1876 by Gore Vidal Page B

The other way round would be unbearable.
    Stedman moved on. I asked Mrs. Sanford if she would like to meet Emma.
    “With joy! I’m French too, you know. I was born in New Orleans. My father was General Delacroix, and we’re Creoles, which does not mean Negro, as they think up here.” She laughed as we made our way across the room. “Not that I would mind one bit. But it would surely annoy my husband.”
    William Sanford is a tall, slender (by New York standards) man, not yet forty, with a head too small for his body, a fine aquiline nose, a glossy beard at whose center is a surprisingly small mouth, rosy-lipped as a girl’s. I describe him in some detail, for he is my first important millionaire. He wore not only a diamond stickpin but a ring with a starred ruby in a heavy gold setting; in the light of the chandelier his dark evening clothes gleamed as if they, too, were made of some rich material like onyx or ebony.
    I presented Mrs. Sanford to Emma. “I’ve enjoyed staring at you all evening,” said Mrs. Sanford in a most direct way.
    Emma was equal to the flattery. “And I’ve enjoyed staring at you, as well as listening to Mr. Sanford.”
    The millionaire took my hand in a firm grip, looked down into my face, as if searching in my eyes for a reflection of his own pale grey eyes. He looked to be so much at home in this particular New York world that I assumed that he, too, was old money like his wife, even Apgar-ish. But he proved to be his wife’s opposite; for one thing, he speaks with a harsh New England country-folk accent in which the final “g” of any word is fiercely decapitated.
    “I’ve decided, Mr. Schuyler, that your daughter is the best-lookin’ lady in this room.” The head inclined toward me; he is taller than I by rather more than that small head.
    “It was my impression that Mrs. Sanford held that distinction.” I was ceremonious.
    Mrs. Sanford laughed without self-consciousness. “My husband is the most terrible flirt. I know. I married him. But he’s right about your daughter.”
    I demurred. More compliments were bestowed. Then Sanford put his arm around my shoulder (something I detest) and led me to a sofa for two and sat me down. He produced superb cigars. “Rolled for me by my own firm in Cuba.”
    My cigar was set afire by a friction match after the ritual circumcision with a bejewelled cutter. “Now then, you want to know all about Orville, don’t you? Well, I’m the fellow who can tell you.”
    Not until Sanford had talked at some length and the blue smoke between us had begun to have an almost narcotic effect did I realize that Emma had told him I was to write about the Grant Administration, and the difficulties that I had encountered in getting anyone outside the political world to so much as respond to a name as grandly notorious as General Orville E. Babcock.
    Babcock and Sanford are friends. They were once associated in a railroad speculation.
    I fear that I have drunk too much champagne this evening, smoked too many fine cigars, and so gorged myself on fried oysters that I cannot recall many of the details Sanford so willingly supplied, but I do recall his offer to give me an introduction to Babcock—to Grant, for that matter. “A good sort of man, you know. Fact, I served on his staff.” My heart sank—Major, Colonel, General Sanford? But whatever his title, he does not use it and whatever it was he did or did not do in the war, he tactfully refrained from mentioning.
    “You see, the thing to be remembered is this, Mr. Schuyler. This country isn’t like anything that ever happened before. Oh, maybe your first Romans were like us, but I doubt it. No, sir. We are sui generis —of our own kind.” He translated nicely for me. I kept on nodding, eyes full of tears from the fine blue smoke between us; his face seemed magnified, if that is possible, while the grey eyes glared at me through the smoke. “The Millionaire in Hell” occurred to me as a title.
    “What