Free 1876 by Gore Vidal Page A

lawyers.”
    “There is one called John Day Apgar.”
    Bigelow got the point. “He is interested in your Emma?”
    “I have that impression. He was at our legation last year in Paris. We saw a good deal of him. Since then he has written her letters.”
    “I believe he is the one who missed the war. He bought himself a replacement.”
    “Do you regard that as wise or unwise?”
    Bigelow laughed. “It depends on how seriously one feels about the Union.”
    I did not tell my old friend that I myself would certainly have stayed out of that incredibly bloody and needless war had I been of conscript age. Most New Yorkers felt the same; witness, the violent riots of those years. “Do you think I should encourage such a match?”
    Bigelow’s response was obvious: How does Emma feel about the young man? I do not know. John Day Apgar is known to be a competent lawyer and his family are well connected with the “cliff-dwellers”—the old nonflashy gentry who live in genteel dreariness below Madison Square. Yet, “I can’t imagine the dazzling Princess d’Agrigente living out her days in West Tenth Street.”
    “No,” I said, with perfect honesty. “I cannot see it either.”
    “Too far from the Tuileries, and all that imperial glitter—sham though it was. Even so, your Emma is a European, she’s not one of us.”
    “I know. Yet she’s so much a part of me that I constantly forget that she was not with us in the old days when New York was different and we were young—you, of course, so much younger than I.”
    “You are a diplomat, Charlie!”
    I left him in the vestibule and made my way out into the cold darkness of Gramercy Park. The gas lamps had been lit and I found their familiar hissing a comforting note in this cold, strange city where I feel suddenly a perfect alien, entirely out of place and time.
    Do the Apgars have money? More specifically, does John Day Apgar have money? Or the prospects of money?
    I have found that when one starts to think of money, one cannot, finally, think of any other subject. More worries of this sort and I shall be a proper New Yorker—and so at home again, no longer alien.

1
    THE BUSIEST WEEK of my life thus far (can I endure such another?) is almost over. A constant round of calls made and calls received. Of telegrams. Of flowers and candies delivered to Emma, who seems on the verge of vanishing into the vast bosom of John’s family.
    Although not old New York themselves, the Apgars have managed to marry into every old New York family. From Stuyvesant to Livingston, they have grafted themselves onto the old patriciate, managing, according to Jamie Bennett, always to attach themselves to the top branch but one of each noble family tree.
    I was much distressed to have my memories of the Empress Eugénie returned from Harper’s with an apologetic note; and the hope that I would do the Centennial for them. Well, that is to be done elsewhere, I wrote them, not pleased. The piece has now been given to Robert Bonner through a mutual ( pace , Bryant) friend. If the Ledger buys it, then I shall not have to spend as many sleepless nights as I have the last few days, waiting for my plans to mature whilst each day glumly subtracting sizeable sums from our infinitesimal capital. As much as possible, I try to keep my worries from Emma. She is so forthright, so Bonapartish that she would rob a bank (or marry John Day Apgar) to save me from ruin.
    “You are all that I have,” Emma said suddenly yesterday. When I mentioned that she is also the mother of two sons, she was brisk, “They will be men soon. And they’ll make their way at Paris. You are what matters to me now.”
    I was deeply moved; must not disappoint her. I must find her a splendid husband here. Failing that, I must at the least get us the American legation at Paris.
    Today—Sunday—we have had a most extraordinary visitation. Emma still does not know what to make of our caller.
    It began yesterday with a dozen