Empire: A Novel

by Gore Vidal

  “A fox,” said Lodge, “is loose in the chicken house.”

  At the foot of Hay’s majestic staircase stood Mr. Eddy and a White House messenger. Hay’s descent was cautious; the scarlet runner a magnificent peril. “What is it, Mr. Eddy?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Secretary.”

  “I don’t know either, sir,” said the messenger.

  “All I know, sir, is he wants you straightaway, sir.”

  “In mid-bomb,” Hay murmured sadly, as the butler got him into his fur-lined coat.

  Although February had been lethally cold, no snow had yet fallen, and the three men were able to walk across the avenue to the White House, where the offices in the east end were ominously lit up while the downstairs was dark.

  The German doorkeeper greeted Hay in the near-darkness of the entrance hall; he said, somewhat surprisingly, “The President’s waiting in the conservatories.” An usher stepped out of the shadow, to lead the way. In the dim light of a single lamp, the Tiffany screen looked incongruously Byzantine.

  During Lincoln’s time the conservatories had been modest; now they covered acres. One greenhouse was devoted exclusively to orchids, another to roses, another to exotic tropical fruits. At evening receptions, the Marine band would play in the rose house, and the young couples would wander from glass-house to glass-house, invariably getting lost. But there had been no such evenings since the sinking of the Maine.

  The President was in the carnation greenhouse, seated in an armchair, smoking a cigar, a stack of papers in his lap. Hay was quite overwhelmed by the scent of flowers, not to mention the moist warmth in such marked contrast to the icy night beyond the panes of glass, which were now so many black mirrors reflecting the artificial-looking colors of the carnations on their green straw-like stalks. Electric lights made summer noon of winter night.

  “I come here when I want to get away.” The Major started to get up but Hay’s hand on his shoulder kept him in place. Hay got into a chair opposite him; they were at the center of a perspective of carnations, arrayed in tables according to color. Those at hand were pale pink, a color Hay disliked and the Major doted on. “Tonight I’ve been working on my speech to the Home Market Club in Boston. It’s for the sixteenth. I want to make the case, once and for all, for annexation. Please go over the text. Add anything, subtract anything. Just make it right. You’re the best I know for this sort of speech.”

  Hay wondered if the President might not be a little mad: to summon him away from a dinner party, admittedly a late one, to sit in a stifling greenhouse in order to discuss a speech two weeks away. “Is that the text?”

  “This?” McKinley held up the top paper on his lap; the huge waistcoated belly had crumpled an edge of the paper where belly rested upon vast presidential thighs. “No, Mr. Hay. This is what we have to talk about. It is from the Manila correspondent of the New York Sun. It will be in all the papers tomorrow.”

  As Hay read the cabled story, the agitated President spun his eyeglasses on their silken cord; first clockwise, then counterclockwise. On the island of Luzon, Aguinaldo’s gun-men had opened fire on American troops. Hay returned the cable to the President. “I am not surprised,” he said. “It was only a matter of time—and timing.”

  “We have a second war on our hands, so close to the other.” The Major sighed. “It is always the unexpected that happens, at least in my case. I thought my Administration would be a quiet affair, dedicated to sound business, sound money. Instead I am thrust by events into war after war.…”

  “Mr. Lincoln said I do not act. I am acted upon. My policy is to have no policy.”

  “In this, we are as one.” McKinley suddenly shook the cabled report as if it were a child in need of discipline. “How foolish these people are! Don’t they realize that this will get us our treaty? The people will insist on it now.”

  Hay nodded; he was also growing suspicious. “Do we know who fired the first shot?”

  “All we know is what you’ve just read. It sounds as if they fired first or provoked us to fire first. I’ve cabled General Otis for a report. Just the other day he said he thought he’d need as many as thirty thousand troops, to run things properly. I disagreed. As it is, our army of occupation is twenty thousand men, all—”

  “… wanting to go home.”

  The massive ivory head—a perfect egg save for the cleft chin—nodded and the round luminous eyes were suddenly hooded. “Now that Spain’s surrendered, we are committed to getting the troops home as soon as possible. They did not sign up to fight Filipinos, Colonel Bryan has reminded me.”

  “So they—Aguinaldo, that is—have really done us a great favor. We can’t bring the troops home if there is an insurrection.” But as Hay began to make the Administration’s case, he was by no means certain to what specific end they were about to commit themselves and the country. After all, the word “insurrection” assumed that the United States government was the legitimate government of the Philippines; but they were not a legitimate government; they were, allegedly, liberators, and the so-called insurrection was actually a war for independence from foreign liberators turned conquerors, with Aguinaldo in the role of Washington and McKinley in that of George III. Hay now began to weave new language: the word “trustee” emerged; “temporary,” also. Suddenly, he stopped, aware that the President was not listening. McKinley’s eyes were shut; and he was breathing deeply. Was he asleep? or in a trance? Could the President, like his wife, be epileptic? Hay wondered, somewhat wildly. But then McKinley cleared his throat; and opened his eyes. “I was praying,” he said, simply. “Do you pray often, Mr. Hay?”

  “Not, perhaps, often enough.” Hay recalled the Jesuit injunction that the wise man never lies, as he has already seen to it that he need not tell the whole truth. Hay was truth-full and god-less.

  “I think God answered me the other night.” McKinley picked a carnation and held it up to his nose. “I actually got down on my knees—not an easy thing,” he smiled, indicating the broad stomach that had overwhelmed his chest, “and asked for guidance. I was in the oval library. Ida had gone to bed. I was alone. I told God that I had never wanted any of this war, and that I certainly had never wanted those islands. But the war had come, and the Philippines are ours. What am I to do? Well, number one, I said to God, I could give the islands back to Spain. But that would be cruel to the natives, who hate Spain. Number two, I could let France or Germany take them over. But that would be a very bad business for us commercially …”

  “I’m sure God saw the wisdom of that.” Hay could not resist the interjection. Fortunately, McKinley was too preoccupied with his divine audience to note Hay’s impiety.

  “… and discreditable, too. Number three, we could simply go home and let them govern themselves, which they could never do, as everyone knows. But at least we’d be out of it. That’s the easy way, of course. It was then that I felt—something.” McKinley’s eyes seemed to glow in the light which had transformed the glass planes of the greenhouse into so many onyx mirrors. “There was a presence in that room, and I found myself summing up in a way that I had not planned to. I had simply wanted to put the case to God and hope. But God answered me. I heard myself saying, aloud: Number four, in the light of numbers one through three, as I have just demonstrated, Your Honor—God, that is—we have no choice but to take all of the islands and govern the people to the best of our ability, to educate and civilize them and to Christianize them—and in my sudden certitude, I knew that God was speaking to and through me, and that we would all of us do our best by them, or our fellow men for whom Christ also died. Well, Mr. Hay, I have never been so relieved. I had the first good night’s sleep in a year. Then, the next morning, without telling you or any of the Cabinet I sent for the chief engineer of the War Department, and I gave him an order.” McKinley opened up on his legs a world map. “Here is what I told him to do.”

  Hay took the map and held it up. At first he noticed nothing usual; then his eye strayed to the Pacific Ocean
and there, in the same yellow color as the United States, an ocean away, were the Philippines with the legend “U.S. Protectorate.”

  “You annexed them?”

  McKinley nodded. “With God’s assurance that I must. And, of course,” he smiled, and took the map from Hay, “some assistance from Admiral Dewey and Colonel Roosevelt. I know I have done the right thing.”

  “But if the treaty fails to pass the Senate, there is no protectorate …”

  “The treaty will pass. That’s why I took you into my confidence, to show you why I am so certain and so—fatalistic. Because,” McKinley stood up, “I never wanted any of this. But it is God’s plan now, and we are His humble instruments.”

  “I hope God will give us some hints on how best to handle Aguinaldo.”

  But McKinley was now moving, in his stately way, down the long aisle of carnations to the door. At the President’s request, Hay joined him in the shaky coffin-like elevator to the living quarters, where, upon arrival, McKinley led him into the oval library to show him the exact spot where the interview with God had taken place. But Mrs. McKinley, not God, was now in possession of the hallowed spot. She sat in her invalid’s chair, knitting bedroom slippers. She was slender, pale, surprisingly pretty; she spoke, however, with a nasal sing-song whine that Hay found as disagreeable as Lodge’s British accent. Was there to be no happy American mean? “When they told me the Major was with you, I felt better. You never keep him up to all hours like some of them do.”

  Hay bowed, as if to Victoria. “I returned him from the carnation room as quickly as I could and as good as new, I hope.”

  Cortelyou appeared in the doorway. “There’s no more news, Mr. President. Secretary Alger says that General Otis’s report will be ready first thing tomorrow.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Cortelyou. You go to bed now.”

  Cortelyou withdrew. Hay was about to do the same when Mrs. McKinley delivered herself of an ex cathedra judgment on Washington’s worldly ladies. “Why, they even brag about how they tuck their poor tired husbands into bed and then they go out gallivanting to parties on their own. Imagine! Well, I tell them that when I tuck Mr. McKinley into bed, I get right in with him, which is what we’re going to do now.”

  “I, too,” said Hay, adding indecorously, “in my own bed, of course.”

  But Mrs. McKinley was staring narrowly at his shoes. “Draw me an outline of your shoe-sole, and I’ll make you slippers next.”

  “With pleasure, Mrs. McKinley.”

  Then, to Hay’s astonishment, Mrs. McKinley stuck her tongue out at him; gave him a lascivious wink; and became rigid, only the whites of her eyes visible. The President, with an unhurried, practiced gesture, took a huge silk handkerchief from his pocket; and covered her head. “I am troubled by the Teller Amendment in the Senate.” McKinley stared absently at the veiled Ida. “How to interpret it? The amendment is clear that we cannot retain Cuba. But will the Senate try to extend the amendment to cover the Philippines?”

  “No, sir. Your Benevolent Assimilation Proclamation has been accepted by all except a few die-hards—and blow-hards like Bryan. If the treaty passes, the archipelago is ours. Paid for in cash to Spain. Twenty million dollars for ten million Filipinos.” Hay found this talk of empire curiously exciting; and even humorous. “That’s two dollars a head,” he added.

  “Colonel Hay.” The President was gently reproving. Then he bade Hay good-night. “We’ll discuss the insurrection tomorrow. Before the Senate vote.”

  “Yes, Mr. President.” But as Hay walked down the east wing stairs, having just vowed never to use the west wing elevator—too like a coffin—ever again, he was beginning to have his doubts about the Major’s new “protectorate.”

  – 3 –

  BUT ALL DOUBTS were dispelled on Monday when at Lodge’s insistence and against Hay’s better judgment, he entered the Marble Room of the Capitol, as a somewhat casual guest of the Senate, which was now, in its chamber next door, busy biting the proverbial bullet. The voting would begin on the treaty in one hour, at three o’clock. From the windows of the gilded, mirrored, marbled chamber, White House and Washington monument were visible against a sky as dark as steel. Only Mr. Eddy accompanied Hay; on principle, Adams refused to set foot in the Capitol—or, for that matter, his family’s one-time home, the White House.

  Fresh from the Senate cloakroom and its intrigues, Lodge joined Hay: more than ever a bumblebee today. “I think we’ve got all the Republicans, except Hoar. We’re getting several Democrats. I may bring them in here to you.”

  “I’ll do what I can, dear Cabot. But what can I do?”

  Lodge was not listening. But then Hay knew that senators, particularly when they were at home on their side of the Capitol, lost their never overwhelming auditory powers. Lodge produced a press-cutting from his frock-coat. “Did you see this? In yesterday’s Sun?”

  Hay had indeed read their friend Rudyard Kipling’s contribution to the American political process. Although English, the prodigious Mr. Kipling had lived for some time in the United States; during 1895, he was a good deal in Washington, where Hay and his circle had come to know and admire him. Theodore Roosevelt, in particular, had taken him up, and their muscular minds, Hay’s happy phrase, lifted, as it were, dumb-bells together. Now Kipling had launched a thunderbolt, in the form of a poem, carefully timed to affect, if possible, the treaty vote. “Theodore sent me an advance copy last month. He thought it poor poetry but good for the expansionist cause. I happen to think it’s quite good as a kind of hymn, pretending to be a poem.”

  “A hymn to the god of war,” said Hay, who had indeed been struck by the poem, not least by its alarming title, “The White Man’s Burden.”

  “I’m using some of it in a speech.” Lodge quoted,

  “ ‘Take up the White Man’s burden—

  Send them forth the best ye breed—

  God bind your sons to exile

  To serve your captives’ need.’

  I also like the warning to us, that we must take over from England, the torch is passing and we must—where is it? Oh, yes.” Again Lodge read,

  “ ‘To wait in heavy harness

  On fluttered folk and wild—

  Your new-caught sullen peoples

  Half devil and half child.’

  That describes those Malays to a T, don’t you think?”

  “Well, they are certainly sullen at the moment. And even the excellent Rudyard admits that we’re in for trouble.” Hay took the cutting and read the quatrain that had most struck him:

  “ ‘Take up the White Man’s burden—

  And reap his old reward:

  The blame of those ye better,

  The hate of those ye guard.…’ ”

  “What’s that?” asked a deep voice from behind them.

  Hay turned toward the door, where stood a tall, noble-looking young man in a frock-coat that had been made famous—like the wide mouth, square jaw—by a thousand cartoonists. Lodge greeted William Jennings Bryan with a cry of joy. Hay never ceased to delight in the spontaneous hypocrisy of the true politician, always at his most appealing when faced in the flesh by a bitter enemy. But the enemies were, this day, allies. As titular head of the Democratic Party, Bryan had been rallying his troops in the Senate to the treaty. But senators are seldom anyone’s troops, particularly those of a defeated presidential candidate. Bryan’s task was made more difficult by the ambition of one Senator Gorman, who saw anti-imperialism as the means to get for himself the Democratic nomination in 1900. Although the weekend had been hectic, Bryan looked calm and at ease. No, he had not seen Kipling’s poem. As he read it, lips moving, sounding the phrases, Hay wondered if Bryan had indeed ever heard of Kipling before. Then Bryan returned the cutting to Lodge. “Well, it can be read two ways,” he said. The smile was wide, perhaps a trifle cretinous; but the eyes were shrewd and watchful. “And, all in all, I’d rather not have either way read today. We’re having a hard enough time as it is. There is no one more anti
-imperialist than I …”

  “Colonel Bryan, we’re all agreed that there will be no long-term annexation. We’re all anti-imperialists.” Lodge lied with perfect sincerity.

  “We’d better be,” said Bryan; and left the room in order to avoid his nemesis, fat, white Mark Hanna.

  “I can’t stand seeing that anarchist in this place,” growled Hanna. “Where’s Hobart?”

  No one had seen the Vice-President, an obscure New Jersey corporation lawyer who had been chosen to be vice-president by Hanna for no reason that Hay could see other than his wealth. Would wealthy men one day buy the great offices of state as they had during Rome’s decadence? Adams thought that the practice was already common. After all, state legislatures elected United States senators. Many legislators were for sale. Hadn’t New York’s sardonic Roscoe Conkling boasted that he had paid only two hundred thousand dollars for his seat? a bargain price back in the seventies? Hay argued that the presidency was still different. A party leader, like McKinley, slowly and openly evolved; or, thanks to a sudden shift in popular opinion, he emerged like Bryan. In neither case could the leadership have been bought, assuming that the would-be leader had had the money, or access to it. But it was on the word “access” that Adams looked dour. Hanna had financed McKinley on a scale unknown until now. What would prevent a Carnegie or a Jay Gould from selecting some nonentity and then, through adroit expenditure, securing for himself the presidency’s power, all in the nonentity’s name? Hay felt that Adams, once again, took too dark a view.

  They were joined by another of McKinley’s intimates, Charles G. Dawes, a personable, red-haired young politician from Nebraska, who had played a significant role in the election of McKinley. When Bryan began to take the country by storm and the multitude thought him the greatest orator in American history, Hanna panicked. Although the money interest was solidly behind McKinley, the South and the West were for Bryan. Since the farmers were penniless, Bryan promised to increase the money supply. Silver coins would be minted, sixteen to one in relation to gold. America, intoned Bryan, in speech after speech to the largest crowds anyone could remember, would not be crucified upon a cross of gold. Meanwhile, McKinley seldom strayed from his hometown of Canton, Ohio, where he conducted his own low-key campaign from his own comfortable front porch, a gift of admirers. After twelve years in the House of Representatives and four as Ohio’s governor, he was a poor man; hence, honest. Hanna thought McKinley should take to the stump. McKinley was tempted; but, as Hay had heard it, young Mr. Dawes persuaded the Major to stay right where he was. When it came to demagoguery, he could not compete with Bryan; so why try? As McKinley recounted it later to Hay, “If I hired a train to campaign in, he’d hire a single car. If I bought a Pullman car berth, he’d buy a cheap seat. If I bought a cheap seat, he’d ride the freight. So I decided to stay put.” In response to Bryan’s cross of gold, McKinley was vigorous and vague. He was, he declared, in favor of both gold and silver money, an admirable sentiment as acceptable as it was unintelligible, to get the largest popular vote. Finally, crucially, a majority preferred the Major’s placid solidity to Bryan’s fieriness. For a moment, class war was in the air. Then the border states, which had made Lincoln president, shifted from Bryan to McKinley; and he was elected with the largest popular vote of any president since Grant.