by Gore Vidal
Caroline seemed uncharacteristically disconsolate. “In France, I-you-we wouldn’t be publishers. We wouldn’t have to know such people, or care.”
Blaise shook his head. “Sell me your share, and go back. I’m in my element now.”
Caroline smiled without pleasure. “That famous shoe keeps shifting, first to one, then to the other foot. Oh, I stay. I’m in too deep. I have my-expiations.”
“You and that mother of yours!” Blaise disliked the subject intensely. “You don’t need expiation. What you need is an exorcist.”
“I want to publish my grandfather’s journal, about her.”
“Go ahead. It’s none of my business,” said Blaise; and meant it. Then Mr. Trimble joined them, a note in hand, a gleam in his eye. “From the White House. From the President.”
“Never explain,” sighed Caroline, “never complain.”
“He’s done both.” Trimble gave them the short message, for publication. The President had no specific recollection of the conversation as reported by Mr. Sibley. “The President would like to see you tomorrow at noon.” This was addressed to Blaise. Then Trimble was gone, and Blaise said to Caroline, “We have drawn blood.”
“Whose, I wonder?” asked Caroline.
The President was receiving a delegation from the new state of Oklahoma when Blaise was announced. “Bully!” the President shouted, and Blaise’s entrance was a signal for the Oklahomans to withdraw. Blaise did get a good look at the state’s first governor, who was also treasurer of the Democratic Party. This gentleman, C. N. Haskell, had that day been named by Hearst as yet another employee of Standard Oil, guilty of serving not the people but the Rockefellers. Bryan, once again the party’s peerless leader, was said to have ordered Haskell to resign as treasurer. As the Oklahomans withdrew, each with a firm handshake from the President, there was no sign that anything was awry other than, as the door shut on the officialdom of the latest state, a sudden explosion: “Taft-the procrastinator-really let us down out there. We could have had all seven of Oklahoma’s electoral votes. But then they came up with this constitution which was mad-pure socialism, and Taft said, wait and write a new one, as if anyone gives a damn about a state constitution, so while he’s dithering, Bryan comes in, praises the constitution, and now they’ve elected nothing but Democrats, including that crook Haskell. They have also, in their infinite Western wisdom, sent us a blind boy for one senator, and an Indian-an Indian!-for another.”
“I know, sir,” said Blaise, “your views on the virtues of the dead Indian, but I didn’t know you took so powerful a line against blind men.”
“I do against this one.” The Roosevelt teeth clicked twice. “A populist demagogue… You’ve read about Haskell?”
“I’ve read everything.”
“What does Hearst want to do? Wreck our political system?”
“If you put it like that, sir, yes, he does.”
Roosevelt did not acknowledge so truthful if radical a response. “What letters of mine has he got?” This was sudden. The President, whose back was to Blaise, turned round. The bright red and yellow leaves of autumn as seen through the window back of him made him look as if he were incongruously trapped in a stained-glass window.
“In themselves, as far as I know, nothing much. But if interpreted …”
“Oh, he’ll interpret! Here.” Roosevelt gave Blaise a typed statement. “Can you run this tomorrow? I’m afraid it’s not exclusive. I’m releasing it to the whole country. But you’ll have it before McLean at the Post.”
Blaise read the short statement and marvelled at the easy even flow of political hypocrisy at its fullest tide. “Mr. Hearst has published much interesting and important correspondence of the Standard Oil people, especially that of Mr. Archbold with various public men. I have in times past criticized Mr. Hearst but in this matter he has rendered a public service of high importance and I hope he will publish all the letters dealing with the matter which he has in his possession. If Mr. Hearst or anybody else has any letters from me dealing with Standard Oil affairs I shall be delighted to have it published.”
Thus, Roosevelt made the best of a bad business by praising the enemy and trying to regain for himself the high ground in what looked more and more like a swamp filled with quicksand. What, Blaise wondered, for the first time, were the President’s relations with Standard Oil? Obviously, there was something that he did not want known; and it probably had to do with the gathering of money for the 1904 election. Although the President had struck a jaunty pose, he looked unnaturally ill at ease.
“I shall publish your statement tomorrow.”
“Good. I gather you’re in communication with Hearst?” Blaise nodded. “When next you talk to him, say that I’d like a word with him here, in the White House, soon. Tell him there are other… forces at work, that he should know about.” The President’s smile was as bright and artificial as his pince-nez; he showed Blaise to the door.
2
ALTHOUGH WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST had been requested to enter the White House from the south side, where private visitors came and went, the great man ordered his chauffeur to drive up the main driveway to the north portico, to the general consternation of the police. Then, slowly, like some huge bear of the sort that the President liked to shoot in quantity while roaring about the necessity of the preservation of wildlife, Hearst entered the main hall of the house which he would never, short of an armed revolution, occupy. Apprehensively, the chief usher received him.
“Tell the President that I am here.” Hearst did not bother to identify himself. He took off his coat, and let it fall, quite aware that someone would catch it before it touched the floor; and an usher did.
“Come this way, Mr. Hearst.” The chief usher led Hearst to the west wing. When told to wait in the secretary’s office, Hearst opened the door to the empty Cabinet room, and took his place at the head of the table. The secretary’s shock was silent; but profound.
Hearst sat back in the chair of state, and shut his eyes, like a man exhausted in a noble cause. He was home. But not for long. As usual, noise preceded the Chief Magistrate. “Delighted you’re here! Bully!” The President was now at the door to the Cabinet room. Hearst opened his eyes, and gravely nodded his head in greeting. For a moment, Roosevelt appeared uncertain what next to do. Then he shut the door behind him. There would be no witnesses to what might follow.
Slowly, majestically, Hearst got to his feet. As the two men shook hands, Hearst deliberately pulled Roosevelt toward him so that the President was obliged to stare straight up into the air at the taller man. “You wanted to see me?” Hearst inquired, as if bestowing a huge favor on a junior editor.
“Indeed. Indeed. We have so much to talk about.” Although Hearst stood between the President and the presidential chair, the tubby but sturdy Roosevelt simply charged the chair, knocking Hearst to one side in the process. Most royally, Roosevelt seated himself; and said, with smooth condescension, “Sit there. On my right. Mr. Root’s chair.”
Hearst’s smile was thinner than usual. “I’d fear some terrible contagion if I were to sit in the chair of so notorious a liar.”
Roosevelt’s face was now dark red; and the smile a snarl. “I’ve never known Mr. Root to lie.”
“Then you’ve had a lot less experience with lawyers than I’d suspected.” Hearst pulled an armchair from its place at center table, putting a considerable distance between himself and the President.
“Root spoke for me in Utica.” Roosevelt was flat.
“Well, I didn’t think he was speaking on oath to God. Of course, he spoke for you when he accused me of McKinley’s murder.”
The conversation was, plainly, not going where Roosevelt had intended. “Your press incited-incites-violence and class hatred. Do you deny that?”
“I don’t deny or affirm anything. Do you understand that? I’m here at your request, Roosevelt. Personally, I have no wish to see you at all, anywhere, ever-unless, of course, we share the same
quarters in hell. So I must warn you, no one says ‘Do you deny’ to me, in my country.”
“Your country, is it?” Roosevelt’s falsetto had deepened to a mellifluous alto. “When did you buy it?”
“In 1898, when I made war with Spain, and won it. All my doing, that was, and none of yours. Ever since then, the country’s gone pretty much the way I’ve wanted it to go, and you’ve gone right along, too, because you had to.”
“You exaggerate your importance, Mr. Hearst.”
“You understand nothing, Mr. Roosevelt.”
“I understand this much. You, the owner-no, no, the father of the country, couldn’t get the Democrats to nominate you for president even in a year when there was no chance of their winning. How do you explain that?”
Hearst’s pale close-set eyes were now directed straight at Roosevelt; the effect was cyclopean, intimidating. “First, I’d say it makes no difference at all who sits in that chair of yours. The country is run by the trusts, as you like to remind us. They’ve bought everything and everyone, including you. They can’t buy me. I’m rich. So I’m free to do as I please, and you’re not. In general, I go along with them, simply to keep the people docile, for now. I do that through the press. Now you’re just an office-holder. Soon you’ll move out of here, and that’s the end of you. But I go on and on, describing the world we live in, which then becomes what I say it is. Long after no one knows the difference between you and Chester A. Arthur, I’ll still be here.” Hearst’s smile was frosty. “But if they do remember who you are, it’ll be because I’ve decided to remind them, by telling them, maybe, how I made you up in the first place, in Cuba.”
“You have raised, Mr. Hearst, the Fourth Estate to a level quite unheard of in any time…”
“I know I have. And for once you’ve got it right. I have placed the press above everything else, except maybe money, and even when it comes to money, I can usually make the market rise or fall. When I made-invented, I should say-the war with Spain, all of it fiction to begin with, I saw to it that the war would be a real one at the end, and it was. For better or worse, we took over a real empire from the Caribbean to the shores of China. Now, in the process, a lot of small fry like you and Dewey benefited. I’m afraid I couldn’t control the thing once I set it in motion. No one could. I was also stuck with the fact that once you start a war you have to have heroes. So you-of all people-came bustling along, and I told the editors, ‘All right. Build him up.’ So that’s how a second-rate New York politician, wandering around Kettle Hill, blind as a bat and just about as effective, got turned into a war hero. But you sure knew how to cash in. I’ll hand you that. Of all my inventions you certainly leapt off the page of the Journal, and into the White House. Not like poor dumb Dewey, who just stayed there in cold print until he ended up wrapped around the fish at Fulton’s Market.”
Hearst sat back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head. Eyes on the ceiling fan. “When I saw what my invention could do, I decided to get elected, too. I wanted to show how I could take on the people who own the country that I-yes, that I helped invent-and win. Well, I was obliged to pay the inventor’s price. I was-I am-resented and feared by the rich, who love you. I could never get money out of Standard Oil the way you could. So in the long-no, short-run it’s who pays the most who wins these silly elections. But you and your sort won’t hold on forever. The future’s with the common man, and there are a whole lot more of him than there are of you…”
“Or you.” Roosevelt stared at the painting of Lincoln on the opposite wall, the melancholy face looking at something outside the frame. “Well, Mr. Hearst, I was aware of your pretensions as a publisher, but I never realized that you are the sole inventor of us all.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t put it so grandly.” Hearst was mild. “I just make up this country pretty much as it happens to be at the moment. That’s hardly major work, though you should thank me, since you’re the principal beneficiary of what I’ve been doing.”
Roosevelt arranged several statute books on the table. “What do you know about me and Mr. Archbold?“
“Standard Oil helped finance your last campaign. Everyone knows that.”
“Have you any proof that I asked for the money?”
“The asking was done by Hanna, Quay, Penrose. You only hint.”
“Mr. Archbold is an old friend of mine.” Roosevelt started to say more; but then did not.
Hearst’s voice was dreamy. “I am going to drive many men from public life. I am also going to expose you as the hypocrite you are.”
Roosevelt’s smile was gone; the high color had returned to normal; the voice was matter-of-fact. “You will have an easy time with the Sibleys and Haskells. You will have an impossible time with me.”
“You fight the trusts?”
“As best I can.”
“Have you ever objected to Standard Oil’s numerous crimes against individuals, not to mention the public?”
“I have spoken out against them many times as malefactors of great wealth.”
“But what,” Hearst’s voice was soft, “have you done to bring Standard Oil to heel? You’ve been here six years. What have you done, except rant in public, and take their money in secret?”
“You will see.” Roosevelt was very calm indeed. “Next year, we bring suit against them in Indiana…”
“Next year!” Hearst slapped the table gleefully. “Who says this is not my country? I’ve forced you, of all people, to act against your own kind. Because of what I’ve revealed this year, you’ll do something next year. But you don’t ever really lead. You follow my lead, Roosevelt.” Hearst was on his feet, but Roosevelt, not to be outdone, had done his special Jack-in-the-box rapid leap to the perpendicular so that, technically, the President had risen first, as protocol required, ending the audience.
At the door to the Cabinet room, Hearst got his hand on the doorknob first. “You’re pretty safe, for now.”
“I wonder,” said Roosevelt, softly, “if you are.”
“It’s my story, isn’t it? This country. The author’s always safe. It’s his characters who better watch out. Of course, there are surprises. Here’s one. When you’re out of a job, and need money to feed that family of yours, I’ll hire you to write for me, the way Bryan does. I’ll pay you whatever you want.”
Roosevelt produced his most dazzling smile. “I may be a hypocrite, Mr. Hearst, but I’m not a scoundrel.”
“I know,” said Hearst, with mock sadness. “After all, I made you up, didn’t I?”
“Mr. Hearst,” said the President, “history invented me, not you.”
“Well, if you really want to be highfalutin, then at this time and in this place, I am history-or at least the creator of the record.”
“True history comes long after us. That’s when it will be decided whether or not we measured up, and our greatness-or its lack-will be defined.”
“True history,” said Hearst, with a smile that was, for once, almost charming, “is the final fiction. I thought even you knew that.” Then Hearst was gone, leaving the President alone in the Cabinet room, with its great table, leather armchairs, and the full-length painting of Abraham Lincoln, eyes fixed on some far distance beyond the viewer’s range, a prospect unknown and unknowable to the mere observer, at sea in present time.
Note
Although I keep the historical figures in Empire to the generally agreed-on facts, I have changed the time of Del Hay’s defenestration from mid-night to mid-day. While the final meeting between Theodore Roosevelt and William Randolph Hearst did take place within the context of the Archbold letters, no one knows what was actually said. I like to think that my dialogue captures, if nothing else, what each felt about the other.
G.V.
March 18, 1987
About The Author
GORE VIDAL wrote his first novel, Williwaw (1946), at the age of nineteen while overseas in World War II.
During four decades as a writer, Vidal has written novels, plays,
short stories and essays. He has also been a political activist. As a Democratic candidate for Congress from upstate New York, he received the most votes of any Democrat in a half century. From 1970 to 1972 he was co-chairman of the People’s Party. In California’s 1982 Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, he polled a half million votes, and came in second in a field of nine.
In 1948 Vidal wrote the highly praised international best seller The City and the Pillar. This was followed by The Judgment of Paris and the prophetic Messiah. In the fifties Vidal wrote plays for live television and films for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. One of the television plays became the successful Broadway play Visit to a Small Planet (1957). Directly for the theater he wrote the prize-winning hit The Best Man (1960).
In 1964 Vidal returned to the novel. In succession, he created three remarkable works: Julian, Washington, D.C., Myra Breckinridge. Each was a number-one best seller in the United States and England. In 1973 Vidal published his most popular novel, Burr, as well as a volume of collected essays, Homage to Daniel Shays. In 1976 he published yet another number-one best seller, 1876, a part of his on-going American chronicle, which now consists of-in chronological order-Burr, Lincoln, 1876, Empire, and Washington, D.C.
In 1981 Vidal published Creation, “his best novel,” according to the New York Times. In 1982 Vidal won the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism for his collection of essays, The Second American Revolution. A propos Duluth (1983), Italo Calvino wrote (La Repubblica, Rome): “Vidal’s development… along that line from Myra Breckinridge to Duluth is crowned with great success, not only for the density of comic effects, each one filled with meaning, not only for the craftsmanship in construction, put together like a clock-work which fears no word processor, but because this latest book holds its own built-in theory, that which the author calls his ‘après-poststructuralism.’ I consider Vidal to be a master of that new form which is taking shape in world literature and which we may call the hyper-novel or the novel elevated to the square or to the cube.”
