The Golden Age

by Gore Vidal

  “You’re here to cheer us up on this dismal day.” They embraced. “When they asked Franklin why he didn’t want a parade, he said, ‘There’s no one left in town to march.’ I’m afraid it’s going to be fearfully gloomy.”

  “I’m sure the President will liven things up.”

  Eleanor’s smile never faded, just as her eyes never ceased to watch the guests. Then a familiar figure approached. It was Caroline’s neighbor in the Wardman Park Hotel, the outgoing vice president, Henry Wallace, a tall, somewhat Lincolnesque figure who had been sacrificed to the party’s Southern conservatives.

  “Dear Henry,” said Eleanor; she was known genuinely to like and admire this reputedly mystical, definitely intellectual figure, so out of place, Caroline had always thought, in American political life. Caroline asked after his black dog, whom she often met in the elevator.

  “He hates the cold. I’m trying to invent some sort of slippers for him. I’m experimenting with rubber. From a tire inner tube. But so far they keep slipping off.” Wallace turned to Eleanor. “I’ve just been told that I’m to swear in the new vice president.”

  Eleanor giggled. “You do have your priestly side, Henry. And think what a good start it will be for Mr. Truman. Oh!” she looked toward the fireplace, where the small, gray, thickly bespectacled Senator Truman was standing, unnoticed, with his very large wife. “There he is. There they are. I must say hello. I don’t think they’ve ever been up here before.” She crossed to the fireplace.

  Caroline said, “Will you be leaving Wardman Park now?”

  Wallace shook his head. “No. I’m supposed to stay on. In the Cabinet. Or so the President tells me. He tends sometimes to vagueness.”

  The guests were now being guided inexorably to the chilly South Portico.

  Caroline paused just inside the doorway; beside her stood the President’s eldest son, Jimmy, a tall man in uniform, going bald. “We’re almost ready for Pa,” he said. He and Caroline were old acquaintances.

  Caroline was prepared to make idle conversation with Jimmy Roosevelt but, to her surprise, he had a good deal to say, all the while watching the closed door between the President’s bedroom and the oval study. “It’s going to be a nightmare when this war’s over. Because we’re going to have millions of hillbilly boys on our hands who don’t know how to do anything except to kill people.”

  “Isn’t—wasn’t that—true after every war?”

  “Not on this scale. Anyway, look what happened last time. When the veterans got hit by the Depression, they marched on Washington to ask for a bonus and General MacArthur shot at them. Pa also says it was even worse after the Civil War when the country was full of all these men with no work, riding the rails … hobos they called them. Well, this time we could have millions of hobos on our hands. And I know these boys. I’ve served with them. I know that if we don’t find something for them to do, all hell is going to break loose.”

  Quietly, a valet appeared at the bedroom door. Slowly, he pushed the President’s chair into the now empty study. Roosevelt wore a lightweight suit and no overcoat. The outline of his heavy metal braces was visible through thin trouser material. In the year since Caroline had last seen him, he had lost weight and his shirt collar was loose. Most alarming, the head was so bowed that his chin rested on his breast, as if he were unconscious.

  Jimmy heard Caroline’s sudden intake of breath. “Don’t worry,” he said. “The old warhorse is ready.” Within a yard of Caroline, the great head was slowly raised at the sight of her and the eyes came into focus. A blue-lipped smile was abruptly switched on. “Caroline!” The voice sounded strong.

  “Mr. President.” Caroline shook his hand and then, to her own amazement, she did a full court curtsy.

  “Bravo!” he said. “The same curtsy you did for Queen Elizabeth in Mary Stuart. Even so, I still prefer you in Huns from Hell.”

  “I was certainly never nobler.”

  When Caroline saw that valet and son were now preparing to lift the President from his chair, she started to slip out the door, but FDR said, “Stay. The more the merrier. Actually, since I’m going to walk, I’m going to need as much window dressing as possible. So you stay close to my side, next to Jimmy.”

  The two men lifted the President a foot in the air: then, plainly a dead weight, he dropped back into the chair with a bump.

  Caroline reached for a carafe of whiskey and filled half a tumbler. With shaking hand, the President took the glass and drank the contents as if it were water. Color returned to his face. “You can say what you will about the new ways in medicine but the old are still the best. Yet Eleanor never stops complaining about how bad it is for me to stay up at night with Winston drinking. Finally, I had to tell her, ‘The problem with drink is on your side of the family, dear, not mine.’ ”

  Once again the two men, very carefully, tugged the President upright; and the valet locked his braces. FDR stood, swaying a moment. Then he said: “In my end is my beginning.” He smiled at Caroline. “I still remember your last words.”

  Aided now by a Secret Service man, the President swung first one leg then the next, back and forth from hip to brace, like some sort of absurd toy.

  As they appeared on the portico, the band played “Hail to the Chief”: the crowd below on the lawn cheered. Caroline stayed near the President, who was not so much standing on braces as being held in place all during the national anthem, a prayer, the swearing in of the vice president. Then the chief justice of the United States, Bible in hand, stood back of a lectern which the President now clutched and, in full view of crowd and cameras, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, for the fourth time, swore to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, “so help me God.”

  A short speech was on the lectern in front of him. The voice was hesitant at first; then it grew clearer as he held himself upright with two never very steady hands. Caroline was reminded of the Pope when he spoke to the city—Rome—and to all the world beyond. Ad urbe et orbi. “Things will not always run smoothly,” he warned. The paper made a sound as it brushed the microphones; he pulled back. “The great fact to remember is that the trend of civilization is forever upward …” This ought to have been true in a Darwinian world but Caroline was agnostic on the subject. He did concede that “our own Constitution of 1787 was not a perfect instrument; it is not perfect yet. But it provided a firm base …” A cold stillness seemed to envelop all the world; his voice alone sounding as, delicately, he alluded to the next task: “We cannot live alone at peace … our well-being is dependent on the well-being of other nations far away …”

  Caroline could hear a woman behind her softly sobbing. Who? Why? “We have learned to be citizens of the world, members of the human community …” He quoted Emerson. “ ‘The only way to have a friend is to be one.’ ” How odd, thought Caroline, that the one thing that earth’s new master could never himself be to anyone, he now proposed that his nation be—or appear to be—to everyone, a friend.

  At the end, there was a great burst of applause from the South Lawn below: strong applause from those on the portico. Simultaneously, Caroline and Jimmy met like two sides of a curtain coming together in order to shield the President from the view of the crowd. Then, once the valet knew that they were out of public view, he unlocked the braces and the President fell into his chair.

  Caroline turned to the source of the sobbing. All in black stood the widow of Woodrow Wilson, confronted for a second time in her life with the pale horse that marks the death of kings. Caroline crossed herself; and shuddered in the cold.

  NINE

  1

  Caroline had first known Lady Mendl when she was Elsie de Wolfe and, if not the first, certainly the most successful of the early century’s interior decorators. She was also one of the first professional women to live with another woman in a relationship that neither bothered to euphemize; there was no nonsense about a white or Boston marriage. They were, simply, a delightful couple who entertained intere
sting people in New York and Paris, always in small perfect rooms. Caroline thought of their settings as essentially dollhouses. Elsie’s friend was a literary agent and Elsie herself had literary inclinations. The never easily pleased Henry Adams himself delighted in their company during that long bright unbroken summer before the First World War. Then, in readiness for a new world, Elsie had married some sort of English civil servant called Sir Charles Mendl; as he was neither rich nor decorative, the marriage was an ongoing mystery that none bothered to solve. People came to Elsie for the other people that she had cast to decorate her rooms. During the Hollywood of the war years, she was counted among such distinguished European émigrés as Stravinsky, Mann, Huxley, Schoenberg, and, like them, she was—though American—expected to go “back” to Europe now that, as of this morning, May 8, 1945, Germany had surrendered. Since most of the islands of the Pacific had been occupied by American forces and a huge new bomber called the B-29 had made rubble of much of Tokyo, it was assumed that Japan would soon collapse.

  A joyous day, thought Caroline, walking up the dark red-brick path to Elsie’s latest dollhouse, a white frame building set among flower beds and exotic trees that produced Technicolor blossoms. The effect was like MGM’s notion of a humble cottage in the English countryside, no longer menaced by Hitler, who had killed himself the previous month just after President Roosevelt’s abrupt death at Warm Springs, Georgia. As the world stage was being emptied of the great players, what looked to be ill-rehearsed understudies were taking their places in the ruins of Berlin, the chaos of Rome, the echoing White House where a dim former senator with thick glasses seemed altogether too aware that he ought not to be there but, as he was there, he doggedly soldiered on.

  “We must chat a moment before the others come.” Elsie had been firm on the telephone.

  In the living room, banked with flowers, Elsie sat in a straight-back chair. In the ten years since they had last met, Elsie had acquired a smooth pink-and-white enamel face and, as if to fit more easily into her latest dollhouse, she had, startlingly, shrunk in the process; yet her energy was undiminished. She hurried forward to embrace Caroline. “You don’t change!” she said, almost accusingly.

  “Neither do you.” Thus ladies lie, thought Caroline, reassured, even comforted, that the somewhat reduced Elsie was actually so little changed. There were not many left at that certain age which each of them had got to at her own pace and in her own way; able, at last, temporarily perched, to look about in some surprise at those who had made it, too, almost always—if not the wrong—the unexpected ones.

  Caroline sat beside her hostess; took orange juice from a waiter. Elsie’s nose seemed to have got more arched and sharp with age; it was now like that of an early Roman emperor or, perhaps, a paper knife.

  “How did you know to plan a party for today?”

  “For today? Well, it was the only free day. There’s so much going on out here. Then, of course, the negotiations took forever. Was it on? Was it off?”

  “I thought the surrender was handled very briskly.”

  “Briskly? Negotiations dragged on and on. Why, February was to have been the start date and here we are in May.”

  Caroline realized that Elsie was deaf. “Well, it’s over, anyway.”

  “Indeed it is. Cary signed his contract last week and Cole’s delighted, of course. Some Hungarian will direct. But then some Hungarian always does nowadays.”

  Caroline wondered if she were going mad. Who was Cary, who was Cole? What she had thought would be a party for the Allied victory in Europe seemed to be some sort of movie party.

  “Caroline Sanford! This is a joy!” It was Sir Charles. He was dressed like a stage Englishman with a gray waistcoat and a chain about his neck to which, Caroline feared, a monocle had been attached.

  “Charles dear, we’re having a private chat.”

  “Sorry to barge in. But the war’s over in Europe. Thought you’d like to know.”

  “Caroline!” Elsie looked stricken. “Is that what you were talking about?”

  Caroline nodded.

  “But why did no one tell me?”

  “But I just did.” Charles was reasonable. “You were so busy with the party all morning, I didn’t get a chance to break the news.”

  “Oh, dear.” Elsie was like some great general arrived, all flags flying, to the wrong battle.

  “You will simply turn this into a V-E celebration,” was Caroline’s contribution.

  “V-D?” Elsie looked faint.

  “No, dear.” Charles was soothing. “V-E. For victory in Europe. V-E is what they call it. V-J is next, I suppose.”

  “That may be.” Elsie was now rallying. “But everyone is coming because Cary Grant finally signed his contract to play Cole Porter in Jack Warner’s movie Night and Day, the story of dear Cole’s life, such a powerful story, and now this has to happen.”

  “Dear Elsie, you can have three guests of honor—Cole and Cary and Ike.”

  “Ike who?”

  “Nickname, dear. Of General Eisenhower.” Charles enjoyed being the Answer Man.

  “Surely, General Eisenhower’s not in Beverly Hills today?” Elsie was starting to panic.

  “No,” said Caroline, enjoying herself. “But pretend he’s at your party, in spirit, and that the war is over after only forty months. I made a bet with someone on how long it would take to win. But I can’t remember who it was.”

  A butler drew Charles into a corner. The sound from the street of car doors opening and slamming announced the arrival of guests.

  “Why didn’t you marry Harry Hopkins?” This was the old Elsie at last.

  “He needed a nurse, not a wife, and I’m no good at that.”

  “Hire a nurse. We were so pleased by all those stories about you and him. To live at the center of history.” Quite lost was the hostess of the Night and Day launch party. “You must have felt like our dear old Henry Adams, living across the street from the White House.”

  “Only he hated his President Roosevelt and I quite liked my President Roosevelt. Now gone.”

  “They do go, don’t they? What’s to become of Eleanor?”

  “She has the cottage at Hyde Park, a place in New York …”

  “With two lady friends of mine.” For a moment, Elsie let slip the Sapphic mask of omertà; thus giving Caroline inordinate pleasure. “But she will want to keep busy.”

  “I think President Truman … how odd to call him, anybody else, that … is going to make her something at the United Nations.”

  The front door was now being opened. Elsie leapt to her feet as befitted one who stood on her head half an hour a day.

  “Is it true,” she spoke quickly, “that his old girlfriend, Lucy Rutherford, was with him when he died?”

  “Yes. That is why Eleanor was playing Medea at the grave.”

  “Well, adultery is apt to take the edge off one’s grief. Here come the guests. Even so, I’m surprised that Eleanor would have been jealous after so many years.” Elsie moved across the room to greet Ann Warner, queen of that Sapphic Hollywood which so sternly governed the film “industry,” the word their complaisant husbands used when referring to the chaos of moviemaking.

  “She was very jealous,” Caroline said to Elsie’s back, “unto the very end, I should think.”

  Caroline was greeted by elderly strangers who turned out to be old friends and acquaintances from her days as Emma Traxler. Facial surgery was boldly presented as if for her approval; generally, it looked as if someone had stapled onto an old friend someone else’s young face; happily, voices still provoked memories. By and large, men had lost their inhibition about what was now universally known as face-lifting even though Richard Barthelmess, an early victim of a bad surgeon’s knife, had eyelids that could not properly close, the lower lids seemingly glued to his cheekbones while glazed eyes constantly filled up with tears. Caroline greeted him fondly as well as his wife, Jessica, if that was her name.

  The younger set were r
idiculously young; or so they appeared to Caroline, whose youthful myopia, guaranteed to become farsighted with age, had, in her case, got worse. Rather than wear glasses, she used a lorgnette to get a quick look at those about her; then, if they approached her, she shut it with what she took to be a wry smile intended to mean: why on earth am I holding this?

  Fortunately, Cary Grant looked like himself. He also looked to be in a bad temper. “Back in Bristol, where I was born, every time you came on the screen the pianist, those were silent days, of course …”

  “Of course, I found my voice too late.”

  “Oh, you certainly didn’t need to speak with that painist in your corner. He had a crush on you. Every time you appeared on screen, he’d play the Hungarian Rhapsody.”

  “Even during the love scenes?”

  “Particularly during the love scenes. It was splendid. Of course I was only thirteen.”

  He need not, Caroline thought, have given his age so assertively. “I was an old twenty-five.”

  Grant flushed. “I do put my foot in it, don’t I. Is Cole here?”

  “I haven’t seen him. How are you going to play him?”

  “With my hand over my face. I’ve got a scene where I play Cole as a twenty-year-old boy at Yale. And here I am forty-two. I must also sing. But I can’t sing. And then, there’s the wardrobe. I’ve just had one fitting.”

  “As a college boy? Argyle socks?”

  “No. As the king of musical comedy. Mirror of fashion and all that.” Grant’s face was a mask of pain. Then, slowly, for dramatic effect, in a voice more suitable for Richard III than Cole Porter, he whispered, “The cuffs of my shirtsleeves go a quarter of an inch beyond the sleeve. I thought I’d have a stroke. Only a cad would show that much cuff. No gentleman ever exposes more than one eighth of an inch of cuff. Maximum.”

  “Use it!” Caroline was getting into the spirit of wardrobe: the dressing-up part of movies that had always so appealed to her. “Play him as a cad!”

  “Cole? Poor dear Cole, a cad? Oh, I couldn’t.” But Grant was smiling mischievously. “Of course, I’m a cad …”