Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule (40 page)

Bemused, Julia watched him disappear around the corner, wondering what possessed him.

The gentlemen remained sequestered in the library for quite some time, long enough for Julia’s curiosity to prompt her to bring them some tea and cake, which she knew Ulys would refuse. She found the men in the midst of an earnest discussion about the publication of Ulys’s memoirs, and she quickly deduced that Twain had urged Ulys not to sign the contract, which he decried as insultingly stingy. He instead wanted Ulys to enter into an agreement with the American Publishing Company of Hartford. They had published several of Twain’s novels quite successfully and, Twain insisted, they would certainly offer Ulys a far more generous, more lucrative arrangement than the Century Company had.

“Smith and Gilder were my benefactors in my time of great need, and it seems disloyal to desert them.” Ulys coughed hoarsely, and concern flashed across Twain’s features. Ulys had been careful to conceal the nature of his affliction, giving neither the public nor his friends any indication that he suffered from more than a bad cold.

“If they can offer terms as good as the American Publishing Company, you won’t have to,” said Fred. “This isn’t a matter of sentiment, but of pure business, and should be examined from that point of view alone.”

Julia was inclined to agree, but before she could venture an opinion, Ulys said, “Yes, but I feel a certain loyalty to the Century Company because they came to me first.”

“In that case,” declared Twain, smiling beneath his thick brown mustache, “I’m to be the publisher because
I
came to you first. It was little more than three years ago in this very room that I urged you to write your memoirs and offered to help you do it.”

Ulys looked thunderstruck. “Well, that’s true,” he acknowledged.

Julia lingered as long as she reasonably could, pouring tea and offering cake, and she left the room just as Twain turned the conversation to the benefits of subscription rather than trade publication. Later, after the men emerged from the library and saw Twain to the door, Fred told her that Ulys had agreed to set aside the Century Company’s contract for a day and seriously consider his friend’s proposal.

Ulys slept unusually well that night, and so when Twain returned the next morning, he found him in good spirits. This time, Julia accompanied the gentlemen when they retired to the library, and she listened intently as Twain made his case for Ulys’s memoirs.

“My good friend General Sherman published his memoirs several years ago,” Ulys said, “a two-volume set, very well made. He told me that his profits were twenty-five thousand dollars. Do you believe I could get as much out of my book?”

“I’m sure you’ll make an even greater profit.”

Julia drew in a slow, quiet breath—but she let it out, deflated, when Ulys gingerly shook his head. “I don’t think you can be right about that.”

“I’m certain that I am.” Twain slapped his palms flat on his knees. “I’ll tell you what, General Grant. Forget about my publisher. Sell your memoirs to
me.
I’ll pay you twice what General Sherman got for his book. Take my check for fifty thousand dollars and let’s draw up the contract right now.”

Julia gasped. Ulys stared at Twain, stunned, but eventually he shook his head, wincing from the pain. “I can’t do that. We’re friends, and I would hate it if you failed to make a profit. I could never allow a friend to run such a risk.”

“I’m taking a very small risk, I assure you,” Twain replied. “I expect to make one hundred thousand dollars from your book within six months.”

“Ulys,” Julia murmured, wanting desperately for him to shake Twain’s hand and accept his check.

Ulys sat for a long while in silence, thinking. “Put your terms in writing. I’ll refer the matter to my friend Mr. George Childs.” Twain inclined his head; the newspaper publisher and philanthropist was known to all as a man of impeccable integrity. “I’ll have him compare the Century Company’s offer to yours and make his recommendation. That’s all I can promise at this time.”

The two men shook hands on it, and Julia clasped hers together tightly in her lap. With two publishers contending for Ulys’s memoirs, surely the family would be saved from financial ruin.

Ulys promptly wrote to Mr. Childs in Philadelphia to request that he come to New York to review the two proposals and negotiate the final contract. While Ulys labored over his chapters on the Mexican War, Mr. Childs and his lawyer carefully reviewed the competing proposals. In early December, Mr. Childs was convinced that Twain’s offer was the superior one, but more negotiations followed before the terms were settled and his verdict made official.

Mark Twain would publish Ulys’s book. Now everything depended upon Ulys completing it.

•   •   •

Writing increasingly exhausted Ulys, and by mid-December, his throat throbbed with pain so intense that relentless nightmares jolted him awake, shouting and disoriented. One harrowing night, Ulys told Julia of a dream in which he was traveling alone in a foreign country. “I carried a single satchel and I was only partially clad,” he said hoarsely, sitting up in bed. “I found to my surprise that I was alone, without money or friends. I came to a fence, but after climbing the stepping stile up one side, I discovered there were no stairs on the other. I went over the fence anyway, only to discover that I had left my satchel on the other side. Then I thought I would return home and borrow the money from you, but when I asked, you replied you had only seventeen dollars, which was not nearly enough. And upon realizing that, I woke.”

Though Julia assured him that she found no prophetic warnings in his visions, the nightmare visited him again several times thereafter. To anyone else it would sound like a strange, perhaps even silly dream, but Julia easily recognized all the elements of her husband’s worst fears—of being forced to retrace his steps, of poverty, of being unable to provide for her.

The dreams and the pain became so severe that Julia and Harrison had to coax Ulys to bed every night. Two great dreads had seized him—that he would choke to death while he slept, and that he would be unable to complete his book, rendering his family penniless and unprotected. By Christmas he had plunged into the deepest melancholy, exhausted, unhappy, and unable to work.

One night, gasping in pain, exhausted but unable to rest, Ulys was in such deep distress that he asked Julia to summon Dr. Shrady. The physician came at once, applied his medicines, and calmly assured Ulys that the pain would pass and that he should lie down with his head on a cool pillow.

Julia stood in the doorway and watched silently while the doctor helped her husband into bed. “Pretend you are a boy again,” Dr. Shrady told him. “Curl up your legs, lie on your side, and bend your neck while I tuck the covers around your shoulders.” Obediently, Ulys did as he was instructed. “Now go to sleep like a good boy.”

Ulys quieted, and Dr. Shrady stood observing him until he fell asleep at last.

When Dr. Shrady turned to go, he seemed abashed to discover that Julia had witnessed the scene. He stole from the room and joined her in the corridor. “My apologies,” he murmured while Julia softly closed the door, leaving it slightly ajar. “I do hope the general won’t think my methods demeaning. My only intention was to ease his pain.”

“There isn’t the slightest danger of that,” Julia assured him. “The general is the most simple mannered and reasonable person in the world. He doesn’t like to be treated with unnecessary ceremony.”

Dr. Shrady regarded her with a potent mixture of sympathy and sternness. “Mrs. Grant, I should warn you that there shall be many more nights like this to come.”

“I know it.” A slight tremble in her voice betrayed her apprehension. “I also know that he’s lost interest in his book, the one endeavor that gave his days purpose.”

“This is natural. Sometimes the general will feel like giving up. Sometimes he’ll refuse to eat and be unable to sleep. He’ll reject his work and become fatalistic. This is the normal and necessary preparation of the mind for a person who is terminally ill.” The doctor rested his hand on her shoulder and held her gaze. “The general is stronger and more disciplined than an ordinary man, and I believe eventually he’ll come to accept his illness and resolve to work through his pain.”

Julia’s eyes filled with tears, and she thanked him, though she wanted to cry out that she did not accept that Ulys’s illness was fatal and would never encourage him to do so.

•   •   •

Ulys’s melancholy persisted as the year came to a close, but when he heard that his old friend William Sherman was in New York, he relaxed his ban on visitors and invited him to call. Julia knew what an effort it was for Ulys to conceal his suffering for the two hours he and Sherman sat in the library and talked. Ulys told him he was writing his memoirs and that he was ill but was recovering under his doctors’ care. Afterward, as Julia escorted him to the door, Sherman paused in the foyer. “Mrs. Grant,” he asked suddenly, “we are friends, are we not?”

“I should certainly hope so, after all these years.”

“Then may I beg the liberty of a friend and ask you a direct question?”

Julia felt a stir of trepidation. They should have known Sherman would recognize Ulys’s pain and thinness for what they were. What would she say if he asked her for the truth? “Of course you may,” she replied, steeling herself.

“Forgive me, but when I look around your beautiful home, I can’t mistake the signs of your material distress.”

“Oh, that? Well, yes.” Julia uttered a tiny, helpless laugh. “It’s true that we aren’t as comfortable as we were before the failure of Grant & Ward, but Ulys’s writing will provide for us.”

Sherman frowned slightly as he bowed and bade her farewell, and a few days later, the Grants learned that he had raised a subscription for Ulys’s benefit. “I appreciate both the motive and the friendship which have dictated this course on your part,” Ulys immediately wrote in response, “but, on mature reflection, I regard it as due myself and my family to decline this preferred generosity.”

To Ulys’s chagrin, his letter found its way into the hands of the press, and it was published in the
New-York Tribune
on January 8. Then, mere days after he hinted at his illness in a letter to another friend, mentioning that he was weak and could not sleep, a Philadelphia newspaper reported that Ulys was ill, and attributed his condition to his financial difficulties. When the New York press besieged Ulys’s doctors, Ulys scripted their answer: He was ill, but cheerful and comfortable, and they expected a quick recovery.

Nothing could have been further from the truth. Not even Julia could pretend otherwise any longer. “My tears blind me,” she wrote to Mrs. Hillyer, her dear friend from their St. Louis and Holly Springs days. “General Grant is ill. I cannot write how ill.”

And yet, in the bleakest midwinter, Ulys seemed to steady himself, and his spirits noticeably improved. Every morning he rose early, allowed Harrison to wrap him in a warm shawl, and went to his study to resume writing.

“Whether those persistent rumors in the press about his poor health have spurred him on, or he has remembered his commitment to Twain,” Julia confided to Dr. Douglas, “he seems to have discovered a new wellspring of strength.”

“I’m not surprised,” Dr. Douglas replied. “I believe the general now understands the adversary he faces, and he has proposed to fight it out on this line if it takes all winter.”

Julia glowed with recognition of the doctor’s paraphrase of her brave victor’s famous words from the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House—so unexpected, so perfectly suited to his ordeal.

•   •   •

Twain had traveled most of the winter on a speaking tour, and when he returned to New York in the last week of February, he promptly called at the Grant residence. Ulys was upstairs in his study, his writing momentarily interrupted by Dr. Douglas’s regular examination. Although Ulys could barely speak above a hoarse whisper, while Dr. Douglas finished his tasks, Ulys and Twain chatted about his new novel,
The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
which had taken him nine years to write. It had been out only a few days and he and his publisher were still awaiting the first reviews.

“For a while the book seemed plagued by bad luck,” Twain confided, settling himself into a chair. “Some unscrupulous scoundrels were trying to sell their own versions of my novel, and a lascivious engraver nearly sabotaged our first printing with a deliberate error to one of the illustrations that showed one of my characters, Silas Phelps, with his—” He caught himself and glanced at Julia. “Well, let’s just say the picture left no question that he’s a male of the species.”

Julia smiled in spite of herself, and the men laughed—all save Ulys, who struggled not to, for the great pain laughing caused him. Twain regarded him curiously for a long moment. “
The
New York World
reported yesterday that you’re suffering not from cancer,” he said, “but from a case of chronic inflammation of the tongue brought on by excessive smoking. I was very glad to see the news.”

“Ah, yes,” said Ulys, smiling faintly. “I read that too. If only it had been true.”

“The general’s condition is serious,” added Dr. Douglas, “and it will worsen.”

Julia could bear no more. She hurried downstairs to the parlor, where she sank into a chair and fought back sobs. Soon she heard Fred escorting Twain to the door, discussing the manuscript and a few details in the publishing contract that had yet to be settled.

Their footsteps paused in the foyer. “I tell you in strictest confidence that my father is very ill, and he isn’t expected to recover,” Julia heard Fred say. “His doctors believe he may have only a few weeks to live.”

“I had no idea it was so serious,” said Twain. “How could a man so robust decline so quickly?”

“Don’t be concerned—”

“How could I be otherwise? Your father is a very dear friend of mine.”

“What I mean is that you shouldn’t worry that his work will be affected,” said Fred. “My father writes diligently each day, and everything is proceeding on schedule. The first volume of his memoirs is finished, and work on the second is progressing very well.”