American Scoundrel by Thomas Keneally Read Free Book Online Page B

claims upon his own generosity. A note written on August 18, 1853, and inscribed “To the aid of A.B.,” Antonio Bagioli, was for $750 at six months. Perhaps the scale of these borrowings can be put against the reality that a skilled shoemaker earned $7 a week in 1853, a factory laborer earned $5 to $6, and three-quarters of female workers earned less than $3. The claims on Dan were broader than those of family and Fanny White, and he had his own supplicants. Mrs. Mary Ellwill wrote to him pleading that George Ellwill, her husband or son, be permitted to do secretarial work for Dan to pay off a family debt. Dan also made a loan of $150 to Daniel E. McClenehan, no doubt the husband of the Mrs. McClenehan who was, about the same time, visiting Teresa. In an attached note, McClenehan offered Dan “many thanks for the very kind and warm interest you have taken in my case.” 4
    An amusing friend to Dan and Teresa as the date of Dan’s departure for London neared was an extraordinary American adventurer named Henry Wikoff, often referred to as the Chevalier Wikoff. He was a manin his mid-forties, fashionable, elegant, and young in spirit. Although tending toward the Democratic Party, he seems to have enchanted most social and political leaders and their womenfolk, and he made himself comfortable with a succession of White House families. It was a coup to have him at a dinner table in Washington or in New York, and people spoke of his “captivating manners” and of there being no other American who knew so many European notables. He always turned up at the tables of the great as an unattached male, which added to his air of worldly mystery. Wikoff’s origins were suitably mysterious; he had no identified parents, although he was commonly said to be the son of a Dr. Henry Wikoff of Philadelphia. In 1836, he had served in the same position in the United States mission in London that Dan was now about to take up, and during his time there he had traveled to Paris and secured some of the personal effects of Napoleon to return to Joseph Bonaparte in his exile in London. For some obscure service to the Spanish government he was made a knight—hence, the Chevalier Wikoff. But after his stint as a diplomat, in 1840 he had turned entrepreneur and brought the most famous exotic dancer of the era, Fanny Elssler, for a U.S. tour. The tours he managed for the lusty Miss Elssler were famously turbulent, and his relationship with her was complicated by the extremely volatile affair they embarked on. He not only refused to marry Elssler; for whatever reason, he published a number of her letters.
    Then, in the late 1840s, Wikoff published a biography of his exiled friend in London:
Napoleon Louis Bonaparte, First President of France.
In England in 1850 he was approached by Lord Palmerston to become a British agent with the particular objectives of persuading the French papers to moderate their tone toward Britain and of promoting an alliance between the United States and Britain. But he was so indiscreet in the approaches he made that Palmerston gave up on him.
    At that time, Dan and Teresa were getting to know the Chevalier Wikoff well, after his recent imprisonment in Italy, where he had served time on the accusation of abducting an American heiress, Jane C. Gamble. He was to have married her in London, but she fled to Italy to avoid him, and he pursued her and was accused of abducting her in Genoa.The fifteen months he had spent imprisoned were still fresh in his memory when he met the Sickleses, and they enriched his anecdotal liveliness.
    The case leading to his imprisonment had indeed achieved international notoriety, and had at first subjected Wikoff to considerable social odium. But he was a close friend of the owner of the
New York Herald
, James Gordon Bennett, who had reported on his movements and adventures extensively and flatteringly, and made him a national figure. 5
    Teresa delighted in Wikoff’s company, his capacity as a