by Gore Vidal
“You know who else.” Daugherty looked away.
But Harding never, at least in Jess’s presence, responded to Daugherty’s prodding. “If he gets his divisions and goes off to war, he’ll come back a hero for a second time …”
“So he better not get his division.”
“I reckon that’s just what Mr. Wilson is saying to himself this morning. Anyway, like always, I want my friends to be happy.”
“Colonel Roosevelt’s your friend?” Daugherty chuckled.
“Oh, yes. Or he will be, after this morning.”
To Jess’s delight, he was allowed to accompany his great friends to the house of Mrs. Nicholas Longworth in M Street. The morning was damp, the sun pale, the press overexcited. A dozen journalists and photographers stood outside the narrow red-brick house. When they saw Senator Harding, they surrounded him, shouting questions. Jess was thrilled to think that he had just seen this much-sought-after man at home in his galluses while the press, eyes and voice to the people, must content themselves with a mere formal glimpse, a brief bloviation, Harding’s favorite noun to describe speechifying, and a mystery.
“Now, boys. Relax. I’m just the proprietor of the Marion Star, a small-town publisher, not like you big Hearst fellows and your—Oh-oh! There’s the World. I better keep my trap shut.” W.G. chatted for some minutes, giving pleasure but no news. Then he entered the house, followed by Daugherty and Jess.
The downstairs hall was crowded with journalists of the progressive sort, as well as friends of the great man. Although Jess hated the progressives to a man, Harding knew exactly how to jolly them along. But Alice Longworth was not about to allow him any role in her house other than that of courtier, if not suppliant, to the warrior-king. “Senator!” She took his arm, and led him into the dining room. Jess looked at Daugherty—What to do? As if summoned, Daugherty marched right into the dining room and Jess did the same, very much aware that he was on history’s stage, for at the head of the table sat Theodore Roosevelt with Senator Lodge on his right and a half-dozen other political grandees. Jess made himself invisible next to a break-front filled with unused wedding presents, his emporium owner’s eye noted.
The appearance of Harding was electrical. Roosevelt leapt to his feet. Lodge languidly rose. Whatever they might have thought of Harding, and Jess was quite aware of the social disdain such people had for simple folk like W.G. and his Duchess, the presence of Ohio in that room, with all the state’s wealth not to mention electoral votes, made even the fat small shrill Colonel reverent. “Mr. Harding!” Each pumped the other’s hand. “You don’t know what this means. I’ll never forget your loyalty, Senator. Never. I don’t mean to me.” Roosevelt turned to the others, catching Lodge in a small yawn. But then Jess noticed that the Colonel had not seen the yawn because the eye that he had turned upon Lodge was plainly blind, damaged, it was said, in the White House by a medicine ball. “I mean to the whole country. Alone in the Senate, Mr. Harding saw the need for volunteers as well as conscripts.”
“Alone?” murmured Lodge.
But Roosevelt was now moving about the dining room, voice raised high. In the hallway, Alice was conferring with her sad-eyed husband, Nick, a bald man with a full moustache, who came from one of Cincinnati’s greatest families, and knew the McLeans better than anyone. But then old John McLean had begun his career in Ohio when he inherited the Cincinnati Examiner; later, he bought the Washington Post Jess took considerable pride in his state: three recent presidents, Hayes, Garfield, McKinley; and then the Longworths, the McLeans—Harding?
Harding had finally been allowed to speak. “I just happened to be in the neighborhood,” he said with a shy bob of his head—and he was shy, at least in the presence of those who could never forget his, or their, origins. “So I thought I’d pay my respects, Colonel, and tell you that no matter what kind of a draft bill we come up with next, there’ll be a Harding amendment added—for three, maybe four, divisions of volunteers, and the sooner we let you raise them, Colonel, the sooner we’ve got this war won.”
As Roosevelt seized Harding’s hand in both of his, Jess noticed how gray the famous face was; gray, too, moustache and hair; while behind the dusty pince-nez, there were tears. At fifty-eight Theodore Roosevelt was a very old man. But then he had nearly died the previous year from a fever that he had caught big-game hunting in some South American jungle. “I swear to you, Senator, I will be true to your trust, and let me tell you what I plan to tell the President today.” The high voice suddenly lowered to a whisper. “I will go to France with my troops, at their head, and I will not return. Because I know that three months in the field will see me to the end …”
“I think, Theodore,” said Lodge, “that if you could convince Mr. Wilson that you were never coming back, you’d get your division this afternoon.”
“Root’s already made that sour joke,” said the Colonel, far too great a man to have a sense of humor.
Alice appeared in the doorway. “Mr. Tumulty’s just rung from the White House. The Logothete will see you at noon.”
“President Logothete,” Nick corrected Alice. Jess wondered what a logothete was: something pretty awful, probably. The Colonel liked big fierce words.
“Good! Good!” The Colonel clapped his hands. Alice poured coffee from a great pot on the sideboard. “I shall come as a beggar. On my knees. Wailing …”
“Mr. Wilson will like that.” Lodge was judicious; then W.G. nodded to Harry: time to go. But as the Ohioans stood up ready for departure, there was a disturbance from the reporters in the hall, as three more guests arrived. Jess recognized the Democrat James Burden Day, who had come to the Senate in 1915, the same year as Harding. With Day was a tall, willowy young couple, the man busy fending off reporters and the woman trying unsuccessfully either to put her large hat on or take it off.
“Senator Day!” The Colonel gave Burden a powerful hand-clasp.
“I’m your escort,” said Burden. “To the White House, in case you’ve forgotten the way. The President thought you’d need a Democrat for protection.”
“Democrats wherever I look!” Roosevelt kissed the woman’s cheek. “Stop fussing with your hat, Eleanor. It’s now too late to put it on or take it off.”
“I think,” the voice was high and fluting, “that I’ve driven a pin straight through my head.”
This was the Colonel’s niece, whom Jess had read about, and her husband, another Roosevelt, named Franklin. As Wilson’s assistant secretary of the Navy, Franklin had been much cultivated by Daugherty, who was always interested in those departments of the government that let contracts.
“Well, Colonel.” Franklin’s smile was even wider than his cousin Theodore’s; fortunately, his teeth were not reminiscent of a New England cemetery. “If ever we needed anybody here now it’s you.”
“Let’s hope your President agrees. I’ve got a thousand names already.” The Colonel gave his wallet pocket a tap. “Volunteers, ready to sign up the second I give the word.”
“I’m sure you’ll have no problem.” The young Roosevelt was all easy charm and lightness and quickness of eye. He immediately shook hands with Lodge; then turned to Harding. “I hope we’re still on for golf at Chevy Chase.”
“Saturday.” W.G. nodded. “Weather and the Duchess permitting. Now, Colonel …” Harding had turned toward Roosevelt, who had turned away from him, to his young cousin.
“What I’d give to be in your place, Franklin! And at your age, too.”
“But you were in my place, in 1898, and you got us the Philippines. I’m afraid I won’t have the same opportunity …”
“Probably not. That was rare luck, finding Admiral Dewey in time, and my poor Mr. Long always out of town …”
“While my poor Mr. Daniels is always in town, with the President.” The young Roosevelt’s smile was just a bit on the false side, thought the connoisseur Jess, even for a politician of the la-di-da patrician sort, who sounded more like an Englishman than an American.
“No. I don’t mean the Navy Department. Once a war starts, anyone can handle that job.”
Franklin’s smile was fixed, while his small, close-set gray eyes stared down at his tubby cousin, who had now begun to walk about, arms flailing, just the way that Jess had enjoyed seeing him and his imitators do for so much of his life. “No. Your opportunity’s more like mine now. To do battle! To enlist. As a private, if necessary. Then go where the action is. There is nothing more fitting for a man than to fight for his nation, with his bare hands, if necessary.”
“But surely, Uncle Tee,” the tall Mrs. Roosevelt was both diffident and firm, “anyone can shoot a gun, while very few people have Franklin’s experience at the Navy Department for four years now …”
“Job for a clerk!” The Colonel smote the dining-room table a mighty blow. “The prizes go to the warrior, to the hero, not to the clerk safe at home behind the lines.”
Although Franklin’s smile was now in place, his cheeks were darkening with rising blood. But he spoke smoothly. “We must serve where we can do the best for our country, not ourselves.”
This last was aimed at his famous cousin, who suddenly clicked his teeth fearsomely, three times; then shouted, “If you choose to imply—”
But Alice Longworth’s voice was loudest of all. “Oh, good. A quarrel! Father, go for him. Remember your Japanese neck-hold …”
“I believe,” began Senator Harding, moving toward the Colonel, Jess and Daugherty on either side of him.
“Try,” said the elegant Senator Lodge, “what they call a right hook of the sort with which I recently floored a pacifist …”
“Try,” said Alice, “this.”
To Jess’s astonishment, she was, for an instant, gone. Then the room burst into laughter. Alice had done a back-flip, landing with perfect balance on her feet, dress barely ruffled.
“Really, Alice.” Cousin Eleanor was unamused. But Jess was ecstatic. He couldn’t wait to tell the Duchess that her dentist was right and that the stuck-up Alice was indeed a dope fiend.
Jess was truly sorry to leave the M Street house, where, for this particular moment anyway, the whole country’s attention was focussed; and yet, except for the privileged Jess, no one was aware of the low vice and high drama those brick walls contained, all lacquered over as they were with Rooseveltian world-glory. Jess had always wanted to be a detective. Now he knew that he had the makings of a great one like the fictional Nick Carter, based on the very real Mr. Pinkerton, whose glory still continued, even after death, in the agency that bore his name. Had it not been for dry goods and a fear of the dark, Jesse Smith might have made his mark in the world of detection. Now he satisfied himself with second-best, with his position on the inside of the top world, where he knew such things as who was a secret dope fiend and who was a secret presidential candidate. “Roosevelt’s running” was Daugherty’s gloomy comment as the three men got onto the half-empty electric trolley car, bound for the Capitol.
“That’s why I’m in his corner.” Harding was mild; he smiled at an old lady, who promptly looked out the window at Pennsylvania Avenue, vast and desolate in its April mud.
“If he gets to go to France, he’s got the nomination.” Daugherty chewed on an unlit cigar.
“He won’t be going to France.” Harding smoothed his thick eyebrows with a moistened thumb. The old woman was now watching him, with obscure horror.
“Then if Wilson won’t let him go, he’s really got the nomination in the bag.”
“Harry, sometimes you go and look just too far ahead.” Harding turned to Jess, who was holding a copy of the Tribune. “Give me the sports page, Jess.”
“I wonder,” said Harry, popping his eyes, the brown as well as the blue, at the demoralized old woman, “just what Burden Day was doing at the Longworths’.”
“He’s an escort, Harry. To get the Colonel from the frying pan to the fire.” W.G. was deep into the sports page. “Well, here’s the real story of why the captain of Army’s football team didn’t get to play Navy. Hazing, it says. He locked up one of the cadets in a locker and then went and forgot all about him. Damn fool thing to do.”
“That’s real absent-minded,” said Jess, who admired Army’s captain more than any of the other football gods, including Hobe Baker.
“I suppose they’ll be graduating all the West Pointers and Annapolis boys a year early, for the war.” Daugherty stared at the Post Office, which always looked to Jess like one of Carrie Phillips’s beloved Rhine castles that had got itself mislaid on the Potomac.
“Remember that punt of his?” W.G. sighed. “Beautiful, it was. What I’d give to be able to do something like that, all those yards.”
2
Burden Day had indeed been chosen by the President himself to get Colonel Roosevelt through the newspapermen at the north portico, not that anyone could control the Colonel, who had brought along someone called Julian J. Leary, as an extra buffer. In the motor car, Burden had found Roosevelt surprisingly small, even subdued, until they arrived under the porte-cochere to be greeted by a news-reel camera crew, a dozen overcoated journalists and photographers, and the Secret Service, whose numbers had doubled since the declaration of war. From all over the country there were scare stories: German-Americans were marching, meticulously armed, on Washington while German spies were everywhere, with dynamite, prepared to eliminate the city of Washington from the map.
There was a slight chill in the air, as Burden and Leary helped the Colonel from the car. Farther down the lawn, lilac was between bud and flower—always April, Kitty had said unexpectedly that morning, when presidents are killed, and wars declared, and the Republic imperilled. Was it something to do with the awakening of spring, with life’s resurrection? Then why so much death at April and so little glory?—barring, of course, the Ned McLeans’ annual Easter gala at their lordly estate, Friendship.
“Colonel!” A dozen voices said the name. Roosevelt came to swift vivid life and began to impersonate himself, left arm moving vigorously as right fist pounded, from time to time, into left palm. He seemed almost exactly like the Theodore Roosevelt who had dominated for twenty years the public imagination while reigning in this house for nearly eight of those years.
“Will Mr. Wilson run for a third term?” asked a journalist.
“You ask him. I won’t. We’re beyond politics now. All of us. This is war. We are not Democrats. We are not Republicans.” Roosevelt could, like every politician, spin this sort of web effortlessly, but Burden watched rather than listened to him and saw how dull the eyes were while a second round face now circled, ominously, the first. It was against nature for T.R. to be old; but nature had been undone by time. Now a prematurely old man of fifty-eight was imitating himself with less and less plausibility, particularly as he tired. But Burden quite believed him when he said that he wanted to lead his own men into battle; and die upon the field. He also knew that, old or not, patriotic or not, Theodore Roosevelt had returned to the center of his party’s stage and there was no one, including Wilson, who could stop him from returning as sovereign to this house which he was now entering as temporary suppliant.
In the entrance hall, a dozen old retainers waited to greet the Colonel, who spoke warmly to each. He had what all good politicians had, the gift of intimacy with strangers, the ability to cut through all shyness and preliminaries and be himself, or something very like. All good politicians with the possible exception of the slender figure standing alone at the entrance to the Red Room, watching, as if at a theater, the performance of his rival, who had accused him not only of being a dread word-monger or logothete but a coward as well, the worst Rooseveltian epithet, since the Colonel had long since convinced the nation, if not himself, that as a man he was astonishingly brave, morally as well as physically.
Suddenly, Roosevelt looked up and saw the President; and each man, simultaneously, remembered to smile. Wilson’s long discolored teeth were equine while Roosevelt’s, though worn down by decades of grinding and
clicking, were still hugely bovine.
“Mr. President!” Roosevelt crossed the entrance hall, Burden close behind him. Mr. Leary remained with the ushers and attendants. Simultaneously, Wilson’s secretary, Joseph P. Tumulty, a classic Irish politician of the school of Jersey, appeared from the Red Room to join in the round of greetings. When Irish eyes are smiling, thought Burden, there’s sure to be a knife.… The possibilities of alternative lyrics of a murderous nature were endless. But Wilson’s clear eyes were Scots, and not smiling at all despite the baring of mottled teeth, while Roosevelt’s face was like a carved coconut of the sort carried into battle by Polynesian warriors.
“Colonel Roosevelt, I’m so glad you could take time to see me.” The courteous-killer Virginia note. “Come in. Come in. Please, Senator Day.” Thus, Burden was invited to witness an historic confrontation. The men had not met since the election of 1912. Before that, President Roosevelt had come once to Princeton, where college president Wilson had received him. Roosevelt, in turn, had acted as host to Professor Wilson at Oyster Bay, Long Island. Beyond that, the two men had existed for one another as, simply, enemies, mirroring one another as each challenged the other: Roosevelt for war at any time and in any place; Wilson for peace, or seeming to be for peace, under circumstances that had a tendency to shift rather more than the President’s high-minded rhetoric could ever quite justify. Roosevelt was at least always in bellicose character; once Wilson had been obliged by events to go to war, he could now no longer depict his rival as an eccentric jingo when he himself was war-lord.
Wilson gestured for Roosevelt to sit before the fire, face to the window, an old trick that Roosevelt finessed by moving his chair so that the direct light was not in his face. Wilson sat opposite him, smiling politely; at the door Tumulty sat in a straight chair, pretending he was not present, while Burden sat comfortably in a sofa just out of range.