Tag Archives: 1860s

Wandering Minstrel: Billy Gashade

31 Monday May 2021

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Review: Billy Gashade, by Loren D. Estleman
Forge, 1997. 351 pp. $12

One broiling day in July 1863, a sixteen-year-old Manhattan youth wanders into riots sparked by Irish workingmen angry at Lincoln’s new conscription law. Pushed by corrupt politicians, they nevertheless have a serious gripe. Men with three hundred dollars to spare may pay for a replacement if their name is drawn; everyone else must serve in the Union Army. This injustice should have no immediate bearing on our teenage interloper, not yet of military age and born to a sheltered existence as the son of a prosperous judge. But for the first time in his life, he steps forward into the breach and uses his soft, musician’s hands to stand up for someone else.

For his trouble, he earns a wicked concussion. A brothel madam takes the boy in, and when the grateful convalescent manages to restore and play the house’s damaged piano, he makes friends. He’ll need them, because there’s now a price on his head—during the riot, he wounded an ally of the infamous, powerful Boss Tweed, and getting out of town is the only answer. Taking the name Billy Gashade, he goes west.

Jesse James as a young man, undated, photographer unknown (courtesy Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

Billy gets a job playing piano in another brothel, this one in Lawrence, Kansas, where he again winds up in a melee, this one between Federal forces and rebel militia. But though violence shapes much of Billy’s story, and its misuses and lust for it furnish key themes, the narrative really describes the character of the Old West, and the difference between the romantic legends and the truth, as Billy sees it. And he witnesses much firsthand, for he makes the acquaintance of many well-known figures, most particularly Jesse and Frank James, but also Jim Bridger, Buffalo Bill Cody, George Armstrong Custer, and a raft of others. However, Estleman properly resists the temptation to let Billy witness the best-known scenes (the Last Stand, for instance), which would have twisted the story into a pretzel; the author knows how to make first-rate drama out of less iconic material. This narrative, though with plot aplenty, gets its drive from character.

Billy Gashade is a yarn par excellence, yet it’s more than that, continually pointing out the differences between haves and have-nots in the eyes of their fellow creatures and the “law,” like as not a corrupt, blunt instrument. Billy’s music seems the only voice of peace and understanding, and the locales in which he plies his art are beautifully conveyed. Depicting those circumstances is one way the narrative takes a bristle brush to the sheen of romance, scuffing it mightily. The Kansas sections in particular revise notions about which side has the moral high ground, abolitionist or proslavery, for the warriors fighting for each are murdering scum. Estleman forces us to take a harder look at the received wisdom we’ve been handed about the Civil War, always a useful exercise.

The author tells his tale in retrospect from 1935, a technique I’ve never liked, but it doesn’t intrude here, because only the very beginning and end take place then. The beginning sets Billy up as the man who’s seen it all and establishes his authority, as reliable narrator and a voice you want to listen to. The story also contains as many coincidences as any three Dickens novels combined, but I don’t mind; often, I’m just as happy to meet old friends as Billy is.

But it’s not just the ride through Billy’s life that leads you on. It’s that irresistible voice:

I have ever been curious, an incurable affliction and nearly always personally disastrous. When I was five I climbed by means of a construction of ottomans, pillows, and the works of Sir Walter Scott to the top of an eighteenth-century chifforobe in my parents’ bedroom, only to burn my hand badly in the pretty blue flame of the gas jet that had inspired the ascent. Alas, it was not a learning experience. As many times since then as my Need to Know a Thing has landed me in foul soup, I would in my present extremity sooner chase a siren than dine on pheasant. In 1863 I nearly died of this condition.

At times, however, I feel that Estleman has replaced one romantic view with another. I don’t find Confederate guerrillas-turned-bank robbers appealing in either guise, so Jesse James repels me. I’ll grant that Billy’s quip about James’s gift for singing is one of the best lines in the book: “I’ve always believed that the world lost a good tenor when Jesse James took to robbing stages instead of appearing on them.” To an extent, Estleman’s trying to tell us our romantic heroes don’t deserve our admiration. Yet Billy’s fond of James and worries that the law will get him, though he knows better than most people what the man has done.

Still, Billy Gashade has much to offer. The wandering minstrel’s travels provide wit, humor, and an education, a tale you can wade into with gusto, and a vision of the Old West you might not find anywhere else.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

That These Dead Shall Not Have Died in Vain: The Impeachers

16 Monday Dec 2019

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Review: The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation, by Brenda Wineapple
Random House, 2019. 514 pp. $32

In May 1868, the Senate voted to acquit President Andrew Johnson of the articles of impeachment Congress had brought against him. Tradition holds that the acquittal quashed a vicious vendetta against a defeated, broken Confederacy, and that Johnson stood for the peaceful reconciliation that the postwar nation needed above all. But as Wineapple proves in this riveting, brilliantly researched (and timely) book, tradition is plain wrong.

Rather, the former Confederacy was doing its best to continue the war by other means — killing thousands of African-Americans and Union sympathizers; attempting to regain control of governmental and administrative bodies denied them as former rebels; and clamoring for readmission to the Union without having to fulfill the conditions set forth by Congress in the Reconstruction Acts. As for Andrew Johnson, he tacitly encouraged the racial violence; vetoed the Reconstruction Acts, though he knew he’d be overridden; refused to convene Congress for months, during which he pardoned former Confederates by the carload; restated his ironclad belief that the country “was for white men”; and removed Unionist Reconstruction officials, putting former planters in their place.

Rep. Thaddeus Stevens, Pennsylvania Republican, believed that Andrew Johnson had betrayed the Federal cause in the Civil War and those who’d died for it (courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Brady-Handy Photograph Collection, via Wikimedia Commons)

Consequently, when Thaddeus Stevens, Radical Republican power in the House, and Charles Sumner and Benjamin Wade, his Senate allies, moved for impeachment, theirs was no vendetta. They believed that Johnson had transgressed the constitutional separation of powers to serve a policy that rendered moot the sacrifices of the Civil War and promised further racial violence and political division. Their ideal — which is why they were called Radicals — was political equality for all Americans, especially the franchise, without which an unjust society would never heal or change.

Wineapple details how the effort to impeach came up short, and what that meant for the South and the country at large. She focuses on the combination of racism, self-interest, lack of principle, and political chicanery that shaped the Senate vote, including, almost certainly, outright bribery. The removal of a president unfit to serve (a characterization that even his allies would have agreed with) further stumbled because of the plaintiffs’ murky legal approach. But, as the author astutely mentions in her introduction, even the concept of impeachment was (and, presumably, is) hard to swallow, admitting as it does that our national myths of triumphant democracy need revision, and that we’re capable of electing dysfunctional leaders.

Consider, for instance, her description of Johnson’s leadership style:

Andrew Johnson was not a statesman. He was a man with a fear of losing ground, with a need to be recognized, with an obsession to be right, and when seeking revenge on enemies — or perceived enemies — he had to humiliate, harass, and hound them. Heedless of consequences, he baited Congress and bullied men, believing his enemies were enemies of the people. It was a convenient illusion.
Those closest to him were unsure of what he might do next.

If that summary rings any bells, no wonder. But are those impeachable offenses, then or now? Wineapple doesn’t speak of current politics, but she doesn’t have to. The correspondences are there, but, more importantly, so are the historical lessons. Even with a substantial Senate majority to work from, the impeachers failed — and not for want of passion or skill. Among the obstacles? Benjamin Wade was president pro tempore of the Senate, and since there was no vice president anymore, he’d take office if Johnson fell. And Wade, radical of Radicals, believed in votes for women as well as for African-Americans.

Nothing less than the nation’s soul was at stake, the ideals of liberty on which we pride ourselves. That alone would make a good story. But Wineapple also has the congressional leaders, Ulysses S Grant, Mark Twain, Frederick Douglass, and a host of other larger-than-life characters, any one of whom would make a fitting protagonist for a novel, let alone a player in a historical drama like this.

I wish that Wineapple had explained how Johnson was able to keep Congress from meeting for so many months. I also confess that the actual trial bored me, in parts, but only because the attorneys droned on so long that even the Senate galleries emptied, when tickets had once been so hard to come by. But otherwise, The Impeachers makes a thrilling narrative. Wineapple has researched her ground so thoroughly with private letters and archival papers that she seems to have listened in on public and private conversations from 150 years ago.

Read The Impeachers and be amazed. And, in case you’re interested, the current president pro tempore of the Senate, third in line for the presidency of these United States, is Orrin Hatch of Utah.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Robber Baron Philanthropist: Carnegie’s Maid

03 Monday Jun 2019

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Review: Carnegie’s Maid, by Marie Benedict
Sourcebooks, 2018. 281 pp. $26

Why did Andrew Carnegie, arguably the most cutthroat robber baron ever — which is saying something — turn philanthropist? That’s the question Benedict tries to answer in this engaging, if half-fulfilled, novel. Her catalyst is Clara Kelley, who leaves Galway for New York in November 1863, on a mission that feels desperate. Her once-prosperous farm family faces poverty, if not destitution, because of her father’s political activity. Clara, healthy, vigorous, and intelligent, is the daughter chosen to cross the Atlantic, find gainful employment, and send money home.

Well versed in horror stories about conmen who fleece new immigrants, Clara makes an instinctive decision on arrival. A man in livery asks her whether she’s Clara Kelley, to which she naturally says yes. But it’s quickly apparent that she’s not the young woman he’s expecting. Nevertheless, she plays the part to the hilt—-who’s fleecing whom?–and he helps her into his carriage, which will bring them to Pittsburgh. During the ride, Clara gleans that she’s to be ladies’ maid to a Mrs. Carnegie, a notion that both excites and terrifies her, because she has no idea what a lady’s maid does or who her new employer is, aside from having a wealthy son. I like this part of the novel best, for Clara must suss out what people want to hear before they even ask, an exercise fraught with tension and, sometimes, humor.

Andrew Carnegie’s birthplace, Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland (courtesy user: kilnburn via Wikimedia Commons)

But our heroine has two aces up her puffy sleeves. First, her betters talk about her as though she weren’t there — a servant’s lot — and from the information gained, she infers ways to keep one step ahead of exposure. Secondly, Clara senses that Mrs. Carnegie asks so many questions about how her former employers dressed, took tea, or buffed their nails not to uncover her maid’s falsehoods, but because she’s unsure of herself. She has money, of course, and a son who’s like a god to her, but no name or social standing, and that scares her. She needs to know How Things Are Done, without giving herself away. In other words, she’s more like her maid than she knows.

Clara can’t ever breathe a syllable of her discovery, yet the knowledge gives her courage and the means with which to flatter. And when she has the rare luxury to breathe, she’s free to observe that her made-of-iron mistress manufactures and sells that product, and her escritoire holds business papers instead of invitations or calling cards. That opens a world for Clara — a woman can enter business and compete with men — a feminist touch I like, and which Benedict wisely refrains from overplaying.

Despite such an ingenious premise and engaging protagonist, though, several obstacles hold the story back. First is Pointless Prologue No. 1728, in which Andrew pens an unsent letter to Clara bemoaning her departure, expressing his love, and promising to devote his fortune to charitable causes. A version of this letter apparently exists, which prompts the central historical question — why did he write it? — but sabotages the plot. Narrative questions do remain, but I think they pale beside the larger issues, not least whose story this is, the male industrialist’s or that of the fictive woman who influences him. I find Clara’s predicament compelling enough at the outset without a Famous Person waiting in the wings.

Also, rather than evoke Clara’s conflicts through physical detail, such as memories of her home and family, she asks rhetorical questions of herself, often the same ones. So many authors settle for that, and some readers might say that’s the difference between commercial and literary fiction. I disagree. A confident storyteller in any genre realizes that a three-sentence digression that offers a window on inner life connects with the reader and creates tension. It’s also subtler and more effective than three rhetorical questions in a row.

Carnegie’s Maid does draw some lovely parallels. Carnegie and Clara realize that they’re both immigrants, yet the distance between them is enormous. I wish Clara had gone a little further, recognizing that her lie is no worse than those he tells in his business, and that unlike him, she hasn’t hurt anybody. Her pretense, in fact, is precisely the sort of boldness that can decide success or failure, especially for a poor immigrant, and it’s certainly what has built the Carnegie empire. She can never say so, but I wanted her to think it.

Benedict also juxtaposes Clara’s family situation with that of Mr. Ford, the household chef and former slave, and her only ally among the servants. I like this very much, but again, I would have liked it even better had Clara imagined slavery or how her friend must have suffered. Likewise, I would have welcomed a passage or two in which she wonders what she would do if she had riches, or what it might feel like to be sexually touched, an issue that arises because of Andrew’s attraction for her. We’re told only that no one in Galway wanted to marry her, but surely, she felt some sexual pull, sometime. I’d have expected her to measure that fantasy against Andrew’s physical reality and to struggle with that.

Consequently, Carnegie’s Maid feels restrained, in a way, because of risks not taken. But I still like this novel, which has much to recommend it.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Art and Seduction: Paris Red

07 Thursday May 2015

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Olympe, Edouard Manet, 1863. (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

Olympe, Edouard Manet, 1863-65. (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

Review: Paris Red, by Maureen Gibbon
Norton, 2015. 282 pp. $26

In a Paris still reeling from the recent war of 1870, two young women, teenagers still, share a tiny apartment and work as silver burnishers. It’s a demanding job but steady work, and Louise and Denise (called Nise) count themselves lucky to have each other’s friendship and a sound alternative to working the streets, however meager their wages. But they also dream of more, of being noticed, picked out from among the crowd.

One day, they pose before a shopwindow, holding drawing tablets, pretending to sketch what’s inside. A man approaches them, and a triangular flirtation begins. At first, Louise and Nise are careful not to push themselves forward, each concerned with not hurting the other; besides, they must at least pretend to play hard to get. But beneath the teasing, Louise senses a strong attraction between herself and the man, who calls himself Eugène, who has some money, has apparently seen the hard side of life, and who sometimes speaks with disarming, if not shocking, directness.

It all happens so easily, it seems, and yet Louise is the type to reflect on why, which is why I like this book:

 

It is about us. Something specifically about us. And I think we should not be surprised. It is what we wanted. With our tablets and our scheming, all the trying not to be ordinary–didn’t we want someone to notice us? To see we were different? . . . Because I do not feel ordinary. Or because I feel ordinary and different at the same time.

 

His name, as she finds out, is really Édouard Manet. Louise Victorine Meurent becomes his mistress, his model, and, to some extent, his muse. I didn’t recognize her name, but I certainly knew what she looked like, because she’s in two of my favorite Manet canvases, Olympe (on the book jacket) and Déjeuner sur l’herbe (Lunch on the Grass). Both created a stir for their frank sensuality and shocking directness. Having dug around a little, I also learn that Meurent became a painter too. Unlike what the novel suggests, she gravitated toward an older, more accepted style than his, which, ironically, earned her more favor than he from the official Salon.

Gibbon has imagined the artist-model relationship in fine emotional detail. I particularly like how she traces the currents that run between them, which don’t always follow the expected route. For one thing, Manet isn’t the absinthe-sodden, self-absorbed, irresponsible artist of lore, which allows him to appreciate Louise for herself, not just as an object. He’s always willing to listen to her, something that takes her by surprise. Just as important, as with the shopwindow scene, you can’t necessarily pinpoint who’s seducing whom, or what it’s for. As Louise observes, “It is not always so clear what someone wants, or what money can buy, or who exactly pays.” Without saying too much, I can tell you that between these two people, it’s more about art than sex, though there’s plenty of both.

The beginning feels a little romanticized, like a sepia photograph that’s been airbrushed. The Paris of Paris Red isn’t nearly as seamy as that of Cathy Marie Buchanan’s Painted Girls, and Louise, though she stints herself at times, seems relatively safe. The key word is relatively, however, because just as Louise has abandoned Nise, which troubles her (somewhat), she worries that Manet will abandon her. She may not starve or have to go on the street, for she has a skilled trade to fall back on. But she will lose her dreams and the connection to Manet on which they depend. As she says, money figures into it, but it’s not everything.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.