Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule (39 page)

Julia served them lemonade, and as she quietly seated herself in a wicker chair at a discreet distance, where she could observe but would not intrude, Mr. Smith broached the subject of Ulys writing his memoirs. His articles were brilliant, Mr. Johnson chimed in, and his swift progress proved that he was more than capable of producing a book. Ulys listened intently, nodding from time to time as the editor and publisher described the project they envisioned, how they would work to create and promote it—and, of keen interest to Julia, how Ulys would profit from the sales.

“Do you really think anyone would be interested in a book I could write?” Ulys asked.

“General,” said Mr. Smith, astonished, “would not the public avidly read Napoleon’s accounts of his battles, if they existed?”

Ulys remained silent, but Julia could tell that the high praise of the comparison impressed him.

“What do you think, Julia?” Ulys asked later, when they were alone.

She thought the gentlemen’s proposal was a godsend, but she said, “When Mark Twain urged you to write your memoirs, you told him you were no writer, that you were sure no one would want your memoirs, and that you would be embarrassed to see a book published under your name.”

“That was three years ago,” said Ulys. “That was before—all this.”

Julia nodded, acknowledging that indeed everything had changed in a matter of months, and that old, trusted decisions must be reconsidered. She could only imagine what other changes yet awaited them, but if Ulys’s memoirs could save their family, he would find the way.

O
CTOBER
1884–F
EBRUARY
1885

A
t the end of October, the Grants left Long Branch and returned to their home in New York. Ulys was eager to continue work on his articles for
The
Century,
but Julia insisted that he first put down his pen, set aside his papers, and keep his promise to call on Dr. Fordyce Barker.

“Well?” Julia asked the moment Ulys returned home from the appointment, only to discover that Dr. Barker had not offered a diagnosis. Instead, upon examining Ulys, he had referred him to Dr. John Hancock Douglas, the preeminent throat specialist in the East. Ulys and Dr. Douglas had met professionally early in the war, while Ulys led the assault on Fort Donelson and Dr. Douglas served on the United States Sanitary Commission.

“I have an ulceration at the base of my tongue,” Ulys informed Julia, Fred, and Ida, after consulting with Dr. Douglas. “The doctor applied a muriate of cocaine to the swollen area, and it gave me immediate relief. He also treated me with lodoform to reduce the pain and disinfect the sore so I can eat and sleep. I’m to visit him twice a day so he can reapply the medicines.”

“Twice a day for how long?” asked Fred, brow furrowing.

“He didn’t say. Until it’s run its course, I suppose.” Ulys smiled briefly and began climbing the stairs to his study, but then he paused, his hand on the banister. “On my way home, I stopped at the
Century
offices and told Smith that I want to write my memoirs.”

The four articles he had already planned would form the foundation for his book, Ulys told them that evening at supper. He expected that it would be a relatively simple matter to bind them together with accounts of his other battles and campaigns and stories from his youth. He worked throughout October, his newfound enjoyment of researching and writing a delight for Julia to see, but his appetite was little improved from before he began Dr. Douglas’s treatments, and Julia and Ida agreed that he had lost weight.

“You know what a stoic your father can be,” Julia said to Fred and Ida in a hushed conversation while Ulys toiled over his manuscript in his second-floor study at the top of stairs, alone except for his longtime valet, Harrison Tyrell. The faithful Harrison, as the family referred to him affectionately, watched over Ulys almost possessively, bringing him fresh paper when he filled a page, adjusting the scarf about his neck when it came loose, plumping a pillow for his back. “Perhaps Pa hasn’t been entirely forthcoming with the doctor. If Dr. Douglas truly understood how much he suffers, he might offer a more aggressive treatment.”

They agreed that Julia and Fred should call on Dr. Douglas and share their concerns.

Dr. Douglas was a handsome man perhaps two years younger than Ulys, with flowing gray hair and an abundant beard. His expression grew progressively more serious as Julia and Fred took turns describing Ulys’s symptoms and suffering at home, but not for the reason they imagined.

“Mrs. Grant, Colonel Grant, I’m going to be as frank with you as I was with the general,” he said. “General Grant has cancer. A carcinoma at the base of his tongue has spread to several other small lesions in his throat. Over time the cancer will grow into his neck, making it nearly impossible for him to eat, and eventually, to breathe. The progress of the disease will be lengthy, excruciatingly painful, and ultimately fatal. All we can do is to make General Grant as comfortable as possible in the time remaining to him.”

Julia sat utterly still, ears ringing. Fred queried the doctor further, but the back-and-forth of questions and replies scarcely registered in Julia’s mind until Dr. Douglas addressed her directly. “Mrs. Grant,” he said distinctly, as if aware he was speaking to her through a thick fog of shock, “I could instruct you how to apply the topical pain relievers to your husband’s throat. It isn’t a difficult procedure, and it would spare him the inconvenience of coming to me for treatment twice a day.”

Wordlessly, Julia nodded, and she forced herself to concentrate as the doctor described what she must do to ease Ulys’s pain. When he finished, Dr. Douglas regarded them gravely and asked if they understood all that he had told them.

Fred assured him that they did, but Julia asked, “Is it curable?”

Dr. Douglas hesitated. “There have been rare cases when it has been cured.”

“How rare?”

“Extremely so, madam.”

Julia took her son’s arm as they left the building, and although they had planned to take the streetcar, Fred took one look at her face and quickly summoned a carriage. “Pa concealed his condition out of a desire to protect us,” he told her as they rode home.

“He shouldn’t have.” Julia inhaled deeply and shook her head. “Except for the growths in his throat, your father is healthy, temperate, and strong. Why should he not be again?”

“Mother—” Fred studied her for a moment before closing both of his hands around one of hers. “Dr. Douglas is the foremost throat specialist on the East Coast. He knows this disease, and he said nothing to encourage us to hope for a cure.”

“He might know cancer, but he doesn’t know your Pa,” Julia countered, a fierce new strength filling her. “I cannot believe that God in his wisdom and mercy would take this great, wise, good man from us, to whom he is so necessary and so beloved. It simply cannot be.”

Julia persisted in her belief that her victor would triumph over his illness, even after she applied the painkilling opiates for the first time and her heart quaked to behold the three scaly, inflamed lesions far back on the roof of his mouth, the swollen gland on the right side, and the membraneous tissue at the base of his tongue that formed the surface of the carcinoma.

“I had hoped to spare you all this,” Ulys said ruefully when she had finished.

“Oh, nonsense,” scoffed Julia, corking the bottles and setting them aside. “We’ve been married thirty-six years. Why should you start sparing me now?”

Her confidence wavered only slightly when Dr. Douglas froze part of Ulys’s ulcerated throat, excised some of the tissue, and sent it to the renowned physician and microbiologist Dr. George Frederick Shrady, who with absolute certainty confirmed a diagnosis of lingual epithelioma, or cancer of the tongue. After examining Ulys, the stern, forthright physician urged Ulys to give up his cigars, but if he could not, he must limit himself to three a day. Dr. Shrady also advised against surgery, noting that the cancer had already ruptured and spread its poison throughout the surrounding tissue, and nothing would slow the carcinoma’s relentless growth. An operation would only increase Ulys’s discomfort while accomplishing nothing.

“What he means is that it’s too late,” Ulys told Julia, holding her gaze steadily. “You do understand, don’t you?”

“Of course,” Julia said. Surgery would not work, so Dr. Shrady would simply have to find another course of treatment.

•   •   •

As the autumn passed, Ulys worked on his articles for
The
Century
and commenced his memoirs, but all the while the pain in his throat worsened, despite Julia’s faithful applications of the medicines and frequent visits to his doctors. Julia and Ida plied him with wholesome soups and custards, easy to swallow and full of flavor and nourishment, but Ulys could scarcely eat enough to maintain his strength. “If you can imagine what molten lead would feel like going down your throat, that is what I feel when swallowing,” he told Julia as she begged him to take just one more spoonful of beef broth.

Writing provided Ulys with a distraction from his pain and an ambitious goal to focus his thoughts. From early morning until well into the evening, Ulys toiled away in his second-floor study at the top of the stairs, a knit cap upon his head to ward off the chill of early winter, a shawl wrapped around his throat. Two windows looking out upon Sixty-sixth Street illuminated his desk, tidily arranged with his manuscript pages in the center and neat stacks of notes all around. Upon a nearby folding table, Fred and Badeau had arranged several useful maps for Ulys to consult as he retraced the progress of his armies’ movements.

Fred worked with his father’s tireless diligence, but Badeau had come to the project somewhat reluctantly. When Ulys first requested his help, Badeau had refused, explaining that he was working on a novel that demanded his full attention, but eventually Ulys persuaded him, even offering a comfortable bedroom in the Grant residence as part of his compensation.

Every day Ulys followed a diligent routine of researching, outlining, writing, editing, and revising. Working from a nearby room, Fred and Badeau compiled research, read sections as Ulys completed them, verified facts with their records, jotted notes in the margins, and returned pages to Ulys for revision. Julia often observed the men as they worked, watching quietly as Ulys sat at his desk bent over his manuscript, the nib of his pen scratching on the paper, Harrison keeping vigil in the corner he had claimed as his own.

Julia knew that the faithful Harrison was much more than a valet to Ulys. A man of color not yet forty, in the years he had been in Ulys’s employ, Harrison had been his messenger, confidante, devoted friend, and increasingly, his nurse. He applied the soothing opiates to Ulys’s throat more often than Julia did, and twice a day, he brought a glass of milk on a tray to the study and insisted Ulys drink it. Harrison was protective of Ulys’s time, and Julia was grateful for the solicitous yet firm way he managed to keep interruptions at bay and tried to ensure that Ulys received adequate rest.

But as the cancer grew, Ulys’s throat gradually constricted and his breathing became more labored. He developed a chronic cough, his throat burned with pain, and his voice began to fail. Julia felt as if a knife turned in her heart to watch him suffer so, and from day to day her moods shifted dramatically between sunny optimism and the bleakest despair. She threw herself into a vigorous regimen of prayer, convinced that only that could save her beloved husband, and that it surely would, if her faith did not waver.

With the onset of winter, Ulys rarely went out, but occasionally friends would call, and he would interrupt his work long enough to cordially shake hands and converse as much as he was able. Good friends quickly discerned that he was unwell, kept their visits short, and required him to say almost nothing, but invariably a well-meaning admirer would linger until Ulys was hoarse and weary.

One caller who could never overstay a visit was the writer and humorist Mark Twain, who like Julia had been born and raised in Missouri. Ulys and Twain—whose real name was Samuel Clemens, although his many admirers, including the Grants, addressed him by his pseudonym—had shaken hands but had exchanged hardly a word the first two times they had met, once at a reception in Washington in the winter of 1866, and later at a White House levee during Ulys’s first term. They did not become friends until ten years later, when Twain was asked to deliver a toast at the Army of the Tennessee’s banquet in Ulys’s honor at the Palmer House in Chicago. As he confided to Julia several years after the fact, Twain had watched as Ulys listened impassively to one laudatory toast after another, and he resolved to make the famously stoic general laugh. He succeeded, too, and in quintessential Mark Twain fashion, by following up another speaker’s toast “to the Ladies” with his own “to the Babies,” whom he pointed out had never been mentioned at a banquet and had been denied that honor too long.

“In still one more cradle, somewhere under the flag,” Twain declared as his toast reached its conclusion, “the future illustrious commander in chief of the American armies is so little burdened with his approaching grandeurs and responsibilities as to be giving his whole strategic mind, at this moment, to trying to find some way to get his big toe into his mouth, an achievement which, meaning no disrespect, the illustrious guest of this evening turned his attention to some fifty-six years ago.”

The crowd, which had been guffawing only seconds before, fell into a stunned, embarrassed silence.

But Twain was not finished. “If the child is but a prophecy of the man,” he said, his voice ringing with good cheer, “there are mighty few who will doubt that he succeeded.”

Ulys was the first to laugh, loudly and heartily, slapping his knee. The rest of the gentlemen in the smoke-filled banquet hall soon joined in, and all raised their glasses to toast “the Babies”—and the stoic former president had proven that he could laugh at himself.

After the Grants moved to New York, Twain called on Ulys often to reminisce about the war, chat about mutual friends, and discuss Twain’s writing career. In October of 1881, over a lunch of bacon, baked beans, and coffee, Twain urged Ulys to write his memoirs, to preserve for future generations the story of his life, his battles, and his presidency. Ulys refused, despite assurances that the book would have enormous sales and that Twain would employ his hard-won experience to protect Ulys from signing a contract with an unscrupulous publisher. Ulys insisted that he would never write his memoirs, and when he changed the subject, Twain did not persist.

Early one morning three years and a month later, Twain called at the Grant residence, his manner to Julia as courtly as ever, although he seemed a trifle harried. “Is the general in?” he inquired as Julia showed him inside.

“He’s in the library with Fred going over some documents,” Julia told him. Ulys rarely left the house anymore, knowing that his appearance would incite speculation. His doctors came to him, and he declined invitations with the excuse that his writing demanded all his attention. “I’m sure they’d welcome your company.”

“My dear lady,” he asked urgently, seizing her hands. “Are those documents by any chance from the Century Company?”

“Why, yes,” she replied, surprised. “It’s a publishing contract.”

“For his memoirs, I presume. Has he signed it yet?”

“Probably not. He and Fred wanted to give it one last careful examination.”

“Thank you, madam.” Twain planted a swift kiss on the back of her hands and strode off toward the library.