The Wages of Fame Page 2

  “Does that include the men in their lives?” Sladen asked in his wryest style.

  “That depends a great deal on whether the men choose to join us—or oppose us.”

  “Oppose, join, you sound like a veritable revolutionary, Miss Kemble,” George Stapleton said in his hearty way. George’s size and stature—he had a magnificent physique—combined to give a slightly condescending tone to his words.

  Caroline’s blue eyes became opaque. She gazed at George with a condescension of her own that reduced him to the consistency of rice pudding. “We simply wish to be treated as intelligent beings, Mr. Stapleton. Is that asking too much?”

  “Of course not,” George gasped, writhing like a soldier who had just received a fatal wound. Which in fact he had. He was in love with Caroline Kemble before they left the dock. Jeremy Biddle saw a similar ardor igniting John Sladen’s saturnine eyes.

  Alarmed at the way things were unfolding, Jeremy asked, “Do you have the address of your school?”

  “Of course. Mother was her usual methodical self.” From her purse Caroline produced a letter in which Martha Kemble instructed her “dear nephew” to escort Caroline to Miss Lucretia Carter’s Female Seminary on Richmond Hill. This was a good mile beyond Columbia on the west side of New York. They located Caroline’s trunk among the luggage on the dock and carried it to a nearby hackney coach for the trip uptown.

  Caroline gazed around her with near ecstatic delight. “Mother wanted me to go to a school in Philadelphia. But I insisted on New York.”

  Her escorts pointed out the principal sights—majestic Trinity Church, in whose graveyard Alexander Hamilton and other revolutionary-era giants lay, the elegant new City Hall in its green park, their alma mater’s ivy-covered walls.

  “That’s where I really wanted to go,” Caroline said, gazing up at Columbia’s tiers of windows. “At my grandmother’s suggestion, I wrote to them. They replied that no female could possibly survive their rigorous course of study without destroying her constitution. Tell me, gentlemen—did you find the study of Greek and Latin verbs threatened your nervous systems?”

  “Not nearly as much as you’re threatening them, Miss Kemble,” George Stapleton said.

  Jeremy had heard family tales of Caroline’s grandmother, the formidably named Katherine Stapleton Rawdon. She too was a relic of America’s revolutionary days—approaching her eighties now. Jeremy gathered Mrs. Rawdon had some strong ideas about women’s rights and the equality of the sexes. These were not uncommon among the women of her time. The Revolution had stirred up a great deal of intellectual dust among all sorts of people. But fifty years had passed—and for most of America the dust had long since settled into the comfortable ideas that had guided the world since Adam’s day. Men were husbands, fathers, and masters; women were wives, mothers, and helpmates.

  “You’re no better than your antiquated professors,” Caroline said. “You refuse to take me seriously.”

  “Miss Kemble, it’s impossible for any man with eyes in his head not to take you seriously,” George Stapleton said.

  “Oh? I must scar my face with acid, cross my eyes, knock out a tooth or two—and then you might actually listen to my opinions? I despise your attitude, Mr. Stapleton. Until you reform it, I haven’t the slightest desire to speak to you again.”

  Jeremy Biddle could scarcely believe his ears. Neither could John Sladen. Here was a woman who coolly—or better, heatedly—flung defiance in the face of a young man who stood to inherit a minimum of a million dollars. Caroline was undoubtedly aware of George’s future fortune. She was his distant cousin, thanks to a long-ago marriage between George’s great-granduncle and her great-grandmother.

  While George floundered, the hackman cracked his whip over his team of bays and they rolled briskly uptown to Miss Carter’s Female Seminary. Caroline spent the rest of the journey telling them she was sure she would hate the place. The course of study consisted of French, piano playing, and sewing. These were the three arts society believed an educated young woman required to be an adequate wife and mother.

  “Not a word about history or literature!” Caroline said.

  “What are some of your favorite books, Miss Kemble?” John Sladen asked.

  “Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is my supreme favorite,” Caroline said. “I also enjoyed Chief Justice Marshall’s life of George Washington, David Hume’s History of England, and Mercy Otis Warren’s history of our revolution. The latter I’m sure none of you have read, it being by a mere woman.”

  George Stapleton, not the most industrious of students, had trouble keeping his jaw from succumbing to the law of gravity. Even Jeremy Biddle, who prided himself on some attention to their courses, was amazed. John Sladen’s eyes glittered with dark delight.

  “I’ll be happy to loan you some of my books, Miss Kemble,” Sladen said. “May I also say I read Mrs. Warren’s history. I found it a most interesting production.”

  “I think it deserves a far more substantial adjective,” Caroline said.

  “On that point, I regret to say we must disagree. I don’t feel she dealt adequately with the military side of the struggle. I also detected a certain hostility to George Washington, born no doubt of her Massachusetts prejudices.”

  “You may be right,” Caroline said grudgingly. “What books do you have at your disposal?”

  Sladen reeled off a half dozen histories of European countries and biographies of great men, including his hero, Napoleon.

  “If you would dispatch them to me, I would be most grateful,” Caroline said.

  “There’s also an excellent circulating medium, the New York Society Library, which you can join for a trifling sum,” Jeremy said.

  “I fear I haven’t even trifling sums available to me,” Caroline said. “I’m here as a sort of scholarship student, thanks to the generosity of Mr. Stapleton’s grandfather.”

  “The Congressman?” George said.

  Caroline’s voice descended an octave; she spoke in a timbre charged with sorrow. “My mother wrote to him, pleading for a loan to send me to school somewhere and appease my determination to escape the environs of Twin Forks, Ohio. He generously donated the full amount of my tuition and suggested I come East to widen my education beyond the realm of books.”

  At this point, the coachman opened the door and announced they had arrived at Miss Carter’s Seminary five minutes ago. None of the frères trois had noticed that their forward motion had ceased. It was a tribute to how totally Caroline Kemble had mesmerized them. They sprang from the coach and Stapleton and Sladen carried her trunk up the steps of the modest town house. Miss Carter’s Seminary was three stories high and its whitewashed brick front was badly in need of painting. It seemed to confirm the melancholy portrait of poverty and rejection Caroline had drawn for them.

  A maid directed them to the front parlor, which also showed signs of genteel desuetude. The frères trois shifted about uneasily, none of them quite certain they were entitled to stay, yet all reluctant to leave.

  “May we call upon you here, Miss Kemble?” John Sladen said. “It would give us the greatest pleasure to show you more than passing glimpses of the sights of New York.”

  George Stapleton violently confirmed this entertaining proposal. “Nothing could give us more pleasure,” he said.

  “I have no idea what the rules of this establishment will be. I’m only certain there will be rules,” Caroline said.

  “There certainly are rules!” thundered a female voice. In the doorway loomed Miss Lucretia Carter. She was at least six feet tall. She wore a black muslin gown with round blue buttons down the front and some sort of epaulets on her shoulders. She glowered suspiciously at the frères trois, as if she was certain they were clandestine white slavers, ready to lure all her students into some Algerian bashaw’s harem.

  Jeremy introduced himself as Caroline’s cousin and displayed her mother’s letter to assure Miss Carter their presence was entirely proper. But no a
mount of pleading could mitigate Caroline’s crime of arriving with three male escorts.

  “Our young ladies may receive visitors between the hours of noon and five P.M. on Sunday. At no other time are visitors welcome,” Miss Carter said. “Young ladies are expected at all other times to apply themselves to their studies.”

  “I’m sure Miss Kemble will demonstrate her eagerness to do that,” Jeremy said.

  The frères trois turned to make brief bows to Caroline. “I hope you’ll send me some of those books, Mr. Sladen. I’m sure I would enjoy them,” she said.

  “Books?” Lucretia Carter said. “You will have no need of books other than those assigned to you, miss.”

  “These were books on politics and history,” Caroline said. “Subjects that interest me extremely.”

  “No self-respecting lady ever displays an interest in such mundane matters,” Miss Carter said. “Come with me, miss. I’ll show you to your room.”

  The frères trois trooped glumly into the street. Sladen stared up at Miss Carter’s Female Seminary with more than usual spleen on his sardonic face. “My God, Stapleton,” he said. “Didn’t your grandfather investigate this miserable school before sending a young woman so fine—so intelligent—to be incarcerated in it?”

  “Grandfather considers himself enlightened to believe in women’s education,” George said. “And he is. He was born in 1742, for God’s sake! I’m sure this place is no worse than other schools.”

  “I begin to think this will cure me of that tendency to self-pity that you see as the chief defect of my character,” Sladen said.

  “I don’t think there’s any need for this storm of sympathy,” Jeremy said. “Cousin Caroline seems to me perfectly capable of taking care of herself. I’m inclined to feel sorry for Miss Carter.”

  “What would Napoleon do in a situation like this?” Sladen asked rhetorically. “We should launch a military campaign to rescue Cousin Caroline from intellectual and spiritual debasement.”

  “I think it might be simpler to persuade my mother to let her live with her and my cousin Sally in our town house,” George said. “She could become a day student at Miss Carter’s and we could visit her to our hearts’ content.”

  George was lazy but he was not stupid. He smiled mockingly at Sladen, who could only gaze glumly back at him. Jeremy knew what Sladen was thinking: The million-heir has done it again. He has reminded us of how insignificant the rest of us are. Jeremy occasionally worried about Sladen’s bouts of envy when he contemplated George Stapleton’s wealth. The Sladens had fought in the Revolution and traced their lineage back to the seventeenth century. But various kinds of bad luck had pursued them for generations.

  “Your mother doesn’t approve of me. It probably has something to do with the cut of my clothes,” Sladen said to George. “Or my failure to elevate my pinkie when I drink my coffee.”

  George’s mother, Angelica Stapleton, was a tremendous snob. Hauteur came as naturally to her as breathing. It had a lot to do with being born a Van Rensselaer, heiress to half the Hudson River valley.

  “I’ll make sure she lets you call now and then,” George said with a grin. “I see no need to take unfair advantage.”

  There it was, out in the open already. Jeremy’s two best friends were about to become rivals for Caroline Kemble’s affections. If he could have foreseen the impact this contest would have on all their lives—not to mention the history of the country—he would have concocted some scheme that would have sent Caroline back to Ohio to commune with tree stumps, no matter how melancholy it made her—or how guilty it made him.

  But Jeremy had no more ability to read the future than any other man in the year 1827. He even entertained the foolish optimism that as an already experienced third, he could cushion the hard feelings that would inevitably emerge in this interesting drama. He was like a novice seaman, sailing into his first hurricane.

  TWO

  BACK IN THEIR ROOMS AT Columbia, Jeremy made his first attempt to pour oil on their already troubled waters. “I want a solemn promise that you’ll both conduct yourselves as gentlemen,” he said. “No matter what this willful creature does or says, you won’t allow it to destroy our friendship. Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” declared Messrs. Sladen and Stapleton with perfect equanimity.

  “You’re both gambling on the unknown, the unforeseeable. You’re about to explore life’s ultimate mystery—the female mind.”

  “I prefer the word soul,” George said. “Mind is utterly inadequate to describe the sensations her eyes stir in me. They can only emanate from some supernatural realm.”

  At times the George Stapleton of 1827 sounded like a fool. This can happen if a fellow reads too much poetry in college. Jeremy was confident that his best friend would grow into a man once he escaped his mother and the unreal groves of academe.

  Jeremy was baffled by the nasty confidence in John Sladen’s eyes. How could he hope to win this woman in competition with George Stapleton? While Jeremy did not presume his cousin Caroline was mercenary, he found it hard to believe any woman, raised in comparative poverty, could ignore the attraction of a million dollars, especially when it came in the person of a man as good-natured, as companionable, as muscular, as George.

  Jeremy puzzled over why John Sladen was even entering the contest. His best hope for a strong start in life was marriage to a wealthy young New York woman whose parents would support his early years as a lawyer and push clients his way. Sally Stapleton, George’s cousin, had been a perfect choice—and she seemed more than amenable to John’s attentions. But he had abruptly abandoned his pursuit just when his prospects seemed promising.

  Jeremy was too young to understand how deeply resentment can alter a man’s soul, how anger can become a kind of barely controlled force that drags him headlong into desires and acts that he cannot explain to anyone, including himself. In the matter of politics, Sladen was already displaying this tendency. He was a frequent visitor to Tammany Hall, headquarters of the city’s Democrats, who worshiped before portraits of Andrew Jackson and cavorted around the General’s symbol, a hickory pole, at election time. Almost every successful merchant in New York would have severe doubts about his daughter marrying a Democrat. But John persisted in his politics, ignoring Jeremy’s advice.

  In his melancholy way, John Sladen was as romantic as George Stapleton. But John’s hero was Byron, the dark angel of the new breed of poets, while George admired gentler spirits, such as Wordsworth and Keats. Jeremy should have realized that spleen made a mockery of the calculation that John claimed to admire. The scorn that dominated his feelings was at war with the very idea.

  George soon made good on his promise to persuade his formidable mother to take Caroline Kemble into her Beekman Street town house. As her only son, he could cajole her into almost anything he really wanted. He allowed her the illusion of ruling his life in matters romantic because it suited his indolent easygoing nature.

  Caroline was immensely grateful to George for this emancipation—and to Jeremy, for obtaining her mother’s approval of it with a letter assuring Aunt Martha that her daughter’s studies would proceed uninterrupted. Even schoolmistress Lucretia Carter had to grudgingly agree that Caroline would obtain a far more ladylike polish in the gleaming interior of the Stapleton town house.

  Angelica Van Rensselaer Stapleton put great stress on appearances. Her house was a treasure trove of fine furniture and Turkey carpets, weighty silver and Sevres dinner services. To Caroline, raised in an Ohio farmhouse, the place looked like a palace. But she retained her implausible hauteur that men found irresistible.

  George persuaded his mother to invite the frères trois to a triumphant dinner a few weeks after Caroline’s arrival. To the table Angelica added his cousin Sally, a year older than Caroline, and her latest beau, an up-and-coming lawyer named Fenimore Gardiner; the writer Washington Irving, who was an old girlhood friend; and several others of his vintage. It was a merry gathering, with frequent quotati
ons and praise for Mr. Irving’s books on New York and his much acclaimed sketches of English life. Short, plump, and genial, Mr. Irving was elegantly dressed like the aristocrat he had been from birth. He looked as if he had been born to sit at well-appointed dinner tables.

  Good cheer and light conversation predominated until John Sladen asked Mr. Irving what he thought of the administration of President John Quincy Adams.

  “I think he’s set the country on a good course. Whether he can keep her on it is the question,” Irving replied.

  “You’re not troubled by the corrupt bargain on which his presidency is based?” Sladen asked.

  Sladen was referring to an arrangement Adams had apparently made with Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky, whereby Clay threw his support to Adams in return for a promise that the Kentuckian would become secretary of state. The deal had been crucial to Adams’s success in the balloting in the House of Representatives. The presidential election had landed there when none of the four candidates received a majority of electoral votes.

  Irving was markedly cool to the indignation Sladen seemed to be professing. “Politicians are always making bargains,” Irving said. “Not all of them are corrupt.”

  “But this one, sir, which involved the selling of the presidency and the deprivation of the man who led the vote, General Jackson—”

  “That was the best thing that could have happened to the country,” Fenimore Gardiner said. “Andrew Jackson isn’t fit to be president of a barnyard!”

  “I’m inclined to agree with Mr. Gardiner, without the animadversion of the barnyard,” Irving said with a placid smile. “I suggest you read my first book, The History of New York by Diedrich Knickerbocker. Amongst the jokes you’ll find some interesting comments on the dangers of too much democracy.”

  “I’ve read it, sir. But I found its politics impossible to praise,” Sladen said.

  A gasp ran down the table. Sladen was virtually insulting the most famous American writer of his time. “May I say that I too read it,” Caroline Kemble said. “It’s one of my very favorite books, even though I too am a devotee of this movement Mr. Sladen so recklessly worships—democracy. But for a very different reason. I hope it will give more scope to women’s rights and abilities.”