The Institute

20

That day marked the zenith of Lloyd Palmer’s star as director of the Hortense Garrett Institute. After that, it began to fall — or, I could even say, plunge. That same week we took on more writers, more biographers, with study rooms, recorders, secretaries assigned to transcribe, and all the rest — including a man I won’t name. He was from Georgia and was doing a book on Longstreet, who was briefly Lee’s second in command. That doesn’t sound like anything trouble could grow out of, but what that biography did to me shouldn’t happen to any American citizen who pays taxes and obeys the law. This writer was well known. He was the author of a fine book on Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox of Revolutionary fame, as well as many historical articles in important publications. In other words, he seemed worthy in every way of the grant-in-aid we gave him, in addition to office accommodations.

The first indication that there might be something odd about him was when Davis dropped by my office and suggested that “you leave him to me,” a hint I disregarded because I was beginning to distrust all hints from Davis. So when this man came in, I asked him to lunch. I took him to Harvey’s and listened while he talked — or at least, half-listened, for he began to bore me early on. I dislike people with grievances. His was against Douglas Southall Freeman, the biographer of Lee and Washington — and, it seemed, of Longstreet as well. That, this man could not forgive Freeman for.

“So, okay,” he growled, “we know about Gettysburg, how Longstreet wanted to shift his corps to the right and hit the Union rear and cut them off from their road, and perhaps, with luck, roll them up for a surrender. And we know that Lee said no and insisted on Pickett’s charge, one of the worst decisions yet made on a battlefield. So, okay, that was it; that was how Freeman had to tell it so long as the subject was Lee. But couldn’t he leave it at that? Did he have to write Longstreet up year after year for every newspaper, quarterly, and publisher who wanted a piece on the subject? Couldn’t he have disqualified himself? Because he must have known, Dr. Palmer, that to make a star out of Lee, he had to make a bum out of Longstreet! But Longstreet was right that day at Gettysburg! He was not a bum! And I say Dr. Freeman was wrong to keep on defaming him! He shouldn’t have! He did not have the right! Why did he have to be Longstreet’s biographer, too?”

He was getting so worked up that the maître d’ began shooting looks at us, and I tried to quiet him down. “Hold it,” I said, “I agree that Freeman might well have stepped aside and let someone else write on Longstreet, but, after all, Longstreet is dead and Lee is dead and Freeman is dead. It’s your turn now, but bury the dead, why won’t you?”

“You have no objection, then?”

“What objection could I have?”

“You’re furnishing me with money, which could give you the idea that you control what I say. Well, get this, Dr. Palmer, I control what I write. I do, not you! Sir, did you hear what I said?”

“Hey, hey, hey.”

He shut up and I told him: “The Hortense Garrett Institute passes no judgment on what you write, nor does the Institute try to control it in any way. All we ask in return for our help is a book.”

“Then you accept my way of doing it?”

“I accept your writing your own book.”

That’s how things stood until he was invited to address a convention of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in Atlanta. There he not only shot off his mouth about his book but repeated his remarks about Lee and what Freeman had done to Longstreet, one of Georgia’s eminent sons. Then he dragged me into it, claiming that I had accepted his “whole idea” as proof of the gains he was making “in swaying scholarly opinion, so justice can be done at long last to a great man’s reputation.” He spoke along these lines for an hour, with photographers taking his picture, reporters taking notes, and ladies taking exception. Because some were fans of Robert E. Lee and one or two were fans of Freeman, there was an argument, which was fine with the newspapers, and not just those in Atlanta, but papers that subscribed to the Associated Press. The story appeared in Washington and Wilmington.

Mr. Garrett called, wanting to know what was up. When I told him, he said: “We’re in for it, then. Sam Dent just reported. We’re to be peeled tomorrow, have our shirts ripped off by old blabbermouth himself, Senator Pickens of Georgia, who’s going to let us have it on the floor of the Senate. He’ll wave the Confederate flag. What else he’ll wave, we don’t know, but I wouldn’t put anything past him. He’s up for reelection this year, and to have this drop in his lap — a chance to defend God, the Confederacy, and Robert E. Lee all in one fell swoop, while being racist and yet pretend he’s not — that’s something he could have prayed for but never believed could happen. So keep your head down. It could be bad.”

Sam Dent was in and out all day, but around five he came in and sat down, looking sullen. “That stupid son of a bitch,” he growled, “we pay him a hundred a week, give him a girl, room, phone, and free phone calls, and this is his way of showing his gratitude. And it’s a mess, Lloyd. That rotten Pickens is milking it. He’s going to give us the works.”

“All right — but what works?”

“Hearings... before his subcommittee.”

That meant the Subcommittee on Internal Revenue, or whatever its title was, of the Senate Finance Committee, which Pickens was chairman of. They had been looking into tax-exempt foundations, some of which had unquestionably been getting away with murder. So far, they hadn’t bothered us, but legally we were under their jurisdiction. I said: “I guess we’re in for it, then.”

“I would say you are.”

“Me? Personally?”

“I hate to upset you — but yes, you are.”

“How? In what way? What have I done?”

“I don’t really know, Lloyd, but if there’s one worst way you can think of, that’s the way it’s going to be. This guy is a rat.”

I could think of a way.

And from the way Sam looked at me, so could he.

The hearing was held in Room 2227 of the Senate Office Building, which is the Finance Committee’s room. Since it met on Wednesday, our hearing was scheduled for Monday of the following week. I received a subpoena to testify, which was served by a man who seemed not to have any face. He touched my coat with it, dropped it on my desk, and left without saying a word. Mr. Garrett also got an invitation, delivered the same way by the same man. By this time he had come down from Wilmington and checked in at the Hilton, “so you won’t be bothered by endless phone calls,” he told Hortense. “Actually,” she explained to me, “so I can stay with you without his seeming to know. He’s so sweet.”

“If you stay with me.”

“Well, that’s nice! Don’t you want me?”

“Hortense, it’s not a question of wanting. Of course, I want you. I’m hungry for you — always. But we could be under surveillance. Sam has already warned me: This guy is a rat. Senator Sam Pickens probably already knows about you.”

“You mean, Sam knows?”

“Let’s assume everyone knows.”

“But how could anyone know? I’ve never been seen—”

“Using your keys, no; but right here in this restaurant, now” — we were at the Royal Arms — “they all know... by the way I look at you, the way you turn your head, the way we talk, and most of all, by the way we don’t talk. That’s when they show it — two people in love. They just sit there saying nothing, with a vacant look on their faces. That’s it. That tells the world.”

“Tells the world what?”

“What do you think?”

“Then I may as well come... tonight.”

“O.K., then... I love you.”

Mr. Garrett, Sam Dent, and I went downtown in my car, which I left in a parking garage on Constitution. Senator Hood, who was on the subcommittee, had invited us to stop by his office before the hearing so he could “have the privilege of escorting you in.” This suited us fine. At 9:30 we were at his office, and he immediately took us into his inner sanctum where he knocked off the amenities and gave it to us straight.

“To begin with,” he said, “this undoubtedly is going to be bad. Lloyd is marked up to go, and he may have to go as a sacrifice—”

“Why?” I said. “What does he have against me?”

“Weakness, for one thing. You’re an employee.”

“And that makes me weak?”

“If he can shake Mr. Garrett’s confidence in you—”

“He can’t,” Mr. Garrett said in that toneless voice of his, causing a warm surge to sweep over me. But Senator Hood cut him off. “I’m giving it to you straight — from Pickens’ point of view. He thinks Lloyd’s scalp can be had, as a rotten anti-Robert E. Lee, anti-God, anti-motherhood, pro-nigger, and pro-man-eating-shark creep. And he needs a scalp in the worst way. He doesn’t dare attack the Institute, which is a project everyone admires. But a worthy project’s faithless employee—”

“But, Senator, I have—”

“Lloyd, we have only a few minutes, so let me finish. He’s a master cross-examiner, so I beg you, whatever he does, keep your cool. Don’t slug it out with him. Don’t for one second try! He knows all the dirty tricks in the book, and I doubt that you know any. He’ll give that crazy writer his head, and—”

“Is he going to be at these hearings, too?”

“He’ll be the star witness, and he’ll be coddled along, encouraged to ‘tell it in his own words,’ allowed to gabble his head off, so all sorts of things can be put in the record, so Pickens can have them reprinted at government expense and distributed all over Georgia. But when it comes your turn to testify, you’ll be put in a straitjacket of ‘did you or did you not?’ — which will restrict you to yes or no answers. And if there’s the least discrepancy between what you say and what somebody else says or between what you say at one point and what you said a few minutes earlier, you’re going to hear the word perjury until you’re climbing the wall with frustration — or worse yet, rage. So, once more, cool it.”

Mr. Garrett said: “There may be something I can do.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” the senator said. “I doubt that you’ll get the chance to do anything. You’ll be handled with kid gloves as a distinguished, public-spirited citizen whose confidence has been abused by a radical, nigger-loving extremist.”

“We’ll see.”

The door opened and the senator’s secretary brought in Miss Snyder, Mr. Garrett’s Washington girl who handed him two large manila envelopes. He slipped out what was in them part way, to check them. In one envelope were photographs and in the other what looked like Xeroxes. Miss Snyder whispered to him: “I’ll be there at the hearing, behind you, if you need me.” This was stuff on Pickens Mr. Garrett had in reserve. As it turned out, it wasn’t needed.

Senator Hood waited, then at two minutes to ten escorted us into the committee room which was on the same floor as his office. By then it was full of spectators who eyed us as though we were animals in the zoo. He took us to the chairs reserved for us with a bunch of tables between them and the dais where two or three senators were already seated. Then he left and went up to the dais. In the chair beside me, looking at us sideways, was the writer who had caused all the trouble. Off to one side on tripods were TV cameras and their crews.

Suddenly everyone rose, and Senator Pickens came in. It was the first time I had ever seen him, though, of course, I had seen pictures of him. He looked about the same, except for his color, which didn’t show in the pictures: a bright, purple red. Otherwise, in a coarse, John C. Calhoun way, he was impressive enough, with gray hair and craggy, beetling eyebrows. He rapped with a gavel and announced that the hearing was to “inquire into alleged abuses on the part of the Hortense Garrett Institute of Biography, a foundation enjoying exemption from federal taxes.” He then called the writer, had him sworn, and after asking his name, place of residence, and occupation, got down to business. I must have tensed, because Mr. Garrett leaned over and patted me on the knee. Once more, I fought off the feeling it gave me — of having a friend who would stand by me through thick and thin.

“The daily papers,” Senator Pickens began, addressing the writer, “have reported a conversation between you and Lloyd Palmer, director of the Hortense Garrett Institute of Biography, on or about March 18 of this year. Did such a conversation take place?”

“It did, yes, sir.”

“Is Mr. Palmer here in this room today?”

I raised my hand.

“Will you please stand, Mr. Palmer?”

I stood, feeling as though in a pillory.

“Is this the Lloyd Palmer with whom the conversation took place?”

“Yes, sir, it is.”

“Will you tell the sense of this conversation?”

That left me standing there, and in a moment I sat down. Apparently, that was what the senator was hoping for.

“Mr. Palmer,” he bellowed, “I will say when you may sit down. I asked you to stand. You may stand!”

I didn’t move.

“Mr. Palmer, did you hear me?”

“Yes, Senator, I did.”

“Then why don’t you do as I order you?”

“Senator,” I heard myself say, “for your information and in case you have forgotten it, I hold the highest rank this country knows: I’m a citizen of the United States. You’re not ordering me to stand up, and nobody else is. Upon your request, I will stand. I did stand. But I will decide when I sit down, not you. I suggest that you remember that. I can’t make you do it any more than you can make me take orders from you. I can make you goddam well wish you had.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“Yes.”

What I was threatening him with I didn’t exactly know, but before he could ask me, crackling applause broke out — for me, not him. He turned furiously to the writer and asked him for the second time to give the “sense of that conversation,” and the next thing I knew, here it came in a diatribe I could hardly believe. It polished off Douglas Southall Freeman, what a heel he was to accept assignments writing up Longstreet, “knowing all the time that he didn’t dare tell it fairly or he would show up Robert E. Lee and what a mess he made of Gettysburg, when he disregarded Long-street and sent Pickett in anyway and proved what a phoney he was.”

“Oh come, come,” the senator interjected.

“Senator,” this military expert shot back, “Robert E. Lee is the most overrated, overpraised, and overwritten military commander in American history. He fought one great battle — Fredericksburg — which was set up and delivered to him on a platter by a Union general under pressure from Washington. But it was a purely defensive battle. Offensively, Lee had two assets, one named Stonewall Jackson, the other James Longstreet. His one great offensive attempt — Gettysburg — I can prove to you was copied step by step and shot for shot from Joseph Hooker’s Chancellorsville plan, which had left Lee doomed before he was saved by Jackson. That’s right. I mean to say: Lee copied his whole campaign from the one his enemy had used against him. Yes sir, I said phoney, and now, I repeat that word.”

“Did you make this point to Palmer?”

“Yes sir, I did.”

“And what was Palmer’s reaction?”

“He agreed with what I said and told me to go ahead — once I made it clear that I would not be dictated to.”

“Did Palmer try to dictate to you?”

“Not in so many words, no.”

“Then in what words. Please tell us, if you recall them.”

“Senator, he had me down for a hundred a week, and that gave him the right to dictate if I submitted to it.”

“And you refused to submit to it, is that right?”

“I did refuse. Yes sir.”

“In so many words?”

“In those words.”

He repeated himself quite a lot as other senators got in it, each time making somewhat incredible remarks about Lee. At last Senator Pickens asked him to step down, and then the senator called my name. I took the seat the writer had sat in, the one by the microphone, and Mr. Garrett moved to the seat beside me.

To say I was nervous as I took the oath and gave my name would be an understatement. I sounded queer and my voice had a tremor in it. The reason, of course, was that I was terrified at the direction the questions might take. I couldn’t be sure that Hortense and I had not been under surveillance, and in spite of lying awake at night, I hadn’t come up with anything to do about it. However, I sounded a bit more natural after the first few questions which focused on Harvey’s Restaurant and Robert E. Lee.

“Did he or did he not,” roared Senator Pickens, “traduce Robert E. Lee to you?”

“He criticized General Lee, yes.”

“Stigmatizing him?”

“He took exception to Lee’s generalship.”

“And what was your reaction?”

“I had none. I’m not an expert on Civil War generalship.”

“You did not defend General Lee?”

“Defend him? Why should I have defended him?”

“A great soldier, a great educator, a great man — and you let these slurs be passed on him without uttering one word in his defense?”

“It wasn’t up to me to defend him.”

“But you accepted this man’s characterization?”

“I did not. He didn’t tell you the truth. He had some idea — he seemed obsessed with it — that I was trying to dictate to him, to block him from the approach he had in mind, to keep him from writing a biography of Longstreet. I kept telling him that I was not. I told him to write his book as he saw it and if that involved derogatory reflections on General Lee, then that was his conception of it, and the Institute had no objection.”

“In other words, you did agree?”

“In no other words but yours, Senator. I told him to write his own book — not my book or the Institute’s book or your book, for that matter.”

“I’ll thank you to leave me out of it.”

“And I’ll thank you not to put words in my mouth.”

By this time I was myself. I sounded civil, verging on oily, and my little crack got a laugh. But the senator wasn’t done yet. He reverted to his basic theme — that I was a faithless, unprincipled creep who had committed a fine institute to anti-Southern writing with his employer’s knowledge.

“Did you or did you not,” he asked me, “discuss this blackening of General Lee’s name with Mr. Garrett?”

“Not until you got in it, Senator.”

“You withheld it from him?”

“I had no reason to bring it up.”

“But you discussed it with Mrs. Garrett?”

“Did I?”

“I am asking you, Palmer. Answer me!”

“I thought you were telling me. No, not with her, either.”

“You’ve seen quite a lot of her?”

“Daily, almost.”

“Where, Dr. Palmer?”

“At her office, at my office, in the Garrett Building, and lately at our offices in the new Institute building. Also at lunch, and quite often, at dinner.”

“And you didn’t mention this to her?”

“Again, not until you got in it.”

“Not even in your cups?”

“In my what?”

He picked up a sheet of paper. “I hold in my hand,” he said, “a copy of the restaurant check you paid on the evening of April 13 last, one week ago today — one the waitress penciled your name on, which shows a fifteen-dollar charge for one quart of champagne. You drank this wine, Palmer?”

“No, I did not.”

“You mean to say, she did? Mrs. Garrett?”

For a moment my head was spinning around, trying to locate myself on this bottle of champagne and figure out what in the name of God he was getting at. His question, though, gave me a clue. He was getting ready to line me up for more of his basic theme: that I had so little respect for Hortense, I’d get cockeyed drunk at dinner with, her, a continuation of what a worthless, respect-lacking employee I was — which, of course, would go down well in the teetotalling parts of Georgia. But mainly, I sensed that he knew nothing of what I had been dreading, which was my relations with Hortense, and my head suddenly cleared. I knew then that I would disregard all the warnings I had had from Senator Hood and let Pickens have it with both barrels, if God gave me the strength.

“No, Senator,” I answered quite casually. “Mrs. Garrett doesn’t drink.”

“Then you drank it, Palmer?”

“No, Senator, I did not.”

“Well, somebody must have!”

“I would assume that the couple across the room did, the couple Mrs. Garrett sent the wine to. A girl at the Royal Arms got married week before last and was having dinner that night with her husband. Mrs. Garrett went over to congratulate them and give Lucy a kiss. Then she asked me to order the wine so she could send it over as a gift from her — which I did. She paid me for it... which leaves you looking rather silly, Senator.”

“Never mind how I look, Palmer. Now did you—”

“Just a moment, Senator; I’m not finished yet.”

“I’m asking the questions, Palmer!”

“And I’m giving the answers. Senator, the mistake you made was to bring this subject of alcoholic refreshment up at a hearing you invited TV to cover, which will show on color film a witness named Palmer with the pasty-pale skin of the man who drinks only water, and a senator named Pickens, with a skin of the deep, crimson-red color that comes from only one pot. Senator, all over Georgia tonight they will see with their own eyes, which of us is sober and which the drunken sot!”

He bellowed something, but the roar of applause I got drowned him out. Then he got another surprise. Mr. Garrett was suddenly there on the dais beside him, looking down at him like something carved out of granite. Then the toneless Garrett voice was coming through the mike.

“Senator, you will expunge from the record all references to my wife — now. Do you hear me?”

But the woman with the stenotype was already tearing up tape. The applause from the crowd bordered on an ovation, with people standing up. As Garrett came marching back, I was still on my feet, and he was extending his hand. I was so glad to take it that I wanted to cry. That handshake, that warm, wonderful grip, was the greatest moment I ever had, in my whole life, with another man.