“Yokel-dokel? Why, I don’t get you, Mr. Swille.”
“Oh, you know — log-cabin origin. That’s old and played out. Why don’t you get some new speech writers? Anyway, you’re the last man I expected to see down here. Aren’t you supposed to be involved in some kind of war? Virginia’s off limits to your side, isn’t it? Aren’t you frightened, man?”
“No, Mr. Swille. We’re not frightened because we have a true cause. We have a great, a noble cause. Truth is on our side, marching to the clarion call. We are in the cause of the people. It is a people’s cause. This is a great, noble and people period in the history of our great Republic. We call our war the Civil War, but some of the fellows think we ought to call it the War Between the States. You own fifty million dollars’ worth of art, Mr. Swille. What do you think we ought to call it?”
“I don’t feel like naming it, Lanky — and cut the poppycock.”
“Lincoln, sir.”
“Oh yes, Lincoln. Well, look, Lincoln, I don’t want that war to come up here because, to tell you the truth, I’m not the least bit interested in that war. I hate contemporary politics and probably will always be a Tory. Bring back King George. Why would a multinational like myself become involved in these queer crises? Why, just last week I took a trip abroad and was appallingly and disturbingly upset and monumentally offended by the way the Emperor of France was scoffing at this … this nation, as you call it. They were snickering about your general unkempt, hirsute and bungling appearance — bumping into things and carrying on. And your speeches. What kind of gibberish are they? Where were you educated, in the rutabaga patch? Why don’t you put a little pizazz in your act, Lanky? Like Davis … Now that Davis is as nit as a spit with his satin-embroidered dressing case, his gold tweezers and Rogers & Sons strap. He’s just bananas about Wagner and can converse in German, French and even that bloody Mexican patois. Kindly toward the ‘weak’ races, as he referred to them in that superb speech he made before the Senate criticizing Secretary of State Seward and other celebrities for financing that, that … maniac, John Brown. And when he brought in that savage, Black Hawk, on the steamboat Winnebago, he treated the primitive overlord with the respect due an ethnic celebrity. You can imagine the Americans taunting this heathen all decked out in white deerskins. Davis’ slaves are the only ones I know of who take mineral baths, and when hooped skirts became popular he gave some to the slave women, and when this made it awkward for them to move through the rows of cotton, he widened the rows.”
“That’s quite impressive, Mr. Swille. I have a worthy adversary.”
Swille, smirking and squinting, flicks the ashes from a cigar given him by the King of Belgium. “An intellectual. What an intellectual. Loggerhead turtles? Oysters? Hogarth? Optics? Anything you want to know, Davis’s got the answer. And his beautiful wife. More brilliant than most men. As aristocratic as Eugénie, wife of my good friend Imperial Majesty Napoleon Bonaparte III. I was having dinner with her just a few weeks ago. You know, she’s the daughter of the Count of Montijo and the Duke of Peneranda. Men who like nothing but the best. I call her Gennie, since we move in the same circles. Why, I’m thinking about refurbishing the Morocco Club in New York — just no place for the royal ones to go any more. We were eating, and she turned to me and asked why Du Chaillur searched for the primitive missing link in Africa when one had shambled into the Capitol from the jungles of the Midwest.”
Lincoln looks puzzled. “I don’t get it, Mr. Swille.”
“She was talking about you, silly. They’re calling you the Illinois Ape. Eugénie’s a brilliant conversationalist. But Varina Davis has it over her. Those glittering supper parties at the Montgomery White House — and did you see the carriage she bought Jeff? Imported it from New Orleans. Yes indeed, from New Orleans. Almost as good as mine. Upholstered in watered blue silk. Can’t you see those two representing the … the Imperial Empire of the Confederate States of Europe in London? They might even make him a knight — Sir Jefferson Davis. I can see it all now. And then upon their return, a ticker-tape parade down Broadway, with clerks leaning out of office windows shouting, Long Live Jeff. Long Live Varina. Long Live Jeff. Long Live Varina. The Duke and Duchess of Alabama. What a man. What a man. A prince. One of my friends recently visited this six-plus-foot tall specimen and said he just felt like stripping and permitting this eagle-eyed, blade-nosed, creamy Adonis to abuse him and … [pant, pant] humiliate him.”
“Come again, Mr. Swille?”
“Oh, Abe, you’re so green. Green as jade in a cocaine vision.”
“Mr. Swille, mind if we change the subject?”
“We have a delightful life down here, Abe. A land as Tennyson says ‘In which it all seemed always afternoon. All round the coast the languid air did swoon. Here are cool mosses deep, and thro the stream the long-leaved flowers weep, and from the craggy ledge the poppy hang in sleep.’ Ah. Ah. ‘And sweet it is to dream of Fatherland. Of child, and wife and slave. Delight our souls with talk of Knightly deeds. Walking about the gardens and the halls.’ And, Abe, a man like you can have a soft easy hustle down here. You could be walking around and wallowing in these balmy gardens and these halls. The good life. Breakfast in a dress coat. Exotic footbaths. Massages three times a day. And what we call down here a ‘siesta.’ Niggers fanning you. A fresh bouquet of flowers and a potent julep delivered to your room. Roses. Red roses. Yellow roses. White roses. We can bring back the ‘days that were.’ Just fancy yourself the Earl of Lincoln, or Count Abe. Or Marquis Lincoln. Marquis Lincoln of Springfield. You could have this life, Lincoln.” He goes to the window and draws back the curtains. There is a view of the hills of Virginia. “It’s all bare now, Lincoln. But we will build that city. From here to as far as the eye can see will be great castles with spires and turrets. We can build one for you, Lincoln. Sir Lincoln.”
“I’m afraid I wouldn’t like it down here, Mr. Swille. I’m just a mudfish. I don’t yen for no fancy flies.”
“Think about it, Lincoln. You can take an hour and a half putting on your clothes down here. Why … why … I’m thinking about taking up Meditative Transcendentalism. I’ve sent to India for a Swami. You know, you may not be so lucky in the next election year. If it hadn’t been for those Hoosiers and Suckers and other rags and patches who packed the Wigwam, you’d be back in your law office in Springfield. Their conduct was disgraceful. Why, I had to tell the networks not to carry it. They hollered you the nomination. Steam whistles. Hotel gongs. Comanches! Liquor flowing like Babylon. Not even top-shelf, but Whiskey Skin, Jersey Lightning and Brandy Smash.”
“The boys were just cuttin up, Mr. Swille, just jerking the goose bone.”
“And then bribing the delegates with Hoboken cigars and passes to quiz shows. Washington, Jefferson and Monroe must be howling in their chains. And that lunatic wife of yours. Must she dress like that? She looks like a Houston and Bowery streetwalker who eats hero sandwiches and chews bubble gum. Why does she wear that brunette bouffant and those silver high-heel boots? She looks like a laundromat attendant. Old frowzy dough-faced thing. Queens accent. Ever think about taking her to the Spa? And why does she send those midnight telegrams to the Herald Tribune after drinking God knows what? And there’s another thing I’ve been meaning to ask you, Mr. Lincoln.”
“What is that, Mr. Swille?”
“Do you think it appropriate for the President of the United States to tell such lewd jokes to the boys in the telegraph room? The one about the cow and the farmer. The traveling salesmen and the milkmaid. The whole scabrous repertoire.”