by Gore Vidal
Caroline recognized Bernard Baruch, a very tall, very rich Wall Street speculator who affected a Southern accent so thick that it made Josephus Daniels sound like a Vermont Yankee. Baruch was a New Yorker of Southern origin. He had made a fortune by remembering to sell those stocks which he had bought before they cost less than he paid for them, a gift Caroline entirely lacked. She had sat next to Baruch once or twice at dinner and enjoyed his flow of gossip, in which every one of his pronouns was firmly attached to a famous name. Like so many newly rich men of no particular world—he was a Jew, she had gathered, only when it suited him—Baruch had been attracted to Washington, to politics, to the President. It was said that he had personally given fifty thousand dollars to Wilson for the election of 1912; it was also said that he used his White House connections to get tips on what stocks to buy. Caroline was hazy about all this. But not Mrs. Bingham, who was now in full swift torrent. “Mrs. Peck,” she said the name accusingly, much preferring she. “The President’s old mistress—she’s in California now—was threatening to sell the President’s letters to the papers last fall before the election, and so Randolph Boiling got Mr. Baruch to go to her and buy the letters for seventy-five thousand dollars, and that’s how the President could marry Edith Boiling Galt, who’s getting fat, and the President could win the election, just barely.…”
A plain small woman with a large head marched toward Mrs. Bingham, followed by a plump bespectacled man with a moist palm, as Caroline discovered when it closed all round her own hand. “Mrs. Harding!”
Mrs. Bingham produced her most ghastly smile for the wife of Ohio’s junior senator, Warren Gamaliel Harding, who, after James Burden Day, was the handsomest man in the Senate. “This is an old friend.” Mrs. Harding pushed her escort forward. “From Washington Court House, in Fayette County. Jesse Smith. Say hello to Mrs. Bingham. Say hello to Mrs. Sanford, Jesse.” The hellos were duly said. Then, to make conversation, Jesse said to Caroline, “I’m a friend of Ned McLean. And Evalyn, too. His wife, you know. With the diamond.”
“I’m not.” Caroline was gracious. “A friend, that is. I wish,” she was expansive in her insincerity, “that I was.”
“I can fix it,” said Jesse. “Any time.”
“Jesse can fix anything.” But Mrs. Harding sounded dubious.
“Where’s the Senator?” Mrs. Bingham came to the only point that mattered: wives were to be tolerated, no more.
“He’s gone to Palm Beach. With the McLeans. He hates the cold. So do I. But I’ve got so much to do here. You see, we went and bought this big house on Wyoming Avenue that’s in two parts. We live in the one part and we rent out the other. Well, there’s no end of bother with tenants, isn’t there?”
Mrs. Bingham said, “I wouldn’t know.”
“You must come see us when we’re settled in. You, too, Mrs. Sanford. I’ve been to your brother’s lovely home.”
“Almost as big as the McLeans’.” Jesse made his contribution.
“My daughter finds it quite large enough these days.” With her usual swift thrust, Mrs. Bingham reminded them that Mrs. Blaise Delacroix Sanford was none other than her own daughter Frederika—my protégée, thought Caroline, who was more glad than not to have got Blaise married to someone who could put up with his uneasy temper, so like their father’s, though unlike that once larger-than-life now smaller-than-death monster, Blaise was not yet mad. Caroline quite admired her sister-in-law’s strength of character, particularly the way she had, socially at least, dropped her mother once she had leapt to the top of their world. Neither Blaise nor Frederika ever appeared at Mrs. Bingham’s “at homes” to the Congress, nor was Mrs. Bingham invited to the Sanfords except for a private meal in the bosom of the family, the very last place that Mrs. Bingham ever wanted to be. Caroline herself was less strict than Frederika. Also, Mrs. Bingham was her invention; and never to be abandoned. She was good value, too, if one could separate her inventions from those shiny disreputable truths for which she had a magpie’s eye.
Mrs. Harding was staring at Caroline. She had left her card upon first arrival in the city in early 1915; and that had been that. “You must come to us, Mrs. Sanford. We’re simple folk, but I know you’re a friend of Nick Longworth …”
“And here,” said Caroline, saved by the appearance of a handsome creature all in blue, “is Mrs. Longworth.”
“Caroline.” The women embraced. “Mrs. Bingham.” Alice Roosevelt Longworth’s cold gray-blue eyes were aslant with controlled laughter. Mrs. Bingham had that effect on her. “Mrs. Harding!” Alice’s eyes went suddenly wide; laughter was choked off at the source.
“I was just telling about your Nick and my Warren.” The “Warren” came out in a staccato roar of “r’s” which sounded to Caroline like “Wurr-rren.”
“They play poker,” Alice announced brightly. “In your apartment …”
“House, in two parts,” began Mrs. Harding with a look of steel in her cold gray-blue eyes. Caroline was not certain which of the two would win if war came. Alice’s wild sense of humor was a sword on which she might yet herself fall. While Mrs. Harding—what was her name?—Florence—would never give way. Ordinarily the two ladies would not have met but for the fact that Alice’s husband was a congressman from Ohio, whose senator was Warren Harding: as a result, neither lady could ignore the other. But thus far Alice had collected the most points. “I must come see your apartment—I mean house. I don’t go,” she turned to Caroline, “because I’m not invited to the poker games. Only boys allowed. Even though I’m a very good poker player.” She turned to Mrs. Harding. “Maybe you and I should have all-girl all-night poker games, Florence.” Alice said the name with sufficient space all round it to leave room for a shroud.
“I’m Jesse Smith,” said Jesse Smith, taking Alice’s hand. “From Ohio, too.”
“Lucky,” said Alice, “you.”
“I think you know my friends the McLeans. She plays poker, Evalyn does. Pretty good, too.”
“Oh, God!” Alice had long since ceased to attend the Ohioans. “Cousin Eleanor! She’s like a lighthouse, isn’t she? So tall, so full of light. I must go tease her.” Alice left them for the fireplace, where Eleanor stood, listening politely to Mr. Baruch. They were the only couple in the room in proper scale to each other. Like kindly giants, they stood before the flames and greeted Alice.
Mrs. Bingham knew all. “Her father will run again, in 1920. He’ll be nominated, too. He’s made his peace with the regular Republicans.”
“My Warren thinks the world of Colonel Roosevelt.” With a hunter’s eye, Mrs. Harding studied Alice in the distance, the quarry that had got away so far. “The Colonel needs Ohio, if he’s going to go anywhere at all, and my Warren can swing it for him.”
“But surely Mr. Wilson will run again, and win again.” As Caroline spoke, she wondered if she ought to try to have another child; or was she too old? Menopause had not yet begun; even so, the Tribune’s Society Lady never ceased to warn its readers against having a child so late in life and so long after the first. Of course, there was no husband, but nowadays a respectable widow could simply take a long trip around the world and return with an adopted child, and an elaborate story of a family retainer, in France, at Saint-Cloud-le-Duc, dead in childbirth. Last wish for baby: America. Adoption. What else could I do? Every four years, coincidental with the presidential election, she thought of having a baby or going back to France for good or entering, at last, upon a furious love affair. Also, any mention of Theodore Roosevelt had the effect of turning her inward. Although she quite liked the former President despite—or because of?—his noisy absurdity, the thought of his absolutely requited self-love made her affections turn not toward him but herself. He aroused the competitive instinct in her. She could still start over. She had not lost her looks; she might still find … what?
“I think I shall go to California,” she said, to the general astonishment of her companions and self. With that, she abandoned them for the father of her d
aughter, Burden Day, who had come to the Senate in 1915, the same year as Warren Harding. Before that he had been in the House of Representatives, where during his first—or was it second?—term he had deflowered her, for which she was in his debt. Otherwise, she might have been like Mlle. Souvestre, a vast untended garden, gone to seed.
“Jim,” she murmured. He had just left the group around Alice and Kitty. Kitty: The Unsuspecting Wife. Caroline tended to think in headlines, capitals, italics, and bold bold Roman. She might no longer be much of a woman but she was truly a good and inky publisher. “Or should I call you Burden now?” With Jim’s elevation to the Senate, Kitty had decreed he be known as Burden Day, which had a presidential sound, she thought, though to Caroline the name suggested a spinsterish old gentleman, at Newport, Rhode Island, in exuberant thrall to needlepoint.
“Call me anything. You look beautiful. What else?”
“I do have something else in mind. The beauty’s only nature’s trap. I want another child.”
“By me?” Burden’s smile was immaculate; but his voice had dropped to a whisper. Nearby, the Austrian ambassador spoke of peace to the secretary of the interior, who cared only for oil.
“By you. Of course. I’m hardly wanton yet.”
“I suppose it could be arranged.” He grinned; reminded her of the boy that he had been when they first met. “Funny,” he added, and she smiled broadly, aware that when anyone said “funny” it was fairly certain that all mirth had fled. “Kitty said almost the same thing to me last year.”
“And you obliged.”
“I obliged. She never really got over Jim Junior’s dying.”
“Now?”
“Happy. Again. How’s Emma?”
“Our daughter wants to go to college. She is very brainy, not like me.”
“Not like me, either.”
“Come see her. She likes you.” Actually Emma was perfectly indifferent to her actual father, so much for the mystical inevitable tug of consanguinity. But then Emma was indifferent to most people; she was withdrawn, self-absorbed, neutral. She read books of physics as if they were novels. Surprisingly, the one person that she had liked was Caroline’s husband of convenience; of course she had thought that John Sanford was her father. But as he was now dead, that was that. Caroline did find it unusual—even unfeminine—that Emma had never once noticed the physical resemblance between herself and her mother’s old friend James Burden Day. But then Emma never looked at a mirror in order to see herself as opposed to hair or hat.
“She’s made friends with the Roosevelt girl.” At the fireplace, Alice was holding forth to cousin Eleanor, whose patient smile was beginning to resemble Medusa’s petrifying rictus.
“Hard to imagine, a Democratic Roosevelt.” Burden stared at the cousins, alike in appearance, unlike in character.
“What do you think of him?”
Burden shrugged. “He doesn’t come my way. He’s a bit too charming, I’d say. He’s also too much the warrior. He can’t wait to get us in.”
“You can?”
“I’m a Bryan Democrat. Remember?” Burden stretched his arms, as if measuring them for a cross of gold. “The war’s not popular where I come from. Maybe the Easterners should go and fight it and let us stay home …”
“And fight Mexico?”
“Well, at least we’d get some loot out of it. There’s nothing for us in Europe except trouble.” Mrs. Harding marched by, Jesse Smith two paces behind her. She greeted Burden; then affixed herself to the Russian ambassador, Bakhmeteff, whose wife was the aunt of Ned McLean, Caroline’s friendly competitor at the Post
“Now he has a problem. Warren Harding, that is.” Burden took a glass of champagne from a passing waiter. It had been Caroline’s idea for Mrs. Bingham to break with Washington tradition and serve champagne as well as the inevitable tea and heavy cake. Official Washington was gratified except for such devoted teetotalers as Josephus Daniels, who had gone so far as to ban wine from the officers’ mess of the Navy. Currently, Mrs. Daniels was notorious for having presided over a tea where onion sandwiches had been served. She would never live that down was Mrs. Bingham’s considered judgment. Even in Washington there were limits to vulgarity.
“Are there so many hyphenates in Ohio?” Caroline found the whole problem of German-Americans and Irish-Americans fascinating. The Administration found it alarming. If the United States went to war with Germany, how would a million or so German-speaking American citizens respond?
“No more than I’ve got, proportionately. But Harding’s got one, a lady friend, who’s a dragon, they say. She’s threatened to expose him …”
“Expose him?”
“Both of them. She’ll tell all if he votes for war with her native land.”
“That is unusual. Cherchez le pays.”
“Senators are known by the women they keep.” Burden grinned. “Actually, he’s a nice fellow, if you don’t count his speeches.”
“That’s what we say about all of you. Except Senator Lodge. We like his speeches. It’s he that …” They were then joined by Mrs. Bingham, blind eyes agleam with excitement. “Mr. Tumulty’s here. From the White House. You’re being called back, Senator. All of you. All Congress.”
“Called back for what?” Burden looked, again, his age; and Caroline decided not to have another child—by him.
“A special session. To receive a communication by the Executive on Grave Questions of Internal Policy. Those are Mr. Wilson’s very words. I’m sure it’s war at last. So exciting, isn’t it?”
Caroline’s heart began to pound—from excitement? Burden’s face was suddenly ruddy. “I’m sure it isn’t war just yet. When is the special session?”
“April sixteenth, Mr. Tumulty says.”
Burden looked relieved. “That gives us a month. Plenty can happen.”
“Plenty is happening,” said Caroline, the editor. “The President’s busy arming those ships that you willful men in the Senate said he shouldn’t.” Although the celebrated American Constitution was a perfect mystery to Caroline, this did seem wrong. “How can he?” She turned to Burden.
“Oh, he can, if he wants to. He can call it ‘military necessity,’ the way Lincoln did.”
“Lincoln! War!” Mrs. Bingham was ecstatic. “I wasn’t born then, of course,” she lied. “But I’ve always wanted to live through a war. I mean a real one, not like the Spanish nonsense.”
“I suppose that’s all that anyone ever wants to do.” Caroline was not well-pleased. “Live through it.”
4
James Burden Day walked up the steps to the north portico of the White House, where he was greeted by an usher who led him across the entrance hall to the small electric elevator. “Mrs. Wilson will be waiting for you in the upstairs hall. The President’s in bed. The chill stays with him.”
Burden was struck by the calm of the White House. There was no sign of emergency. A few politicians could be seen, showing friends the state apartments. Of course, the executive offices were in a separate wing to the west of the mansion, and although telephones never ceased to ring in the offices, there was, as yet, none of that tension which he remembered from the days of McKinley and the Spanish war, not to mention the tremendous bustle of the Roosevelt era when children and their ponies were to be seen indoors as well as out, and the President gave the impression of presiding simultaneously in every room with a maximum of joyous noise.
The Wilson White House was like the President himself: scholarly, remote, and somewhat lady-like. The President had been entirely devoted to his first wife. Now he was besotted by her successor. He was easily the most uxorious of the recent presidents; he also had the fewest friends. Ill-at-ease with men, Wilson preferred the company of women, particularly of his three daughters, gracious replicas of himself, ranging from the sad plainness of the spinster Margaret, who wanted to be a singer, to the dim beauty of Eleanor, married to the secretary of the Treasury, William G. McAdoo, to the equine-featured Jessie, married
to one Francis B. Sayre.
The elevator stopped. The glass-panelled door opened. Burden found himself in the familiar upstairs corridor that ran the length of the building from west to east. In the old days, the President’s offices had been at the east end and the living quarters at the west, with the oval sitting room as a sort of no-man’s-land at dead center. But Theodore Roosevelt’s family had been big; ambitious, too. He had added the executive wing to the mansion, while converting the entire second floor for himself and his family: successors, too, of course.
The wife of the most despised of his two despised successors stood opposite the elevator, waiting for Burden. Edith Boiling Galt Wilson was a large, full-breasted woman whose wide face contained small regular features, reflecting the Indian blood that she had inherited, she claimed, from Pocahontas. The smile was truly charming. “Senator Day! Now tell me the absolute truth. Did the usher refer to me as Mrs. Wilson or as the First Lady?”
“I think he said ‘Mrs. Wilson.’ ”
“Oh, good! I hate ‘First Lady’ so! It sounds like something out of vaudeville, with Weber and Fields and me as Lillie Langtry.”
Burden was aware that she was the focal point of a heavy jasmine scent that ebbed and flowed in her wake as she led him to the end of the hall where a desk with two telephones had been placed beneath a great fanlight window that looked out on the executive offices to the west and the State War and Navy Building to the north. At the desk sat Edith’s social secretary, Edith Benham, an admiral’s daughter who had replaced the magnificent Belle Hagner, a queen of the Aboriginal City, and secretary to the first Mrs. Wilson as well as to Mrs. Roosevelt and Mrs. Taft. It had been suggested that as Edith Boiling Galt had never been included in Mrs. Hagner’s list of those who were invitable to the White House, Miss Hagner herself was no longer to be found there with her lists, her files, her telephones at the desk below the fan window. Kitty had talked of nothing else for a week; and Burden had listened less than usual.