Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule by Chiaverini Jennifer

Author:Chiaverini, Jennifer [Chiaverini, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Literary, Biographical, Historical, Fiction
ISBN: 9780525954293
Publisher: Dutton
Published: 2015-03-03T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

MARCH–APRIL 1864

Julia’s first glimpses of the capital through the carriage window revealed a startling juxtaposition of elegance and squalor. The tall marble dome of the Capitol, still under construction, rose proudly above snow-dusted streets where cows, pigs, and geese freely roamed. Pennsylvania Avenue and a few adjacent blocks of Seventh Street were paved, but the carriage rattled painfully over broken, uneven cobblestones. The opulent marble edifices housing various federal departments inspired awe, but the one-hundred-fifty-six-foot stub of the Washington Monument stood forlornly in the midst of an open field where cattle grazed.

“It was begun with such good intentions,” Rawlins remarked, peering past her, “but construction was halted thanks to political squabbling, economic uncertainty, and vandalism.”

“Do you suppose they’ll ever finish it?” Julia asked.

“Perhaps,” said Rawlins, frowning skeptically. “After the war is won.”

“After the war is won, the South will need to be rebuilt,” said Ulys. “I think President Washington would agree that houses and towns should come before monuments.”

As they rode on, the white tents of the soldiers’ camps provided a reassuringly familiar scene, but the overcrowded hospitals served as a painful reminder of what became of the wounded soldiers carried from Ulys’s battlefields. Though it was late March, the city clung to the vestiges of winter, and Julia shrank back from the window and pressed her handkerchief to her nose when a gust of wind carried to her the fetid miasma of innumerable outhouses and refuse dumps. Eyes watering, she fervently hoped that come springtime, flowers budding on the trees lining the broad swath of grass south of the Executive Mansion would release their lovely fragrances throughout the city, masking the stench.

Their carriage soon arrived at the Willard Hotel, an elegant, five-story structure on the corner of Fourteenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. The Willard, Rawlins informed Julia, was not only the city’s finest and largest hotel but also a nexus of Washington society and politics. Some observers considered the Willard more the center of Washington and the Union than the Capitol, the White House, or the State Department.

The hotel had endured the hardships of war, the front desk clerk told them, but not without great effort and ingenious diplomacy. When tempers first flared over secession, the Willard brothers had tried to maintain peace between contentious factions by assigning Southern guests rooms on a single floor and urging them to use the ladies’ Fourteenth Street entrance, while Northerners were encouraged to use the main doors on the Pennsylvania Avenue side.

“Which entrance should I use?” Julia inquired as the clerk passed Ulys their heavy iron room keys. “I am a western woman for the Union.”

“You are the wife of our great general Grant,” the clerk said graciously. “You may use whatever entrance you like.”

It was a relief to enter their lovely suite on the second floor and shut the door against the noise and bustle. Their rooms were comfortably furnished and appointed with all the modern conveniences—gaslights, polished mirrors, running water, and toilets. Best of all, the windows offered enticing

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.