by Gore Vidal
“A friend-our friend, Gardiner-gave me this early draft. Once the will is probated, and King’s bric-a-brac is sold, the widow will be able to live in moderate comfort as Mrs. Todd or Mrs. King, in Toronto or Flushing or…”
“This sounds like one of poor Stephen Crane’s stories. The gentleman and the fallen lady, the illegitimate family, the false names…”
“Oh, it’s a much bolder story than anything Mr. Crane put his hand to. You see, dear John, King’s perfect woman, mother of his five children, emblem of the original universal goddess for whom the male has no use once his biological function is complete, this glorious creature from pre-history, this Ada Todd, is a Negress.”
Hay exhaled suddenly; and all the blood went from his head. For an instant, he thought he might faint. Then he rallied. “Clarence King married a Negress! But-that’s impossible.”
“You did not go to Tahiti.” Smugly, Adams gazed into the fire, framed by luminous Mexican jade.
“But you did, and I fail to see a dusky Mrs. Henry Adams on these premises…”
“Only because I moved on-and up. To the Virgin of Chartres, to another more perfect avatar of the primal goddess, who…”
“I’ll be damned,” said John Hay, as William slowly opened the door to the study and said, “The young ladies would like to pay their respects…”
Adams rose; and assumed his avuncular mask, though a certain unfamiliar gleam in his eye suggested that there was still something demonic latent in his nature.
The room was filled by three girls. Hay had never been able to figure just how it was that his two daughters and their friend Alice Roosevelt could take up so much space, breathe so much air, create so much atmosphere-for want of a better word-but they did.
The three swarmed over Uncle Henry; receiving chaste touches of his hands, now raised in papal blessing. Helen was more and more like Clara, while Alice was like himself. The President’s Alice was, happily, not like her father, except for a thin mouth full of large snaggled teeth. Alice Roosevelt was more handsome than pretty, with a slender figure, and gray marbly eyes; she stood very straight, and comported herself like the regal princess she saw herself as. She was also given to demonstrations of manic energy, and there were already signs of a dexterous, most undemocratic-yet hardly royal-wit. Henry Adams affected to find her intimidating. Eager to please, she proceeded to intimidate Uncle Henry. “You must come to the party. It’s not every day I have a debut in the White House…”
“I am too old, dear child…”
“Of course you are. So we’ll prop you up like who was it at the feast?”
“Themistocles…”
“Mr. Hay, make him come!” Alice Roosevelt turned to Hay, one arm raised high like the goddess of victory.
“I’ll do what I can.”
Helen threw herself, with rather too much of a crash, into the chair opposite Adams, the large chair consecrated to her mother, who was still larger, Hay was relieved to note, than their daughter. He was also relieved that Helen would marry Payne Whitney the following month. Were she to become even larger… He dared not think of what it would be like to live in a house between that massive Scylla, his wife, and a prospective spinster of equal grandeur, Helen, as Charybdis.
“Everyone else is coming.” Alice Roosevelt perched on a stool. “Of course, it will be boring. Father and Mother refuse to spend money. Other girls get a cotillion. Do I? Of course not! Simple Republican Alice gets only a dance, and punch. Not even champagne. Punch!” she exclaimed, as her father might have shouted “Bully!”
“Surely punch is suitable for young people.” Hay, making kindly grandfatherly sounds, could think only of voluptuous black women, heavy-breasted and sinuous, crabs to his relevant shell, to appropriate Henry’s ugly image. How lucky King had been. Even as he was dying, he had had “a woman,” and, apparently, such a woman as the unadventurous Hay had not known since he was a very young man, living a bachelor life in Europe. Was it now too late? Of course, he was dying, but then King had been dying, too. Where there was a will, there was Eros. There was, also, Thanatos, he grimly completed his reverie. He would never again touch warm silken skin.
“We’re to have a hardwood floor in the East Room instead of that awful mustard carpet, and those round seats with the palms sprouting out of them. It’s a horrible house, isn’t it, Uncle Henry?”
“Well, it has never been a fashionable house,” Adams began.
“Father is going to redo everything, as soon as he makes Congress cough up the money. It’s intolerable, all of us upstairs, and Father’s office, too, in such a small place. We’re going to do over the entire floor, from west to east…”
“And where will the President have his office?” In Hay’s memory, every administration had tried to change the White House; and except for the odd Tiffany screen, nothing much had been altered since Lincoln’s time.
“Father’s going to tear down the conservatories, and put his office where they were. So he’ll be practically next door to you at the State Department.”
“Is this wise?” Even the iconoclast Adams-and what mustier icon than the White House was better suited for his smashing?-was dismayed.
“Either our family grows smaller or the house grows larger.” Thus the Republican princess decreed.
“Alice knows her mind, her mind!” Helen applauded.
William was again at the door; this time he stood very straight, as he announced, “The President.”
All rose, including the Republican princess, as Roosevelt, dressed in morning suit, skipped into the room, as if he were still racing upstairs, two at a time, his usual practice, which would, sooner or later, Hay thought, with true pleasure, cause that thick little body to break down. “I’ve been to church!” The President shared the great news with all of them. Lately, he had taken to dropping in on Hay after church, which gave sovereign and minister a few often crucial moments alone together, away from secretaries and callers. The President, Hay had duly noted, could not be alone. Even when he was reading, a family passion, he liked to have fellow-readers all about him. “I heard you were over here, for breakfast…”
“Join us, Mr. President.” Adams was silky.
“Oh, no! Your food’s much too good for the likes of me.”
“Chipped beef will do for the President.” Alice grimaced. “And a nice hash with an egg on it. And ketchup.”
“Perfect breakfast! If Alice ever exercised, she’d eat hash, too. Prince Henry of Prussia.” Roosevelt flung the name at Hay; then took up an imperial position before the fire; and clicked his teeth three times.
“Father!” Alice shuddered. “Don’t do that. You know, the slightest breeze makes my bottom teeth sway…”
“I’m not making a breeze.”
“But you’re clicking your teeth, which reminds me… Look,” Alice opened wide her mouth, “the horror!”
But all Hay could see was a lower tier of teeth somewhat smaller than the tombstones above. “They are all loose,” she said triumphantly, mouth still open, diction suffering.
“Do shut, please!” Roosevelt, in turn, as if by paternal example, pursed his own lips tight-shut.
“I should have had them all pulled out. Every debutante in America would have imitated me, of course. A nation of toothless girls-like the Chinese women, with their bound feet…”
“Alice, your teeth have exhausted us as a subject…”
“I,” said Adams, “was just beginning to enjoy this dental-permutation on Henry James’s American girl…”
“Effete snob!” Roosevelt glared.
“Prince Henry of Prussia.” Hay retrieved the lost subject.
“Oh, yes. He’s to come in February, to pick up the yacht we’re building for the Kaiser, or so I was informed at church by old Holleben, who had converted to Presbyterianism, at least for the day. What do we do?”
“Give him a state dinner. But try to keep him from getting around the country…”
“Since I am a debutante
,” said Alice, “I shall be asked to charm him. Is he married?” Alice was now moving about the room in imitation of her father, only as she walked, she swept her long dress this way and that, as if it were a royal train. “If I married him, I’d be Princess Alice of Prussia, wouldn’t I? So much nicer than Oyster Bay…”
“Princess Henry, I should think.” Adams was in his avuncular glory. “You will civilize the Teuton. If that’s possible.”
“Barbarize them even more.” Roosevelt was brisk. “Anyway, he’s married, and no Roosevelt’s going to marry a Prussian.”
“Unless the next election looks very close,” added Hay.
“Extraordinary!” Roosevelt added at least one too many syllables to the word. “The loyalty common Americans have to Germany. Imagine if we felt the same way about Holland.”
“We’ve been away longer,” said Alice. “Come on, girls.” She swept from the room with Hay’s daughters in tow.
“You are good to take Alice in.” Roosevelt sat in the chair vacated by Helen. “She is so-strenuous.”
“Like her father.” Hay thought of black women; and spoke of Prince Henry. “He’s here for one purpose. To stir up the German-Americans.”
“We won’t allow that. He’s supposed to be a gentleman. Not like his brother. The Kaiser’s a cad, all in all. Well, one day he’ll go too far. He’ll put out his neck and place it on the block.” Roosevelt clapped right hand with left; the sound was like a pistol shot. “No head. No Kaiser.”
“Then we shall be king of the castle?” Adams’s voice was mild, always, Hay knew, a dangerous sign. Adams was growing more and more restive not only with the bellicose President but with his own brother, Brooks, who never ceased to make the American eagle scream.
“That may be.” Roosevelt was equally mild; and guarded.
“Brooks believes that we are now at the fateful moment.” Adams smiled at Nebuchadnezzar. “The domination of the world is between us and Europe. So-which will it be?”
“Oh, you must come on Thursdays, and enlighten us.” Roosevelt was not to be drawn out. He was wily, Hay had discovered, rather to his surprise. Under all the noise, there was a calculating machine that never ceased to function. “We meet at nine o’clock and listen-”
“To my brother. I could not bear that, Mr. President. I’m obliged to hear him whenever I-he likes.”
“We’ll pick a Thursday when he’s not there.” Roosevelt was on his feet. “Your breakfast guests will be coming soon. Gentlemen.” Adams and Hay rose; their sovereign beamed upon them; and departed.
“He will have us at war.” Adams was bleak.
“I’m not so sure.” Hay approached the fire, suddenly cold. “But he wants the dominion of this earth, for us…”
“For himself. Curious little man,” said Adams, himself as small as Theodore, as small as Hay; three curious little men, thought Hay. “Now there are three of us.” Adams looked at Hay, forlornly.
“Three curious little men?”
“No. Three Hearts where once there were five.”
Hay felt a sudden excitement of a sort that had not troubled him for years; certainly, not since he had begun to die. “Is there a photograph?” he asked, voice trembling in his own ears. “Of her?”
“Of who?” Adams was bemused by firelight.
“The black woman.” The phrase itself reverberated in Hay’s head, and his mind was, suddenly, like a boy’s, filled with images of feminine flesh.
“As the trustee of his will, I suppose you could ask her for one. Droit de l’avocat, one might say. King outdid us all. We died long ago, and went on living. He kept on living long after he should’ve been dead.”
Two Hearts gone, thought Hay; three left. Who would be next to go? he asked himself, as if he did not know the answer.
TEN
1
AS USUAL, THE APOSTLE of punctuality was late. John Hay stood in the doorway of the Presbyterian Church of the Covenant, watch in hand held high to dramatize the lateness of the presidential party. Inside the church, the nave was crowded with dignitaries. To the dismay of the church elders, admission to God’s house-unlike Paradise-was only by card. The Senate, the Cabinet, the Supreme Court and the diplomatic corps were all represented, with sufficient omissions to cause social anxiety for the rest of the season. It had been Clara’s inspiration to place Henry Adams between the Chinese ambassador, Wu, and the Japanese ambassador, Takahira. As a result, the angelic Porcupine now resembled an ancient not-so-benign mandarin, engulfed in the Orient.
The Whitney family had given Hay rather more trouble than the canal treaty. The rupture was not about to be healed between William C. Whitney, with two of his children loyal to him, and his former brother-in-law, the bachelor Oliver Payne, with two of Whitney’s children loyal to him, including today’s groom, Payne. Hay had placed the Payne faction on one side of the aisle and the Whitney faction on the other. There had been even more confusion when William Whitney arrived at the church without his card, and the police had tried to stop him from entering, to the bleak joy of Oliver Payne, secure and righteous in his pew. As Hay got Whitney past the police, he was struck, as always, by the speed with which oblivion surrounded even the most celebrated of men when he no longer held office. Whitney, king-maker and king-that-might-have-been, was just another guest at his son’s wedding to Helen Hay.
Like a stagecoach pursued by rustlers, the presidential carriage came hurtling down Massachusetts Avenue, horses steaming in the cold. Before the guards in front of the church could open the carriage doors, the President sprang out, wearing a silk top hat. Then Edith Roosevelt, more majestically, descended, followed by Alice, got up like a Gainsborough painting in dark blue velvet, with a dashing black hat. Hay stood, watch held before him like the host.
“We are exactly on time,” the President lied.
“Of course. Of course.”
Church ushers appeared in the doorway. Quickly, their Republican majesties drew themselves up, and then, with hieratic-that is, to Hay’s eyes, waddling-gait, they proceeded down the aisle to their pew in the front row.
The moment that the Roosevelts were seated, the wedding march began, and Hay, curiously weak of limb yet free of pain, went to collect the terrified Helen, magnificent in white satin and tulle but no-she wanted to be original-lace; then, in due course, under official Washington’s eyes, Hay delivered his daughter over to the tall, handsome Payne Whitney, while Clara wept softly in the background, and Henry Adams, surrounded by Asia, looked incredibly old and small.
The wedding breakfast greatly appealed to Hay’s sense of drama, never entirely dormant. He had invited seventy-five guests, which meant overflow from dining room into his study, where, in the bay window, he had set a table at which, side by side, he had placed William C. Whitney and Oliver Payne. As the President and Mrs. Roosevelt were also at the round table, good behavior was assured. Hay had also added the Whitelaw Reids, whose never allayed ambition for social distinction would be temporarily sated. The President was at Clara’s right; and Mrs. Roosevelt at Hay’s right.
There was no need to fear awkward silences. Theodore, very much aware of the two men’s enmity, delivered himself of a lecture on the trusts; an occasional glance at the two money princes acted as a reminder that today, at least, and in more ways than one, they were in the same boat. The handsome Whitney was, as always, calm, but Payne, a choleric man, could barely speak for rage.
The situation was too curious for words, thought Hay, happy that Theodore’s flow of talk could not be deterred by mere curiosity of situation. For once, Edith did not give her husband a warning look, followed by a small cough, followed-if that did not staunch the flow-by “Oh, Thee!” in a stern voice. She, too, was awed by the hatred of the two men, who spoke, politely but briefly, to each other whenever the President paused for breath. The Whitelaw Reids, for once at rest in the still circle of perfect social preeminence, glowed benignly, as course after course was served, and the round table in the bay window became l
uminous with bright winter sunlight, an Arthurian table at the Arctic, thought Hay.
“Helen loved your gifts, Mr. Whitney.” Clara made motherly sounds. “They are so very grand, the rings, the brooch.”
“I’m glad.” Whitney was Chesterfieldian in his politeness. He had had a great deal to contend with lately. He had given up his political career. He was under fire for his various business connections. He had not been invited to his son’s bachelor dinner, held at the Arlington Hotel by Colonel Payne, the usurper. Yet he acted as if nothing in his world was amiss. On the other hand, Payne was incoherent with mysterious rage. Hay wondered why. The fact that after the death of Oliver Payne’s sister Whitney had remarried could not have been sufficient reason for so long-lasting a vendetta-long-lasting and infinitely resourceful. There was something positively Luciferian in the relentless way that Payne had gone about buying two of Whitney’s children, one of whom was now Hay’s son-in-law. Perhaps childlessness was at the root of it all. Envying Whitney’s charm and fecundity, Payne robbed him of two children; and tried to ruin him financially as well. But though Oliver Payne was the richer of the two, Whitney was the cleverer; and not made for failure.
Edith Roosevelt made the error of asking Oliver Payne what he had given the young couple. “Not much,” he said, eyes on his plate, where a quail in aspic seemed, somehow, obscene. “Diamonds, the usual,” he mumbled. Whitney drank champagne, and smiled at Mrs. Whitelaw Reid. “The house in Thomasville, Georgia,” said Payne. “They’ll honeymoon there. Good hunting, Georgia.”
The President, mouth full, could not let the subject of hunting pass unannotated. “Wild turkey!” he choked.
“Thee!”
But guns and wild turkeys were now the subject of that powerful energetic boy’s mind. “I’m also lending them my yacht,” said Oliver Payne to those of the table who were not entirely attentive to the presidential hymn to the slaughter of wildlife. “The Amphitrite. They’ll go to Europe on it, this summer…”
“An ocean-going yacht?” Mrs. Whitelaw Reid’s happiness was complete.
