Empire

by Gore Vidal

  “The White House thinks that Hearst will win.” Caroline was at her dressing table, rebuilding her hair.

  “So do I. So does he. So does the animated feather-duster.”

  “Mr. Root is going to Utica.” Caroline pulled her hair straight back and stared into the mirror, without apparent pleasure.

  “What does that mean?”

  “The President is sending him. To Hearst.”

  “Too late.”

  “Mr. Root carries great weight in New York. As the President’s emissary… I would be nervous if I were Mr. Hearst.”

  But all Blaise wanted to speak of was Jim, and that, of course, was the only subject that he and Caroline could never again mention to each other.

  Blaise was with the Chief in New York City when the Secretary of State spoke in Utica. It was the first of November. The weather was peculiarly dismal, even for New York, and a drizzle that was neither snow nor rain made muddy the streets.

  Hearst had his own news-wire in his study, set up between busts of Alexander the Great and-why?-Tiberius. Blaise was at his side as the message from Utica came through, even as Root was speaking. Elsewhere in the room, Brisbane kept a number of politicians in a good mood, an easy task since none doubted that soon they would all be going to Albany in the train of the conquering Hearst.

  As read, line by line, the speech was lapidary. Root’s style was Roman, school of Caesar rather than Cicero. The short sentences were hurled like so many knives at a target; and none missed. Absentee congressman. Hypocrite-capitalist. False friend of labor. Creature of the bosses. Demagogue in the press and in politics, pitting class against class.

  “Well,” said the Chief, with a small smile, “I’ve heard worse.”

  But Blaise suspected that he was indeed about to hear worse; and he did, toward the end. Root read Ambrose Bierce’s quatrain, calling for McKinley’s murder. Hearst stiffened as the familiar words stuttered past them on the wire. Root quoted other Hearstian indictments of McKinley, inciting the mad anarchist to murder. Then Root quoted Roosevelt’s original attack on the “exploiter of sensationalism” who must share, equally, in the murder of the beloved-by-all President McKinley.

  Hearst was now very pale, as the thin ribbon of text passed through his fingers to Blaise’s. “I say, by the President’s authority, that in penning these words, with the horror of President McKinley’s murder fresh before him, he had Mr. Hearst specifically in mind.”

  “The son of a bitch,” whispered Hearst. “When I finish with him…”

  The message went on: “And I say, by his authority, that what he thought of Mr. Hearst then he thinks of Mr. Hearst now.”

  So it would be on the charge of regicide that Hearst was to be brought down at last. Blaise marvelled at the exactness with which Roosevelt, using Root for knife, struck the lethal blow.

  “Champagne?” Brisbane approached with a bottle in hand.

  “Why not?” The Chief, who never swore, having just sworn, who never drank, now drank. Then he turned to Blaise. “I want you to go over the Archbold letters with me.”

  “With pleasure, if I can publish first.”

  “Simultaneously, anyway, with me.”

  3

  CAROLINE WAS SHOWN INTO the Red Room, forever referred to by Roosevelt loyalists as the Room of the Great Error. She had received a last-minute invitation to a “family” dinner, which could well mean, considering the Roosevelt family, fifty people. But it was indeed, for the most part, family. Alice and her husband, Nick Longworth, were already there, with, to Caroline’s surprise, the sovereign himself, who sprang to his feet, rather like a Jack-in-the-box, and said, just like his music-hall imitators, “Dee-light-ed, Mrs. Sanford. Come sit here. By me.”

  “Why not by us?” asked Alice.

  “Because I want to talk to her and not to you.”

  “There is no reason,” said Alice, “to be rude, simply because I’m the wife of a mere member of the House…”

  But the President had turned his back on daughter and son-in-law, and led Caroline to a settee near the door, so situated that if the door was open, as now, the settee was invisible. Roosevelt practiced several unpleasant grimaces on Caroline, before he began. “You know about the Archbold letters?”

  Caroline nodded. Trimble had received copies of a number but not the entire set. “I gather your brother Blaise has seen the lot.”

  “We’re not speaking at the moment.”

  “But if he decides to publish, they will appear in the Tribune.”

  “If I decide to publish, they will appear in the Tribune.”

  Roosevelt clicked his teeth three times, as if sending out a coded message to a ship in distress at sea. Then he removed his pince-nez and polished it thoroughly with a scrap of chamois. Caroline noticed how dull the eyes were without the enhancement of shining magnifying glass. “You are the majority shareholder?”

  “Mr. Trimble and I are, and he does what I want him to do.”

  “Good.” The pince-nez was again in its glittering place. “I hope good. Would you publish?”

  “I would have to have a motive. Senator Foraker would have to introduce some legislation, favorable, let us say, to Standard Oil. Then I would publish, of course.”

  “Of course! As you know, I have done-the Administration has done-nothing for Standard Oil. Quite the contrary.”

  “But,” said Caroline boldly, “there are your letters to Archbold.”

  “Which I don’t even recall. He was a friend, from years ago. He is a gentleman. I am certain there is nothing in anything that I ever wrote him that I would not be happy to see on the front page of every newspaper in the country.”

  Caroline arranged the spray of hot-house lilies that Marguerite had persuaded her, against her better judgment, to wear on a cold November night. “I’m afraid, Mr. President, that you will probably read those letters on every front page except mine, unless they prove-relevant.” Caroline liked the vagueness of the word.

  “You mean that Hearst will publish?”

  “Exactly. He wants revenge. Mr. Root-and you-lost him the election.”

  “What did he expect? It is hardly usual for a republic to allow its own overthrow.” This was said with such swift savagery that Caroline was taken aback.

  “You think Hearst would do that?”

  “I put nothing past him. He is outside our law, our conventions, our republic. He believes in class war. That is why I would do anything to finish him off…”

  “You did do everything, and he has said that he will never run for office again.” The rage of Hearst had been something to behold. From a commanding lead he had, yet again, because of outside intervention, lost an election that was his: this time to the egregious Hughes. Of one and a half million votes cast, Hearst lost by fifty-eight thousand. Except for Hearst, every Democrat on the ticket had been elected, and the entirely unheard-of was at last heard of: the candidate for lieutenant governor, dimmest of posts, was won by an upstate Democrat, an aristocratic Chanler, hardly known for his appeal to the masses, or anything else. Roosevelt had finished Hearst; would Hearst return the compliment? “I gather,” said Caroline, “that as many Democrats are involved in Standard Oil payoffs as Republicans?”

  “Which explains why this noble citizen, with his so-called proofs of corruption, has been delaying publication for what could be years, to help not justice but his own career.” Roosevelt was now speaking for eternity, and Edith, not one to abide too much eternity on an empty stomach, signalled that it was time to go in to dinner.

  SEVENTEEN

  1

  “I WILL NEVER AGAIN be a candidate. But I shall continue to live in New York and educate and support the principles of reform which I have always stood for.” Thus, William Randolph Hearst withdrew from politics, as a candidate. But Blaise knew that the Chief would now be even more formidable than before. Free of the wheeling-and-dealing required of a man canvassing votes, Hearst could not only do as he pleased but, if he chose, transf
orm the republic itself. He now knew more than anyone else about the internal workings (for the most part, corrupt) of the republic; he also knew that, with time and money spent, he could decide, through his Independent League, the outcome of numerous elections.

  Bryan, on the other hand, was obliged to shift his position according to the prevailing wind. Where, today, was sixteen-to-one silver? Once the only means whereby the American worker, tacked with three nails to his cross of gold, might one day descend-or ascend?-silver had become a non-subject. Yet, unlike Bryan, Hearst had never wavered in his own program. But now he was finished as a politician. Of course, in the press, he could continue to be the working-man’s full-time tribune. Precisely why the working-man had been selected for this distinction, Blaise could never fathom, but he could not fault Hearst for consistency, unlike Bryan and Roosevelt, who tacked this way and that. What, after all, did Roosevelt think of that solid rock upon which his party was based, the tariff?-which he used to sigh over in private, and refer to as “expediency,” a price he must pay to his supporters for the empire that he was assembling for their descendants. Bryan was at least consistent in his hatred for war and the conquest of far-off places and the mindless acquisition of other races. Hearst was genuinely ambivalent about Roosevelt’s tempting vision of empire. Sometimes he approved; sometimes not.

  Blaise put this down to Hearst’s hatred of the British empire; after all, much of his support was Irish. In fact, whenever Hearst could think of nothing to say to an Irish audience, he would announce, as though the thought were new to him, “You know, if I ever get to be president, the first thing I’m going to do is send an Irish-American to the Court of St. James’s. That’ll wake them up.” The cheering would be deafening. He still used the same line, adding, “I offer the suggestion to some future president, and hope ardently he’ll do it.”

  For Theodore Roosevelt, Hearst had only contempt. “He sold himself to the devil in order to get elected, and you’ve got to hand it to him-for once, he’s kept his side of the bargain.” Blaise knew that the first part was true. Roosevelt, in his famous pre-election panic, had promised the rich everything. Then, as he would never again run for president, he double-crossed the lot, or as Frick not so dryly put it, “We bought him but he isn’t staying bought.”

  Somehow, whenever Blaise thought of Hearst-no longer, remotely, the Chief to him-he thought of unopened crates. He had acquired everything, tangible and intangible, and then never got around to unpacking what was his; and making sense of it. Currently, literally, unopened crates provided the only furniture in Hearst’s new home, the Clarendon Apartment Building at the corner of Riverside Drive and Eighty-sixth Street. Hearst had taken over the top three floors, some thirty rooms.

  At the very top-the twelfth floor-Hearst and Blaise went over the Archbold letters, spread across the width of a huge refectory table from Spain, pitted with newly drilled wormholes, as guarantee of antiquity. Over the years, at Saint-Cloud-le-Duc, Blaise had learned a good deal about furniture. Over the years, Hearst had learned almost nothing. But the law of averages was, eventually, on his side. If one bought everything, sooner or later one might really buy something, and the lost Giorgione would be his. Blaise wondered if the something might not also apply to politics. If one kept on long enough, spending money, organizing voters, one might end up with the lost-what? Crown, no doubt, in Hearst’s case.

  “What happens if Archbold brings charges against you, for theft?”

  “I didn’t steal anything. I just copied some letters offered me pro bona publica.”

  “Pro bono publico.”

  “That’s what I said. I wish I could make more out of Theodore’s letters.” Hearst looked wistfully at the short enigmatic letters from the White House to Archbold. Within the “right” context, they could send the President to jail. But there was no context at all to these anodyne texts. “Of course, one could cook something up.”

  “I wouldn’t,” said Blaise firmly.

  “I won’t. Until I have something to go on. I have detectives at work, going over his bank accounts. Also, the Republican Party’s accounts, which are almost as bad…”

  “… as the Democrats’.”

  Hearst looked at Blaise gloomily. From the floor beneath them, they could hear Millicent’s voice, loud and harsh enough to be heard at the back of the third balcony of the Palace Theater. She was at work with her designer, creating if not a pleasure dome, the largest apartment in New York, filled with what was, by now, the largest collection of old and new antiques in the Western world. “I’m going to start off with Hanna and Quay, They’re dead. I’m going to show how much they collected for Roosevelt’s campaign. Then I’m going to show what TR has done for Standard Oil…”

  “He hasn’t done a thing. We ran that story. Of course, the real story is hard to write. The fact that he’s actually done nothing at all is the only thing against him.”

  “I can work that one out,” said Hearst. “And still stay with the facts. He’s done nothing because they helped finance him. At least in 1904. Oh, I’ve got him. He’s terrified. Next Sunday, I’m dropping some hints in all the papers that we have his letters to Archbold, compromising letters.”

  Blaise was beginning to feel that the impossible was about to happen; Hearst was actually going to go too far. Unless the detectives turned up something new, Hearst was about to find himself in the dangerous position of one who has accused of corruption a popular president in office. This was not quite like going after Murphy of Tammany Hall. Blaise said as much. Hearst was offhand.

  “All I’ve got to do is smoke him out. I do think he’s corrupt, by the way. I mean, everyone in this business is-to raise money to run-but because he’s a hypocrite, he’s worse than the others. That’s why I want to keep him guessing. My ace is this, he doesn’t know how much or what we know, and he’d give anything to find out.”

  Hearst wandered over to the French window that opened onto a terrace, with a view of the Hudson, and the high Palisades. “When I quote from his two cronies Hanna and Quay-and Foraker, too-everyone knows I mean Roosevelt, too. So we may as well throw him to the wolves right now. Otherwise, people will say we only mention dead people who can’t fight back, or dead ducks like Foraker. Then we say, next week we’ll publish the Roosevelt letters. Oh, there’ll be a hot time in the old town that night.”

  Hearst had agreed that Blaise might use certain letters that he himself had no immediate use for. The powerful Senator Penrose was given to Blaise; and a half-dozen members of the House. In exchange, Blaise would use the Tribune files to back up the Hearst “investigation,” if that was not too lofty a word for what Hearst was doing. Since most of the country’s politicians were paid for by the rich and since most of the electorate knew this and did not care, Blaise kept urging Hearst to make some useful point instead, simply, of listing names, with prices attached. Hearst disagreed. Yes, he admitted to a desire for revenge. Roosevelt had accused him, yet again, of McKinley’s murder and for that low blow Hearst was whetting his journalistic ax. But as for true reform, Hearst looked, mournfully, at Blaise. “I guess,” he said at last, “if you don’t like it here you can go back to France.” All in all, Hearst took for granted his country; and Blaise did not.

  Blaise was at his desk in Washington when Caroline made an unannounced entrance, the first, in fact, since each had seen fit to confide to the other more truth than was necessary for everyday life in the American republic.

  “Look,” said Caroline, who seldom said anything so obvious.

  Blaise spread out the New York Journal American on his desk, and read the headline. „W. R. Hearst Proves the Rule of Oil Trust in Politics.” He read the story quickly. Someone, probably Brisbane, had put together a highly damning account of Standard Oil’s promiscuous dealing with the politicians of both parties. With some subtlety, the story never got far from Roosevelt and the Republican Party, but, thus far, no line of Roosevelt was quoted. That was, the story concluded, to come.

&n
bsp; “I suspect that this will not be a happy morning at the White House.” Caroline sat down; she stared off into space, no doubt at headlines as yet unset in type.

  “Well, he’s done one thing I didn’t think he could. He’s proved that Standard Oil gave a lot of money to Roosevelt’s campaign, and Roosevelt, so far, hasn’t really gone after any of the oil trusts. Well, that’s cause and effect, isn’t it?”

  “But,” said Caroline, “Archbold also contributed to Judge Parker and the Democrats. So the two cancel out.”

  “I wonder.” Blaise turned to Caroline. “Do you-and Mr. Trimble-agree to breaking the Penrose story?”

  Caroline nodded. “Mr. Trimble’s running it tomorrow, front page.”

  “That puts us one ahead of the Post.” Blaise was pleased. “Hearst wants to do the best of Sibley’s letters. But we can have the rest of him, the part that doesn’t concern the President.”

  Joseph C. Sibley was a Republican congressman from Pennsylvania, who had never tried to disguise his loyalty to the Rockefeller oil interest. Sibley wrote Archbold: “For the first time in my life I told the President some plain if unpalatable truths as to the situation politically, and that no man should win or deserve to win who depended upon the rabble rather than upon the conservative men of affairs…” This could have been, thought Blaise, the beginning of Roosevelt’s abrupt shift to the rich-and to Standard Oil-in order to raise money for the 1904 campaign.

  “Have you ever thought of going home?” Caroline was sudden.

  “Home? To Connecticut Avenue?”

  “To France.”

  Blaise laughed. “That’s where Hearst told me to go-instead of hell, I suppose, when I was making heavy weather about some of his crazier tactics. No. I like it here, more than ever. Besides, do you know anything about French politics? Look what they did to your friend Captain Dreyfus.”