Empire

by Gore Vidal

  “The Chief’s amazing,” Blaise murmured in Caroline’s ear. “He’s like a painter.”

  “But is it always murder first?” Caroline’s voice was low, but Hearst, now on all fours, heard her. “Rape’s better,” he said, “if you’ll forgive the word.”

  The Willson girls shrieked with delight. Hearst received an enlarged headline from a copy-boy: “Murdered Woman Found!” He placed it above the Madonna face. “We also like a good fire.”

  “And a good war,” said Mr. Abbott dutifully.

  “Look,” said Blaise. On the wall opposite, beneath an American flag, the huge headline “Journal’s War Won!”

  “Your war, Mr. Hearst?”

  “Pretty much, Miss Sanford. McKinley and Hanna weren’t ever going to fight. So we got the war going so they’d have to…” Hearst sat on his heels, a strand of blond dull hair in one eye. “Mr. Abbott, wasn’t the murdered woman found nude?”

  “Actually, no, Chief. She was wearing a sort of gingham dress…”

  “Well, make that a slip… a torn slip.” Hearst smiled up at Caroline. “I hope this doesn’t shock you.”

  “No. Blaise has prepared me.”

  “Blaise has got a real knack for this.” The great man then started in on page two, with running commentary to Abbott, mostly asking for more pictures and large headlines; also, “We’re giving too much space to that dude Roosevelt. Remember. We’re for Van Wyck. And sound government, and all that.”

  “You mean Tammany, Chief?” Abbott smiled.

  “Platt’s better than Tammany any day. But Van Wyck’s our crook. Roosevelt’s theirs. But we’ll clean up this city one of these days.”

  “Reform?” asked Caroline, who knew in theory what the word meant; knew, in practice, what it meant when applied to New York City’s politics; knew nothing of what the word meant to Hearst.

  “Yes, Miss Sanford. The whole country, too. Bryan’s hopeless. McKinley’s just a front for old moneybags Hanna.” Hearst stood up. On the floor, his masterpiece: the front page for the next morning’s edition of the New York Journal. “So we need somebody new, clean.”

  “That’s what they say Roosevelt is.” Blaise was cautious.

  “He’s Platt’s candidate. How can Platt be reformed? Anyway, he’s going to lose. Mr. Abbott.” Hearst turned to the editor just as that more than ever weary figure was presenting the intricate mosaic of the front page to the printer.

  “Yes, Chief.”

  “I’ve decided on our next president.” Even the Willson girls stopped dancing when they heard this. Everyone looked very solemn; even Caroline was impressed.

  “Yes, Chief?” The editor was imperturbable. “Who?”

  “Admiral Dewey. Hero of Manila. ‘You may fire when you are ready, Gridley.’ That’s as good as ‘Don’t shoot till you see the whites of their eyes.’ ”

  “But did Admiral Dewey really say those-those inspiring words?” Caroline was now caught up in the excitement of inventing history, not to mention of creating presidents.

  “Well, we said he said it, and I suppose he probably did say something like it. Anyway, he hasn’t denied it, and that’s what matters. Besides, he beat the Spaniards and got us Manila. Do you know him?” Although Hearst was looking at Caroline, the question was to Abbott.

  “No, Chief. But I suppose we could write or cable him and inquire…”

  “Nothing in writing!” Hearst was firm. “Send someone to Manila, to sound him out. If he’s willing, we’ll nominate him to run against McKinley.”

  “Is the Admiral a Democrat?” asked Blaise.

  “Who cares? I’m sure he doesn’t.”

  “But,” asked Caroline, “does he want to be president?”

  “Oh, everyone does over here. That’s why we call ourselves a democracy. Fact, just about anyone can be president, particularly if the Journal promotes him right.”

  “You, too?” Caroline was bold; despite Blaise’s evident dismay.

  But Hearst was bland. “Do you like Weber and Fields?”

  “The shoemakers?” Caroline had heard the names before. “In Bond Street.”

  The Willson girls giggled in harmonic unison. “No. Comedians. In vaudeville. I can’t get enough of them. We must take her with us sometime,” Hearst said to Blaise; then to Caroline, “Now get this. Weber and Fields are in this fancy French restaurant, and the waiter comes up after dinner and the waiter asks Weber if he wants a demitasse, and Weber says yes. Then the waiter asks Fields if he’d like a demitasse, too, and Fields says, ‘Yes,’ ” at this point Hearst began to laugh, “ ‘Yes, I’d like a demitasse, too, and,’ ” Hearst was now shaking with laughter while the Willson sisters clung to one another, giggling, “ ‘and I’d also like a cup of coffee.’ ” The office echoed with laughter; and Caroline assumed that her question had been dramatically answered.

  Blaise drove her back to the Waldorf-Astoria; escorted her to the suite where old Marguerite, in her night-dress, greeted him with a cascade of pent-up French. “She will not learn English,” said Caroline, presenting Blaise with a new bottle of brandy, which he opened. As he filled a glass for each, Marguerite delivered herself of a tirade celebrating the beauties and comforts of Saint-Cloud-le-Duc as contrasted with the horrors of New York; then she went to bed.

  Every vase in the Louis XVI sitting room was filled with chrysanthemums despite Marguerite’s piteous pleas that they be taken away, for, as the civilized world knows, chrysanthemums are flowers suited only to memorialize the dead. Although Caroline told her not to be superstitious, she herself was somewhat troubled by those memento mori. But she kept them where they were, all bronze and yellow, as a proof of her new unsuperstitious Americanism.

  “Do you like the Chief?” Blaise sipped at his cognac. Caroline poured herself Vichy water.

  “I don’t think I’d ever find him very easy to like. But he’s certainly fascinating to watch-to listen to. Is he so powerful?”

  Blaise nodded. “He can really make someone president…”

  “But he didn’t say someone. He said anyone.”

  “Well, he exaggerates at times.”

  Caroline laughed. “At times? I should think that that’s his power. He exaggerates all the time.”

  “It sells newspapers.”

  “That’s all that he cares about?”

  Blaise refused to be led into deeper waters. “As a publisher, yes. That’s what I want to be.”

  “With Mr. Hearst?”

  “No. I want to be my own Mr. Hearst.”

  “He doesn’t know that yet, does he?”

  “How can you tell?” Blaise gave her his best boyish smile; and it was still most boyish even though she knew the amount of adult calculation that went into it. Charm was Blaise’s most formidable weapon. Charm was Caroline’s most fragile defense.

  “The way he treats you. With everyone else, he is very grand seigneur. He is polite, the way we are to servants. But he treats you as an equal, which means that he expects you to invest money-perhaps all your money-in his papers.” Caroline had not intended to get so directly to the will but she trusted her instinct about Hearst’s attitude to Blaise.

  Blaise frowned, not at all boyishly. In fact, he looked like his father at the card table, trying to recall the bidding. “I’m not about,” he said finally, “to make this kind of investment.”

  “But you’ve allowed him to think that you will.” Caroline understood Blaise. Did he, she wondered, hardly for the first time, understand her? “That could be dangerous, with a man so-unusual.”

  “Father meant twenty-seven.” Blaise struck hard. “Mr. Houghteling ought to know. He was his lawyer. He says there is no doubt of intention.”

  Caroline sat very straight in her chair. Back of Blaise’s head a mass of bronze chrysanthemums were arrayed as for a funeral. An omen? If so, his funeral or hers? “It was a lucky accident for you that Father’s pen slipped. We both know what he meant. But what I want to know is what you mean. Why do you want my share o
f the estate? Surely, there’s enough for both?”

  “There isn’t. For what I want to do.” Blaise looked at her bleakly.

  “To start a newspaper?”

  Blaise nodded. “I’m learning how it’s done now. When I’m ready, I’ll start my own, or buy one. Maybe here…”

  For once, Caroline could not stop herself from smiling. “In competition with Mr. Hearst?”

  “Why not? He’d understand.”

  “There’s no doubt he’d understand! He’d understand that you had betrayed him. He’d also understand that if you tried to compete with him, he’d be obliged to crush you, as he seems to have crushed Mr. Pulitzer.”

  “The World’s doing all right. Mr. Pulitzer just isn’t number one any more.”

  “So there might yet be Hearst, Pulitzer and Sanford?”

  “Yes,” Blaise said; and said no more.

  Caroline was impressed; and appalled. “You will lose the entire inheritance.”

  “No,” Blaise said; and said no more.

  “Lose or gain, for six years you will have the use of my capital. Then-what happens?”

  “According to Mr. Houghteling,” Blaise was deliberate, “you’ll inherit the amount which represents half the estate at the time the will was probated.”

  Caroline began to see her way through the labyrinth; and not as a victim but as the Minotaur. “Should you double my share of the estate, you will keep half?”

  “That seems only fair. I will have doubled it, not you.”

  “If you lose…”

  “I won’t lose…”

  “If you lose, what do I get?”

  Blaise’s smile was radiant: “Half of nothing.”

  “So I lose everything if you are unfortunate and gain nothing if you are lucky.”

  “You’ll be paid thirty thousand dollars a year for the next six years. You can live very nicely on that here. Even better, back at Saint-Cloud.”

  Caroline began to see a way through to-the treasure. She was not yet sufficiently New York predator to demand living flesh for her dinner. She had begun by wanting what was hers. Now she was eager to take what was his, as well. Although family history had always bored her, she had been sufficiently intrigued by her father’s cryptic references to the fact that Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler, her grandfather, had been an illegitimate son of Aaron Burr. At Mlle. Souvestre’s school she had had the good luck to have a history teacher who did not, like all the others, disdain American history. Together they had read all that they could-which was not much-about her great-grandfather, who seemed more artist than rogue, more Lord Chesterfield than Machiavelli-and, of course, Burr was her maternal ancestor, not Blaise’s, which gave her an advantage if there should be anything to the laws or, rather, whims of heredity. Burr had been narrowly cheated of the presidency; had been rather less narrowly, to say the most, cheated of the crown of Mexico; had lived long enough to see another illegitimate son, if the gossip was true, become president. Burr had been called a traitor but, in actual fact, he had been something far worse and more dangerous to his world, a dreamer. Because of this sublime subversive trait, he had enchanted Caroline. Finally, as Aaron Burr had treated his only legitimate child as if she were a son, so Caroline had vowed when she left Europe for America that she would now become Burr’s great-grandson, and live out, on the grandest scale possible, that subtle creature’s dream of a true civilization with himself as its center, whether in the provincial capital Washington or the even more unlikely Mexico. But where the man Burr had wanted high office-even a crown-his great-grand self-styled son was, after all, unmistakably and completely a woman, and so for Caroline there would be no high office in a nation where only males were allowed to occupy such visible places; yet there was something far better than mere office, and she had got a glimpse of it that evening on the second floor of the Tribune Building in Park Lane; there was, simply, true power. Although money was the source of power in this rude place, now even less of a civilization than it had been in Burr’s day, what she had seen and heard of Hearst that night had convinced her that the ultimate power is not to preside in a white house or open a parliament while seated on a throne but to reinvent the world for everyone by giving them the dreams that you wanted them to dream. She doubted if Blaise-heir to prosaic Delacroix but not to the arch-dreamer Burr-grasped this. He saw simply an exciting game to play, with money and the illusion of power as its reward. While she saw herself creating a world that would be all hers, since she, like Hearst, would have reinvented all the players, giving them their dialogue, moving them in and out of wars: “Remember the Maine,” “Cuba Libre,” “Rough Riders,” “Yellow Kids”… Oh, she could do better than any of that! She too could use a newspaper to change the world. She felt giddy with potentiality. But, first, she must see to her inheritance. She got to her feet. Blaise did the same.

  “I suppose,” she said, “we’ll next meet in court.”

  Blaise blinked. “You have no case.”

  “I shall accuse you of altering the will.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “I know you didn’t. But the accusation will always be there, all your life. Mr. Hearst can afford not to be respectable. You can’t.”

  “You can’t prove a thing. And I’ll still win.”

  “I wouldn’t be so certain. Anyway, remember this.”-Remember the Maine! Had Aaron Burr ever so rapturous a vision?-“I shall do anything to get what’s mine.”

  “All right.” Blaise turned to go. “I’ll see you in court.” He opened the door to the suite. “Do you know how much litigation costs here?”

  “I took the liberty of removing the four Poussins from Saint-Cloud. They are in London, with a dealer. He says they should fetch a marvellous price.”

  “You stole my pictures?” Blaise was white with fury.

  “I took my pictures. When we divide the estate, evenly, I’ll give you your half of what I get from the sale. Meanwhile, I shall be able to buy quite a lot of wonderful American law.”

  “Comme tu est affreuse!”

  “Comme toi-même!”

  Blaise slammed the door hard behind him. Caroline remained standing in the center of the room, politely smiling, and singing, rather loudly, and to her own surprise, verse after verse of “There’ll be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.”

  2

  THE BRONZE BUSTS of Henry James and William Dean Howells stared off into space, as did the earthly head of Henry Adams beside the fire. It was John Hay’s turn to be host to his friend and neighbor, and from his armchair he surveyed the three heads with a pleasure he was quick to identify to himself as elderly. Each belonged to a friend. If nothing else, he had done very well when it came to friends. Although he was not the man-of-letters that James or Howells was, or the historian that Adams was, he felt extended through them beyond his natural talents. Had he wanted to turn round in his chair, he could have stared into Lincoln’s bronze face, surprisingly life-like for a life-mask. But Hay seldom looked at the face that he had once known far better than his own. During the years that he and Nicolay were writing their enormous history of the President, Hay was amazed to find that he had lost all firsthand memory of Lincoln. The million words that they had written had had the effect of erasing Hay’s own memory. Nowadays, when asked about the President, he could only remember what they had written, so dully he knew, of that odd astounding man. Hay and Adams often discussed whether or not a memoir might not have the same effect-a gradual erasing of oneself, bit by bit, with words. Adams thought that this would be ideal; Hay did not. He liked his own past, as symbolized by the two busts, one life-mask. He had always suspected, even in moods melancholy and hypochondriacal, that he would end his days in comfort, with abundant memories, seated at his fireside on a February night in the last year of the nineteenth century, in the company of a friend not yet bust-ed. Of course, he had not counted on being secretary of state at the end of the road, but he did not any longer object to the dull grind, which he had turned over to A
dee, or to the battles with the Senate, which he allowed Senator Lodge to conduct for him, with considerable help from Lodge’s old Harvard professor Henry Adams.

  Now the old friends waited for Mrs. Hay, and the dinner guests and “the shrimps,” as Hay addressed his children: two out of four were in the house. Alice and Helen were deeply involved in the capital’s social life. Clarence was away at school. Del was in New York, perhaps studying law. Hay had always found it easy to talk to his own father; yet found it impossible to talk to his oldest son. Some bond of sympathy had, simply, not developed between them. But then Hay had been a country boy like Lincoln, with nothing but his wits-and a connection or two; while Del, like Lincoln’s son Robert, was born to wealth. Lincoln father and Lincoln son had not got on well, either.

  “Will Del marry the Sanford girl?” Adams often strayed into Hay’s mind.

  “I was just thinking of Del, as you must have known, with those other-worldly Adams psychic powers. I don’t know. He doesn’t confide in me. I know he sees her in New York, where she’s set up for the winter.”

  “She’s uncommonly clever,” said Adams. “Of all the young girls I know…”

  “The brigade of girls…”

  “You make me sound like Tiberius. But of the lot, she is the only one I can’t work out.”

  “Well, she’s not like an American girl. That’s one reason.” Hay had found Caroline disturbingly direct in small matters and unfathomable when it came to those things that must be taken seriously, like marriage. There was also the problem, even mystery, of her father’s will. “I think she’s made a mistake, contesting the will. After all, when she’s twenty-five, or whatever, she’ll inherit. So why fuss?”

  “Because at her age five years seems forever. I hope Del brings her into the family. I should like her for a niece.”

  “He threatens to bring her here, for a visit. But he hasn’t.”

  The butler announced, “Senator Lodge, sir.” Both Hay and Adams rose as the handsome, were it not for a pair of cavernous nostrils that always made Hay think, idly, of a bumblebee, patrician-politician glided into the room. “Mrs. Hay has got off with Nannie. Neither one can bear to hear me say another word about the treaty.”