Empire: A Novel

by Gore Vidal

  “The Major,” Hay was cautious, “has said you’d be an ideal governor once the fighting stopped.”

  “I might be helpful there,” said Roosevelt, wistfully: he truly liked war, as so many romantics who knew nothing of it tended to. One day’s outing with bullets in Cuba was not Antietam, Hay thought grimly, where five thousand men died in less than an hour. It was generally assumed that because Roosevelt’s father had so notoriously stayed out of the war, the son, filled with shame, must forever make up for his father’s sin of omission. Hay could never decide whether he very much liked or deeply disliked Roosevelt. Adams was much the same: “Roosevelts are born,” he had observed, “and never can be taught,” unlike Cabot Lodge, a creature of Adams’s own admittedly imperfect instruction.

  “Save yourself, Governor.” Root rose; and stretched. “We have so much to do right now. There is an ugly mood out there.” An airy wave of an arm took in the mud-streaked glass of the White House conservatories. “And an election next year.”

  “Ugly mood?” Roosevelt sprang to his feet. For a man so plump, he did exert himself tremendously, thought Hay, whose every rise from a chair was a problem in logistics, and a source of pain.

  “Yes,” said Hay. “While you have been enjoying the company of Platt and Quay and the refinements of the Albany mansion, we—the Cabinet and the Major—have been ricocheting about the country for the last six weeks. As there were elections in—”

  “Ohio and South Dakota. I’m a Dakotan myself. When I—” Roosevelt got everything back to “I.”

  Root raised a hand. “We shall all read The Winning of the West. To think! You are not only our Daniel Boone but our Gibbon, too!”

  Roosevelt blew out his upper lip so that lip and moustache fluttered against the tombstone teeth. “I hate irony,” he said with, for once, perfect sincerity.

  “It will do you no harm,” said Root. “The fact is the labor unions are giving us more and more trouble, particularly in Chicago. We barely squeaked through in Ohio, where the President made a special effort, and though Mark Hanna spent more money than ever before, John McLean engineered a big victory in Cleveland for the Democrats.”

  “Out of the twelve states voting, we carried eight.” Roosevelt was brisk. “Only cranks opposed us …”

  “But in our own party,” Hay began.

  “Every party has its lunatic fringe.” Roosevelt’s recent coinage of this phrase had given him great pleasure, which he shared with the world. “Luckily for us, the Democrats have Bryan. He’s just carried his Nebraska with a fusion ticket, which means he’ll be nominated, which means we will win.”

  “Unless the Admiral hears the unmistakable cry of a grateful people,” said Hay, working himself out of his chair, “and puts himself forward as a candidate opposed to the very same empire that he—guided by you, Theodore—brought us. Now that would be a splendid big election.”

  “That would be a nightmare,” said Root.

  “That won’t happen,” said Roosevelt.

  Adee appeared yet again in the doorway. “Colonel Roosevelt, Admiral Dewey wants to know if you would be willing to submit yourself,” for some reason, today, of all days, Adee was more than ever quacking like a duck, thought Hay, as he shoved himself to his feet, “to something of a photographical nature, which sounds like—our telephone has developed a strange sea-like sound, like the inside of a sea-shell when you hold it to your ear …”

  “Mr. Adee is stone-deaf,” said Hay to the others, his face averted from Adee, who could then neither hear his voice nor read his lips.

  “Sounds like what?” Roosevelt’s eyes gleamed. He loved all forms of publicity.

  “Biograph, Governor.”

  “Biograph?” Hay was puzzled.

  “It is a moving-picture,” said Roosevelt, bounding toward the door. “Gentlemen, good day.”

  “Do nothing, Governor,” Root was beaming, “until you hear the unmistakable call of the people.”

  “You,” said Roosevelt, waving a fist at Hay, “and Henry Adams have a great deal to answer for, with your deprecatory ironic style, which is like … like yellow fever, this unremitting cynicism.” Roosevelt was gone.

  Hay looked at Root and said, “If nothing else, Teddy’s more fun than a goat.”

  “Unremitting cynicism.” Root laughed. “He comes to Washington as a candidate for vice-president with the backing of Platt and Quay, the two most corrupt political bosses in the union.”

  “Doubtless, he means to betray them, virtuously, in the interest of good government and, of course, reform …”

  Root nodded thoughtfully. “I confess that to betray without cynicism is the sign of a master politician.”

  “Certainly, the sign of an original.” Hay started to the door. “I must visit the Major.”

  “I must go to work.” Root opened the door, and stood to one side so that the senior Cabinet member could go first. Hay paused in the doorway. Adee was at his desk, back to them; thus, wrapped in impenetrable silence. Hay looked at Root and said, “You know who the Major wants for vice-president?”

  “Don’t tell me Teddy …”

  “Never Teddy. He wants,” Hay studied Root’s face, “you.”

  Root was impassive. “The Republican National Committee wants me,” he said precisely. “I don’t know that the President was ever influenced by them.”

  “He isn’t.”

  “It is,” said Root, “a long time until next summer and your—not my—twentieth century.”

  Behind Adee’s back, Hay bet Root ten dollars, even money, that the new century began the coming first of January, 1900, and not a year from that day.

  – 3 –

  FOR CAROLINE, marriage to Del was postponed until he had returned from Pretoria, in a year’s time. Yes, she would come to South Africa to see him. No, she did not want a formal engagement. “A woman does that sort of thing for a mother, and I am not so burdened.” They came to these terms in the large victoria which was used by the Secretary of State for weddings, and funerals.

  They drove though a light rain across Farragut Square to the K Street house of Mrs. Washington McLean, who, with her daughter-in-law Mrs. John R. McLean, as vice-reine, presided jointly over Washington society in a way that no President’s wife could, even were she not epileptic. The senior Hay had decided not to attend the afternoon reception for Mrs. Washington McLean’s daughter, Millie, now wife to Admiral Dewey. As head of Ohio’s Democratic Party and proprietor of the Cincinnati Enquirer, John McLean, now the Admiral’s brother-in-law, was particularly unpopular with the Administration. But Del saw no reason why he shouldn’t go, and Caroline was eager to meet her fellow publisher, Mr. McLean. Thus far, their paths had not crossed in Washington’s jungle. But then Caroline had kept pretty much to her own bailiwick throughout the summer, which had proved to be as equatorial as Cousin John had promised. Fortunately, to Caroline’s surprise, she had proved as strong as she had boasted. There was no gasping retreat to Newport, Rhode Island, or Bar Harbor, Maine. She had divided the furnace-season between Georgetown and Market Square; and duly noted that by mid-July the city was entirely African. The President had retreated to Lake Champlain. Congress had gone home and the gentry had fled to cool northern spas. As a result, she had never so much enjoyed Washington. For one thing, there was the newspaper to be fathomed. For another, there were the legal maneuverings of Houghteling and Cousin John. To make no progress was Houghteling’s masterly aim; and no progress had been made. Meanwhile, Trimble taught Caroline the newspaper business, which seemed to have very little to do with news, and even less with business, in a profitable sense. Yet circulation had begun, slowly, to increase, thanks to Caroline’s bold imitation of Hearst. Both the Post and the Star had sent reporters to interview her, but she had refused to see them.

  In a city where all power was based on notoriety, she was thought eccentric—a rich young woman perversely playing at being a newspaper proprietor. She was not distressed by what they wrote. She now knew
, at first hand, that nothing written in a newspaper should ever be taken seriously. She might herself not know how to produce a successful newspaper but she certainly had learned how to read one. Simultaneously, Trimble had shown an unexpected, even original, interest in the corruption of city officials, and though she doubted that the subject was of much general interest, she encouraged him to reveal what crimes he could. Meanwhile, she exulted in the river’s catch of beautiful bodies, often torn, literally, to bits by raging passions. She was now experimenting with abandoned live babies in trash-cans, having failed to ignite the city’s compassion with abandoned dogs and cats.

  “How long will you keep it up?” asked Del. In front of them, Admiral Farragut, all in metal, rested a spy-glass on his raised left knee. Farther on, off the square in K Street, stood the McLean mansion.

  “Oh, forever, I suppose.” Their carriage now joined a long, slow line in front of the K Street mansion.

  “But doesn’t the paper lose a good deal of money?”

  “Actually, there is a small profit.” She did not add that the profit still came from calling-cards, and now that Congress was due to assemble in December, orders were coming in at rather more than the seasonal rate. “Anyway, I do it to amuse myself, and others.”

  Del tried not to frown; squinted his eyes instead. Caroline had come to know all his expressions; there were not many but they were, for the most part, agreeable to her. He had grown more confident since his diplomatic appointment; and somewhat stouter. He was his mother’s child. “You do find quite a lot of crime here.” Del tried to sound neutral. “I suppose people like to read about that.”

  “Yes, there is a lot of crime to be found here. But the real point is,” and Caroline frowned, not for the first time, at the thought, “does it make any difference if you tell people what is actually happening all around them? or do you ignore the real life of the city and simply describe the government in the way that it would like you to?”

  “You are a realist. Like Balzac. Like Flaubert …”

  “Like Hearst, I’m afraid. Except that Hearst’s realism is to invent everything because he wants to own everything, and if you’ve invented the details of a murder or a war, why, then it’s your murder, your war, not to mention your readers, your country.”

  “Do you invent?”

  “We—I do nothing, really. Like Queen Victoria I encourage, advise and warn—we sometimes put in what others leave out …”

  “As a matter of good taste …”

  Caroline laughed. “Good taste is the enemy of truth!”

  “Who is truth’s friend?”

  “No one in Washington—that I’ve met, anyway. I hope my peculiar métier doesn’t embarrass you.” To say that Del was conventional was to say everything.

  “No, no. You are like no one else, after all.”

  “You will do well in …”

  “Diplomacy?”

  “Pretoria.” They both laughed; and entered the “sumptuous mansion,” as the Tribune always described any home with a ballroom, at whose center stood the splendid Mrs. Washington McLean, flanked by her daughter Millie, a handsome little woman, aglitter with diamonds, and the happy white-haired, teak-faced, gold-braided bridegroom. Although Caroline had not been to many of Washington’s hard-pan affairs (so named because these new rich had, often as not, made their millions with a hard pan in some Western creek, prospecting for gold), she recognized from her own newspaper’s reports numerous city celebrities, permanent residents, often from the West, builders of new palaces along Connecticut and Massachusetts Avenues, those two great thoroughfares of the fashionable West End. She herself always caused something of a stir, as a grand Northern or European, or whatever she was, personage who had taken on the proprietorship of a dull small-town newspaper and made it incontrovertibly and shockingly yellow. No one could guess her motive. After all, she was a Sanford; engaged, more or less, to the equally rich Del Hay; yet she spent her days in Market Square, dealing in murders and, lately, civic corruption; and her evenings at home, where few of Washington’s cliff-dwellers or hard-panners were ever invited, assuming that they would come to the house of so equivocal a maiden.

  For company, Caroline had taken up with the Europeans, particularly with Cambon, the French minister; and with the recently ennobled British ambassador, Lord Pauncefote. Although she found the twice-divorced Russian ambassador, Count Arthur (surely, Arturo? she had said) Cassini, amusing and predictably gallant, she had followed Mrs. Hay’s advice and steered clear of him and his beautiful sixteen-year-old “niece,” who was, actually, his daughter by a one-time “actress,” now installed at the Russian embassy as the girl’s governess. The Washington newspapers had been almost as savage as the Washington gossips. Out of deference to Clara Hay, Caroline had avoided the Cassinis and the McLeans. Now she felt exhilarated as she stepped into the gilded room. Where the Hays and the Adamses and the Lodges were discreetly wealthy, and lived lives of muted splendor, prisoners to good taste and devotees of civilization at its most refined, the McLeans flaunted the inexhaustible contents of their hard pan. Guiltily, Caroline was more delighted by the vulgar kingdom than by the known one.

  Caroline and Del made their way down the receiving line. The Admiral was gracious. “Tell Mr. Hay how much I appreciated his letter.”

  “I will, sir.”

  “Is Mr. Hay coming?” asked Millie, a pretty woman, Caroline decided, for forty-nine.

  “I believe he is with the President tonight,” Del lied smoothly, and Caroline was pleased that he had taken so well to the world that he would be obliged to make his way in.

  “We expected the President.” The new Mrs. Dewey smiled hugely; the teeth were discolored. But the huge doll’s eyes were a marvelous blue.

  “There is a crisis,” murmured Del. “In the Philippines.”

  The small, imperial Mrs. Washington McLean regarded the young couple with mild curiosity. “We don’t see much of you, Mr. Hay,” she said. “We don’t see you at all, Miss Sanford.” This was neutral. The style was very much that of the Mrs. Astor.

  “I hope,” said Caroline, “that that will change.”

  “I do, too.” A thin smile hardly lit a face entirely shadowed by a diamond-studded bandeau lodged half an inch above small eyes. “I shan’t be here forever.”

  “You go back to Cleveland, to be renewed?”

  “No. To Heaven, to be redeemed.”

  Then Caroline found herself face to face with John R. McLean himself. He was tall, with the limpid blue eyes of his sister, and a neatly trimmed moustache. “Well, it’s you,” he said, staring down into Caroline’s face. “Come on. Let’s talk. Unless you want money from me. I don’t give money, outside the family.”

  “How wise.” Then, exquisitely pretentious, Caroline began to quote Goethe in the original German: apropos a father’s duties.

  Startled, McLean completed the quotation, in German. “How did you know I speak German?”

  “You were at school at Heidelberg. You see? I study my fellow publishers.”

  McLean began to hiccup, eyes misty with pleasure, or so Caroline hoped. “My stomach,” he said, “has been eroded by its own acids. Come into the library. Away from these people.”

  They sat before a huge fireplace, where great logs burned. The firelight was reflected in the dark blue leather bindings of the books, arranged like so many Union soldiers on parade in their mahogany shelves. “You can never make that paper a success.” He gave her a glass of champagne; he poured himself soda water. The library door was firmly shut to the other guests. When McLean noticed that her eyes were on the door, he laughed. “Two publishers can’t compromise each other.”

  “Let us hope Mr. Hay sees our relations so practically.”

  “I am told that he’s an agreeable young man. We’re all of us from Ohio, you know. At least Clara Stone is. John Hay’s from nowhere. A sort of gypsy who’s taken to stealing power instead of babies.”

  “How else,” asked Caroline, di
spleased, “is power obtained if it is not taken from someone else? I realize, of course, some power is inherited, the way you inherited the Enquirer …”

  McLean was amused. “Me, an idle heir! Well, that’s a new one. I built on an inheritance, you might say—like your friend Hearst.” From a log, bright blue Luciferian flowers suddenly bloomed.

  McLean stared at Caroline a moment. “I won’t ask you why you’re doing this,” he said finally. “I get pretty tired of people asking me that. If they can’t see why you—why we—do it,” he was suddenly attractive to her, now that he was collegial, “there’s no way of telling them. But since you’re a handsome young woman with a fortune, and Del Hay to marry, how long can you be so … original?”

  “As long as you, I suppose.”

  “I’m a man. We’re allowed to marry and we’re allowed—delighted to do business. No lady that I know of has ever set out, so young, while single, to do anything like this.”

  Caroline studied the white smoke which had replaced the blue flame-flowers. “Why,” she asked, “are you so eager to be president?”

  “How do you know I am?”

  “That’s coy, Mr. McLean. That is maidenly. You give me the sort of answers that I’m supposed to give you. Why do you want it so badly that you took on the President in his own home state, and lost, as you knew you were going to?”