It was a not so quiet rumor in Washington that King and career Jacksonian politician James Buchanan were a 'couple.' There were snide remarks about King's gracious, gentle nature, and his tall, slender prettiness. Displaying a proclivity for fine clothes, he dressed flamboyantly and favored wigs long after they went out of fashion. He was known to be sweet-tempered, benign and friendly in the Senate club of egoists.
He and Buchanan, lifelong bachelors, shared a residence in the nation's capital for twenty-three years and were seen everywhere in Washington social circles in one another's company. They had evident deep regard for one another. They were an item of gossip in Washington for three decades. Old Hickory called King "Miss Nancy," a common term for an effeminate-not necessarily gay-man. Buchanan, King, and Jones-all bachelors-were staunch Jacksonian Democrats who served alongside one another for twenty years in the Halls of Congress.
Buchanan succeeded Pierce as President in 1857. His presidency, like that of Pierce, was crushed by the issue of slavery. Aaron V. Brown of Tennessee (1785-1859), socialite millionaire Congressman, Governor, and Postmaster General under Buchanan, referred to King as Buchanan's 'better half' and 'wife' in a letter to former First Lady Sarah Polk in the late 1840s.
Why was Jones sent as the emissary of the United States Congress to witness King's swearing in as the thirteenth vice-president of the United States? Was it because of congressional seniority or the regional relationship between Tennessee and Alabama…or was there more? Popular novelist John Updike toyed nimbly with the idea of a love affair between King and Buchanan in his 1992 book, Memories of the Ford Administration.
I already had suspicions about Mr. Jones and Miss Patc. I wondered about his relations with slave women. Adultery was a common enough practice, then as now. Miscegenation was also not uncommon. I was now imagining the opposite-covert heterosexuality on his part. Could he also have been a participant in 'the love that dare not speak its name,' homosexuality? Yet my dabbling in that sexy question…and my nagging notions about Miss Patc's son and about the run-away mulatto children…in all probability said more about me and my demons than Jones and his life.
Imagination is a most willful mistress. As I rummaged around in these thoughts, I had a strong awareness that issues of sexual addiction are troublesome. We live in a culture that manifests many dysfunctional sexual ideas and practices that are both covert and widespread.
I accept Sigmund Freud's premise that sex and sexuality are central to the human experience. He was a bit obsessed with it, but his general understanding rings true, though his work may only have reflected his own obsession, not the reality of others. At any rate, he got pretty close to my reality. Sexual feelings crowd my being, meddling with my relationships with others, my thoughts, and my work. I thought that perhaps I was managing information, matters of fact, from the life of George Washington Jones to serve my own ends, validate my own addictions, and even justify them, rather than trying to tell his story honestly. I felt as if I were standing on soft ground, unsure of whether to move or not, and in what direction.