Empire

by Gore Vidal

  “Nothing ventured,” she concluded. Caroline quite liked the look of what she now took to be her future city.

  The carriage turned into Pennsylvania Avenue. Down the avenue’s center, there were two streetcar tracks, parallel to one another. Electrical cars glided, more or less smoothly, from northwest, the Treasury, to southeast, the Capitol, and back again. Unlike New York City, Washington had few automobiles: “devil wagons,” according to the large black woman who presided over the N Street kitchen. As always, Caroline was struck by the number of black people; they seemed to be the city while everyone else was, like herself, a transient member of an alien race. “A city of hotels,” she said, as they passed a huge Romanesque building, with a turreted tower.

  “And medieval cathedrals.” Sanford did not appreciate the great new post office, behind which had once flourished Marble Alley, with its thousand brothels, once known locally as “Hooker’s division” since the girls had been so busily employed by that general’s troops.

  “The influence of Mr. Adams?”

  “His architect’s, yes. Washington, thanks to Mr. Richardson, has leapt from first-century Rome to twelfth-century Avignon, with almost nothing in between.”

  “That means there’s still a renaissance to look forward to.” The carriage turned into E Street, and stopped before yet another Adams-influenced building, all low arches and high-peaked roofs. Across the building’s pale rough stone front, a sign proclaimed: The Washington Post. Out-of-town newspapers also maintained offices in the Post’s building, their names inscribed on upper windows. Caroline duly noted that the New York Journal and San Francisco Examiner shared an office. Mr. Hearst had already dropped his anchor at the capital in the form of a scandalously brilliant California newspaperman called Ambrose Bierce. The Pittsburgh Dispatch and the Cleveland Plain Dealer also advertised from fourth-story windows. The names of these newspapers, unknown to her a few months ago, now caused pleasurable reverberations in her head.

  In front of the Post building, there was a large newsstand where out-of-town-and even out-of-hemisphere-newspapers were on sale. Beneath an awning, next to the busy newsstand, a high blackboard stood, covered with mysterious white and yellow lines.

  “What is that for? A lottery?”

  “Baseball scores. From all over the country.”

  “Is that the game,” asked Caroline, “they play with a wooden stick?”

  “Yes.” Sanford smiled. “As someone who is about to become deeply involved in American life, I suggest you know all about baseball.” Sanford now led her into Gerstenberg’s Restaurant, next door to the Post. The interior was smoky, and smelled of vinegar-of sauerkraut, to be exact, she decided sadly; she had never been inclined to German cuisine. A German waiter in shirt-sleeves and red galluses led them past the crowded bar. “Newspapermen,” whispered Sanford, as if warning her of lepers in a lazaret.

  They were established at a table in the back, close to the swing-door to the kitchen. Huge schooners of beer sailed past them, and any moment Caroline expected to be drowned by one; but the waiters were as dexterous as they were loud. Then the man they had come to meet joined them.

  Josiah J. Vardeman was a mulatto. Quite unprepared for anyone so exotic, Caroline gazed in fascination at the red kinky hair, café au lait skin and unmistakably Negroid features in which were set pale gray eyes. Mr. Vardeman was not yet forty; dapper in appearance; elaborate in manners. “I am late, Miss Sanford. Forgive me. I have been with advertisers. You can imagine. Good to see you again, Mr. Sanford.”

  Caroline stared at Sanford, who looked at her innocently. He had intended to surprise her; and he had succeeded. “I see you are tolerant of the opposition,” she said. Vardeman looked bewildered; she explained, “I mean you come here …”

  “Oh, yes. A German place. But then my father’s family were German. From the Rhineland.”

  “I meant here, next to your opposition, the Washington Post.”

  “Oh, that.” He laughed. “Well, we are so much older. We can afford to be nice to the new folks. I’m not saying I wouldn’t mind having some of their advertisers. They’re good at business, those people. We’re not, sad to say. But we Vardemans are an old family, and I guess old families lose some of their vigor, don’t they? Europe’s full of that, I reckon.”

  Caroline then knew delight. “Old family? Oh, Mr. Vardeman, we’re all of us-everyone there is-as old as Adam and Eve and no older.”

  “I am second to none in my belief in Scripture, Miss Sanford, but families that have had great men in them sort of dry up at the roots, you might say, and the next crop or two don’t amount to all that much.”

  “I wouldn’t know. My own family is nondescript except for one ancestor, perhaps.” How on earth, she wondered, could she get this extraordinary creature deeper into genealogy?

  “Who is that?” he asked.

  “Oh, no one very highly regarded nowadays, or even known-Aaron Burr,” she said, hoping that the name would mean absolutely nothing.

  She was disappointed. Vardeman clapped his hands. “We are practically related!” Caroline was pleased to see that a number of surprised, not to mention suspicious, looks were turned in their direction. Cousin John looked very pale indeed; to compensate, no doubt, for this new relation. “My mother was a Jefferson. One of the Abilene, Maryland, Jeffersons. So your ancestor was my ancestor’s vice-president.”

  Caroline expressed delight and wonder. She had always heard that Jefferson had had a number of children by a mulatto slave girl; no doubt, this was the descendant of one of them, passing, as perhaps they all did by now, for white. In any case, Caroline knew that she had at least one thing in common with Mr. Josiah J. (for Jefferson?) Vardeman: each was descended, literally, from a bastard. Now it was her task to have something else in common.

  “I am interested, as my cousin has told you, in acquiring the Washington Tribune. I have developed a passion for newspapers…”

  “Devilish expensive passion,” murmured Sanford, lighting a cigar. Caroline felt like a man; like a business man. This was life. She wished that she knew how to smoke! A cigarette smoked openly in a German restaurant would quite overshadow Mrs. Fish’s girlish capers at lofty Sherry’s. Mr. Vardeman, lineage forgotten, was watching her attentively. “There are,” she said, “five thousand shares in all, and all owned by you or your family,”

  “Yes. It’s always been a family newspaper. First, Mr. Wallach owned it. Then he started up the Evening Star. I’m third generation of his family. A cadet branch,” he added, not knowing, Caroline decided, what the phrase meant.

  Caroline took a deep breath; and inhaled her cousin’s cigar smoke. No, she would not take up cigarettes, she decided; she coughed once, and said: “I accept your offer of twenty-two dollars and fifty cents for each of the five thousand shares.” Next to her, Sanford coughed. She had taken him by surprise. But she had not taken herself by surprise. She had spent a lot of time in N Street, thinking. She was betting almost everything that she had on a single throw of the dice.

  Mr. Vardeman stared at her, as if not certain whether he was being included in a particularly high-toned verbal game. Then, as she gave no signal that she was anything other than serious, he said, “What will you do with a newspaper, if I may ask? They’re not easy or cheap to run, as I can tell you firsthand. The Tribune loses money every issue. We’d have to close down if it weren’t for our printing shop, and all those visiting cards they make for everybody. Mr. Sanford’s told you about our books, I guess.” Mr. Vardeman had finished his stein of beer. At the bottom of the now-empty mug, Caroline noted the ominous legend “Stolen from Gerstenberg’s.”

  “Indeed I have,” said Cousin John. “And there’s no doubt that the Tribune’s name is a great one in the city. But the Post and the Star have sewed up the town. What can anyone do to change that?” He looked at Vardeman, who looked at Caroline, who said, “I’m sure there are new things to be done. Who would have thought Mr. Hearst could have revived the New York
Journal?” This was a daring move, because for all that Caroline knew, Blaise and Hearst might already have been in correspondence with Vardeman. On the other hand, she had had tea with Phoebe Apperson Hearst, the sweetly stern mother of the most ambitious man in publishing, if not the United States, and Mrs. Hearst had said, “I have spent all that I intend on my son’s newspapers. I now want to spend money on educating young Americans.”

  “So that they will be too clever to read your son’s newspapers?”

  The old lady had looked, first, severe; then she had laughed. “I had not thought of that.” Then she had proceeded to speak longingly of California, and of a university at an exotic place called Palo Alto. What her son was doing for journalism, she would do for education. Plainly, mother and son would be forever at cross-purposes.

  “Mr. Hearst’s people were down here a few months ago. They looked over the plant, the books, everything. They’re still very interested.” Vardeman’s attempt at selling was perfunctory. He did not expect anyone to pay the price he was asking for what was, essentially, a run-down printer’s shop.

  “Do we have,” asked Caroline tentatively, “an agreement?”

  Solemnly, Vardeman extended his hand across the table. Solemnly, Caroline shook it. “The Tribune,” said the now former publisher, “is no longer a Wallach-Jefferson-Vardeman newspaper-after forty-two long, long years,” he added somewhat anti-climactically.

  “It is now a Sanford newspaper.” Caroline felt a ringing in her ears which could be either victory, or nausea from too much cigar smoke.

  Vardeman himself took her through the Tribune offices, in a three-story brick building with arched windows that looked out on the north side of Market Square, a curiously ill-defined, and hardly square, open area between Seventh and Ninth Streets on Pennsylvania Avenue. “A wonderful location,” said Vardeman, sincerely. “This is the heart of the commercial district, where all our advertisers are.”

  “Or will be,” said Cousin John.

  Caroline stood on the dirty stoop beneath the faded sign Washington Tribune and looked across the square, a riot of electrical and telephone wires, of turreted red brick modern buildings in the medieval style which she realized that Henry Adams, in his serenely ruthless way, was imposing on the capital city. To Caroline’s left the Center Market loomed, a combination of windowed exposition hall and Provençal cathedral, whose brick walls were the color of dried blood-Washington’s emblematic color, in which were set not stained-glass windows but dusty panes of conservatory glass. Here farmers from Virginia and Maryland brought their produce; and here in the vast interior, democracy reigned, with everyone buying and selling. Vardeman identified two banks in nearby C Street. “The one on the left held our mortgage,” he said. “But not any more.”

  They entered a small waiting room, where no one waited. Dusty creaking stairs led to the offices and the newsroom, while a corridor, the length of the small building, led to the presses which were located in a converted stables at the back. Caroline could never get enough of the actual business of printing. Rolls of paper affected her rather the way bolts of silk affected Mrs. Jack Astor, while the smell of printer’s ink gave her not only an instant headache but, equally, swift delight. In a pleasurable haze, she met her new employees. The chief printer was the money-maker; and appropriately grave. He was German; spoke with an accent; came from the Palatinate. Caroline spoke German to him; and was certain that she had won his heart. Cousin John asked to see invoices; and lost the newly gained heart.

  The editorial offices overlooked Market Place. The editor was a tall Southerner, with red hair and side-whiskers. “This is Mr. Trimble, the best editor in Washington, and a Washingtonian, too. Almost as much a native as the darkies,” Vardeman added; he was prone, Caroline had noticed, to mentioning darkies rather more often than was entirely necessary. “What,” asked Caroline, “is a true native?”

  “Oh, you’ve just got to be born here. I mean, you don’t have to be like Mr. Sanford’s Apgar relatives, who go back to the first day.” The voice was high but not unpleasant.

  “Are there Washington Apgars?”

  Cousin John nodded. “Apgars are everywhere. They outnumber everyone else because they marry everyone. Some of them came here in 1800, I think. They were in dry,” said Cousin John sadly, “goods.”

  “My family came with General Jackson,” said Mr. Trimble. “You can always tell when us natives got here by our names. The Trimbles, like the Blairs, came with Jackson, and after we settled in, we never went home, any more than the Blairs did. Nobody goes back to Nashville if he can help it.”

  “But the President-Jackson, that is-does, or did,” said Caroline, charmed by her new editor.

  “Well, he couldn’t help it,” said Mr. Trimble. “What do you intend to do with the old Trib?”

  “Why-be successful!” Caroline’s ears were now ringing again; she wondered if she was about to faint. Where once there had been four Poussins there was now a newspaper and a printer’s shop in an African city half a world away from home. Was she mad? she wondered. More important, could she win? She was certain that in the war with Blaise she had just won a significant battle if not the war itself, but Blaise was now, oddly, secondary to the newspaper, which was hers-became hers, as she sat at a rolltop desk to write out the second and final payment on her account at the Morgan Bank; and gave it to Vardeman, who then signed the various documents that Cousin John had brought with him. The transfer was complete.

  “You will see a lot of me, Mr. Trimble.” Caroline was now at the door. “I’m here for at least a year. Maybe forever.”

  “Are we to continue as before?”

  “Oh, yes. Nothing is to be changed, except the circulation.”

  “How will you change that?” asked Vardeman, with something less than his habitual ceremony: the check in hand gave him gravity.

  “Have you no murders to report?” asked Caroline.

  “Well, sure. I mean, we put the police news on the last page, like always. But it’s just the usual. A body found floating in the river…”

  “Surely, from time to time, a beautiful woman is pulled out of the muddy cold dark Potomac River. A beautiful young woman perhaps divided into sections, and wearing only a negligée.”

  “Caroline,” murmured Cousin John, so shocked that he used, in public, her first name.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, you’re right. No negligee could survive being quartered.”

  “The Tribune is a serious paper,” said Vardeman, thick lips suddenly compressed like punctured bicycle tires. “Devoted to the Republican Party, to the tariff…”

  “Well, Mr. Trimble, let us never forget our seriousness. But let us also remember that a beautiful young woman, murdered in a crime of passion, is also a serious figure if only to herself, while the crime-murder-is the most serious of all, in peacetime, that is.”

  “You want… uh, yellow journalism, Miss Sanford?” Trimble was staring at her, a look of amusement in his pale blue eyes.

  “Yellow, ochre, café au lait,” tactlessly, she looked at yellow-brown Vardeman, “I don’t care what color. No, that’s not true. I am partial to gold.”

  “What about the gold standard?” asked Cousin John, eager to make light of everything that she had said.

  “As a friend of Mr. Hay, I favor that, too. Whatever,” Caroline added as graciously as she could, “it is. You see, Mr. Trimble, I am a serious woman.”

  “Yes, Miss, I see that all right, and I’ll send someone over to police headquarters right now to see what they got in the morgue.”

  Caroline recalled Hearst on the floor, making up the front page of the Journal, the murdered woman slowly coming, as it were, alive under the embellishments. “Do that,” she said. “But remember that the illustration on the front page…”

  “Front page,” groaned Vardeman, looking out at Market Square.

  “… need not resemble too closely what is actually in the morgue.”

  “But we… you… the Tr
ibune is a newspaper,” said Vardeman.

  “No,” said Caroline. “It is not a newspaper. Because there is no such thing as a newspaper. News is what we decide it is. Oh, how I love saying ‘we.’ It is a sign of perfect ignorance, isn’t it?” The ringing in her ears had stopped; she had never felt so entirely in command of herself. “Obviously earthquakes and election results and the scores of… baseball teams,” she was proud to have remembered the name of the national sport, “are news, and must be duly noted. But the rest of what we print is literature, of a kind that is meant to entertain and divert and excite our readers so that they will buy the things our advertisers will want to sell them. So we must be-imaginative, Mr. Trimble.”

  “I shall do my best, Miss Sanford.”

  In the street Cousin John turned on her, with unfeigned anger. “You can’t be serious…”

  “I have never been more serious. No.” She stopped herself. “That’s not true. What I mean to say is that I have never been serious about anything until now.”

  “Caroline, this is… this is…” He launched like an anathema the word. “Corruption.”

  “Corruption? Of what? The newspaper readers of Washington? Hardly. They know it all. Of the Tribune, a dull, dying paper? The word doesn’t apply. I see no corruption in what I mean to do. Perhaps,” she was judicious, “we shall offer a true reflection of the world about us. But you cannot blame a mirror for what it shows.”

  “But your mirror willfully distorts…”

  “A newspaper has no choice. It must be partisan in one way or another. But where is the corruption in this case?”

  “An appeal to base appetites…”

  “Will increase circulation. I did not make those appetites base.”

  “But that is corrupt, to pander to them.”

  “To gain readers? Surely, a small price to pay for…” Caroline stopped; a herdic cab had seen them, and now drew up to the front step.

  “To pay for what?”

  “To pay, Cousin John, for power. The only thing worth having in this democracy of yours.” More than a generation separated Caroline from Henry Adams’s Mrs. Lightfoot Lee; now, Caroline decided, it was possible for a woman to achieve what she wanted on her own and not through marriage, or some similar surrogate. She had not realized to what an extent Mlle. Souvestre had given her confidence. She not only did not fear failure, she did not expect it. “Which is probably proof that I am mad,” she said to Cousin John, as he helped her down from the cab, in the dense lemon-scented shade of the twin magnolia trees.