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The book purports to be the private journal of Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler, the illegitimate son and protege of Aaron Burr (and the co-star of Burr). Charles, now 62, returns to the U.S. on the eve of its Centennial after a 38-year sojourn in Europe. Wiped out by the panic of 1873, he must barter his reputation as a respected journalist for some badly needed cash. He must also make a suitable match for his daughter Emma, 35, the widow of an impecunious French prince. Ultimately, Schuyler hopes to parlay a casual friendship with New York Governor Samuel J. Tilden into the best old-age pension of all: with Reformer Tilden the certain Democratic nominee for President and a likely victor over the scandal-ridden Republicans, Schuyler grandly casts himself as America's next minister to France.
Schuyler soon secures domestic assignments with several New York papers and covers a number of enviable beats: Congress and the White House, the opening of the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, the Republican convention in Cincinnati. (He rejects his editor's invitation to go West and write about the Indians; the massacre of troops led by General George A. Custer convinces Schuyler that he was right to refuse.) Leading writers and politicos traverse the pages of 1876: William Cullen Bryant,
Mark Twain, President Grant, New York Senator Roscoe Conkling, Representatives Is James G. Elaine and James A. Garfield.
Bedazzled by Schuyler's fatherly connection with royalty, the best New York families—the "Astorocracy"—throw open their gilded doors. Schuyler is allowed into the presence of Mrs. William Astor, contender for the post of society's grandest dame, and notices that her "dead-black hair is not entirely her own." He catches a party glimpse of John Jacob Astor III, "slow but agreeable, and much too red in the face." Wherever he goes, Schuyler is publicly deferential, as befits an aging favor seeker. Privately, this self-described "effete Parisian" fills his journal with barbed, often uproarious observations on this "vigorous, ugly, turbulent realm."
Schuyler's comments (see box) are themselves worth the price of the novel. Vidal has no peers at breathing movement and laughter into the historical past. His book teems with offbeat details: Tilden's dyspepsia and private collection of erotic literature; the Petronian orgy of a White House banquet ("25 courses and six good wines"); the surprisingly low and musical quality of Grant's voice. Even though the results have been in for 100 years, Vidal marshals his research so that the 1876 election reads like a cliffhanger.