Empire: A Novel

by Gore Vidal

  “There was a good deal to be sad about.”

  “My problems are so slight compared to his. Curious, to measure oneself with him. I don’t think I’m immodest when I say I’m very much superior to most of the politicians of our time. But when I think of what greatness he had …” Roosevelt sighed, a most un-Rooseveltian sound. “You must get some rest, John.”

  Hay nodded. “Once the treaty’s done. I’m going south.”

  “Bully!” Roosevelt was again his own best imitation.

  – 4 –

  THE GREAT hollow sound of metal striking the thick bole of a magnolia tree brought Caroline and Marguerite to the window of the Georgetown house. A motor car had, somehow, got from N Street onto the sidewalk and into the largest of Caroline’s two magnolias. At the wheel was Alice Roosevelt, a feathered hat now jammed over her implacable blue eyes, while at her side Marguerite Cassini, looking both beautiful and terrified, waved her hands in front of her, in a gesture which Caroline took to be, literally, the wringing of hands, something that only her own histrionic Marguerite ever did.

  Caroline hurried into the street, where an elderly Negro man was working hard to open the door on Alice’s side of the car; it had jammed.

  “The brakes!” Alice was accusing. “They don’t work. It’s your chauffeur’s fault.”

  “It’s my fault, when Father finds out.” Marguerite got out of the car. Caroline helped the Negro to free the Republican Princess, who then shoved her hat back in place; leapt to the ground; thanked the Negro; and said, “Tell the police to take this bit of junk back to the Russian embassy, in Scott Circle. It is the ugliest house there. They can’t miss it.”

  “My father—” Marguerite began.

  “Your father? My father. That’s the problem. He wouldn’t let me buy a car, you know.” Alice led Caroline into her own house, while Marguerite Cassini gave the Negro elaborate instructions. “I can’t fathom him. There are times when he seems to be living in another century. I had picked out this splendid roadster. Too killing. And he said, no. Never. Women are not to drive, or smoke, or vote. I agree on the vote, of course. It will just double the same old vote. Even so … What’s it like, being married?”

  They were now in the back parlor, overlooking the small garden where, because of the season, only late ominous chrysanthemums grew. The trees had lost their leaves; and in the small goldfish pond, a large goldfish had bellied up, a victim to overeating.

  “Serene. The same, actually. John’s mostly in New York with his law firm. I’m mostly here with the paper; and the child.”

  The two-month-old Emma Apgar Sanford was less noisy than Caroline had anticipated, and though not yet the best of company, she was a benign presence in the house, and Caroline, against Marguerite’s advice—no longer heeded, ever—breast-fed her daughter, and noted with awed wonder how large her gravid breasts had become. She was, for the first time in her life, à la mode in the grand fleshy world.

  Marguerite Cassini now made her hardly climactic entrance. Caroline admired her beauty; but nothing more. The shadow of Del seemed, mysteriously, attached to her. Caroline had heard it said that the opal ring that had broken in half on the New Haven pavement had been a gift from Countess Cassini. Plainly, fiction’s war with truth was never-ending. Marguerite went straight toward the open box of chocolates from Huyler’s, the city’s principal confectioner. Each Washington house ordered its own mixture, and Caroline had introduced white chocolate to Washington, a novelty still controversial in those circles where the Tribune’s Society Lady so hungrily moved. “You shouldn’t eat chocolate. You’ll get fat,” Alice announced. “I never eat dessert. Just meat and potatoes, like Father.”

  “Perhaps you’ll be as stout as he is,” said Marguerite, looking suddenly Mongol—or was it Tartar?—or were they the same? The friendship between La Cassini and Alice was the talk of the town, and by no means confined to the Society Lady’s circles. In the current troubles between Russia and Japan, President Roosevelt tended to take the Japanese side, to the fury of Cassini, who had roared in Caroline’s presence, “The man’s a pagan! We are a Christian nation like the United States, and he sides with yellow savage pagans.” At the White House, Russian greed was sadly deplored. The Administration was ready to acquiesce in Japan’s proposal that Russia might annex Manchuria if Japan could be allowed to take over Korea as well. The Tribune tried to be even-handed but tended, thanks to Mr. Trimble, to favor Russia, to the President’s fury. At the center of the new Cabinet room, he had made Caroline a long speech on the tides of history while a portrait of Abraham Lincoln looked wearily away from the seated woman, the marching President. Lately, Cassini tended to kiss rather too warmly Caroline’s hand at receptions, and Marguerite had thanked her for her editorial support. “It’s so difficult for me,” she had sighed, “now that I am doyenne of the diplomatic corps.” With Pauncefote’s death, Cassini had become the senior chief of mission at the capital. As his hostess, Marguerite sailed first into every official gathering; meanwhile, the President’s daughter defied her father and made Marguerite her friend, all because, as only Caroline knew, the President had refused to allow Alice to own a red automobile, and so Alice had commandeered the Russian Ambassador’s machine. The previous summer Alice and Marguerite, like Arctic explorers, had driven together to Newport, to the fearful applause of the public, to the horror of pedestrians run down, of motorists forced off the road. After today’s collision, Caroline was fairly certain that the relationship between Alice and Marguerite was about to undergo a sea-change. Cassini would deny them the use of his car; and Japan would triumph over Russia. The causal links, as Brooks Adams liked to say.

  “What am I wearing tomorrow at the British embassy?” asked Alice, opening her handbag, removing a cigarette case and, as expertly as any clubman, lighting up. Caroline still experienced mild shock whenever she saw this; and had said so. “But,” Alice had assured her, “everyone will be doing it now that I do.”

  “But you don’t do it beneath your father’s roof.”

  “I do it out the window, a technicality he has come to respect. So what am I wearing?”

  “The dark blue velvet, with lace at the throat …” Caroline began.

  “I won’t lend you my sable again.” Marguerite was squashing the chocolates with her fingers; she liked only soft centers.

  Both Mrs. Roosevelt and Alice liked to invent elaborate costumes, which they did not possess, and then give the White House press secretary descriptions of these fabulous creations, which would be written of, ecstatically, in every “Society Lady” page. As it was, neither lady could afford much of anything to wear, though, of the two, Alice was somewhat richer. When Caroline had caught on to the White House game, Alice had asked her to help invent costumes, which Caroline would describe in the Tribune, to the amazement of those who had actually seen what the Roosevelt ladies had been wearing.

  The maid-of-all-work appeared with tea. Caroline had planned to move to larger quarters and hire what the Apgars would call a proper staff, but John’s liabilities had used up her own income for the year; fortunately, the newspaper had begun, shyly, to flourish, and she could live, comfortably, as a Mrs. Sanford in Georgetown instead of the Mrs. Sanford, which she would not be until March 5, 1905, some fifteen months in the future. Worse, she suspected that John had even greater debts than he had admitted to. Even worse, she suspected that Blaise knew just how insolvent her unexpected bridegroom was, because he had only recently suggested that she sell him the Tribune, if she were so minded. She was not so minded, she said, and continued to watch, as did all Washington, his palace take shape on Connecticut Avenue, rivalling in its ornate marble splendor those Dupont Circle palaces where reigned the Leiters and now the Pattersons, whose daughter, Eleanor, known as Cissy, a restless nineteen-year-old, entered on the arm of the most elegant member of the House of Representatives, one Nicholas Longworth of Ohio, a dapper figure in his early thirties, most glitteringly bald. One day it was rumored that he
was supposed to marry Marguerite Cassini; the next, Alice Roosevelt; the day after, no one at all, for “he is,” his mother had confided to the press, “a born bachelor.”

  Caroline poured tea; made conversation, not that much of that ever had to be made in a room containing Alice, who never stopped talking, particularly when inspired to shock, and Longworth seemed her particular butt of the moment. While Marguerite Cassini glowed, in her Tartar way, and Alice spoke rudely of the House of Representatives, Cissy Patterson told Caroline her problems. Cissy’s face was that of a dull red-haired Pekinese, with a small pink nose; eyes, too, for she had been weeping. “Yes, I’ve been crying on Nick’s shoulder,” she murmured to Caroline.

  “The Pole?”

  “The Pole. I can’t believe Mother is doing this to me.”

  “But he is handsome …”

  “I don’t think I care for men,” said Cissy, staring at Caroline in a way that made that new mother—new woman, too—somewhat uneasy; the gaze was too like Mlle. Souvestre’s.

  “Oh, you’ll get used to them. They are too large, of course, for most uses.” Caroline thought fondly of Jim, who visited her every Sunday, after his ride along the canal. He smelled, always, of horse. In fact, she now so connected sex with horses that she had suggested that perhaps he send her the horse on a Sunday, and himself go home to Kitty. He had been shocked.

  “It’s not that. At least, I don’t think it is. Of course, I’m a virgin.”

  “Of course,” said Caroline. “We all were once. Such happy carefree days.”

  “I don’t know about happy. But Joseph is deeply impressed by my virginity. Apparently, there are no virgins in Europe.”

  “Very few, certainly.” Caroline was eager to be agreeable. Cissy’s uncle was Robert McCormick, whose wife’s family published the Chicago Tribune, and he was eager to buy Caroline’s Tribune. Cissy’s brother, Joe Patterson, was a reporter for her uncle’s paper; and so, like a law of nature, Pattersons had begun to gravitate toward Sanfords, printer’s ink, in its way, as binding as blood. Cissy had literary dreams; she would write novels, she said; and promptly picked up Mr. James’s latest effort, The Ambassadors, inscribed to Henry Adams, who had recommended it to Caroline, who had given up reading fiction now that she herself, a newspaper publisher, was a principal purveyor of that evanescent product.

  “He’s too long-winded now.” Cissy had learned to say what everyone else said, a moment or two before perfect staleness made dust of the conventional wisdom. As a result, she was thought clever. “He’s getting a million,” she whispered into Caroline’s ear, while biting off, one by one, the points of one of Huyler’s very special thin chocolate leaves.

  “Count Gizycki?”

  Cissy nodded, tragically; mouth full of chocolate.

  “That’s fair, I suppose.” Caroline was judicious. “In Europe, the bride brings the money while the husband provides the title, the name and the castle. There is a castle?”

  “In Poland.” Cissy sighed. “He doesn’t love me, you know.”

  “Then why marry him?”

  “Mother wants me to be a countess. Father will pay, of course. But it’s very un-American, buying a husband.”

  “It may be un-American but Americans do it all the time. Look at Harry Lehr and the poor Drexel girl. Or read your uncle’s paper, or mine, or—if you’re really innocent—any of Mr. Hearst’s. It’s common.”

  “Common!” Cissy looked as if she might burst into tears. “I wish,” she said unexpectedly, “I had your mouth.”

  “I’ll give it to you, on your wedding day—in the form of a kiss,” added Caroline, uneasily aware that she was now the recipient of a “crush.”

  Marguerite Cassini joined them, leaving, unwisely, thought Caroline, Nick Longworth to the predatory Alice, who had her father’s need to be always the center of attention. She was capable of marrying anyone, if she thought that that was the only way of gaining everyone’s complete attention. Of the Republican dollar princesses, Alice was the most interesting, and the most doomed, Caroline decided, to unhappiness. It was all very well to be the most famous girl in the United States, but then, more soon than late, all-powerful presidents turned into obscure ex-presidents, while glamorous girls became women, wives, mothers, forgotten. She could not imagine Alice old; it would be against nature. Meanwhile, the beautiful Cassini was consoling Cissy, with countessly wisdom. “The family is a great one—for Poland, of course. And his best friend is very close to us, Ivan von Rubido Zichy, who says Joseph is over the heels head in love with you!”

  “These names sound,” said Caroline, “like characters in The Prisoner of Zenda.”

  “You are so literary,” said Marguerite, disapprovingly. “You must get it from having to read all those newspapers.”

  “My White House marriage will be the first since poor Julia Grant married Prince Cantacuzene.” Alice hurled herself at center stage.

  “Nellie Grant, Julia’s mother, was married in the White House.” Longworth was languidly pedantic. “That was the last White House marriage. Julia was married in Newport …”

  “And my father, representing the Tsar, had to give permission, which he wouldn’t, of course, because Julia’s aunt, Mrs. Potter Palmer, wouldn’t come up with a dowry on the ground that Julia was pretty enough to be married for herself alone.”

  “Hardly true,” all three girls echoed as one.

  “So Father said to Mrs. Potter, ‘How much do you pay your cook?’ Then he explained that a newlywed prince and princess must also have enough money to pay their cook. He was overwhelming. Of course, the Prince was rich in his own right …”

  Caroline cut short Marguerite’s tsarist vainglory. “Alice, you must tell us when your White House wedding will take place; and with whom …”

  Alice was brisk. “In 1905, probably. After Father’s reelected. I haven’t picked anyone yet. Blaise is very rich, isn’t he?”

  “Very.” Caroline had often thought what a good match it would be for him, not to mention the publisher of the Tribune. In or out of the White House, the Roosevelts would be colorful, if nothing else. “You’d also have that new palace of his to live in.”

  “Oh, I’d never live here! Too dull. Scenes of former glory sort of thing. I don’t want to be a fixture. No, I could never live here. I want New York, Paris, London …”

  “Oyster Bay is probably what you’ll get,” said Longworth. “And deserve.”

  “Better that than Cincinnati.” Alice’s eyelashes were, Caroline noticed, remarkably thick; she fell just short of actual beauty. Did she care?

  Then Longworth proceeded to amuse them with an impression of Theodore Roosevelt, which made even his daughter laugh: and Alice was always alert to condemn lèse-majesté. But Nick, like the President, was a member of Harvard’s Porcellian Club and so nearly an equal.

  “I was in his office Monday, talking about some business in the House, and he was in a bad mood—for him, that is. So I was getting a bit uneasy because I’d promised this young Cincinnati reporter that I’d get him into the President’s office for a minute or two, and he was waiting in the next room. Anyway, after we finished our business, I said, ‘You know, Colonel, there’s a young journalist who’d like to say hello …’ ” With that, Longworth began a rendition of Theodore Roosevelt—snarling, grimacing, charging about the room, fists punching wildly at the air. “ ‘Never! Never, Nick! You presume too much! You are a fellow Pork, true. We are bound together by the ties that bind all gentlemen, but, no! Of course, I am the First Magistrate, and I am accessible, in theory, to every citizen. But if I saw them all, there would be no time left for me to magistrate …’ ‘First magistrate,’ I ventured. ‘Execute,’ ” the voice was now an inhuman shriek, “ ‘my office. What’s his name?’ I told him. ‘Never heard of him. What’s the newspaper?’ I told him. ‘Never heard of it!’ I was desperate. ‘His father, so-and-so, led the movement that denied General Grant a third term.’ ‘I don’t believe it. Send him in.’ Well, the y
oung man entered, filled with awe, and the President practically embraced him. ‘I am thrilled, young man, to make your acquaintance. Do you know why? Because your grandfather was one of the greatest men I have ever had the privilege to meet. How well I remember him arguing to the party’s leaders—such eloquence!—which you’ve inherited, I can see, in the pages of your inspiring journal. Well, sir, on that occasion your grandfather was another Demosthenes, but unlike the original, he stopped the tyrant, and saved the republic from corruption of a sort that it makes me shudder, even now, to contemplate. Go thou, my boy, and do likewise!’ With that the President shook the ecstatic boy’s hand and got him out of the room, a convert to TR for life. Then he turned to me and hissed, ‘Never do that to me again!’ Then he winked.”

  As they all laughed, Alice said, thoughtfully, “Father has depths of insincerity not even he has plumbed.”

  “It is the nature,” said Longworth, “of our politicians’ art.”

  The ladies asked to see the baby, who was brought down to the drawing room, a solemn wide-eyed child. Cissy promptly burst into tears at the thought of marriage and babies and money and a title, and Caroline gave her a tumbler of brandy, which she drank in a single gulp, to everyone’s amazement.

  As the impromptu “at-home” broke up, Marguerite Cassini took Caroline aside to announce, “Nick has asked me to marry him. Tell nobody.”

  Except the public, thought Caroline, who asked, “Will you?”

  Marguerite nodded.

  “Come on, Maggie,” Alice commanded. “Nick’s taking us in his carriage. I hope that father of yours fixes those brakes. We,” she said dramatically, “could have been killed.”

  “Maybe,” said Cissy, darkly, to no one, “it would be for the best.”

  “Do be still,” said Princess Alice; and they were gone.

  Glumly, Caroline sat at her desk and began, yet again, to study her husband’s debts. Slowly, she was coming to the realization that if his creditors refused to wait, she might have to sell the Tribune. She did her best not to blame John. After all, she had married him, and not the other way round. Even so, men were supposed to know about business, and she felt, obscurely, cheated. The wages of sin, she thought; and laughed aloud: she was beginning to think like a newspaper. Nevertheless, where, she wondered, could money be found?