American Scoundrel by Thomas Keneally Read Free Book Online Page A

Wheatland, Dan’s imagination was no doubt inflamed by Buchanan’s plans for the mission they would run in London, and, with a typically sudden shift of ardor, Dan now wanted the post of first secretary as he wanted few other things. Buchanan sent Dan’s name to the Department of State for confirmation. Though Pierce’s Secretary of State, William Marcy, a Barnburner New Yorker, objected to Dan’s appointment,President Pierce intervened at Buchanan’s request to make sure that it went through. 2
    Not everyone in his circle thought that Dan was doing the right thing. He would have to surrender his work as corporation attorney, and a friend from Tammany advised him, “You’d better think well over it before you surrender up that which would give you
a competency
for life.” But Dan was set on the project. Teresa, “the female child,” was more ambivalent. There was an immediate problem in that Baby Laura was as yet too young, according to conventional wisdom, to make an autumn journey across the Atlantic. In that era, there were great dangers for mother and child in the event of bad weather or an outbreak of fever. Also, Teresa wanted to stay close to her mother, Maria Bagioli, for a time, even though her letters showed that she loved Dan thoroughly and had a forthright hunger to see him more than his busy life as an instrument of Tammany and attorney to the New York Corporation allowed. In her pleas to him, sometimes written on official corporation paper Dan had brought home with him, she never struck a dismal pose; she did not chide or harangue. One cannot but wish that the generosity of her tone had evoked an answering generosity in charming Dan. In a typically un-reproving letter of August 1853, she wrote simply because she longed for his company, though she said she had not a great deal to report. She filled up the letter by telling him frankly and in explicit detail about the buying of a new dress—“it’s white silk to be trimmed up with ribbon.” Obviously Dan did not stint her on clothing, a saving grace, since he certainly did not stint Fanny White. The occasion for the dress was that she was going in a day or so to August Belmont’s house for dinner. It is not hard to imagine the lushness and air of Italian-American wholesomeness with which she must have emerged from her carriage outside Belmont’s splendid house on Fifth Avenue, near Fourteenth Street, and entered a mansion opulent enough to possess a picture gallery of masters that some considered one of the finest private collections in the world.
    As for the sun-filled August day on which she wrote this letter about longing, a dress, and August Belmont, she had many visitors at home. A Mrs. Phillips had called in, a Mrs. McClenehan, a Ginger Clark, and Ma,Mrs. Bagioli. Teresa loved to fill her house with friends who fussed over the infant Laura and conversed with her. But nothing compensated for Dan’s absence, and she pleaded with him to come home to dinner and stay the night. “I want to be as much with you as possible . . . should you go [to England] without me. Come, do. I wish to be near and with you.” The imminent separation haunted her. “I hate the idea of your going away without me, and know that I would not have you [do so] if it were in my power. You know what is best—and I shall act as you wish me to however much I may dislike it. God only knows how I can get along without you—and still I think it would be cruel to leave Ma entirely alone. She seems wrapped up in the baby. . .. Come home as early as you can. God bless you my own dear darling pet. May God bless you is my prayer.” 3
    Dan had meanwhile been busy at his offices in Nassau Street in organizing cash flow and credit, both for himself and for others. To note the scale of his indebtedness, one has only to look at the loans he took in a period of less than a year, from December 3, 1852, to August 4, 1853, amounting to more than $3,500. Not only that, but he had