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Tag Archives: William McKinley

Blackmail and Murder: Hot Time

25 Monday Jul 2022

Posted by Novelhistorian in Reviews and Columns

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1896, blackmail, book review, historical fiction, Minnie Gertrude Kelly, murder, mystery, New York City, Otto Raphael, police, presidential election, Theodore Roosevelt, W. H. Flint, William Jennings Bryan, William McKinley

Review: Hot Time, by W. H. Flint
Arcade, 2022. 267 pp. $27

August 1896 witnesses a record “hot wave” in New York City, as the newspapers call it, searing temperatures that kill thousands of people as well as horses that drop in harness, blocking the streets. Political temperatures run almost as high, as a presidential election campaign prepares for its autumn stretch. William Jennings Bryan, the Democratic candidate opposing William McKinley, will speak at Madison Square Garden, expected to draw an overflow crowd, and the police have uncovered purported plans by anarchists to stage a violent demonstration there, maybe even to kill Bryan.

Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt, who makes little secret of his ambitions to ride McKinley’s coattails to a coveted government post, perhaps with the Navy Department, is also trying to weed out the corruption among New York’s constabulary. Aiding him in this Herculean task is Otto (Rafe) Raphael, the first Jew to wear the uniform of New York’s Finest, and Minnie Gertrude Kelly, the department’s first woman stenographer.

Jacob Riis and Theodore Roosevelt tour the slums, 1894 (from Riis’s book, The Making of an American, 1901, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

Complicating matters is William d’Alton Mann, whose dead body has been found near the Brooklyn Bridge. The police report ascribes the motive to robbery, and Commissioner Roosevelt accepts the judgment, even when Rafe, who’s had the chance to investigate on his own — overstepping his authority — points out a key fact. Mann’s gold cufflinks, likely the most valuable items on his person, remained untouched.

What’s more, Mann was an infamous blackmailer, gathering poisonous secrets about the rich and powerful, perhaps even Commissioner Roosevelt himself, and threatening to print them unless sizable sums are paid. Rafe, who admires Roosevelt without being blind to his faults, doesn’t know what to think — and keeps digging.

For me, the chief pleasure of Hot Time is the political and social atmosphere. Flint, a pseudonym for a well-known historian of the Gilded Age, has lovingly re-created that era and many of its figures, well-known or otherwise, the latter including the blackmailer, our inquisitive constable, and ground-breaking stenographer (though the author has taken license with biographical fact).

It’s not just that J.P. Morgan, Mark Hanna (senator, kingmaker, and McKinley’s handler), Bryan, and Jacob Riis, the reporter who exposes the degradation of New York’s slums (and wrote How the Other Half Lives), float through these pages. Flint has underlined how even reformers like Riis disliked and distrusted immigrants, Jews especially, and how the populist Bryan wanted the United States to close its borders.

I’m a little surprised that Flint has ignored Tammany Hall, which ran the police department like a fiefdom and brought about the corruption Roosevelt’s trying to counter. (I’m also curious about how Tammany, a Democratic machine, would have viewed a candidate who wore the right party emblem but opposed immigration, to which the organization owed its roots and power. Maybe too complex for a mystery novel.) But otherwise, the author portrays an engaging portrait of a time when bigotry and fears sound all too familiar to us today.

I also like the depiction of New York itself, of the Lower East Side and what was then “uptown,” the area in the lower Thirties. Flint brings to life the hard existence of newsboys, usually homeless young children, whose welfare was one of Roosevelt’s pet causes. One boy, called Dutch, figures heavily in the story:

At the Bowery, [Rafe] crossed under the elevated tracks, grateful for a moment’s respite from the sun. His usual newsboy was on the corner. Brown hair stuck out from under his woolen cap, and he stood with a habitual hunch, like a stray dog wondering whether the next passerby was good for a handout or a boot in the ribs.

But Hot Time, though intriguing as a historical novel, falters as a mystery. The narrative implies the killer’s identity fairly early on; only the motive remains unclear, and though it turns out to be politically satisfying, I find it somewhat hard to credit. The real tension comes from remarkable chase scenes involving Dutch’s acrobatics, and though they’re hair-raising, I wanted more of a puzzle. It’s as though the narrative can’t decide whether it’s a mystery or thriller.

As a detective, Rafe is dogged, intelligent, and good-hearted. There’s a whisper of attraction between him and Minnie, the stenographer, which can go nowhere, for religious reasons. For the most part, I believe Rafe’s Jewishness — thank you, Mr. Flint — and his family’s living conditions seem real too.

However, certain conversations feel like information dumps, and I wish Rafe’s interior narration depended less on rhetorical questions, sometimes a half-dozen or more in a row. Whenever an author resorts to that device, I sense a perceived need to remind the reader what’s been learned (or not) and uncertainty as to how best to convey this, except in shorthand.

Consequently, if you read Hot Time, concentrate on the atmosphere and the derring-do, and you’ll see the narrative in its best light.

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

Who Knew Politics Could Be so Much Fun?: Empire

23 Monday Sep 2019

Posted by Novelhistorian in Reviews and Columns

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1898, book review, cynicism, Gore Vidal, Henry Adams, historical fiction, John Hay, literary fiction, money in politics, newspapers, politics, power, Theodore Roosevelt, Washington, William McKinley, William Randolph Hearst, yellow journalism

Review: Empire, by Gore Vidal
Random House/Vintage, 1987. 486 pp. $17

Caroline Sanford, recently arrived from Paris, where she’s spent most of her life, hits Washington in 1898, and that city will never be the same. It’s not just that Caroline has the requisites to advance in society or make a brilliant marriage — youth, looks, charm, and money. In fact, society bores her, unless it provides the means to a different end, and she’s convinced that wedlock would be even duller. Rather, she possesses yet another trait, worth more than the others put together, an iconoclastic way of thinking about men and women, which therefore makes her difficult to shock. Moralists ascribe this “improper” outlook, and the plans that result, to her foreignness. But Caroline’s American enough to understand that where her countrymen fear to tread — or, more particularly, countrywomen — creates an opportunity, which she’s European enough to seize with panache. As she says, life’s not easy for a woman who wants more than anything to be interested. Her scheme to achieve that takes everyone by surprise: to publish a newspaper.

William Randolph Hearst as a New York congressman, 1906, photo by James E. Purdy (courtesy Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons)

Naturally, she does not intend to print stories about doilies or the right way to entertain, or even politics, of which she has an innate sense. No; she desires to publish a scandal sheet that outdoes William Randolph Hearst, the king of so-called yellow journalism, whose latest coup, if it may be called that, is fomenting the Spanish-American War for no good reason other than to augment his own power.

Family rivalry plays a key role, here. Caroline’s half-brother Blaise, works for Hearst. Said half-sibling is also trying to deny her the rightful share of the fortune their father left them. So for Caroline, buying and running a successful newspaper means not only fulfilling her dream of being someone other than wife or socialite, but socking Blaise where it hurts — and believe me, he deserves it.

Lucky for Caroline, she’s immediately taken up by one of the first families in Washington. John Hay, former private secretary to Abraham Lincoln and soon to be William McKinley’s secretary of state, has a son, Del, who’s sweet on her. Hay the elder also has significant friends and political bedfellows, the likes of Henry Cabot Lodge, William Jennings Bryan, Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Adams and his brother, Brooks (descended from two presidents and noted for their historical and political writings), Henry James, and various others.

So Empire offers the reader a close-up view of politics during the McKinley years and after, which is to say much like today: “… it’s the way that things are made to look that matters now,” not the substance of what anybody says. Vidal takes this huge cast of historical figures, just about everyone except Caroline and Blaise, and renders these movers and shakers in their heads and skins. The result is electric, and often very funny. The humor is biting and caustic, and when these famous wits trade ripostes, the dialogue runs away with you. (Theodore Roosevelt provides the butt of many such sprees, even from his daughter, friends, and supposed allies.) Like a latter-day Dickens, minus the treacle or the moralizing, Vidal re-creates these people in their passions, urges, and appetites, as with this portrait of William McKinley at table:

Lunch was as simple and as enormous as the President’s dove-gray waist coated paunch, which began very high indeed on his frame and curved outward, keeping him from ever sitting close to the table, which accounted, no doubt, for the single shamrock-shaped gravy stain on the black frock-coat that hung in perpendicular folds to left and right of the huge autonomous belly, like theater curtains drawn to reveal the spectacle. Quail was followed by porterhouse steak which preceded broiled chicken, each course accompanied by a variety of hot bread — wheat muffins, corn sticks, toast, and butter.

It helps if you’re familiar with the history, but even if you’re not, Empire is a delight either way, and an education. Vidal takes a very dim view of American politics and the influence of wealth upon it, and if perhaps he overstates his case at times, he’s always entertaining. The way most of the characters manage to overcome their scruples—even Caroline, at moments—lends a cynical tone to the proceedings, which may not please everyone. Is nothing sacred? Are there really no heroes and no principles, where power and money are concerned? But readers will immediately see our present day in all this too, and besides, you’ll laugh out loud. Who knew that politics could be so much fun?

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

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