The Americans Read online

  In prior years Mrs. Astor’s annual ball in January had always been considered the season’s paramount event. The Vanderbilt affair changed that. Conservative estimates said it cost the hostess a quarter of a million dollars to stage her little party. The opulence of the costumes of the guests was matched only by the cleverness of some of them. Another Vanderbilt, Mrs. Cornelius, had come arrayed in white satin and diamonds, representing the electric light. And although elaborately costumed and choreographed quadrilles were no novelty at formal balls, Mrs. Vanderbilt’s quadrilles— especially the Hobby Horse Quadrille featuring realistic, lifesize representations of horses which were attached to the dancers’ waists—had been talked of for days afterward.

  No wonder the established leader of Society, Caroline Astor—the Mrs. Astor, as she preferred to be known—had been forced to recognize Mrs. Vanderbilt at long last. Before the ball, Mrs. Astor had discovered that her daughter was rehearsing for the Star Quadrille but had not received a card of invitation. The significance of the omission was clear. There would be no invitation unless Mrs. Astor paid her respects to Mrs. Vanderbilt, even though the latter was theoretically inferior in the social ranking.

  Putting her daughter above her pride, Mrs. Astor ordered up her carriage and drove to the Vanderbilt chateau at 660 Fifth Avenue in New York. She sent one of her blue-liveried footmen inside with her card. In recognition of her eminence, it bore only the words Mrs. Astor. She didn’t personally enter the mansion, or even leave the carriage. But she had humbled herself sufficiently. The invitation was in her daughter’s hands soon afterward.

  No symbolic act of reverence could have secured an invitation for Gideon and Julia. The list of reasons was an extremely long one.

  Julia’s family credentials—she had been born a Sedgwick—might once have entitled her to consideration, but they no longer did. Not since she had divorced one Kent—Amanda’s son—and married another. The women who ruled New York Society did not divorce. Not even if their husbands slept with other women, which most of them did. Julia was also on the disapproved list because she had publicly espoused the cause of female suffrage.

  Gideon had even more against him. First, he’d served on the Confederate side during the war. After Appomattox he’d associated himself for a time with the labor movement. His newspaper and his publishing house were considered scandalously liberal. And he was “in trade,” the contemptuous term for anyone who wasn’t a gentleman of leisure, living off a business income but doing nothing to earn it. Gideon actively involved himself in his business, and had even been known to repair a broken book press if the schedule of Kent and Son demanded it.

  His recent history was cloudy, too. His first wife had died in a fall from a window of the mansion he’d formerly owned on upper Fifth Avenue. His daughter was in a disreputable profession, and his younger brother had a reputation for outrageous behavior. In Europe, Matthew Kent’s paintings were making him famous, but his escapades had long ago made him notorious in his native land. Added to this was Gideon’s murky role in the 1877 shooting death of the Chicago railroad magnate Thomas Courtleigh. All in all, the head of the Kent family had a reputation as a radical and a roughneck. Definitely not good social material.

  There was one other event which absolutely assured the Kents’ ostracism. This was what Gideon privately referred to as the McAllister Incident. Two years earlier he’d had a sharp encounter with the man who served as Society’s unofficial prime minister, responsible for drawing up the guest lists for the balls which the great ladies gave, and for planning the themes and costumes of the quadrilles performed at those balls. Mentally—and sometimes openly— Gideon called that gentleman the little toad.

  In Gideon’s estimation, Mr. Samuel Ward McAllister was undistinguished in intellect as well as appearance. He was remarkable only in that he managed to prosper by being no more than a parasite. It disgusted Gideon that a born Southerner would thus debase himself. Perhaps that was why, during a chance meeting at Gideon’s club in New York, things had gone badly.

  After introductions, someone had happened to mention Gideon’s war record. This brought a sniff from McAllister.

  “I’m from Savannah, as you may know. But at least I was never a traitor.” He eyed Gideon’s chin. “Your beard led me to briefly mistake you for a member of the Grand Army of the Republic.”

  “I don’t know what led me to briefly mistake you for a man, Mr. Make-A-Lister.”

  Society’s prime minister turned purple when Gideon applied the scornful name the newspapers had given him. But he had no time to utter a protest because Gideon immediately knocked him down with one punch.

  ii

  Gideon usually rose before sunup. His workday seldom ended until nine or ten at night. This evening was no exception. After a light supper, he retired to the library of the splendid three-story Federal brick house that he’d purchased when he and Julia returned to Boston in 1878. He had paid the exorbitant asking price solely because Philip and Amanda Kent had both owned the residence during their lifetimes. Gideon intended to see that the house never slipped out of the family again.

  On Beacon Street below the library window, gas lamps glimmered, as they did above Gideon’s large desk. Immediately after moving in, he’d taken over the library and converted it to an office.

  Wires hung from several holes in the plaster. The house would presently be electrified with some of Mr. Edison’s lamps. And Gideon planned to install a telephone as soon as long distance lines were available between Boston and New York. At present he could only phone long distance to Lowell. Who the hell wanted to call Lowell?

  Puffing on a cigar, he settled down to work just about the time Carter was leading the donkey into Eisler’s stable. Gideon’s own son was upstairs in his room, studying, Gideon presumed. Will attended the excellent Boston Latin School; Carter’s wayward behavior at the Adams Academy had put the name Kent in such disfavor, Will could not possibly have gone there. Gideon reminded himself to look in on his son later.

  Over the library mantel hung the sword and rifle Philip Kent had collected in the early years of the Revolution. The rifle was the kind commonly called a Kentucky; the sword, a French grenadier’s briquet. On the mantel itself stood the original green glass bottle of tea Philip had brought home from Mr. Adams’ tea party.

  All the other family mementoes were displayed in the library as well. A glass case contained the medallion struck by Gilbert Kent, Philip’s second son, as well as the bracelet of tarred cordage from Old Ironsides, on which Philip’s grandson Jared—Gideon’s grandfather—had served. Nearby hung the oil portrait of Philip himself, painted when he was an affluent, middle-aged Boston printer. On the wall opposite, Gideon had put the framed Auguste Renoir cartoon depicting Matt and his wife, Dolly, dancing at a Paris cabaret before their permanent separation. Dolly was now teaching school at an army post in India, and raising her son, Tom.

  Next to the cartoon hung Gideon’s contribution—a decidedly inferior one, in his opinion. Strictly speaking, he had contributed nothing, merely rediscovered a memento left by another. When he’d moved in, he had come across it in a packing crate that had evidently been abandoned in the cellar years ago. Now it was displayed as befitted a treasure—nestled in a velvet background under glass contained by a thick walnut frame. It was a splinter of wood, four inches long.

  He had found the splinter wrapped in oilskin and shoved in among rotted garments in the packing case. One moldering coat bore a legible label. G. Kent. From that, Gideon knew he’d found the lost piece of the mast of Old Ironsides which Jared had brought home to Gilbert from the War of 1812. Gilbert’s correspondence had referred to the sliver of wood, but no Kent had seen it until Gideon chanced upon the crate.

  For a moment he felt tired, reluctant to attack the papers piled on his desk. Very little had changed since New Year’s night. He’d made no progress in solving the problems which had sent him wandering the docks that evening and many evenings since. If anything, one of
the problems had grown worse. Carter had taken to roistering more and studying even less.

  Gideon hadn’t suffered a recurrence of the chest pain, though. That was the only part of the situation which had improved.

  With a sigh, he picked up the first paper. It was a detailed cost estimate from the Herreshoff Company in Bristol, Rhode Island. John Herreshoff and his younger brother, Captain Nat, built steam launches for the United States and torpedo boats for other countries. Lately they’d introduced a new kind of pleasure boat—a small steam yacht noteworthy for its speed and economy. Gideon was negotiating for construction of an eighty-five-foot vessel that would incorporate one of the Herreshoffs’ innovative triple-expansion engines. He could easily have afforded one of the much larger floating palaces of the kind skippered by Astor, Gould, and Bennett. A Herreshoff yacht was more to his taste. He intended to christen it Auvergne, after the region in France where Philip had been born.

  He studied the estimate for ten minutes, wrote several questions on the margin and approved the total, appending a note to the Herreshoffs asking them to proceed with all speed.

  Next he read a memorandum from his banker, Joshua Rothman. It informed him that the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company could now make service available between his home and the Rothman Bank. Except for communication between cities, Gideon considered Mr. Bell’s telephones an impractical novelty. But he liked to surround himself with the latest gadgets, so he scribbled a note to the bank officer who handled details of his account. The note authorized installation of a line. To the first note he pinned a second one approving a new roof for the family home at Long Branch, New Jersey, where his father’s widow, Molly, a near-invalid now, lived the year round.

  He turned to a belated letter of appreciation from the young Irishman Oscar Wilde, with whom Gideon and his Beacon Hill neighbor, William Dean Howells, had shared a delightful evening at the Kent dinner table the preceding year.

  Boston had been one of the stops on Wilde’s American lecture tour. Gideon and Howells—both of whom favored the new, more realistic approach to literature which Howells practiced in his novels—had jumped at the chance to entertain the young aesthete. The country’s chief defender of old-fashioned literary virtue, Edmund Clarence Stedman of New York—“The Mrs. Astor of poesy,” Gideon called him with great sarcasm—had been outraged by some of Wilde’s earlier pronouncements, and had written the Boston newspapers in an effort to persuade the literary community to ignore him when he came to town. In response, Gideon invited Wilde to dine. He’d asked Howells to join them to make sure Stedman was properly affronted.

  Oscar Wilde had turned out to be a moon-faced, brown-eyed chap. He had lank, dark hair which hung around his ears, and a manner that was languid and faintly decadent. But there was something delightful about him, too. Entering the United States, he’d told them at the dinner table, he had been questioned by customs officials. “I replied that I had nothing to declare except my genius.”

  After reading Wilde’s letter, Gideon put it aside to save. Then he turned to the competitive newspapers delivered every day by special messenger from New York. He spent an hour with the papers. Buried in a back column of the Times he found an item about a new type of outdoor pageant being tried out in Omaha by Buffalo Bill Cody. Something called a Wild West show. The Times was too dignified to give it more than a paragraph, but Gideon quickly got on the telegraph transmitter which served in lieu of a telephone. The private wire linked the house with the editorial rooms of the Union down on Park Row.

  Gideon had taught himself telegraphy so he wouldn’t have to rely on intermediaries to transmit confidential instructions. He clicked off his message. Five minutes later, he received confirmation that a reporter would be dispatched to Omaha to see the outdoor show and write an article about it.

  The Union needed a steady supply of colorful copy. Theo Payne, the paper’s superb editor, was nearing seventy, but his judgment was as keen as ever. He constantly reminded his employer that competition among New York dailies was intensifying every day. Neither Payne nor Gideon was as smug as some newspapermen about the arrival of Joe Pulitzer, who was taking over the World. Like Gideon, Pulitzer was something of a crusader. But Pulitzer also had fewer scruples about printing items of a sensational or sordid nature. He knew how to get a newspaper read by those who counted most—ordinary people. Now Gideon proceeded to write down some thoughts for a long, long letter to Payne on the subject of trying to enliven all sections of the paper.

  A last glance at the Times brought a smile to Gideon’s face. Eleanor was mentioned in the column headed Theatrical Gossip. In fact she was referred to as “one of the country’s most talented young actresses.” In the next line, her name was linked romantically with one of her fellow players, “the handsome Mr. Leo Goldman.”

  Leo Goldman had pursued Eleanor ever since they were young members of an amateur theater club in New York City. Leo would marry Eleanor eventually, Gideon supposed. He admired Leo, who was talented, ambitious and bright. But he hated to think of Eleanor being forced to deal with bigotry all her life, as she surely would be if she became the wife of someone of the Jewish faith.

  And of course, the more deeply she involved herself in the theater, the less interested she would be in the affairs of the Kents.

  His last task was to write a special editorial for the Union. It had been stewing in his head for weeks. In three quick paragraphs, he reiterated the Union’s endorsement of the Pendleton Act, which had become law over President Arthur’s signature in January. The act removed about twelve percent of Federal jobs from the realm of patronage and made them subject to competitive examinations. It also established a commission to oversee the civil service. The snivel service, as one of the act’s disgruntled opponents, Senator Roscoe Conkling, called it.

  The act had been passed as a direct result of President Garfield’s assassination in ’81. The president had been shot by a man named Charles Guiteau, who had expected a Federal patronage job and failed to get it. Gideon’s editorial lashed the Congress for waiting for a tragedy before passing needed legislation. He headed the editorial Must Someone Always Die? He feared he knew the answer to the question. Congress seldom acted swiftly or decisively until jolted by some disaster.

  On a scrap of paper he scribbled a reminder about another editorial he ought to compose soon. Something had to be done to set up better machinery for presidential succession. The Constitution was vague on the procedure, and while Garfield lay dying with a bullet in him, the country had in effect been leaderless for three months.

  A small clock showed Gideon the hour. Almost eleven. He hadn’t heard Carter come in yet. No wonder the young man was failing most of his courses.

  A frown on his face, Gideon climbed the stairs to the second floor, passed the door to his wife’s sitting room and looked in on Will, who was under the sheet devouring a paper-covered ten-cent novel about Bill Cody.

  iii

  “Time to put out the light,” Gideon said. His voice still bore traces of the soft, rhythmic speech of his native Virginia.

  Will yawned. He was a stocky boy of fourteen with brown eyes, brown hair, and features that favored his late mother. When he lost the adolescent fat still showing in his cheeks, he’d be good looking—though never as handsome as Carter, of course.

  “All right, Papa.”

  “Did you finish your school work before you turned to great literature?” Gideon asked with a smile.

  “Yes, sir. Barely. The math gets me down. I can’t do it.”

  “Of course you can! A person can do anything if he puts his mind to it.”

  Will looked doubtful. Gideon was sorry he’d snapped. “Did you ride today?”

  “For an hour. The mare almost threw me, though.”

  “Ask them to rent you a different horse next time.”

  “All right.” From the boy’s expression, Gideon knew he probably wouldn’t have the nerve to make the request.

  “You have
the makings of a fine horseman, Will. Maybe you’d like to learn to drive four-in-hand.”

  Will’s face lit up. “Yes, sir, I surely would.” Hesitancy then. “At least, I’d like to try to learn it—”

  Gideon pretended he hadn’t heard the last sentence. “Good. We’ll do something about that. Coaching’s a coming sport.”

  “That’s what Carter said a few days ago.”

  Gideon scowled. No statement was ever true unless it bore Carter’s imprimatur.

  “Is Carter back yet?” Will asked.

  In spite of Gideon’s good intentions, the scowl deepened. “No. Why?”

  “I need to ask him a question.”

  “What about?”

  “Oh, just something.”

  “Could I answer it?”

  “I’d rather ask him. It’s something to do with fellows our age.”

  “And a graybeard like me wouldn’t understand?”

  Will smiled back. “Your beard isn’t gray. Well, not very.”

  “What about your question?”

  Again the boy’s eyes shifted elsewhere. “It can wait until I see Carter.”

  “All right. Good night.”

  Gideon leaned down and squeezed his son’s arm. The boy had grown self-conscious about being kissed by his parents.

  As Gideon left the bedroom, he tried not to be annoyed by Will’s blind affection for his stepbrother. Perhaps Will owed that to Carter. After all, it was Carter who had moved in with the Kents after Margaret’s death and given Will the comradeship the younger boy so desperately needed. Carter had done what no adult could. By serving as a brother and surrogate father combined, he’d restored a little of the zest for living which Margaret’s crazed behavior had driven out of her son.

  But it was disturbing to Gideon that Will had become dependent on Carter for the answer to virtually every question. He ought to discuss the situation with Julia, and soon.