Grant's Cottage

     . . . . The historic site where President Grant lived for the last six weeks of his life is located on McGregor's Mountain, in Wilcox, outside of Saratoga Springs.

The area in which the Cottage is located was, in that era, a very expensive resort for the Gilded Age rich, who arrived via a private bridge railway from Saratoga Springs. The resort was lit at night by that new-fangled electric light. Powered by generators, the lights went off then, at ten PM, because the generated noise kept people from sleeping.  The resort was just a short walking distance from the Cottage.

In agony from the  throat and tongue cancer that was Grant's death sentence, he completed his Personal Memoirs of the Mexican American War and the War of the Rebellion there. He was dead less than week after finishing. 

Half of the contents in the huge jar of his cocaine solution, with re-crystalized by now cocaine on the bottom, remains in the cottage.  All the furnishings, including the paintings and photos on the walls, are original to what Julia and the patron to who provided the Cottage put up there in 1885, when his doctors urged them to leave hot dirty NYC for the cooler, damper air of the Adirondacks.  All that summer Grant, with the same inexplicable, calm courage with which he defeated the CSA, battled to stay alive long enough to complete the Memoirs, which Mark Twain assured him would support his wife and family handsomely for the rest of their lives.  Recall, Grant had not only gone broke, but deeply in debt when his son's financial company, turned out to be his lying partner Ferdinand Ward's Ponzi scheme, financed entirely by President Grant's name. 

After his death, Grant's doctor said that his patient could never have lived so long if he had also imbibed the morphine prescribed for such agony. But he didn't because it would fuzz out his mind, sap his will, on his determined drive to finish the book.

This is the famous photo of Grant, finishing the Memoirs, in his chair on the corner of the veranda, outside his office, where most of the work, particularly the editing work by Mark Twain, took place.

I cannot believe I have stood there.

I knew all this but seeing the place was deeply affecting.  For years I've poured over the photographs of Grant and his family on the veranda of the Cottage.  Grant wrote a great deal on one of the corner's of the veranda.  There are photos of him in the chair there, the chair that still exists.  There are hand-written pages by him on view, and so many other items involved with the composition of the Memoirs.  Material bits and pieces of the celebrated do not hold much intrinsic interest for me, but these things, o they did!

And at the end, we viewed the bed where he died.  Above the headboard hung and still hangs his personal portrait of President Lincoln.

I choked up. Shed tears.

An Evening With The Big Chief + General Grant's Birthday

This weekend, at Symphony Space.  We are fortunate to be able take several friends too, so we are!

And, dinner.

Friday is also the birthday of Ulysses S. Grant, so I shall raise a glass to him.

Ulysses S. Grant: Learning President Lincoln Had Been Assassinated

"It was the darkest day of my life," Grant told newsman John Russell Young.  "I did not know what it meant.  Her was the Rebellion put down in the field, and starting up in the gutters.  We had fought it as a war, now we had to fight it as assassination."

Recall, there was an attempt on Grant's life as well that night, but the Grants' railroad car door when stopped at Havre de Grace (where I've been -- Maryland), was locked, preventing the assassin getting to Grant.  The assassin  wrote an unsigned note later to Grant, thanking God that he'd been prevented from attempting to kill him. (Julia Dent Grant, The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant 156-57, John Y Simon, ed. (New York; G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1975).

The Rebellion continues to this day, by many, many other means, but particularly via those hatched in the gutters of mind and media.

Novels Recently Read, Novels Acquired Today

I have finished re-reading Gore Vidal's Burr, Lincoln and 1876, which I took on after reading The Education of Henry Adams.  Both of them write very well, and they know whereof they write.  They also share a loathing for President Grant that will not allow him to have done a thing right.  There's never mention of his attempts to follow Lincoln's Reconstruction plans, particularly for integrating the free black population into the economic and political life of the nation, nothing about how he attempted to reform the scandal and corruption that was the Bureau of Indian Affairs -- rather they focus on the corruption scandal involving the wife of one of his cabinet members, who had some kind of shenanigan deal with a reservation store merchant.  That sort of thing.  I have to dig down and find out more about this antipathy for Grant by those who would seem to have on surface provided him more support.  But they hate him, and portray him as being hated by the voters too -- which doesn't fit in with other things I've read about how Grant was regarded by non-politicians.  There's a scene in 1876 that breaks your heart -- and I'm thinking that Vidal was exercising whole cloth his privilege as a novelist to make up stuff, while Adams in his Education was writing neither history nor fiction, but fashioning his persona for the ages.

Novels acquired today -- a nice haul!


Derby Day by D.J. Taylor, an historical novel published last year in the UK, and last month here -- I have been waiting for a long time to get hold of a copy since reading about it in the UK reviews -- it was nominated for the Man Booker prize; from the Kirkus review:

[ " Taylor reinvents the Victorian novel, basing his narrative loosely on W.P. Frith’s massive satirical portrait of mid-19th-century English life of the same name. " ]

It's also been billed as a Victorian era mystery. Now I'll find out for myself. Perfect subway reading.

The Barbarian Nurseries by Héctor Tobar (2011) -- this has one of the best titles ever, which I just stumbled upon today out of nowhere, having heard nothing about it before; from the LA Times review:

[ " One of Tobar's conceits in this portion of the novel, and it really works, is to invite his readers to consider Los Angeles as though it were fabulous and exotic — which, of course, it is. His travelers stumble around this unfamiliar place like a lost band of Marco Polos. Later, 11-year-old Brandon recounts the adventure through the filter of all the hundreds of fantasy novels he's read. "We were looking for Grandpa's house, because Araceli said we should look for him. But we found this other place instead, where there are houses like jails I guess …. and other things I thought only existed in books. But they were real."

By then Brandon is telling his tale to a gape-mouthed audience composed not just of his parents but also of cops, lawyers, a psychologist and a formidable young woman from child protective services — for when Scott and Maureen finally got it together to come home, they found the house empty, called the police and accused Araceli of kidnapping. The truth of what happened is already disappearing beneath layers of invention, much as history itself accretes and gathers upon any patch of ground, even in an environment as ostensibly new as SoCal. " ]

Doc by Mary Doria Russell (2011).  Dpc and the Earps.  My constant interest in the history of the Western as fictional history has had this one in mind since it was published.

The Ulysses S. Grant Memorial Sculpture on the Washington Mall

A fairly decent photography guide to this brilliant Civil War memorial sculpture can be found here.  The expressions on the faces of the men, and of the horses, capture the exertion and agony of battle in a succinct manner one might not expect could be done in bronze.

Here's the wiki that describes what we see.

However, this blogger, Aporetic, in his entry, "The Unseen Spectacular," provides a personal reaction to the sculpture. with both the photographs and the description.  It is highly recommended.

Bob Dylan on Barack Obama, Ulysses Grant and American Civil War Ghosts

From Times Online:

Bill Flanagan: In that song Chicago After Dark were you thinking about the new President?
Bob Dylan: Not really. It’s more about State Street and the wind off Lake Michigan and how sometimes we know people and we are no longer what we used to be to them. I was trying to go with some old time feeling that I had.
BF: You liked Barack Obama early on. Why was that?
BD: I’d read his book and it intrigued me.

Multimedia:
Archive blog: Ulysses Grant, Quantrell, Jesse James - what's Bob Dylan been reading?

Related Links:
Bob Dylan says Barack Obama is 'changin' America
Artist Dylan has got everything
Bob Dylan: Modern Times

BF: Audacity of Hope?
BD: No it was called Dreams of My Father.
BF: What struck you about him?
BD: Well, a number of things. He’s got an interesting background. He’s like a fictional character, but he’s real. First off, his mother was a Kansas girl. Never lived in Kansas though, but with deep roots. You know, like Kansas bloody Kansas. John Brown the insurrectionist. Jesse James and Quantrill. Bushwhackers, Guerillas. Wizard of Oz Kansas. I think Barack has Jefferson Davis back there in his ancestry someplace. And then his father. An African intellectual. Bantu, Masai, Griot* type heritage - cattle raiders, lion killers. I mean it’s just so incongruous that these two people would meet and fall in love. You kind of get past that though. And then you’re into his story. Like an odyssey except in reverse.
BF: In what way?
BD: First of all, Barack is born in Hawaii. Most of us think of Hawaii as paradise – so I guess you could say that he was born in paradise.
BF: And he was thrown out of the garden.
BD: Not exactly. His mom married some other guy named Lolo and then took Barack to Indonesia to live. Barack went to both a Muslim school and a Catholic school. His mom used to get up at 4:00 in the morning and teach him book lessons three hours before he even went to school. And then she would go to work. That tells you the type of woman she was. That’s just in the beginning of the story.

BF: What else did you find compelling about him?
BD: Well, mainly his take on things. His writing style hits you on more than one level. It makes you feel and think at the same time and that is hard to do. He says profoundly outrageous things. He’s looking at a shrunken head inside of a glass case in some museum with a bunch of other people and he’s wondering if any of these people realize that they could be looking at one of their ancestors.
BF: What in his book would make you think he’d be a good politician?
BD: Well nothing really. In some sense you would think being in the business of politics would be the last thing that this man would want to do. I think he had a job as an investment banker on Wall Street for a second - selling German bonds. But he probably could’ve done anything. If you read his book, you’ll know that the political world came to him. It was there to be had.

Multimedia:
Archive blog: Ulysses Grant, Quantrell, Jesse James - what's Bob Dylan been reading?
Rel ated Links
Bob Dylan says Barack Obama is 'changin' America
Artist Dylan has got everything
Bob Dylan: Modern Times

BF: Do you think he’ll make a good president?
BD: I have no idea. He’ll be the best president he can be. Most of those guys come into office with the best of intentions and leave as beaten men. Johnson would be a good example of that … Nixon, Clinton in a way, Truman, all the rest of t hem going back. You know, it’s like they all fly too close to the sun and get burned.
BF: Did you ever read any other presidential autobiographies?
BD: Yeah, I read Grant’s.
BF: What was he like? Any similarities?
BD: The times were different obviously. And Grant wrote his book after he’d left office.
BF: What did you find interesting about him?
BD: It’s not like he’s a great writer.* He’s analytical and cold, but he does have a sense of humor. Grant, besides being a military strategist, was a working man. Worked horses. Tended the horses, plowed and furrowed. Brought in all the crops – the corn and potatoes. Sawed wood and drove wagons since the time he was about eleven. Got a crystal clear memory of all the battles he’d been in.

BF: Do you remember any particular battle that Grant fought?
BD: There were a lot of battles but the Shilo one is most interesting. He could’ve lost that. But he was determined to win it at any price, using all kinds of strategies, even faking retreat. You could read it for yourself.
BF: When you think back to the Civil War, one thing you forget is that no battles, except Gettysburg, were fought in the North.*
BD: Yeah. That’s what probably makes the Southern part of the country so different.
BF: There is a certain se nsibility, but I’m not sure how that connects?
BD: It must be the Southern air. It’s filled with rambling ghosts and disturbed spirits. They’re all screaming and forlorning. It’s like they are caught in some weird web - some purgatory between heaven and hell and they can’t rest. They can’t live, and they can’t die. It’s like they were cut off in their prime, wanting to tell somebody something. It’s all over the place. There are war fields everywhere … a lot of times even in people’s backyards.
BF: Have you felt them?
BD: Oh sure. You’d be surprised. I was in Elvis’s hometown – Tupelo. And I was trying to feel what Elvis would have felt back when he was growing up.
BF: Did you feel all the music Elvis must have heard?
BD:No, but I’ll tell you what I did feel. I felt the ghosts from the bloody battle that Sherman fought against Forrest and drove him out. There’s an eeriness to the town. A sadness that lingers. Elvis must have felt it too.
BF: Are you a mystical person?
BD: Absolutely.
BF: Any thoughts about why?
BD: I think it’s the land. The streams, the forests, the vast emptiness. The land created me. I’m wild and lonesome. Even as I travel the cities, I‘m more at home in the vacant lots. But I have a love for huma nkind, a love of truth, and a love of justice. I think I have a dualistic nature. I’m more of an adventurous type than a relationship type.
BF: But the album is all about love – love found, love lost, love remembered, love denied.
BD: Inspiration is hard to come by. You have to take it where you find it.

Bob Dylan's new album Together Through Life is out April 27 on Columbia Records

To read more, go to bobdylan.com

* Fox here: Note that griots are not part of East African tribal cultures. They belong to the cultures of Senegal and Mali -- from whence come the ancestors of the banjos, and the melissima that are so much part of the African American Blues (and which you don't find elsewhere in the New World -- the Blues, I mean; melissima can be found, but not much, since the Spanish King forbade the import of Muslim slaves to the New World.

* Fox here: Profoundly disagree with Dylan's assessment of Grant's writing. But as Dylan's process and objective is all subconscious solipcism (I mean this in the best way when it comes to Dylan, but it's not something that should be done at home by just anyone because mostly just anyone will fail), he would perceive Grant's work that way. Still he recognizes and can admire Grant's precision.

* Fox here: Antietam was fought in the North. Also, the South wasn't different because the war mostly was fought there -- it was fought there because the South was different -- it was determined (at least the powerful establishment was determined, the 3% who owned 90% of the slaves, and those who received economic and political power from serving that slaveowning 3%) to expand slavery throughout the nation, and even further, into South America, thus it was called The War of Southern Aggression.