Destiny of the Republic - Candice Millard [65]
There are times in the history of men and nations, when they stand
so near the veil that separates mortals and immortals, time from
eternity, and men from their God, that they can almost hear their
breathings and feel the pulsations of the heart of the infinite.
JAMES A. GARFIELD
On the morning of July 2, Harry and Jim Garfield were still in bed when their father bounded into their room, a broad smile on his handsome face. Singing “I Mixed Those Babies Up,” from his favorite song in the new Gilbert and Sullivan opera H.M.S. Pinafore, he plucked his teenage sons out of bed, tucked one under each arm, and swung them around “as if we were in fact two babies,” Jim would later recall. Wriggling free, Jim turned a flip over the end of his bed and said triumphantly to his father, “You are President of the United States but you can’t do that.” To his sons’ astonishment and delight, Garfield, six feet tall and just a few months shy of his fiftieth birthday, not only did the flip but then hopped across the room balanced only on his fingers and toes.
Despite the strain of the past year, Garfield still looked strong, vigorous, and, on this day, thoroughly happy. Each blow—from his unexpected and unwanted nomination to the battle with Conkling to Lucretia’s illness—had taken its toll, but he remained the man he had always been. “There are a few additional lines about the eyes, perhaps,” a reporter for the New York Tribune noted, “but he wears his old robust hearty frank look, stands straight as a soldier, and greets his friends with the same cordial, strong, magnetic grip of the hand.”
After rousing his sons, Garfield had breakfast with his private secretary, who had just returned from a trip to London that Garfield had arranged. “The work of the campaign and the pressure of the first three months at the White House had made pretty severe inroads on my vitality,” Brown admitted. When Garfield needed someone to shepherd $6 million in U.S. bonds to London, therefore, he had sent his young friend.
The president had been delighted to give the opportunity to Brown, who had come from a family of modest means and had traveled very little, but he was happy to have him back. Brown had become essential not just to Garfield but to everyone who came into contact with him. Despite the fact that he was the youngest man ever to hold the office of private secretary to the president, he had, in the words of one journalist, “the tact and ability of age and experience.” As well as organizing Garfield’s voluminous correspondence and personal papers, he made arrangements for presidential receptions and dinners, attended to the countless problems that occurred each day in the White House, and oversaw the entire staff. He had even impressed a hard-bitten political reporter for the Washington Post, who wrote that Brown was “perfectly master of the situation and handles his office … with ease and dexterity.”
As the president’s right-hand man, Brown was the last person in the White House to see him before he left for the train station that morning. He was working quietly in his office when, just before 9:00 a.m., he heard the door open and looked up to see Garfield walking into the room. Over the years, he had come to know the president well, and he could tell that he was looking forward to this trip “with an almost pathetic longing.” Clapping a hand on his secretary’s shoulder, Garfield said, “Goodbye, my boy, you have had your holiday, now I am going to have mine. Keep a watchful eye on things.”
After warmly shaking Brown’s hand, Garfield stepped outside the White House and climbed into a waiting carriage. It was the State Department carriage, a small coupe with just one seat for the president and the secretary of state, whom Garfield had asked to ride with him to the station. There were no guards, not even an assistant. Just two old friends riding in a modest, one-horse carriage. Behind them, Garfield’s army buddy Captain Almon Rockwell drove Harry and Jim in the president’s carriage, which Garfield had borrowed from Rutherford