Destiny of the Republic - Candice Millard [112]
Bliss, however, terrified that Garfield would not survive the trip, refused. “It would not now be prudent,” he told the president. He could leave Washington as soon as his stomach was stronger.
“It’s all right now,” Garfield replied. “I want to get away.”
Although Harriet seemed to speak for everyone in the White House when she admitted to her daughter that she had lost “heart and spirit,” there remained two people who refused to surrender. Lucretia had been so sick with worry for so long that her hair had begun to fall out, forcing her finally to cover her head with a scarf. Still, a reporter from the Evening Star marveled, she seemed to have “banished despair, and hopes even when to everyone else there was no hope.”
The only person in the White House whose determination equaled Lucretia’s was Garfield’s young secretary, Joseph Stanley Brown. Although he would describe this time in his life as “one prolonged, hideous nightmare,” Brown would allow no one, not even the members of Garfield’s cabinet, to express anything but optimism in his presence. At a meeting of the cabinet members in late August, “despair,” a reporter noted, “was in their countenance, and in their speech. They said, ‘He must die.’ ” Brown, who had not yet turned twenty-four, stood and addressed the men, each one old enough to be his father. “Let nothing but words of cheer ever reach the President,” he reprimanded them. “He will not die.”
Brown rarely left the White House, sleeping, when he slept at all, on the small sofa in his office. Garfield wanted Brown near him, so the young man divided his days and nights between the sadness of the sickroom and the madness of his own office, where he replied to thousands of letters and telegrams, fielded journalists’ questions, and greeted dignitaries. “During all this terror, hope, despair, and rush at the White House,” a reporter for the Evening Critic wrote, Brown has been “the ruling spirit of the Mansion, and his young hand, guided by his wise head and kind heart, has been upon all.”
One night, as Brown was working, a member of the White House staff brought him a message that the first lady wished to see him. When he appeared before her, Lucretia did not at first speak, waiting “until control of her voice was assured.” Finally, she asked, “Will you tell me just what you think the chances are for the General’s recovery?”
Brown took one look in Lucretia’s “anguished face,” he would later say, and “threw truthfulness to the winds, and lied and lied as convincingly and consolingly as I could.” Then, as quickly as possible—“as soon as decency permitted”—he excused himself and left the room. “Once beyond the door,” he admitted, “all restraint gave way.” He could not bear to tell Lucretia the truth, but he could no longer hide it from himself. He was, he would acknowledge years later, “utterly shattered and broken.”
• CHAPTER 21 •
AFTER ALL
Despite the prayers and tears, and earnest pleading,
And piteous protest o’er a hero’s fall,
Despite the hopeful signs, our hearts misleading,
Death cometh after all
Over the brightest scenes are clouds descending;
The flame soars highest ere its deepest fall;
The glorious day has all too swift an ending;
Night cometh after all
O’er bloom or beauty now in our possession
Is seen the shadow of the funeral pall;
Though Love and Life make tearful intercession,
Death cometh after all
ANONYMOUS POEM, UPON THE DEATH OF
PRESIDENT GARFIELD, SEPTEMBER 1881
While Lucretia was forced to watch the slow, cruel approach of death, for Bell it came suddenly, blindsiding him while he was caught up in another man’s tragedy. Although he had returned to Boston to be with Mabel, he continued to work feverishly on the induction balance at his old work space in Charles Williams