by Gore Vidal
Back of Caroline, Alice Longworth sat with her cousin Eleanor and Senator Borah. Alice, as usual, was doing all the talking, and Eleanor looked pained. Eleanor was as much for Wilson as her cousin was against him. Burden wondered how the friendship or, specifically, relationship was going to survive so much political passion. Senator Harding suddenly sat in the desk next to Burden. The handsome face was flushed; he enjoyed his drink. “I can’t for the life of me see the point of all this.” He shook his head mournfully. “It’d be so easy to just sit down and work out what’s possible and what isn’t with the treaty, and compromise.”
“I don’t think it’s that easy, Mr. Harding. The President gave his word to the Allies that this was what we’d been fighting the war about, this treaty, this League of Nations, and so they gave in to him, which is why he can’t go and change it now.” Burden glanced at his watch: five minutes to go. The Vice President was also looking at his watch. Lenroot was speaking.
“Well, I’m not convinced it’s the best thing in the world the way it is, and I still don’t know why we fought that stupid war. This is between you and I.” Harding smiled. “Naturally, in public I’m for democracy for everybody everywhere every minute of the day. But I think a lot of this Bolshevism that’s going on in Europe and starting up here at home, too, is Mr. Wilson’s doing.”
Burden was suddenly aware of Lodge’s presence in the chamber. The gallery applauded as Lenroot yielded the floor to Lodge, who addressed the Senate, document in hand. This was not according to Burden’s plan.
Lodge’s splendid Boston voice was high with tension. “Mr. President, I desire to take only a moment of the time of the Senate. I wish to offer the resolution which I hold in my hand, a very brief one.” Then he read from the paper. “That it is the sense of the Senate that while it is their sincere desire that the nations of the world should unite to promote peace and general disarmament, the constitution of the League of Nations in the form now proposed by the Peace Conference should not be accepted by the United States …” There was a gasp from the Wilsonians in the galleries; and applause from the rest.
Burden was on his feet waving to the chair for recognition. Lodge persevered, as Marshall gavelled for order. “… immediately be directed to utmost expedition of the urgent business of negotiating peace terms with Germany …”
Burden had caught Marshall’s attention, too late.
“… and that the proposal for a League of Nations to insure the permanent peace of the world should be then taken up for careful consideration.”
Burden was certain that there were not enough senators present to pass this or any other measure with the hope of surviving a later full vote; also, many of the senators present had been defeated in November while those who had been elected in their place had not yet been sworn in. As Lodge knew that his motion would carry no weight until the convening of the Sixty-sixth Congress, what was his motive? Lodge said, “I ask unanimous consent for the present consideration of this resolution.”
Burden recognized a parliamentary trap when he saw one. There was no possibility of unanimous consent now or ever. Burden turned to Harding, but Harding had vanished. Burden started down the aisle, ready to object to the propriety of the measure. But Claude Swanson of Virginia had got the Vice President’s attention. Swanson said, “I object to the introduction of the resolution.” Swanson had taken the bait.
Lodge remained standing during this, the venerable white head inclined to one side, like a listening bird; then he nodded his head judiciously as if some important point that had been too difficult for him to grasp had been at last cleared up. Swanson sat down.
With as much an appearance of humility as that bearded Roman head could permit, Lodge bowed gracefully to Swanson. “Objection being made, of course, I recognize the objection. I merely wish to add, by way of explanation, the following.” Burden felt a chill: the trap had sprung. With relish, Lodge recited the names of those Republican senators who would have voted for his resolution if they were present and a vote had taken place. Lodge read off the names of thirty-seven senators, more than the one-third needed to defeat the League of Nations. As the gallery began to understand what was happening, applause broke out; then boos. The Vice President called for order.
Lodge left the floor, and the La Follette filibuster began again, with Sherman of Illinois first to speak. They would speak straight through the night until adjournment at noon. There would be no finance bill. There would be an extra session while Wilson was out of the country. There would be no League of Nations if Lodge could hold on to his thirty-seven senators, which Burden doubted. Even Lodge himself favored a league. The problem was as simple as it was insoluble. Wilson’s league, as approved in Paris by the Allies, would not be accepted, while Lodge’s league was so deliberately vague that even the most extreme isolationist might be able to support it at the proper time.
In the cloakroom, Lodge now held gracious court. As Burden went to his locker, where he kept whisky and soda water, he found Brandegee doing the same thing. “That was my idea,” he said winningly. “The Round Robin.”
“The what?” Burden was feeling not only tired but stupid.
“The thirty-seven signatures.” Brandegee helped himself to his own dark restorative while Burden drank directly from the bottle; and promptly felt less tired but no less stupid. “Do tell the President. I don’t want Cabot hogging all the credit.”
“Credit? For putting the covenant at risk?” Burden sounded more righteous than he intended. Actually, he quite liked this deeply conservative and even more deeply cynical political gamesman who explained to him how, Sunday morning, he had found some accumulated mail at his house, including a letter from a stranger who implored the Senate Republicans to pass some sort of resolution declaring the League as presented unacceptable; otherwise, Wilson would go back to Paris and say that the Senate and the nation were behind him. “After I read the letter, I went straight to Massachusetts Avenue and explained it all to Cabot, and told him I could get more than a third of the Senate, enough to defeat the treaty, to sign and then he could present it at the last minute of March third for a vote …”
“He could never have got a vote.” La Follette had entered the cloakroom from the hall, where, presumably, he had been in the washroom, emptying himself for the coming filibuster. He and his friends would speak all night and all the next morning until the adjournment of the session at noon.
“We knew we couldn’t get a vote. We also knew that one of you would make the mistake of objecting, which Brother Swanson did, and then Cabot would meekly accept the objection and say that, naturally, as the full Senate wasn’t here he quite understood, but that if they were present, the following senators had said that they’d vote to reject Brother Woodrow’s League as it stands, and that’s how we got the Round Robin into the record and now we’ll be able to mail it all over the country to our many friends and fellow patriots.”
“Beautiful work,” said Burden without irony.
“I thought you’d appreciate it. I revere Brother Cabot, but I don’t want him to be entirely credited for my last-minute rescue of this republic from the hands of a would-be world tyrant and his decadent allies in old Europe, so unlike our sunny land, where ne’er a shadow falls.”
“Unless it’s shot down by … Brother Frank Brandegee.” Brandegee bowed low; then he joined Lodge and the rejoicing Republicans at the far end of the smoky cloakroom.
Hitchcock and Swanson were in a deep glum conversation with the Vice President. “I’m sorry,” Burden said, “but before I could call for a vote, Lodge had the floor.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Hitchcock rubbed his face. “They would’ve got that damned thing in the record one way or another.”
“If I hadn’t objected,” Swanson began, but the Vice President stopped him. “You did. You had to. I’m going home. I’m turning the chair over to fellows who know there’s going to be no vote tonight or tomorrow morning.”
“What do we say
to the President?” asked Hitchcock.
“You say, ‘Good morning,’ ” said the silver-haired, silver-moustached Vice President, who, like most of his predecessors, felt that the accident of fate that had made him forever second was a cruel one. There goes Vice President Marshall, someone had recently said, with nothing on his mind except the President’s health.
Burden agreed to spend the night captaining the Democratic minority from a cot in the hall. If anything happened, he would be wakened instantly. But nothing happened; and he awoke with a start to find a fresh-faced page staring down at him. “It’s morning, Senator,” said the boy. Burden inclined his head gravely, as if he had been meditating not sleeping. Why, he wondered, did everyone hate to be caught asleep?
In the great washroom with its high marble urinals and outsized basins, he shaved himself, as other weary senators came and went. Cold water on the face was the preferred restorative. The filibuster was still underway. La Follette had spoken for many hours on many subjects. As Burden stepped in the corridor, he could hear the hoarse rasping voice from the chamber. He hurried on to the President’s room.
The Capitol was crowded with journalists, diplomats, citizens, all eager to enjoy the great filibuster, and Woodrow Wilson’s discomfiture.
The President sat beneath a crystal chandelier at a desk on which last-minute bills would be placed, ready for his signature. “Senator Day.” The smile was warm. Wilson was not about to give any Republican the joy of seeing him distressed. Hitchcock was beside him. Admiral Grayson was behind him. Burden wondered, yet again, at the political wisdom of being always seen with one’s doctor.
“I’m afraid we couldn’t get the government paid for this time around.”
“Well, I’m sure Mr. Glass,” he nodded to the small imp-like replacement to Mr. McAdoo, “will be able to borrow enough between now and December to pay the light bill at the White House.”
“I can also change stones into loaves and fishes.” The Virginia drawl was acid.
Wilson got to his feet and motioned for Burden to join him at a distance from the others. “Tell me,” he said in a low voice, “did Lodge make any reference to the League involving us with—what does he call it—‘international socialism and anarchy’?”
“Not last night, no. He’s very vague. He has to be, since he favors the League, which he opposes.”
“Solomonic. There is now pressure on me to commit the United States to a war on Bolshevism …”
“Russia?”
“In particular, but international socialism in general. I’m speaking tonight in New York. I’m going to say that according to my reading of the Virginia Bill of Rights, our old testament, any people is entitled to any kind of government it damn pleases, whether we like it or not. After all, I don’t think the current King George really approves of us. Was the bill returning the railroads to their owners passed?”
“No. Mr. La Follette was too busy giving us his view of a future and better world. Or so I was told. I slept on a cot.” Burden looked down at the President, who was half a head shorter than he. “When will you be back from Paris?”
“June. No,” Wilson anticipated the question, “I won’t call a special session before I get back even if none of us gets paid his salary.”
“It will be hard.”
Wilson winced; hand to his jaw. “My tooth. Always when you’re about to take a trip, a tooth goes wrong. Let’s hope the naval dentists …” Wilson stopped. The Vice President, Lodge and Hitchcock entered the room, each the picture of weary self-importance.
“Mr. President, the Sixty-fifth Congress adjourned at eleven thirty-five,” said Marshall, adding roguishly, “not sine die but sine Deo.”
“That depends, sir, upon which God it is that you serve.” Lodge was amiably sanctimonious; he also never took his eyes off the President, his quarry.
But Wilson ignored Lodge. He picked up his pen, expectantly. “Is there any legislation awaiting the approval of the executive?” he asked formally.
Lodge said that there was none. Marshall said, “There is the prohibition amendment, Mr. President. But it’s not ready. There’s a stipulation that if the states don’t ratify it in seven years, the damned thing is dead. We’ll deliver it to your ship, where you can drink a toast to the prohibition of all alcohol in the United States.”
“I will drink the toast only outside our territorial limits.” Then Wilson motioned for a youthful watchful man to come forward. He presented him to Burden. “I think you should get to know my new attorney general, Mr. Palmer, and prepare him for his confirmation into this church sine Deo.”
Burden shook hands with Palmer. “I’ll escort you through the Senate maze.”
Slowly Wilson crossed to the door. Then he turned. “Gentlemen,” he said, “we shall see each other in December. I bid you good day.” Lodge stared at Wilson’s back as it receded down the corridor. Great mischief was brewing for Wilson. What, Burden wondered, if anything, for the state?
2
At thirty-five Cissy Patterson, the sometime—still? no one quite knew—Countess Gizycki was as handsome and as original as she had been at nineteen when her parents had bought her a Polish title and sent her forth from their palace in Dupont Circle to three wretched years of married life. Today Cissy’s hair was redder than it had been when she was a girl, while maturity had given her a distinctly voluptuous look, somewhat undone by wit. Caroline regarded her, if not quite as a daughter, as a younger sister because, “Oh, how I envy you everything!”
Cissy looked about Caroline’s office in the Tribune building with a view of F Street’s streetcars, traffic jams, movie houses. Currently, an Emma Traxler production was playing to capacity audiences at the Capitol while Emma Traxler herself was on view at the nearby Mercury in “a very special vehicle,” as Thomas Ince had called what looked to be suspiciously like a hearse for whatever ambition she might have had as a photo-play star. She had played a society adulteress at the turn of the century, which she herself had been in life. But in the photo-play, unlike life, she had fallen out of society, and threw herself from a window of the Waldorf-Astoria. The plot had been stolen from Mrs. Wharton, who had complained to Blaise, who had told Emma, who had warned Thomas Ince, who had said, “Let her sue.” Emma Traxler’s very mature beauty had been acknowledged by all, but the story was not good and Emma herself—Caroline, that is—was somewhat shaken that she had not noticed the story’s shortcomings earlier. But then Tim had been in California during the shooting in New York.
“You must buy yourself a paper. You have the right ink in your blood.” Caroline was brisk. “Your grandfather, father, brother, cousin all put out newspapers. So why don’t you? There’s nothing to it.”
“I know there isn’t, but what is there to buy? Hearst’s got the Herald in the morning and the Times in the evening. You and Blaise have the Tribune, and don’t want to sell, do you?”
“No.”
“I wonder,” said Cissy, “what happens to the Post if Ned finally drinks himself to death?”
“Evalyn publishes. Why not start something new?” Caroline held up the copy of the New York Daily News that Cissy had brought her. Cissy’s older brother, Joseph, had started it in June, with some help from his cousin Robert McCormick, now running the family newspaper in Chicago. The News was half the size of an ordinary newspaper: tabloid-size, it was called, and Hearst had laughed at the notion. “No one wants a paper that you can’t get a lot of pictures onto a page.” But for once the Chief’s cunning in journalistic matters had deserted him. Joe Patterson’s tabloid was an instant success, and just as Caroline’s brother had been made jealous by Caroline’s not-so-instant success with the Tribune, now Cissy was jealous of Joe’s astonishing coup, the first in the third generation. Until now, the family giant had been their grandfather Joseph Medill, whose Chicago Tribune had gone to his son-in-law, her father, and now to his grandson, her cousin, Robert R. McCormick. “The boys have got Chicago and New York. Well, why can’t I have
Washington?”
“Do you have the money to start a tabloid here?”
“In competition with you and Hearst? No. That Polish son-of-a-bitch is costing me a fortune.”
“Kill him.”
“Try and find him.” Cissy glared at the painting of Caroline and Blaise and Mr. Trimble, their editor. “At least I got Felicia away from him.” The battle between father and mother had rivetted the attention of the popular press for years. Mother had finally won but the cost had been high. Cissy now lived in lonely state in her father’s Dupont Circle home; and dreamed of newspapers.
The secretary announced the approach of Blaise. Caroline nodded; he could come in. From the beginning, they had agreed that neither would ever surprise the other in his or her office.
Cissy was delighted to see Blaise. Cissy’s reputation had been so damaged by her marital trials that she had then set out, perversely, to damage it all the more in the eyes of Washington’s Aborigines. She was moderately promiscuous and she drank “like a man,” as the saying went, and she sometimes fell, again like a man, upon others of her sex. Although she was too grand a Washington fixture ever to be shunned, the mention of her name caused a mournful Greek chorus of gossip, mostly invented, and all of it as pleasurable for Caroline to listen to as it was a matter of indifference to the restless, energetic Cissy. “I think I shall write a novel. I’ll call it Glass Houses.”
“Who will you throw stones at?”
“Alice Longworth. Who else? And my Polish beast. I begged the Reverend Woodrow to partition Poland until nothing was left.”
“I suppose he laughed at your delicious wit.” Blaise enjoyed Cissy, who had, thought Caroline, rather a soft feeling for Blaise.
“He was unimpressed. You’ve seen Joe’s paper?” Cissy held up the Daily News.
Blaise nodded. “I’ve just won a bet with Hearst. On the circulation. He said the public would never buy a tabloid.”
“They’re certainly buying this one. I do nothing but envy others. This is a sign of bad character, I know.” Cissy looked pleased with herself. “Captain Patterson, he calls himself.” She added, with some malice: “It’s like the Civil War, isn’t it? And my cousin Bob wants to be called Colonel McCormick.”