Empire

by Gore Vidal

  “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 Long-worth 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 young 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?

  TWELVE

  1

  BLAISE STARED A MOMENT at the door to the house in Lafayette Square, exactly opposite the White House. All in all, he decided, it was a tribute to the energy and colorfulness of Theodore Roosevelt that this less than splendid house, formerly rented by Elihu Root, was now occupied by Representative William Randolph Hearst. Plainly, it was Roosevelt’s powerful magnetism that drew to sleepy backward Washington Hearst and himself, not to. mention the likes of Elihu Root, now gone back to New York to practice law, his place as secretary of war more than amply filled by that human mastodon William Howard Taft, the President’s most trusted adviser on the Philippines, where he had reigned in vice-regal splendor during the… whatever it was: no one had yet come up with the right word for the violent resistance of so many Filipinos to Yankee rule. As of February 1, 1904, a week ago, Taft had become secretary of war, complaining bitterly to everyone that he would not be able to live on his salary; yet while every officeholder made the same complaint, everyone accepted office and, somehow, got by, thought Blaise, cynically.

  The familiar corpulent George opened the door, just as if they were still in a real city instead of this curious Southern village. “Mr. Blaise, you’re a sight for sore eyes.” Over the years, George had come to regard Blaise as the Chief’s young brother, or even son, a role Blaise had never once had any desire to play. But play-act both men must, the omnipotent Hearst, publisher now of eight papers (Boston had surrendered), and the wealthy Blaise, who had still to make his mark at anything, particularly since yesterday’s disastrous fire had destroyed his Baltimore printing press. Although Hapgood had made arrangements with a new press, the Examiner would not appear for several weeks.

  Hearst sat, enthroned, in the wood-panelled study, listening to a small and-to Blaise-perfectly appalling Georgian named Thomas E. Watson, who had served a term in the House, as member of the Farmers’ Alliance; been vice-presidential candidate of the Populist Party; might now be the Populist candidate for president in 1904. Currently, Hearst was desperately wooing him to support the Democratic Party-and Hearst, who was weak in the Godly South, thanks to the aura of scandal about his name; yet, practically speaking, Hearst was the closest thing, politically, to a socialist or Populist among the national possibilities. Certainly, he appealed to Watson; but then Watson appealed to Watson even more.

  Jim Day was seated on a sofa facing Hearst; he greeted Blaise with a smile; and continued to listen to the tiny fiery Watson, who stood at the room’s center, declaiming. Blaise’s entrance was made little of. Hearst waved him to a chair. Watson ignored him as a preacher would a late-comer to a revival meeting.

  “I dedicated my book on Thomas Jefferson to you, Mr. Hearst, because I see you as Jefferson’s heir, politically, that is.”

  “Lucky for me.” Lately, Hearst had begun, tentatively, to tell jokes. “He didn’t leave a cent when he died.”

  “That’s to his eternal credit.” Watson’s blue eyes flashed, unamused. “I’m writing biographies of my-and your-heroes, Jackson and Napoleon, and I’ll dedicate them all to you if you continue to fight the good fight for the people, just as they did, against the trusts, the Jew bankers, the idolatrous papists, and all the rest of the foreign element that keeps down our people, the original people of this republic.” There was more in this vein. Hearst listened patiently. At the Democr
atic Convention in July, Watson could swing the Southern delegates to Hearst, and the nomination; at election time, Watson was worth five million votes to the nominee. But would Watson himself be a Democrat in July? or would he be the candidate of the Populists? Blaise did not envy the Chief. From what Blaise could tell of the American people-glimpsed, admittedly somewhat askew, through their tribunes-they tended to sectarian madness. Religion ran like poison through their veins, followed by-or mingled with-racism of a sort undreamed of in wicked old Europe. There was always a “they” at whom a pejorative verb could be launched, automatically transitiving “they” to the ominous all-evil “them” who must be destroyed so that Eden could be regained. Blaise would rather be a humble worker in his father’s encaustic-tile plant at Lowell, Massachusetts, than president of so strenuously mad a country as the United States. He could not fathom it; did not want to; marvelled that Caroline had got the range of the place, and all without in any way becoming one of-yes, them.

  Watson spoke for another half-hour; then, with a peroration on the absolute necessity, if the United States were ever to know greatness, of a rural free mail delivery service, he stopped. “Mr. Watson,” Hearst rose; he towered over the tiny orator, “I have admired-even simulated you…”