by Gore Vidal
“The highest.” Burden was knowledgeable. “A Norman facade. Gray stonework. A terrace. A pond. A porch to the side …”
“Let’s hope the war won’t interfere.”
“Building goes on. Even if food doesn’t.” Burden moved from log to ground; and the inevitable grass stains on his trousers. “The President’s fit to be tied over Section 23.”
“You can’t blame him.” The animal psychic was now the political psychic, having skipped any sort of rapport with those human beings between the two poles of her life.
“They’re trying to do to him what they did to Lincoln when they set up that joint congressional committee to oversee the war.”
“Same thing.” Kitty nodded. “And all tucked inside the food bill, which is sly. But you won’t let it go through?”
“No. But there’ll be a real fight. Can’t you just hear the talk? Oh, the talk!” More than ever, the Senate encouraged personal oddity. Originally intended as a house of lords for the American patriciate or its assigns, the members of the upper house were selected by the various state legislators that were themselves paid for by the moneyed class. But since 1913, senators were now popularly elected. As a result, a new breed of lordly tribunes of the people had appeared in the sleepy chamber; and they delighted in tormenting the gentlemanly old guard of the patriciate. Also, since any senator who had got the floor to speak could speak as long as he was conscious, a great new age of filibuster had dawned, and a leather-lunged senator might, in the last hours before adjournment, talk to death a piece of legislation or threaten to do so in exchange for favors.
Even so, Burden was delighted to belong to so powerful a club, in which he had found his place as chief conciliator of his party’s chief, the schoolmaster president, whose control over the Senate’s Democratic majority was fragile at best. This meant constant work for Burden, who must placate—when not outright bribe—the Bryanites, the isolationists, the pro-Germanites and all the rest, who chose to reign in committee rather than serve their president.
“I wonder who she’ll marry.” Kitty gazed fondly at Diana, almost as if she were a plump raccoon arrived at the kitchen door for a handout.
“Isn’t that tempting fate?” Burden felt a swift chill; and shuddered. He had once speculated on Jim Junior’s future and promptly lost him to diphtheria.
“No. She’ll marry in this house, or from this house.” Kitty had a sort of second sight. “I suppose she’ll be happy, too.”
“Yes.” Burden was noncommittal. Kitty was fond of him; he of her; no more.
“Did your father like your mother?” This was sudden.
“That was so long ago. I don’t recall.” Burden had grown up on a farm in Alabama, surrounded by veterans of the lost war like his father. Burden had always been amazed at how Mark Twain had managed to make so idyllic that harsh crude muddy—always mud—world of mosquitoes and chiggers and wet-heat and poisonous snakes the color of the mud. Of course, Twain had been writing of an earlier generation before the war, but even so Burden had been aware all his childhood that this was not the way life was meant to be. There had been a very great fall, which his father, unlike so many veterans, was eager to explain and describe, the pale blue eyes fierce and crazy, as they must have been that day at Chickamauga when the bullet felled but did not kill him and he was taken prisoner. Later, among the ruins, Obadiah Day had begun his life all over in the delta mud. Of his children—seven, eight? Burden did not know the count—all but two had died of bloody flux, as the cholera was known. Burden did recall how much of his childhood seemed to have been spent in the local cemetery, watching small boxes being hidden under red dirt. He also recalled hours spent listening to his father speak of how They had ruined the South, corrupted the Negroes, foreclosed on the land of the best true stock of the country. They were a shifting entity composed of all Yankees and bankers and railroad men and, sometimes, of plain aliens, of whom Catholics and Jews were the worst. Curiously, the Negroes, no matter how out-of-hand, were never held directly responsible for their behavior. If a nigger went bad it was They who’d gone and turned him.
In time, the defeated Confederates turned to politics, the only weapon that they could use against Them. The political picnic and the under-canvas rally became the true church of those who had been dispossessed in their own land, and Obadiah was among those who had helped form the Party of the People in order to redress the people’s wrongs, and the party flourished everywhere in the South, and Obadiah himself was elected to a series of small state offices. Then came the day when he heard the fourteen-year-old Burden speak at a rally, and joyously he had welcomed his son to the great struggle, much as the Baptist had received the Messiah on Jordan’s shining bank. So, at Alabama’s edge, James Burden Day had come into his kingdom to do his father’s work and rout Them in the people’s name.
Clearer to Burden now than the crowd itself—and every crowd to Burden was like a lover met and lost or, more likely, ravished and won—was the image of his father, still surprisingly young in appearance, despite white hair, still brilliant of that bright blue eye not covered by a patch, still lean enough to be able to wear the butternut-gray patched Confederate uniform that he had come home in, with the bullet that struck him at Chickamauga on a string about his neck after he had insisted that it be gouged from his thigh by a friendly doctor so that, should he die, no part of Them would be eternally mixed with his bones. Together, father and son had fought in the ranks of the People’s Party until Burden had gone west to a new state to practice law; and though he never ceased to be, he swore to his father and murmured to himself, a true Populist, he had been obliged to start an entirely new life in a brand-new dry dusty state as opposed to his old wet, muddy one. Obliged to use a family connection to get an appointment at Washington in the Comptroller’s Office, he had disappointed his father. But they were reconciled when Burden had promised the old man that he would never give up the struggle and that when the time was right he would go back to his new state and lead their party. When the time was right, he did go back and marry Kitty, and with her father’s help, he was elected to Congress not as a Populist but as a Bryanite Democrat. Father no longer spoke to son. Yet Obadiah and a second wife continued to live in Alabama; and though Burden had sent him a message after his election to the Senate—where, after all, did he not continue to fight Them?—he got no answer from the old man, who was still, at heart, the furious boy struck down a half-century earlier at Chickamauga—two minutes before noon, he had noted the time before he lost consciousness. To live without such a father’s pride was, to Burden, unendurable; particularly when he himself had never lost their common faith in the people, their people. What was a party label? What was—anything?
“Will it be you?” Kitty rose. She took Diana from him. The child was falling asleep in the warm sun. The sweet heavy odor of honeysuckle was everywhere, as was the vine itself, a yellow-green tapestry clinging to the laurel.
“Me? What?”
“If Mr. Wilson does not run for a third time, which no one has.”
Kitty never ceased to calculate, despite the distractions of a child, house, the wild beasts of the field and—the what?—of the air. “It’s far too soon to even guess. The war will be short. That’s one thing—in his favor. He’ll be a victorious war president. And not too old. So if he wants it, he’ll probably have it.”
“It does no harm,” said Kitty, removing the drowsy Diana’s thumb from her mouth, “to place ourselves in position in case something goes wrong. If it does, our only competition will be Mr. McAdoo.”
“That’s a lot of competition.” Burden frowned, as he always did, when he thought of the enormous advantage that the President’s son-in-law and secretary of the Treasury had over everyone else in the party. McAdoo had already so positioned himself to inherit the Wilson legacy that it would be impossible to contest him unless the whispers of corruption that always surrounded the vast gray granite Treasury Building proved true.
“Then
there’s the Colonel.”
“Surely, he must die sometime.” Kitty was sweetly relentless.
“At sixty-one? With the nomination already his? If ever there was a life-restorer, it’s that. Almost as good as a Federal pension to insure longevity. There are,” said Burden, as always bemused by the fact, “seventy-three widows of the War of 1812 currently collecting pensions from the government.”
“Young girls who married old boys.”
“Now they are old girls made immortal by a pension.” Their Negro driver, Albert, joined them. He was a native Washingtonian, and a consummate snob. For years when Burden was in the House of Representatives, Albert would refer to his employer, behind his back, as “the Senator.” Burden’s eventual election to the Senate was, Kitty maintained, more thrilling for Albert than either of them. “I always felt we were common,” Albert would say, “when we were in the House with all that tobacco-chewing white trash from nowhere.” Albert’s mother had been called Victoria, after the queen; and she had called him Albert, after the consort. “Very psychological,” Kitty would say, looking wise. “He’s very much a mother’s boy.”
Albert reminded Burden that he had agreed to go out on the river with the Assistant Secretary of the Navy. So Burden collected Diana while Kitty collected laurel to decorate the Mintwood parlor; and then they descended the hill to the road, and the waiting car.
The Sylph looked its name—a swift slender craft of a type unknown to Burden, but then he was the perfect landsman and could not tell one boat from another. But he was grateful for the day’s outing, anything to escape Washington’s airless heat.
The Assistant Secretary was all in white and most nautical-looking, as was Cary Grayson, the President’s physician, and Grayson’s young wife, Altrude, Edith Wilson’s closest friend. Obviously, the Assistant Secretary of the Navy had discovered that the most direct route to the President was through the Graysons, and as Franklin Roosevelt’s luck would have it, Grayson was Regular Navy. He was also a very small man; and the gracious Altrude, very much in the Edith style, loomed over him. There was another couple whom Burden did not know—“fashionables,” as he thought of the eastern gentry whom he had met, from time to time, in Sanford-land. Finally, in the new uniform of a woman sailor, yeoman third class, the charming Lucy Mercer, Eleanor’s social secretary. Lucy’s escort was a young man from the British embassy.
Once they were under way, Burden relieved himself of jacket and tie and enjoyed the cool, somewhat rank breeze off the Potomac River as they headed downstream toward Mount Vernon and the Chesapeake. For a moment, the frantic war-time city seemed remote; war, too, except for a pair of destroyers, if that’s what they were, anchored off the Navy Yard.
As Burden accepted a mint julep from a steward, Franklin smiled contentedly. “If only Josephus Daniels could see us now.”
“Surely his prohibition of alcohol does not extend to guests of the Navy.”
“To everyone, including the President.” But Burden noticed that Franklin drank only lemonade, while the others were now all forward, waiting for the ship to draw abreast Mount Vernon, which the Sylph would duly salute, as antique Navy custom required.
Franklin made agreeable small talk. He had far more charm than his presidential cousin, at least for Burden, who was something of a connoisseur in these matters since everyone in Washington wanted to charm senators, particularly those, like Burden, of the majority party. Ordinarily, Burden and the Navy had no links. Burden’s committees were Agriculture first last and always; with Foreign Affairs for amusement, and Banking for grave necessity, since that committee, a twin to the House Ways and Means Committee, was the fountain of all expenditure; hence, government patronage. But as Burden was only in his first term, he carried no great weight other than the power that accrued to him as the link between the Bryanite senators and the President, a position recently relinquished by the blind Senator from Oklahoma, who could abide neither President nor war. But the true link between Burden and the young Roosevelts was Caroline and, to a lesser extent, Blaise. The Roosevelts tended to move in high fashionable circles, keeping their distance from such low showy fashionables as the Ned McLeans.
“Where’s Mrs. Roosevelt?” The mint julep was uncommonly pleasant; and the sun, filtered by a heavy white haze, was, for the first time in days, bearable.
“She’s gone up to Canada, with the chicks. I’m supposed to join her in August. Only …” Franklin stared at the Virginia shore.
“Only what?” But Burden knew. Franklin was planning to run for the Senate from New York in the fall election.
“Do you think I should run?”
“I don’t know that much about the state. But if I were you, I wouldn’t quit this job first. Just take a leave of absence.”
Franklin laughed without much joy. “I will. If I can get away with it. I think old Josephus would like to see me well and truly gone.”
“But the President—”
“—has been most understanding. Everyone tells me I’ve a safe berth here if I lose, only …” Again the pause; the word “only” seemed to provide a barrier for Franklin, who, while appearing to have no secrets, managed to evade all intimacy with considerable grace.
“Only you’d rather not lose.”
“Exactly.”
“Do you have Tammany’s support?”
“No. They’ve got their candidate. So I shall be reform, I suppose. Another Uncle Tee in Democratic clothing.” He swallowed some lemonade; and grimaced. “I’ve a sore throat. Too much talking. I argue and argue and nobody listens. You see, I’ve worked out a way to bottle the German submarines. But the British can’t be budged. And our admirals are so slow, so slow. The solution, Burden, is this.”
Burden never much liked being called by his first name, particularly by someone who was not only a decade his junior but so far beneath him in the national hierarchy. Yet it was a part of this Roosevelt’s considerable charm to lift, spontaneously, others to a level of intimacy with himself, a member of that sovereign patriciate that still held a number of seats in a Senate which had been entirely theirs until democracy had so rudely sprung the chamber’s door and let Burden, among others, in.
“It’s so clear. We seal off the North Sea with a mine barrage from Scotland to Norway so that no submarine could ever get through, which would seal them up tight in their own ports. Well, it took me weeks to get to the President, who’s now given the go-ahead. But the British are still dragging their feet even when I said we’d do the same for the Dover Straits, which would protect their home waters. But they are sound asleep.” He scowled, as he drank more lemonade. Burden noticed that Franklin’s face was now glistening with sweat despite the cool breeze. The handsome head with its thin chiselled nose looked fragile; the small eyes were not only too close together but due to the face’s asymmetry one was higher than the other.
Suddenly, they were athwart the pillared mansion of the first president. Franklin sprang to his feet, as did Burden, who remained at self-conscious attention while a bugler “aft” played taps.
When the fashionable couple joined Franklin in the stern, Burden made his way forward to where the English diplomat and Yeoman Third Class Lucy Mercer were seated. Both rose in deference to senatorial rank.
Burden sat between them. A steward plied them with Josephus Daniels’s lemonade. Like everyone else in the small Washington world, Burden found Lucy uncommonly attractive, and mysterious. Why hadn’t she married? Of course, she was a member of Maryland’s Catholic gentry and there were not so many Catholic bachelors available in the capital. On the other hand, a short trip to Baltimore and she would be surrounded by her own kind. Yet she had chosen to live in Washington and work for Eleanor Roosevelt and fill in at dinner parties until she had joined the Navy. “Now you are a fighting woman,” said Burden.
“It was Mr. Roosevelt’s idea.” She smiled, and looked away.
“Your military service,” said the Englishman, “is distinctly selective.”
/> Burden had more than once claimed credit for the sublime euphemism “selective service.” The word “conscription” was taboo, reminding everyone of the Civil War’s bloody riots. But since Wilson could no more rely on volunteers than Lincoln, a new phrase was devised. A few years earlier when it looked as if the border troubles with Mexico might turn into a full-scale war, Wilson had issued a ringing call for volunteers: and hardly anyone had rallied to the colors. This time he was taking no chances. Conscription was to be swift and absolute and under another name. On June 5, ten million men between twenty-one and thirty had been registered under the National Defense Act for “selective service” in the armed services, which sounded rather better than, say, cannon fodder in France.
Privately, Burden hated the whole enterprise. The wounded of the Civil War had been all round him in his youth, and the general poverty of the delta during that time was directly due to the loss of manpower and money in the war. Publicly, Burden supported the war; yet he could never rationalize to himself the brutal manner in which the United States had violated its own sacred Monroe Doctrine in order to fight a war in Europe, something the original republic had guaranteed to all the world that it would never do. However, as a practical politician, he had been able to rationalize the necessity of making the world safe not for democracy—a quixotic enterprise, since the United States had yet to experiment with so dangerous a form of government, as those militant women who wanted to vote never ceased to remind their sexual masters—but to enrich the nation. This had already begun, as the Englishman, Mr. Nigel Law, reminded him. “Your speech in committee, sir, was much applauded in London.”
“It was just plain old common horse sense.” British accents tended to cause Burden to assume the folksy, down-home style of a vaudeville rube comedian. He chewed an imaginary piece of straw. “Can’t let our best buddy go broke.”