Empire

by Gore Vidal

  “I can’t wait to be thrown. But I’m always astride. That’s because I’m nobody. Power is poison, you know.”

  “I don’t know. But I’d like to taste it.”

  “The problem is what I call Bostonitis. The habit of the double standard, which can be an inspiration for a man of letters, but fatal to a politician.” Adams picked up a folder beside his chair. “Letters to John Hay. Letters by John Hay. Clara’s been collecting them. She wants to publish.”

  Caroline had, from time to time, received a note from Hay. He was a marvellous letter-writer, which meant that he was always indiscreet. “Is that a good idea?”

  “Probably not. I’m sure Theodore will think not. Hay liked him, but saw all his faults. Worse, his absurdities. Great men cannot bear to be thought, ever, absurd.”

  “Publish! And be praised.”

  “I think I will edit them.”

  “Why not write his life?”

  Adams shook his head. “It would be my life, too.”

  “Write that, then.”

  “After St. Augustine, I’d look more than usually inept. He did best what cannot be done at all-mix narrative and didactic purpose and style. Rousseau couldn’t do it at all. At least Augustine had an idea of a literary form-a notion of writing a story with an end and object, not for the sake of the object, but for the form, like a romance. I come at the wrong time.”

  “But you occupy the right space,” said Caroline. “Anyway, I don’t believe in time…”

  “Are you content?” Adams looked at her closely.

  “I think so. I wanted to be-myself, not just a wife or mother or…”

  “Niece?”

  “That I wanted most of all.” Caroline was entirely serious. “But then I have never confessed to you just how ambitious I am. You see,” she took the great plunge, “I wanted to be a Heart.”

  “Oh, my child!” Adams struck a note that she had never heard before. There was no irony, no edge to that beautiful voice. “You are one. Didn’t you know?”

  “I wanted to-know.” She was tentative.

  “That is it. That is all there is, to want to know…”

  Elizabeth Cameron and Martha entered; each was dressed appropriately for the White House dinner.

  “We’ve heard from Whitelaw Reid,” said Lizzie, after her usual warm but not too warm greeting of Caroline. “Martha’s to be presented at court, June the first, and you know what Martha said?”

  “ ‘I’d rather stay in Paris’ is what Martha said,” said Martha.

  “You must give pleasure to Whitelaw. He has so many presentations to make and so few presentables.” Adams had greeted Whitelaw Reid’s appointment as ambassador to the Court of St. James’s with exuberant derision. Reid’s pursuit of office and its attendant pomp had, finally, been rewarded by the President, who had required that all ambassadors and ministers resign after the election. Everyone had now been moved round-or out.

  “I do it for Mother.” Martha would never be beautiful, Caroline decided, but she might yet cease to be plain.

  The clocks were carefully checked, and it was agreed that the three ladies share the same carriage to get them across the perilous wintry waste of Pennsylvania Avenue, a matter of so many icy yards.

  Adams rose and showed them to the door of his study; he kissed each on the cheek.

  “I hope Cabot won’t be there,” said Lizzie. “I have a permanent grudge against him, since John died.”

  “Be forgiving, Dona.” Adams smiled his secret smile. “Life is far too long to hold a grudge.”

  The Lodges were not present; the dinner was relatively small; and there was no theme, which Caroline enjoyed. Of the Cabinet, only Hay’s successor, Elihu Root, was present. He and Caroline gravitated toward each other in the Red Room, where the company was gathered before dinner. The Roosevelts never made their regal entrance until everyone was present.

  “What is your brother doing?” was Root’s less than ceremonious greeting.

  “He is travelling through New York State, enjoying the scenery.”

  “I am alarmed. We’re all alarmed. You know, Hearst was really elected mayor of New York. Then Tammany destroyed the ballots.”

  “Then why are you alarmed? When he’s elected governor, Tammany will just burn the ballots all over again. Fraud is the principal check-or is it balance?-of your-sorry, our-Constitution.”

  Root’s mock alarm was replaced by, if not real alarm, unease. “We can’t rely on our most ancient check this time. Hearst has made a deal. He’s going to be Tammany’s candidate.”

  “Is this possible?” Caroline was startled.

  “Everything’s possible with those terrible people. Warn your brother away.”

  As Caroline was explaining why Blaise accepted no warnings from her, Alice Roosevelt and her new husband, Nicholas Long-worth, made their entrance. Root looked at his watch. “Amazing! She’s arriving before her father. Nick’s influence, obviously.”

  Alice looked, if not blooming, as in a rose, bronze, as in a chrysanthemum, while her husband’s bald head was scarlet from sunburn. They had been married in mid-February, with great pomp, in the East Room; then they had gone to Cuba for their honeymoon. This was their first White House function, as man and wife. Alice joined Root and Caroline. “Well, I’ve been to the top of San Juan Hill, and it’s absolutely nothing. I looked for the jungle-remember the famous jungle? where Father stood among the flying bullets, ricocheting off trees, and parrots and flamingos-I always added them to every description-sailed about? Well, the place couldn’t be duller. The hill’s a bump, and there is no jungle. All that fuss about so little. But they gave us something called a daiquiri, made with rum. After that, I remember nothing.”

  The President and Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt were announced, rather as if they were the Second Coming, and Theodore conducted himself rather as if he were God, surveying, with quiet satisfaction, His Creation. Edith Roosevelt looked tired, as befitted God’s conscientious consort.

  The President greeted Caroline with his usual amiability, usual because the Tribune usually supported him. As a reward, he would occasionally ask her to the White House, where he would give her a story-usually minor-that no one else had yet printed. He was even stouter and redder this season, she noted; apparently, the vigorous, strenuous life he advocated for others and practiced himself was not, of itself, thinning. “You must come to lunch, and tell me about France. I envy you last summer. If I ever get away from here…”

  “Come to us, Mr. President.”

  “Delighted!”

  “What, if I may cease to be a lady at court for an instant, is going to happen to the Hepburn Bill?” This was a commanding work of legislation which the House of Representatives had passed the previous year. The regulation of railroad rates was, somehow, at the center of the national psyche. The progressive saw it as a necessary means of controlling the buccaneer railroad operators, while the conservative courts and Senate saw it as the first fine cutting edge of socialism, the one thing that all Americans were taught from birth to abhor. Characteristically, Roosevelt was vacillating. When he had needed money for his presidential campaign he had asked the railway magnate E. H. Harriman to dinner at the White House; no one knew what promises were exchanged. Yet Caroline had taken heed of one of Adams’s truisms which was so true as to be ungraspable by minds shaped from birth by an American education: “He who can make prices for necessaries commands the whole wealth of all the nation, precisely as he who can tax.” That said it all. But the ownership of the country controlled both Supreme Court and Senate, and so they need not give up anything, ever. “I shall stand fast, of course. I always do. To Principle. I’m sure I can bring Senator Aldrich around. One thing I won’t accept will be an amended bill.”

  “How curious to see you allied with the populists, like Tillman…”

  “Terrible man! But when the end is just, grievances are forgotten. We must make do. If we don’t, Brooks fears a revolution on the left or a coup d�
�état on the right. I tell him we are stronger-fibered than that. Even so…”

  An aide, roped in gold, moved the President through the room to greet the other guests. “It was in this very room, on election night,” observed Root, “that Theodore told the press that he would not run for a second term of his own.”

  “He must have been-temporarily-deranged,” observed Caroline, admiring Edith Roosevelt’s inevitable look of interest in the presence of even the most ruthless bore.

  “I think he got the mad notion from mad Brooks, whom he was just quoting. In order to be profoundly helpful, Brooks went through several million unpublished Adams papers and found that both of the Adams presidents had thought that one term was quite enough, and despised what they called ‘the second-term business.’ ”

  “On the sensible ground that since each had been defeated for a second term, the principle was despicable.”

  “Exactly. Anyway, Theodore, in a vainglorious mood, said that there would be no second election for him.”

  The fat little President was now showing off a new ju-jitsu hold to the German Ambassador, while Edith’s lips moved to form the three dread syllables “Thee-oh-dore.” “He’ll be bored. But then he will keep on governing through his successor-you, Mr. Root.”

  “Never, Mrs. Sanford. First, I’d not allow it. Second, I won’t be his successor.” Root’s dark eyes glittered. “I’m not presidential. But if I was, I’d tell my predecessor to go home to Oyster Bay, and write a book. You do this job alone, or not at all. Anyway, he can bask in glory. He loved war, and gave us the canal. He loved peace, and got the Japanese and the Russians to sign a peace treaty. He will be, forever-which in politics is four years-known as Theodore the Great.”

  “Great,” murmured Caroline, “what?”

  “Politician,” said Root. “It’s a craft, if not an art.”

  “Like acting.”

  “Or newspaper publishing.”

  “No, Mr. Root. We create, like the true artist. News is what we invent…”

  “But you must describe the principal actors…”

  “We do, but only as we see you…”

  “You make me feel,” said Root, “like Little Nell.”

  “I feel,” said Caroline, “like the author of Freckles.”

  On the way in to dinner, Alice told her of the great advantage of matronhood. “You can have your own motor car, and Father has nothing more to say.”

  “This means that you’re a socialist.”

  For once Alice was stopped in her own flow. “A socialist, why?”

  “You missed the story. You were in Cuba. The new president of Princeton said that nothing has spread socialistic feeling in this country more than the use of the automobile.”

  “He sounds mad. What’s his name?”

  “I don’t remember. But Colonel Harvey at Harper’s Weekly says that he will be president.”

  “… of Princeton?”

  “The United States.”

  “Fat,” said Alice, “chance. We’ve got it.”

  2

  BLAISE WAS FILLED WITH ADMIRATION for Hearst, who had managed to make himself the candidate of the independent lovers of good government, forever hostile to the political bosses, while simultaneously picking up the support of Murphy of Tammany Hall, and a half-dozen equally unsavory princes of darkness around the country who, should he be elected governor of New York in November, would make him the party’s candidate against Roosevelt’s replacement. Hearst had adopted the Roosevelt formula: with the support of the bosses, you run against them. Hearst had even announced, with his best more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger compassion, “Murphy may be for me, but I’m not for Murphy.” Thus, the alliance was made and the tomahawks in the Tammany wigwam currently buried.

  In due course, Hearst became the Democratic candidate for governor as well as the nominee of his own now potent machine, the Municipal Ownership League. The Republican candidate was a distinguished if dim lawyer, Charles Evans Hughes, known as the scourge of the corrupt insurance companies. He was considered no match for Hearst, whose fame was now total.

  When, in April, San Francisco had been levelled by earthquake and fire, Hearst had taken over the rescue work; had fed people; sent out relief trains; raised money through Congress and his newspapers. Had anyone but Hearst been so awesomely the good managing angel, he would have been a national hero and the next president. As it was, he was forever associated not only with yellow journalism, to which most people were indifferent, but with socialism (he favored an eight-hour work day), the nemesis of all good Americans, eager to maintain their masters in luxury and themselves in the hope of someday winning a lottery. Yet despite so many handicaps, Blaise could not see how Hearst was to be stopped.

  At the end of October, on a bright cold morning, Blaise boarded Hearst’s private car, Rêva, on a railroad siding at Albany. He was greeted by the inevitable George, now grown to Tart-like proportions. “It never stops, Mr. Blaise. The Chief’s in the parlor. Mrs. Hearst won’t get out of bed, and little George won’t go to bed. I can’t wait till this is over.”

  To Blaise’s relief, Hearst was alone, going through a stack of newspapers. The blond hair was turning, with age, not gray but a curious brown. He looked up at Blaise, and smiled briefly. “Seven in the morning’s the only time I’ve got to myself. Look what Bennett’s done to me in the Herald.” Hearst held up a picture, with the headline “Hearst’s California Palace” and the sub-head “Built with coolie labor.”

  “You don’t have a house in California, with or without coolies.”

  Hearst dropped the newspaper. “Of course I don’t. It’s Mother’s house. Built by the Irish, I think, years ago. Well, it’s in the bag.”

  Blaise settled in an armchair, and a steward served them coffee. “The animated feather-duster,” Hearst’s name for Charles Evans Hughes, “is getting nowhere. No organization. No popular support.” Hearst gave Blaise a general impression of the campaign thus far. The entire Democratic ticket seemed to be winning; and Hughes could not ignite popular opinion despite the anti-Hearst press (the entire press not owned by Hearst), which was outdoing even Hearst himself when it came to inventions and libels. But the voters appeared unimpressed. “I’ve never seen such crowds.” Hearst’s pale eyes glittered. “And they’ll be back in two years’ time.”

  “What about the Archbold letters?” For Blaise, the letters were the essential proof of the rottenness of a system that could not survive much longer. Either the people would overthrow the government or, more likely, the government would overthrow the people, and set up some sort of dictatorship or junta. Blaise suspected that if it came to the latter, Roosevelt would do a better job than Hearst.

  “I don’t need the letters. I’m winning. The letters are for 1908. In case I have problems. You see, I’ll be the reform candidate then.”

  “If I were you, I’d use them now. Hit Roosevelt before he hits you.”

  “Why bother?” Hearst chewed on a lump of sugar. “There’s nothing Four Eyes can do to me, in this state, anyway.”

  The following Sunday, Blaise arrived at Caroline’s Georgetown house; on the first of the year she would move into her new house in Dupont Circle, close by the Pattersons.

  Blaise knocked on the door; there was no answer. He tried the door handle; it turned. As he stepped inside the entrance foyer, Jim Day appeared on the staircase, tying his tie.

  For an instant they stared, frozen, at each other. Then Jim finished his tie, as coolly as he could; the face was attractively flushed, the way it had been on the river-boat in St. Louis. “Caroline’s upstairs,” he said. “I have to go.” They met on the stairs; but did not shake hands. As Jim passed him, Blaise smelled the familiar warm scent.

  Caroline was in her bed, wearing a dressing gown trimmed with white feathers. “Now,” she greeted Blaise, in a high tragic Olga Nethersole voice, “you know.”

  “Yes.” Blaise sat opposite her, in a love-seat, and tried to look for signs of love-mak
ing. Except for a large crumpled towel on the floor, there were no clues to what had taken place-how many times? and why had he never suspected?

  “It is all quite respectable. Since Jim is Emma’s father, we must keep this in the family. Don’t you agree?”

  “Yes.” Blaise saw the whole thing clearly at last, including the otherwise meaningless marriage to John. He did his best not to imagine Jim’s body on the bed, all brown skin and smooth muscles. “It would be the end of him, if Kitty knew,” he added, gratuitously.

  “Or the beginning.” Caroline was airy. “The world doesn’t end any more with an affair.”

  “It does in politics, in his state.”

  “If she were to divorce him, I’d fill the breach, as best I could. That’s not the worst fate, is it?”

  “For him, probably.” Blaise was, obscurely, furious.

  But what might have been obscure to him was blazingly plain to Caroline. “You’re jealous,” she teased. “You want him, too. Again.”

  Blaise thought that he might, like some human volcano, erupt with-blood? “What are you talking about?” He could do no better, aware that he had given himself away.

  “I said-I repeat we should keep all this in the family as,” she smiled mischievously, “we seem to have done, anyway. We have the same tastes, in men, anyway…”

  “You bitch!”

  “Comme tu est drôle, enfin. Cette orage…” Then Caroline shifted to English, the language of business. “If you try to make trouble between Jim and Kitty, or Jim and me, your night of passion aboard the river-boat, with poor Jim, doing his innocent best to give you pleasure, will be as ruinous for you as anything you can do to him or to me or to poor blind Kitty.” Caroline swung her legs over the side of the bed, and put on her slippers. “Control yourself. You’ll have a stroke one of these days, and Frederika will be a widow, as well as my best friend.”

  In the back of Blaise’s mind, there had always been the thought-hope-that he and Jim might one day reenact what had happened aboard the river-boat. But, ever since, the embarrassed Jim had kept his distance; and once again, Caroline was triumphant. From Tribune to Jim, Caroline had got everything that he had wanted. In the presence of so much good fortune, Blaise was conscious of a certain amount of sulphur in the air. But for now at least, he must be cool, serene, alert.