Empire

by Gore Vidal

  Clara and Adams entered, unannounced. “We have seen the ring-bearer, on his joyous errand.” Adams was sardonic. Despite Hay’s best efforts, Adams had discovered the gift of the ring with Washington’s hair to McKinley. “You will be known to posterity, dear John, as the barber of presidents.”

  “You are jealous that you have no hair suitable for enclosing in a ring.”

  “We are booked,” said Clara, “on the Cretic, sailing March eighteenth.”

  Hay coughed an acknowledgment. Each January he was host to a bronchial infection, and this January’s was still in residence.

  “We land at Genoa on April third, by which time you should be dancing the tarantella on the deck.” Adams gazed thoughtfully up at his grandfather’s eyes, which stared down at them from the room’s fireplace. Except that each was entirely bald, there was no great likeness.

  “I’ve made arrangements at Nervi. With the heart specialist,” Clara declaimed idly.

  “Then on to Bad Nauheim and Dr. Groedel, but not with me,” said Adams. “As I am totally valid, I have no desire to join the invalid…”

  “Bad No Harm, Mark Twain calls it.” Hay was beginning to feel better. “Then on to Berlin. The Kaiser beckons.”

  “You won’t see him.” Clara was firm.

  “I must. He hungers to know me. And I him. Anyway, the President says I must.”

  “You are,” said Clara, “too ill, and he is far, far too noisy.”

  “That is the nature of kaisers,” said Adams, “and of at least one president…”

  “Henry, not on this day of days.” Hay held up a hand, as if in benediction.

  “All is energy,” said Adams abruptly. “The leader of the world at any given moment is simply the outlet for all the Zeitgeist’s energy, all concentrated in him.”

  “Major McKinley was much quieter,” said Clara, thoughtfully.

  “Less energy flashing about in those days.” Hay indicated that Clara could help him up. “I have a feeling that it will rain tomorrow.”

  But though there was rain in the early morning, by the time of the parade down Pennsylvania Avenue and the first inauguration of Theodore Roosevelt at the Capitol, the sky was clear, and a strong wind made it impossible to hear the President’s speech, which was just as well, thought Hay, for the speech was cautious and undistinguished. Theodore had made too many promises to too many magnates for him to sound a bugle note of any kind. For the moment, the square deal was in abeyance, and the progressive President retrogressive. Later, Hay was certain that Theodore would exuberantly betray his rich supporters. He could not not be himself for long.

  Hay sat with the Cabinet in the front row of the platform which had been built over the steps of the Capitol’s east front. Hay was grateful to have Taft’s huge bulk next to him, shielding him from the icy wind. Directly in front of him, Theodore Rex addressed his subjects, and, as always, Hay marvelled at the way neck became head without any widening at all.

  The President was not going to have an easy time of it. Now that Mark Hanna was dead, he would have difficulty getting so obvious a bill as the one regarding the inspection of meat through a Senate where nearly everyone had been bought or was himself, like Aldrich of Rhode Island, a millionaire buyer of votes, while in the House, Speaker Cannon was wedded to the rich, no bad thing in Hay’s eyes, himself a millionaire not only through marriage but his own efforts. Even more than Adams, he had always had a golden touch, a source of some surprise to one who had begun life as a poet.

  Although Hay deeply believed in oligarchy’s “iron law,” as Madison put it, he saw, as Roosevelt saw, the possibility of revolution if reforms were not made in the way that the new rich conducted their business at the expense of a powerless public. The Supreme Court and the police together ensured not only the protection of property but the right of any vigorous man to bankrupt the nation, while the Congress was, for the most part, bought. The occasional honest man, like the loud young Beveridge, was, literally, eccentric: too far from power’s center to do anything but make the public love him-and the all-powerful Steering Committee of the Senate ignore him.

  As for Cabot… Hay shuddered; and not from cold. Cabot’s vanity and bad faith were two of the constants of Washington life. Cabot will be the rock, Adams had once observed, on which Theodore wrecks himself. So far, Theodore’s barque had sailed the republic’s high seas without incident; yet Cabot was always there to try to block every one of Hay’s treaties. Cabot’s my rock, Hay murmured to himself, happy he would soon be sailing not on the republic’s viscous sea but on the Mediterranean.

  There was loud, long applause, as Theodore finished. In the north a black cloud appeared. Taft helped Hay up. To Hay’s surprise, Taft asked, “Was it here Lincoln gave his last inaugural address?”

  Hay nodded. “Yes. Right here. I remember now. There was rain at first. Mr. Johnson, the Vice-President, was drunk. Then the rain stopped, and the President read his speech.”

  Taft looked thoughtful. “I know that speech by heart.”

  “We never suspected, then, that we were all so-historical. We just saw ourselves caught up in this terrible mess, trying to get through the day. I remember there was applause before he had finished one sentence.” Hay had the odd sense that he was now, if not in two places at once, in the same place at two different times, simultaneously, and he heard, again, the President’s voice rise over the applause, and say with great simplicity the four terrible words “And the war came.”

  “We lost a generation.” Taft was oddly flat.

  “We lost a world,” said Hay, amazed that he himself had survived so long in what was now, to him, so strange a country.

  2

  THE DAY AFTER THE INAUGURAL BALL, Caroline celebrated her twenty-seventh birthday with Blaise, and two lawyers, one her husband, John, the other Mr. Houghteling. The celebration began in her office at the Tribune, where various documents of transfer were signed and witnessed and countersigned and notarized. John asked pointed questions. Houghteling’s answers were as to the point as his innumeracy allowed. Blaise stared into space, as if he were not there. Caroline now had what was hers; while Blaise, in possession of half of what was hers, was marginally better off. To be a half-publisher of a successful paper was better than being a non-publisher, or the custodian of the Baltimore Examiner.

  “Now,” said Houghteling, as the last set of signatures had been affixed, and Caroline had become a number of times a millionaire, “in the matter of the Saint-Cloud-le-Duc property, the will of your late father neglects to make clear which of you inherits. In law then, a court would doubtless find that you own it jointly as you do the rest of the estate, and should the property be sold, you would divide, evenly, the money from the sale. Is that agreeable?” He looked at John, who looked at Caroline, who said, “Yes,” and looked at Blaise, who shrugged and said, “Okay.”

  “I want it for May and June,” said Caroline. “I miss the place.”

  “I’ll come in July and August,” said Blaise. “For my honeymoon.”

  “Good,” said Houghteling, who never listened to anyone except when specifically paid to.

  Caroline looked intently at Blaise, who was now wiping ink off his middle finger. “Frederika?”

  “Yes. We’re getting married in May.”

  “Then you must have Saint-Cloud. For May, that is.”

  “We can all stay there.” Blaise was equable.

  “Congratulations,” said John, and formally shook Blaise’s hand. Houghteling had now put away his documents in a leather case and, still unaware of his client’s approaching marriage, bade them all good-by with the sentiment that, after nearly seven years, all must be well that had ended so well.

  Blaise suggested that Caroline join him and Frederika for dinner that night at Harvey’s Oyster House. “And you, too, John,” he added; and left the room.

  In recent years, Caroline and John seldom looked at each other directly; nor very often aslant, either. “Well, it’s over.” John t
ook out his pipe; filled and lit it. Caroline studied a mock-up of the Sunday Ladies’ Page. Princess Alice was featured yet again; and there were hints that she might marry Nicholas Longworth; and then, again, she might not. “How is Emma?” Caroline had been touched to find that John had taken to the child and she to him.

  “She flourishes. She asks for you. I’ve talked to Riggs Bank. They will start making monthly payments into your account, as we agreed.”

  John stood up and stretched himself. He looked years older than he was; and the face was now of the same gray as the hair. “I suppose you’ll want a divorce.” He played with the heavy gold watch chain, to which were attached emblems of exclusive clubs and societies. He, too, was Porcellian, a gentleman.

  “I suppose so. Would you like one?” Caroline was amazed at the tone that each had managed to strike, a mutual lassitude, like guests at a dinner party that would never get off the ground.

  “Well, it’s for you, really, to decide. You see, I have no future.”

  “What makes you think I have one?”

  John gave a wan smile; and exhaled pale blue pipe-smoke with the words: “Heiresses cannot avoid having a future. It’s your fate. You will remarry.”

  “To whom?”

  “Emma’s father.”

  “Out of reach. For good.”

  “Kitty might die…”

  For the first and last time in their marriage John astonished her. “How did you know?”

  “I have eyes, and Emma has his eyes, and Emma can talk now, and she speaks of his Sunday visits, with pleasure, too.”

  “You haven’t spied on me?” Caroline’s face felt unnaturally warm.

  “Why should I? It’s no business of mine. What business I ever had with you is concluded, and yours with me.”

  “I trust,” said Caroline, rising from behind her rolltop desk, “you will always be a-lawyer to me.”

  “And you a client to me.” John smiled, and shook her hand, formally. “You know I did want to marry you, when you first came over. I mean really marry you.”

  Caroline felt a sudden strong emotion, which she could not identify. Was it loss? “I’m afraid that wasn’t meant to be, no fault of yours-though, perhaps, of mine. You see, I wanted to be all myself, but had no real self to be all, or even part of. I think I make no sense.” Caroline was suddenly flustered. It was not her way to speak so personally to anyone, even Jim.

  “Well, the key to your-brief,” John was dry, “was that it wasn’t meant to be, and that certainly proved to be the case. I helped you, and, God knows, you helped me. Shall I divorce you, or you me?”

  “Oh, divorce me!” Caroline had regained her poise. “For desertion, that’s fashionable now. In the Dakotas, which should be lovely in the summer.”

  “I shall notify you legally. Here.” To her amazement, he gave her his handkerchief; then he left. To her amazement, she found that she was weeping.

  3

  BLAISE SAT AT THE EDGE of an artificial lake, and watched the swans sail back and forth, greedy eyes alert for food, predatory beaks ready to strike at any land-creature that moved within range. A perspective had been carefully arranged by an eighteenth-century gardener who believed that nature could only be revealed in its essential naturalness through total artifice. Trees of various sizes gave an odd sense of a huge park that extended to what looked to be a second larger lake, which was, actually, smaller than the first. Roses in full bloom made bonfires of color in the dim greenness. Blaise was content. If he had no inherent talent for marriage, Frederika had more than enough for two. With every show of amiability, she and Caroline had each taken over a wing of the chateau, and each kept to her wing unless invited by the other for a visit.

  The state rooms were held in common, under the jurisdiction of the butler, who was also, in effect, the estate manager. M. Brissac had been at the chateau for thirty years; it was he who hired and fired and stole discreetly; it was he who had known both Mrs. Sanfords, and never had a word of the slightest interest to say about either. Now the old man approached Blaise from the central part of the chateau, an astonishing creation of rose-red brick, high mansard windows, gilded ironwork, and chimneys like so many monuments to Saint-Simon’s beloved peers of France.

  Brissac bowed low, and presented Blaise with a telegram, which he opened: “Millicent and I and four others will come to lunch May 30. Hearst.”

  It was typical of the Chief to give only a day’s notice. As Blaise gave orders to M. Brissac, Caroline and Emma appeared from the woods. They looked like figures on a Watteau fan, thought Blaise, once again thinking not only in French but with French malice, as he noted to himself that this fan could not be shut.

  Emma ran forward to her uncle, who picked her up, and listened to her chatter in a combination of French and English. She had her grandmother’s complexion, hair.

  “The Chief arrives tomorrow. For lunch. With four lords-in-waiting.”

  “He does us honor.” Caroline sat in one of the curious carved sandstone thrones that the builder of the chateau, in a frenzy of premature pharaonism, had sculpted beside the lake. “With the beautiful Millicent?”

  Blaise nodded. “He’s very respectable now. He expects to be elected mayor of New York in the fall.”

  “Poor man. But I suppose it will give him something to do. Frederika fits in very well.”

  Blaise was mildly disappointed that wife and half-sister got on so well. But then Caroline had known Frederika longer than he. “She has discouraged Mrs. Bingham,” he said, giving pleasure.

  “She would not fit in.” Caroline put out her hand. “The key.”

  “To what?”

  “Father’s desk. I want to read Grandfather Schuyler’s memoirs, or whatever they are.”

  “The desk’s open. They are in two leather-bound boxes.”

  “Have you read them?”

  “I don’t like the past.”

  “That’s where the key is. If there’s one, of course. Come on, Emma.”

  As Caroline collected her child, Blaise said, “Why did you divorce?”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s very American of you.”

  “I am very American. Anyway, I wasn’t married in the church. It doesn’t count, really-for us, anyway. It’s just a legal convenience. Just another key, to just another lock.”

  Blaise was still mystified by the whole affair. “Was John with… someone else?”

  Caroline’s laugh dispelled any suspicion along that line. “I wish he were.”

  “Are you?” Blaise was convinced that Caroline had, for some time, been having an affair, but she was even more guarded than he about her life. He assumed that the man was married; otherwise, now that she was divorced, she would have been free at least to mention if not marry him. Blaise did not rule out a passionate liaison with a lady: Mlle. Souvestre’s powerful example was a fact of their world. But Washington seemed hardly the setting for so Parisian an activity.

  “I wish I were.” Caroline echoed herself and was gone.

  Blaise found the Chief rather less phlegmatic than usual. He had gained so much weight that had he been shorter he might have presented to the world a comforting McKinley-esque rotundity. But because of his height, the result was more ursine-menacing than McKinley-majestic. The two couples with the Hearsts were part of his publishing life. “I’ve just bought Cosmopolitan magazine,” he said, as Blaise showed him through the suite of state apartments.

  The Chief stopped at every painting, sculpture, tapestry, console. Blaise was pleased at the Chief’s awe. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” Hearst said, as they entered the grand salon, where windows opened onto the vista of lakes and forests, “outside of a royal palace or something. Those tapestries Gobelin?”

  “Early Aubusson. It was my father’s hobby, fixing up this place. When he bought it, in the seventies, it was a ruin.” Behind them Frederika was hostess to Millicent, whose moon face shone with pleasure, as she said in her tough New York Irish accen
t, “Don’t sell a stick of furniture to Willy, or he’ll buy it all and put us in the poorhouse.”

  “Warehouse is more like it.” Hearst enjoyed talk of his mania for acquiring everything on earth-including Saint-Cloud-le-Duc. “You’re not thinking about selling, are you?”

  “Never,” said Caroline, making a grand entrance on Plon’s arm. “We’re home at last.”

  After lunch, Blaise and Hearst walked together by the lake. “I want to know about Willie Winfield.” Blaise was direct.

  Hearst stopped in mid-stride. For an instant, Blaise was struck by the incongruity of the splendid seventeenth-century façade behind them, the swans and topiary and pale statues before them, and the American political squalor that was their all-consuming subject. Of course, the great duke who had built the chateau had been a notorious thief; on the other hand, he had spent his stolen money with a splendor yet to be rivalled on Fifth Avenue or even Newport’s Ochre Point. “How do you know him?”