Moonlight Sonata

1871

IF THE CAREER of Theodore Keller advanced considerably in the eight years after his visit to Coney Island, it was due mainly to two circumstances. The first was that, at the end of the summer of the terrible riots, he had decided to go down to cover the later stages of the Civil War. The second had been the patronage of Frank Master.

And yet now, on a warm afternoon in October, on the very brink of the most important exhibition of his life, in the splendid gallery near Astor Place that Master had hired for the occasion, he was about to lose his temper with his patron.

“You’ll ruin everything!” he cried to Master in exasperation.

“I’m telling you,” said Master firmly, “it’s what you need to do.”

They’d already had one disagreement. Theodore had made no objection when Master suggested that one of the portrait photographs he’d taken of Lily de Chantal be included. But when his patron had warned him not to include the picture of Madame Restell, Theodore had been furious.

“It’s one of the best pictures I ever took,” he’d protested.

The portrait of Madame Restell had been a masterpiece. He’d gone to her house, found a huge, ornate armchair, and placed her in it, like Cleopatra on her throne. With her great bull-like face, she’d stared belligerently at the camera, as terrifying as a minotaur. Placed beside even General Grant, her portrait would have knocked his off the wall.

“Theo,” Frank Master had told him, “that woman is now so notorious, they can’t even sell the plot next to her house—on Fifth Avenue, if you please! No one will live there. If you put her portrait up, you’ll never get another commission.” Even Hetty Master had reluctantly agreed. When Madame Restell discovered she wouldn’t be in the show, she had been furious.

And there were other aspects of the exhibition that had worried Master: the political pieces.

“Be careful, Theo,” he’d said. “I don’t want you to do yourself harm.” His counsel was possibly wise, but Theodore didn’t give a damn, and he’d refused to budge.

“I’m telling the truth,” he’d said. “That’s what artists do.”

In this he’d had one unexpected ally. Hetty Master. “He’s quite right,” she’d told her husband. “He should include any photographs he likes. Except Madame Restell, perhaps,” she’d added, a little reluctantly.

But the sudden message from Master that day, when the whole exhibition had already been hung, had driven Theodore into a fury. Nor had the arrival of his patron at the gallery to argue his case made matters any better. Quite the contrary.

“Think of it,” Frank cried enthusiastically. “Put the three together on one wall. Boss Tweed on the left, Thomas Nast on the right, and that shot you took of the city courthouse just below them. Or above, if you prefer,” he added obligingly.

“But the work isn’t interesting,” Theodore expostulated. The three photographs, from the thousands in his collection, were perfectly adequate, but nothing more.

“Theodore,” said Frank Master as patiently as if he were addressing a child, “Boss Tweed was arrested today.”

If Tammany Hall knew how to make money out of New York City, it had to be said that Boss Tweed had taken the gentle art of the padded contract to heights never dreamed of before. It wasn’t that he did anything complicated. Together with Sweeny the Park Commissioner, Connolly the Controller and Mayor Oakey Hall, he formed a ring for the awarding of city contracts. But where in the past a contract worth ten thousand dollars might have had a thousand or two added, the ring, since they controlled everything, felt free to do much better. For more than a decade now, the amount on a contract might be multiplied five, ten, even a hundred times. The contractor was then paid, with a large bonus on top, and the huge remaining amount split between the ring.

His noblest enterprise had been the courthouse, behind City Hall. It had been under construction for ten years now, with no end in sight. When eventually it was completed, there was no doubt that it would be one of the noblest buildings in the city—a regular palace, in the best neoclassical style. But the ring was in no hurry to finish it, since this splendid architectural receptacle was also a trough of liquid gold. Everyone benefited—at least, all the ring’s many friends. Modest craftsmen with contracts for work there had already emerged from it as rich men. No one knew how many millions had flowed into this one building, but this was certain: the courthouse had already cost more than the recent purchase of Alaska.

Yet it hadn’t been until two years ago that the press had attacked the ring in any serious way. But when it did come, the attack was two-pronged: from the New York Times, in words; and from the brilliant cartoons of Thomas Nast, in Harper’s Weekly.

It was Thomas Nast’s cartoons that Boss Tweed feared the more. His constituents mightn’t be able to read, he said, but they could understand the cartoons. He even tried to buy Nast off with half a million dollars. But it hadn’t worked. And now, finally, Boss Tweed had been arrested.

Theodore hadn’t been particularly pleased with the portrait he’d done of Tweed a couple of years back. With his high domed forehead and beard, he might have passed for any corpulent politician, although the light falling aslant the studio had brought out some lines of aggression and greed in his face. He’d enjoyed the session with Nast far more. They were about the same age, and both from German families. The clever cartoonist had a surprisingly smooth, round face, upon which he sported a bushy mustache and a jaunty goatee beard. But Theodore thought he’d captured the young man’s lively, quizzical character quite well.

As for the photograph of the courthouse, it showed the growing building well enough, but it wasn’t interesting.

“This is just to attract publicity,” he complained to Master.

“Publicity is good for your business,” Frank replied.

“I know that. But can’t you see what will happen? People will notice the Tweed pictures just because he’s in the news today, and they’ll fail to pay attention to the important work.”

“Get a name first,” said his patron. “The rest will follow.”

“I won’t do it.”

“Theodore, I am asking you to do this. All the other work you want is there. People will see it, I promise you.” He paused. “It will mean a lot to me.”

It was said kindly, but Theodore could not miss the threat within it. If he wanted Master’s future support, the money he provided for the exhibition, the customers he could supply, then the three photographs had to go up. He sighed. This was the price. The question was, would he pay it?

“It’s four o’clock now,” said Master. “I’ll be back at six, before the opening.”

“I’ll think about it,” said Theodore.

“Please do.”

For the next half-hour he considered what to do. He would have liked to go for a walk to mull it over, but he couldn’t leave because he’d promised to be here to meet someone else. He hoped she’d come soon.

It didn’t take Mary O’Donnell long to walk from Gramercy Park to the gallery. She could have gone that evening with the Masters—indeed, Mrs. Master had suggested it. But even though she knew Gretchen would be there, Mary didn’t really feel comfortable in the middle of a fashionable crowd. She’d much prefer to let Theodore show her round the exhibits in private. She always felt comfortable with Theodore.

After all, they had been lovers.

Not for long. Following the Draft Riots that summer of ’63, she’d quite decided that she wouldn’t go to see him. She knew that when he’d seduced her on the beach on Coney Island, he hadn’t meant anything serious by it. She didn’t mind. And once back in the city, her old life in the Master household took over at once, and after a week she even supposed that he was fading from her mind.

So it was really only on a whim, she told herself, that one Saturday early in August, having a free day and no other engagements, she happened to look in on his studio in the Bowery.

He was just finishing a portrait of a young man when she came in. Greeting her politely, as though she were his next customer, he asked her if she’d wait in the larger studio. She’d sat down on the sofa there, then got up to look at the books on the table. There were no poems on the table that day, just a newspaper and an old copy of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter. She’d read the book, so she contented herself with reading the newspaper. She heard the young man leave, and Theodore busying himself about the studio.

Then he entered, and stood there smiling.

“I didn’t think you’d come.”

“I happened to be passing,” she said. “I said I’d look in.”

“That was my last customer for the day. Would you like to eat something?”

“If you like,” she said, and stood up.

He came over to her.

“We can go out to eat in a little while,” he said. Then he began to kiss her.

Their affair lasted through that month and the next. Of course, there were only certain times when she could meet him, but it was surprising how, with a little ingenuity, they could contrive to get together. And on her free days they went out walking, or he took her to concerts or the theater, or other things he thought she might like. Now and then he’d explain to her how he took his photographs, the way he tried to compose them or arrange the light, and she discovered that she had some natural understanding for such things, so that quite soon she could tell which was the best work and sometimes how it was achieved.

She knew he would not marry her. She was not sure she’d even wish it. But she knew that she interested him, and that he had affection for her.

They did not tell Gretchen.

It was in the middle of September that Sean came to see her. They walked round Gramercy Park together.

“So what’s going on with Theodore Keller?” he asked.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

“Yes you do. I know all about it, Mary.”

“Are you following me, Sean? I’m almost thirty years old. Have you nothing better to do?”

“Never mind how I know. I’m not having my sister trifled with.”

“My God, Sean, how many girls have you trifled with in your life?”

“They weren’t my sister.”

“Well, it’s my business and not yours.”

“I can have him taken care of, you know.”

“Oh my God, Sean, don’t even be thinking such a thing.”

“Do you love him?”

“He’s very good to me.”

“If there’s a child, he must marry you, Mary. I wouldn’t allow anything else.”

“Sean, I don’t want you interfering in my life. This is my doing as much as his. If you’re going to be this way, I don’t want to see you any more. I mean it.”

Sean was silent after that for a moment or two.

“If you’re ever in trouble, Mary, I want you to come to me,” he said gently. “You’ve always a place in my house.” He paused. “Just one thing you’re to promise me. You’ll never give a child away. Never. I’ll look after any child.”

“You’re not to touch Theodore—he’s not to blame. You must promise me that.”

“As you wish.”

That October, when Theodore had decided he should go down to the battlefields, she had suffered a good deal. But she hadn’t let him see. And she’d realized also that it was better he should go then, before she became so attached that the parting would be too painful to bear.

He’d been gone a week when she wondered if she might be with child. During the time of her uncertainty, she’d been so frightened that it was all she could do to concentrate on her work in the house. And Sean’s words had come to her often then. But to her relief, that danger had passed.

Theodore had been gone many months, and after his return, though very tempted, she had been determined to keep him only as a friend. God knows, she thought, he’s sure to take up with other women if he hasn’t already.

And so they had remained friends. She hadn’t taken another lover, so far, and she hadn’t found a man she wanted to marry. But she’d kept her secret memory, and she was proud of it.

She’d even been able to be helpful to him. When he had told her he was looking for a patron, it was Mary who’d gone to Frank Master and asked him to look at his work. That had been five years ago, and Master had been a fine patron ever since—commissioning work, providing contacts—everything that an artist could hope for. And when he said he needed to get journalists to come to the opening of the exhibition, she’d even made Sean speak to some of the newspapermen he knew.

So now, finding Theodore pacing about in a rage, she got him to tell her all about it. And after she had looked round all the work and admired it very much, she remarked to him gently: “If you put Boss Tweed and Nast over there”—she pointed to a wall that had some spare space—“it wouldn’t look so bad.”

“I suppose you’re right,” he said grumpily.

“I wish you’d do it for me,” she said.

There was a good crowd at the opening that evening. Of course, everyone went to see the portraits of Tweed and Nast, but Frank Master proved to be right, for having done that, they were circulating round the rest of the show, and lingering over some of the best work too.

So after greeting his sister, and making polite conversation with all the people to whom the Masters introduced him, Theodore could almost relax. Almost, but not quite. For there was one person who had still to arrive. One person who was very important indeed. If he showed up.

The reporter from the New York Times. It was Sean O’Donnell who had promised that the fellow would come, but at seven o’clock there was still no sign of him. Nor at ten minutes past the hour. It wasn’t till nearly seven thirty that Master came to his side and murmured, “I think that’s him.”

Horace Slim was a quiet man in his thirties, with a thin mustache and sad eyes. He greeted Theodore politely, but though he wasn’t giving anything away, something in his manner suggested he was only there because he’d been sent and that, as soon as he had enough material for a short piece, he’d be gone.

And Theodore needed more than that. He made himself keep calm, though. He knew it was no good pushing too hard; one could only hope for the best. But he’d handled journalists before, and he was not without cunning. So, giving the man a professional nod, he said quietly, “I’ll take you round, Mr. Slim.”

The exhibition filled several rooms, and was arranged thematically. He’d already decided to start with the portraits, but not to go straight to Boss Tweed. He’d got some famous people, after all. Names that should give the journalist some useful copy.

“Here’s President Grant,” he pointed out. “And General Sherman. And Fernando Wood.” Slim duly noted them. There were some big city merchants, with imposing architectural details behind them, an opera diva, and Lily de Chantal, of course. Theodore paused by her.

He’d always had a pretty good idea why Frank Master had suggested he take the picture of Lily de Chantal, though he wasn’t such a damn fool as to ask why. It was a suspicion reinforced when, ten minutes ago, he’d heard Hetty Master drily remark: “She looks a lot older than that in real life.” The picture was excellent, with a theatrical backdrop.

“I took this after her recital last year. Did you go to it?”

“Can’t say I did.”

“It was a notable event—quite a society occasion. Maybe worth a mention.”

Slim had a look at the other portraits, and took down a couple more names. They’d been carefully chosen to attract more clients. Then they came to Boss Tweed and Thomas Nast, and the courthouse.

“Good timing,” said Mr. Slim, making a quick note.

“I suppose so,” said Theodore. “People have been looking at them.”

“It’ll make a good opening for an article,” said Slim.

“So long as it’s not the only thing you mention.”

“Any other sitters you’d like to tell me about?” the journalist asked quietly. “Anyone of interest?”

Theodore glanced at him. Were those sad eyes better informed than they let on? Did Horace Slim know about Madame Restell?

“All my sitters are interesting,” said Theodore carefully. But he’d better give the fellow a story. “I’ll tell you whose picture’s missing,” he offered. “Abraham Lincoln—at the Gettysburg address.”

At the end of that summer of the Draft Riots, when he’d decided to leave New York for a while and follow the war out in the field, there’d been only one sensible way to do it. And that was to work for Mathew Brady. Brady had the government concession. He’d send you out, even provide you with a special carriage, converted into a movable darkroom. And so, in November 1863, along with several other photographers, Theodore had found himself down in Pennsylvania, at Gettysburg, where a new cemetery had just been prepared to receive the fallen heroes of the great battle that had taken place nearby only months before.

There had been little doubt, by then, about the significance of the Battle of Gettysburg. Before July 1863, after all, both sides might have been getting sick of the war, but the Confederacy was still on the offensive. Down on the Mississippi, General Grant had so far failed to take the Confederates’ mighty fortification at Vicksburg. Bold General Lee and Stonewall Jackson had taken on a Union army twice their size on the Potomac River, and though Jackson had died, Lee and his Confederate army had swept through Maryland and into Pennsylvania, threatening both Baltimore and the capital.

But then, on the Fourth of July, had come the double victory for the Union. Vicksburg had fallen, at last, to Grant, and Lee’s army, after a display of matchless courage, had been smashed and turned back at Gettysburg.

The North had the initiative. The South was open to massive attack.

Not that the war was won. By no means. The riots in New York, after all, had been only the most extreme expression of a widespread Union dislike of the war, by then. The will of the North might crack. The South might yet outlast them. The government in Washington knew it very well.

The dedication of the new cemetery at Gettysburg had been important, therefore. A ceremony was called for. A big story for the newspapers. A fine speech.

The speech had been entrusted to the president of Harvard, the greatest orator of the day. Only later, as a courtesy perhaps, did anyone think of asking Lincoln himself to attend. Indeed, Theodore remembered, he and the other photographers hadn’t been too sure that Lincoln was coming at all.

“But come he did,” he remarked to the journalist now. “There was a big crowd, you know, governors and local people and all the rest. Maybe fifteen thousand altogether. Lincoln rode up with the Secretary of State, I think, and Chase, the Treasury Secretary. Then he took his place with the others, just sat there quietly with his tall hat off, of course, so that we could hardly see him. I’d caught a glimpse of him when he came to make his address at the Cooper Institute, when he was still clean-shaven, but I hadn’t seen him with his beard before. Anyway, there was some music, and a prayer, so far as I remember. And then the president of Harvard rose to speak.

“Well, that was quite a speech, I can tell you. He gave full measure—two and a half hours—and when he finally came to his grand peroration, the applause was like thunder. Then there was a psalm sung. Then Lincoln rose, and we could see him well enough.

“Now we knew he wouldn’t be speaking for long—we’d had the big speech—so we got ourselves prepared, myself and the other photographers, pretty quick. But I dare say you know how that is done.”

It had been no easy business getting a picture in the Civil War. The photographs were always taken in 3-D, which meant that two plates had to be inserted simultaneously into a double camera, one to the left, one to the right. The glass plates had to be quickly cleaned, coated with collodion, then, while still wet, dipped in silver nitrate before being put into the camera. The exposure time might only be a few seconds, but then one had to rush the plates, still wet, into the mobile darkroom. Quite apart from the difficulties of having people in motion during the seconds of exposure, the whole process was so cumbersome that taking pictures of battlefield action was almost impossible.

“Well, dammit, I’d heard the first words of his speech—‘Fourscore and seven years ago’—and I was on it, preparing my wet plates. And I’d finished ahead of the other fellows, and slipped them into the camera, and was ready to go, when I heard him say, ‘… that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.’ Then just as I was getting him in my sights, he stopped. And there was silence. Then he looked down at one of the organizers and said something. Seemed as if he was apologizing—he looked kind of discouraged. And then he sat down. Everyone was so surprised that they hardly even got round to clapping. ‘Was that it?’ said the fellow next to me, who was still trying to get the plates into his camera. ‘Guess so,’ I said. ‘Jeezus,’ he said, ‘that was fast.’ Of course, that speech is pretty famous now, but the audience didn’t think anything of it at the time, I can tell you.”

“So you got no picture of the Gettysburg address?” said Horace Slim.

“Not a damn thing. Nor did anyone, so far as I know. Did you ever see a photograph of that famous day?”

“That’s a good story,” said the journalist.

“Let me show you the West,” said Theodore.

It had been an excellent opportunity. A government commission, to go into the western wilderness with the surveyors and bring back photographs that would attract settlers to take up land there. He’d done a good job. Big, rich-looking landscapes; pictures of friendly Indians. The government men had been delighted. One charming picture of a little Indian girl had caught Frank Master’s attention, and he’d paid Theodore a good price for a print of it.

But the journalist was bored. Theodore could tell. Swiftly he took him into the biggest room.

“So,” he said cheerfully, “these are the pictures I’ve been told not to show.”

For they were of the Civil War.

Nobody wanted to know about the Civil War now. While it was still being fought, everyone did. When the dour Scotsman, Alexander Gardner, had taken his picture, Home of the Rebel Sharpshooter, it had made him famous. Yet when his collection, a world classic, was published the year after war’s end, it didn’t sell.

Then there was Brady himself. People often imagined he took every picture of the Civil War. After all, his name was on so many of the pictures taken by the photographers he’d hired—a fact they sometimes resented. Yet to be fair, it was Brady who’d been the first in the field. At the start of the war, when the Confederates smashed the Union men at Bull Run, Brady had been there on the battlefield, lucky not to be a casualty.

It wasn’t Brady’s fault that his failing eyesight made it difficult for him to take the pictures himself. But he’d sent out those keen young men, set them up, provided them with movable darkrooms, all out of his own pocket. And what had he got from it all, when the war was over? Financial ruin.

“People don’t want to be reminded of those horrors,” said Theodore. “They wanted to forget them the moment the war was done.” In the South, he’d heard, the agony of defeat was so terrible that quite a few photographers had even destroyed their own work.

“So why do you show this work?” asked Horace Slim.

“Same reason you write, I dare say,” answered Theodore. “A photographer and a journalist both have a duty to record: to tell the truth, and not let people forget.”

“The horrors of war, you mean—the killing?”

“Not really. That was important of course, Mr. Slim, but others had already covered it.”

“Like Brady.”

“Exactly. In ’62, when the most terrible battles began, Brady had photographers with General Grant when he went into Tennessee. They recorded the carnage at Shiloh. Brady’s boys were in Virginia that summer, when Stonewall Jackson and General Lee saved Richmond from destruction. They were there when the Confederates struck back at us in Kentucky, and they were up in Maryland that fall, when Lee was turned back at Antietam. Do you remember the great exhibition Brady organized after Antietam, when he showed the world what the battlefield looked like after that terrible slaughter? It was a wonder to me, sir, that those photographs did not stop war altogether.” He shook his head. “Brady had photographers at the Battle of Gettysburg the next summer also, but I wasn’t one of them, you see—I didn’t become a Brady photographer until a couple of months after that. So maybe my task was different. Anyway,” he gestured to the photographs on the walls, “this is what I did.”

The journalist took his time, which was exactly what Theodore wanted. The first picture that seemed to interest him was entitled Hudson River. It showed a New York street, and had a grainy, dusty feel to it. A couple of blocks away the street ended and beyond was a great emptiness which was clearly the Hudson, although you couldn’t actually see the water.

“Draft riots?”

“That’s right. The third day. Wednesday.”

“Why call it Hudson River? The river’s hardly visible.”

“Because that’s the name of the man you see.”

There was only one man in the picture. A blackened bundle hanging from a tree. Blackened because he had been burned after he was lynched. Burned almost to a cinder.

“He was called Hudson River?”

“Yes. He worked in a saloon, for Sean O’Donnell.”

“I know him.”

“O’Donnell had hidden him in the cellar. Didn’t even know he’d got out. Reckons he could have been drinking down there, or maybe he just couldn’t stand the boredom any more—he’d been down there three days. Whatever the reason, young Hudson River sneaked outside. Must have wandered round Battery Park and started up the West Side. That’s where they caught him. They were catching a lot of black men that day. Strung him up on that tree and set fire to him.”

Horace Slim said nothing, and moved on.

“That’s a strange one,” he remarked by another photograph. “What is it?”

“An experiment, technically,” Theodore said. “I was with General Grant’s army at the time. The camera is looking through a magnifying lens that has been placed in front of the object, and you can actually see the magnified image of the object.”

“I see. But what is it?”

“It’s a lead slug. A bullet. But I have cut the slug open, so that you can see its internal construction better. You’ll notice that instead of being of a consistency throughout, the slug has a cavity at its base. Invention of a Frenchman named Minié originally—that’s why they call it a Minié ball. As you’ll know, the old smooth-bore musket was never accurate except at short range. But the rifle, with its spiral grooves inside the barrel, causes the bullet to spin, so that it becomes far more deadly over longer ranges.”

“And the cavity in the slug?”

“Under the pressure of firing, the open bottom of the slug expands outward, pushes it against the walls of the barrel so that it takes the rifling. That little cavity has brought death to thousands.”

“Ingenious. The photograph, I mean.” He moved on. “And this pair of broken-down shoes?”

“General Grant himself showed them to me—in disgust. They came from New York, too. You’d think they were years old, to disintegrate like that, but they’re not a week old.”

“I see. Shoddy goods.”

It had been one of the greatest scandals of the war. Profiteers, not a few of them from New York, had got contracts to supply the army and sent them shoddy goods—uniforms that fell apart and, worst of all, boots that seemed to be made of leather, but whose soles were actually compressed cardboard. At the first shower of rain they disintegrated.

“This may interest you,” Theodore remarked, leading the journalist across to another picture, which consisted of two posters. “I picked ’em up, in different locations, then put them side by side on a wall.” Each advertised the rates being offered for joining the Union army. “You’ll recall the reluctance of our own state to accept any black men into the army at all. But, of course, the black regiments came to be some of the best in the Union by the end of the war.”

The posters were quite straightforward. A white private was offered $13 a month, and a $3.50 clothing allowance. The black private was offered $10 and $3 for clothing.

“And what point are you making?” the journalist asked. “Are you aiming to shock?”

“No,” said Theodore, “it’s just a little irony. A reminder, if you like. I dare say plenty of white soldier boys reckoned that difference was fair—after all, the white man’s family would need more, because they lived better.”

“Not everybody’s going to like you,” said Slim.

“I know. That’s why my good friends told me not to show this part of the work. But I told ’em—in a friendly way of course—to go to hell. The record is the record, Mr. Slim. It is for you, as a journalist. And it is for me. If we don’t tell the truth as we see it, we have nothing.” He smiled. “Let me show you a landscape.”

It was the only landscape in the Civil War section—actually three landscapes pasted together to make a wide panorama. And under it, the title: Marching Through Georgia.

“In the fall of ’64, I’d gone back to New York. Grant was stuck in Virginia at that time, and the war so unpopular again that most people reckoned Lincoln would lose the election that year, and the Democrats would make peace with the South so the Confederates could have pretty much declared a victory. But then Sherman took Atlanta, and everything changed. The Union cause was up again, Lincoln would be re-elected, and Sherman would make his great march from Atlanta to the sea. A fine photographer I knew, named George Barnard, went down to join General Sherman there, and I went with him. That’s how this picture came to be taken.”

“Marching Through Georgia,” Horace Slim remarked. “Fine song.”

“Yes. You know who hates it? Sherman himself. Can’t bear the sound of it.”

“They play it wherever he appears.”

“I know.” Theodore shook his head. “Think of the lyrics of that song, sir.” He sang them softly: “‘Hurrah, Hurrah, we bring the jubilee! Hurrah, Hurrah, the flag that makes you free!’” He looked at the journalist. “It has a joyous ring, don’t it? That’s what makes it so contemptible, to those of us that were there.”

“Well, the slaves were glad enough to see you, surely?”

“Yes—‘How the darkies shouted when they heard the joyful sound,’ as the words of the song go. The slaves greeted Sherman as a liberator, it’s true. And though when he set out, he hadn’t been that interested in them, he came to believe in their cause and did much for them. But consider the lines that follow—‘How the turkeys gobbled which our commissary found; How the sweet potatoes even started from the ground.’”

“Poetic license.”

“Hogwash, sir. We took every provision we could use from that fine land, most certainly. We raped it. But anything that was left after that, we destroyed. It was deliberate, it was cruel, and the scale of it had to be seen to be believed. That was Sherman’s intent. He believed it was necessary. ‘The hard way,’ he called it. I don’t say he was wrong. But there was no joy in that land, I assure you. We destroyed every farm, burned every field and orchard, so that the people of the South should starve.” He paused. “Can you quote me the words of the song that describe it?”

“‘So we made a thoroughfare for freedom and her train; Sixty miles of latitude, three hundred to the main.’”

“That’s right. A great swathe of total desolation, a blackened wasteland. Utter ruination. Sixty miles wide, sir, and three hundred miles long. That’s what we did to the South. I do not believe anything more terrible was ever done in the history of war.” He paused. “And some damn contemptible fool has made it into a popular song.” He pointed to the landscape. “That’s what it looked like.”

The landscape in the photograph was wide indeed. You could see for miles. And it stretched to a distant horizon. In the foreground were the charred remains of a farmstead. And everywhere else, as far as the eye could see, was an empty, blackened wasteland.

There was one more room to visit. It was the smallest, and it contained pictures that were not united by any theme. The first to catch the journalist’s eye was Theodore’s picture of the black men walking up the railway tracks beside the gleaming river.

“I like that,” he said.

“Ah.” Theodore was genuinely pleased. “It’s an early one, but I’m still quite proud of it.”

There were some small studies of family and friends, including a fine one of his cousin Hans, the piano-maker, sitting at the keyboard, the fine lines of his face caught by the soft light coming from an unseen window.

On one wall were three views of Niagara Falls, commissioned by Frank Master. They were wonderfully striking, the long exposure adding a complexity to the billowing sprays rising from the base, and a dazzling clear sky making the whole scene almost unearthly, like a painting.

“Hmm,” said Horace Slim. “You’ll do well with those.”

Theodore grinned. “Pays the rent, Mr. Slim. They are technically excellent, by the way.”

There were a few scenes of New York, including one of the reservoir on Fifth Avenue. Hetty Master had commissioned it.

And that pretty much seemed to wrap the exhibition up. Except for one small, rather dark picture in a corner. Horace Slim walked over and took a quick look at it. The photograph had a title: Moonlight Sonata.

It took a few seconds to decipher what was in there. The scene had required a very long exposure, because it was taken by the light of a full moon. You could make out a trench line, and a sentry standing near a field gun, whose long barrel shone softly in the moonlight. There were tents and a little stricken tree.

“Civil War?”

“Yes. But it didn’t seem to go in the other room, somehow. It’s more a personal photograph, I guess. I may take it down.”

The journalist with the sad eyes nodded, folded up his notebook and put it in his pocket.

“Well, I guess I’m done, then.”

“Thank you. You’ll give me a notice?”

“Yes. Don’t know how long—that’ll depend on the editor—but I have all I need.”

They began to walk out together.

“Just out of interest, not for the piece, what was the story of the little dark picture?”

Theodore paused.

“Well, it was the night before an engagement. In Virginia. Our Union boys were in their trenches, and the Confederates in theirs, not more than a couple of stone’s throw away. It was quite silent. The moonlight, as you saw, was falling on the scene. There must’ve been all ages, I suppose, between those trenches. Men well into middle years. And plenty who were little more than boys. There were women in the camp, too, of course. Wives, and others.

“I supposed they would soon fall asleep. But then, over in the Confederate trenches, some fellow started singing ‘Dixie.’ And soon they were all joining in, right along the line. So they sang ‘Dixie’ at us for a while, then stopped.

“Well, sure enough, our boys weren’t going to let it go at that. So a group of ’em started up ‘John Brown’s Body.’ And in no time the whole of our trenches were giving them that. Fine voices too, I may say.

“And when they’d done, there was another silence. Then over in the Confederate trench, we heard a single voice. A young fellow by the sound of it. And he started singing a psalm. The twenty-third psalm it was. I’ll never forget that.

“As you know, in the South, with the shape-note singing, every congregation is well practiced in the singing of psalms. So again, all along the line, they joined in. Kind of soft. Sweet and low. And maybe it was the moonlight, but I have to say it was the most beautiful sound I ever heard.

“But I’d forgotten that many of our boys were accustomed to singing the psalms too. When you consider the profanities you hear spoken every day in camp, you might forget that; but it is so. And to my surprise, our boys began to sing with them. And in a short while, all along the lines, those two armies sang together, free for a moment of their circumstances, as if they were a single congregation of brothers in the moonlight. And then they sang another psalm, and then the twenty-third again. And after that, there was silence, for the rest of the night.

“During which time, I took that photograph.

“The next morning there was a battle. And before noon, Mr. Slim, I regret to say, there was scarcely a man from either of those trenches left. They had killed each other. Dead, sir, almost every one.”

And, caught unawares, Theodore Keller suddenly stopped speaking, and was not able to continue for a minute or two.