. He had married Fannie Josephine Chaffee, the daughter of Colorado senator Jerome B. Chaffee, who had earned a multimillion-dollar fortune from his investments in silver mines. When the financial tycoon Ferdinand Ward proposed that he and Buck establish a Wall Street investment firm, between Ward’s experience, connections, and capital and Buck’s revered Grant name, their success seemed preordained. At Ward’s suggestion, they took on another partner, James D. Fish, a respected New York financier and president of the prestigious Marine Bank. When Grant & Ward quickly found its footing and began to reap astonishing profits, Buck invited Ulys to join as a partner, and after he agreed, many other members of the Grant family entrusted their savings to the firm.

For three years, Grant & Ward prospered. Every morning, Ulys reported promptly for work at his offices on the second floor of No. 2 Wall Street, cordially greeting the potential investors Ward courted, lending the weight of his august presence to meetings and transactions. To Julia’s delight, Ulys’s initial investment of ten thousand dollars grew to three-quarters of a million, and they were at last free of the lurking fear of debt and poverty. They kept a lavish home on East Sixty-sixth Street in Manhattan, and Ulys gave Julia a generous monthly allowance of one thousand dollars to spend however she pleased, while he indulged his love of good cigars and fine horses.

“You needn’t trouble yourself to save for the children,” Ulys told her one Thanksgiving as they prepared for a family visit. “Ward is making us not only secure, but wealthy.”

But in the early months of 1884, Ulys frequently came home from his office with a furrowed brow, troubled by rumors circulating on Wall Street that Ward was mishandling his investors’ funds and that Grant & Ward was on the verge of crumbling.

Then, on the morning of May 4, a quiet, peaceful Sunday, Ward unexpectedly called at the Grant residence. “The Marine Bank needs a twenty-four-hour loan of one hundred fifty thousand dollars,” Ward told Ulys, his voice trembling with dread. “Our investments are imperiled.”

Listening just outside the doorway, Julia heard Ulys sigh heavily. “I’ll do what I can,” he said, as Julia had known he would. The firm was in jeopardy, and therefore, so was his good name.

After seeing Ward to the door, Ulys went out and returned a few hours later, unsmiling, cheeks flushed with embarrassment as if he were a young lieutenant again. In his pocket he carried a check from his old friend and political supporter William Henry Vanderbilt, the enormously wealthy railroad magnate. “He told me he cared nothing for the Marine Bank and very little about Grant & Ward,” he told Julia, “but he cares a great deal about me, and so he offers this as a personal loan.”

Ulys delivered the check to Ward, but in the days that followed, the Marine Bank closed, creditors would not honor Buck’s checks, angry crowds gathered outside the firm demanding payment—and Ward disappeared with Ulys’s money.

Grant & Ward went bankrupt. Ulys and every member of the Grant family that had invested in the firm had lost everything.