by Gore Vidal
Blaise retreated, raging. But then father and son were seldom at ease with each other. Blaise much preferred his daughter, Enid. She was older than Peter; drank too much; gave the family only trouble. Yet Blaise doted on her as well as on her ambitious young husband, Clay Overbury, a budding politician. Blaise and Clay were far more like indulgent father and grateful son than Blaise and Peter, who was more pleased than not that Blaise and Clay had found, as it were, each other, letting him off the hook. In principle, he had no great objection to Blaise as a father. Ordinarily, their relations were amiable, thanks, Peter had come to realize, to his own phlegmatic nature. He was a born observer; and to observe the world about him required not only tact but a sort of emotional neutrality unknown to his father or, indeed, to any of his family except the enigmatic Caroline, whom he observed with near-obsession: could anyone be so serenely neutral—that word again—as his aunt? Even with her appalling daughter, she never lost control; never gave away her game, whatever that game might be.
Peter daydreamed in a convention hall that would soon be the center of the American political world. He definitely had no gift for journalism, if journalism required any special gift. But then he had grown up in a newspaper family and the trade, hunting down famous people in search of secrets, did not appeal to him, nor did he want for himself to be a quarry for others. He would rather watch than himself be watched, unlike Clay, who was already scheming to be president later on in the century, with Blaise’s passionate help: this meant being forever reinvented by the needs of each observer. One must entirely lack a character of one’s own to submit to so many eyes. As a subject, history attracted him most, largely because there was always something wrong with it. Caroline had known Henry Adams and his circle, and although Peter found the Adams pessimism too stylized for his taste, he liked the thought of someone who never ceased to observe and ponder and formulate all through a long life only to throw up his hands at the end and say, “I never cared what happened, only why it happened. Couldn’t find out. Gave it up.” That was very much the right spirit. But Peter sensed a flaw in the Adams conclusion. Why assume there is a why? Why even ask why? Why not simply describe and then let the description answer all the “why” that anyone could want? Of course, Adams had had an odd, for an Adams, religious turn to his mind: the Virgin and the Dynamo. Why the one? Why the other? Why either?
“Would you like to meet your father for lunch?” The rich Rooseveltian voice emerged from a plump young man who had been, until recently, a very, very fat younger man, the quintessential insider-journalist who, with a partner, wrote a political column for the New York Herald Tribune. Peter got to his feet and greeted Joe Alsop. “I was thinking about history.”
“About writing it or making it?”
“About what it is, if it is anything at all except different versions of something that probably never was.”
“Detroit! That’s the place for you, Peter. Henry Ford. ‘History is bunk,’ he says. And so is he. Your father’s at the Union League for lunch, with the Willkie people. What they decide today might well be historical. So come along. Watch them closely. I think Willkie has a good chance of defeating Cousin Franklin. Of course, we won’t allow that. But if he’s the candidate, we’re still safe.”
“You mean England’s safe.”
“That’s we, dear boy. Same boat.”
“Did you know Henry Adams?”
“If he had a morbid turn of mind, it is possible that he saw me in my crib. No, Peter, I’m not that old. Ask your aunt. The old man doted on her.”
They stepped out into the heat. “We shall now take a streetcar,” said Joe, reveling in their plebeian adventure. “This is how you get to understand the people, up close, doing their useful sordid tasks.”
With great dignity, Joe leapt onto a streetcar, followed by Peter, who soon realized that they were going in the wrong direction. “Surely they all end up passing the same places.” Joe was not one to admit error.
The Union League was pleasantly old-fashioned. Blaise was holding court in a corner of the club’s dining room with Thomas W. Lamont, Russell Davenport, the onetime boxer Gene Tunney, and Walter Lippmann, whose political columns read like the meditations of an unnaturally benign deity. At the next table sat the young Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts. He was, like his father in the Great War, a leading isolationist.
Joe and Peter were introduced by Blaise to the table. Chairs were brought. Peter had not seen his father so animated in a long time. Obviously, conventions were good for him. At first, Peter thought he should be taking notes; then quickly realized that he would be seen as a spy, which he was in the sense that the others had come together to make sure that their man was nominated while he was entirely indifferent except as a spectator.
“Cousin Alice is for Taft,” Joe announced. Mention of Alice Longworth always made people smile. Possibly because they knew that a joke was on its way; and so it was. “When I told her not to be such a reactionary snob, that at last we had a true grassroots candidate, she said, ‘Yes, from the grass roots of ten thousand country clubs.’ ” Everyone laughed, including Lamont, who said, rather mildly, “Wendell’s just retired from the board of the First National Bank.”
“Not a moment too soon.” Blaise was brisk. “We don’t want this to be a House of Morgan election like 1916.”
“Then,” said Lamont, “you must all deny that I was in Philadelphia today.”
“I’ve had a long talk with Willkie about the draft.” Lippmann’s Chinese mandarin eyes gleamed above two large pouches. “He’ll support selective service whenever the President is ready to send it to Congress.”
There was a pleased murmur at the table, possibly because, of those present, only Joe Alsop and Peter Sanford were of draft age. “In fact,” Lippmann continued, “Willkie wishes the President would move more quickly toward rearmament.”
“Will he say this?” Gene Tunney was large, solid, slow; he was considered an intellectual because he had once had tea with George Bernard Shaw. Peter wondered why Shaw was interested in the world’s champion heavyweight prize fighter; wondered how history could ever be written without knowing the motivations of those who appeared to be making it. How to know the unknowable obviously had been too much for Henry Adams. But suppose that personal motivations were unimportant. Peter tried to recall what Hegel had written; then realized that he’d never read Hegel but only recalled what his professor, a sort of T. S. Eliot monarchistic Anglican, had said on the subject. So much to know. So many bad teachers.
The table found it amusing that Willkie had only just switched, officially, from the Democratic to the Republican Party. Joe Alsop, as the table’s know-it-all, acted as instructor, though it was clear to Peter that Lamont, plainly the leader of this enterprise, knew the full story. “He was an Ohio delegate to the 1924 convention, where he acted as a floor manager for Newton D. Baker. A sign of flawed taste.” Peter had forgotten who Baker was. “Then in 1932 he was again a delegate, but this time a floor manager for—ah, you’ve guessed it I can see!—for Newton D. Baker.”
“Thank God he wasn’t for Franklin,” said Lamont.
“Oh, he explains that eloquently.” Joe was eating scrapple, a peculiar Philadelphia dish, not unlike tinned dog food. “When he voted for Roosevelt in 1932 the New Deal wasn’t on the ballot. Had it been, he shouts, he would never have voted for a socialist.”
“A born politician.” Lamont tried to make this sound like a compliment.
The table then discussed the candidate’s private life and whether or not it would become public. For two years Willkie had been having an affair with the book editor of the Herald Tribune, Irita Van Doren, once wife to a popular historian, Carl Van Doren. Willkie was eager for culture and Irita was eager to be his muse. “I don’t see any great harm coming of this,” said Lippmann, which sounded to Peter as if he did fear scandal.
Joe, as always, knew most. “When somebody suggested that he stop seeing her—once he’s nominated
next Thursday—he said, ‘Oh, every newspaperman in town knows about us.’ ”
“I,” said Russell Davenport, “was the somebody who said that, and I still think it’s potentially dangerous.”
“If they try that,” Blaise was grim, “we’ll discuss Franklin’s affair with Missy Le Hand.”
Lamont turned to Blaise, in mock horror. “Don’t you dare. The President is our savior. Willkie is only our insurance.”
Even Lippmann laughed. Suddenly it occurred to Peter that Lippmann, Alsop, and the mistress of the Hoosier candidate were all employed by the New York Herald Tribune. Was this a coincidence?
Blaise shrugged. “The only person we should fear in a matter like this is William Randolph Hearst. He lives for scandal.”
“Happily his palace at San Simeon,” said Joe, “is made of such exquisite crystal that an unkind word could shatter it.”
Blaise turned to Davenport. “Do you still have your headquarters in New York?”
Davenport nodded. “We’re still at the Murray Hill Hotel. We’ve been there since January.” He gave Blaise a card.
So much, thought Peter, for the spontaneous candidacy of the grassroots candidate. He wondered if he would be allowed to write anything of interest. “Who,” he asked Alsop, “is Sam Pryor?”
“From my home state of Connecticut. He’s our Republican state committee man. Why?”
“I keep running into him.”
“He’s working hard for Wendell. He’s also in charge of credentials.” Joe chuckled. “The most important man in Philadelphia, this week.”
“Who is Ralph E. Williams?”
“I don’t know everyone, dear boy.” But Peter had a definite impression that the name had indeed registered. After all, Joe did know everyone that he thought worth knowing. Peter now saw himself as a fearless investigator, making his way through the Philadelphia morgue, where he pried open a metal filing case from which he removed a yellow manila folder—this particular daydream was in full color—containing an autopsy form with the name “Ralph E. Williams” at the top. Below the name, in bright red letters, was the word “Murder.”
4
The convention hall was indeed transformed once all the lights were blazing. The noise of people talking was a constant roar as the delegates took their seats alongside their state standards.
Peter had found a corner of a press table beneath the front of the stage. Although he was not able to see what was going on above him, he had a clear view of the state delegations and of the overhanging tier at the back of the hall, where people were streaming down the aisles as they searched for their seats. Flustered attendants were having difficulty finding seats even for the irritably ticketed. Had Sam Pryor issued too many or too few tickets?
The Philadelphia Orchestra was off to one side, and the musicians were tuning their instruments loudly. In the New York delegation Peter recognized Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., who stood next to the state standard, talking to Joe Alsop, who was making the rounds. The Colonel was for Dewey.
Peter moved out from under the stage to study the rest of the press corps, all seated in a sort of pen at the back of the stage. Needless to say, the grandees of the New York Herald Tribune like Walter Lippmann were not to be seen rubbing shoulders with their sweaty brethren, but he did recognize, with pleased awe, H. L. Mencken of the Baltimore Sun, wearing a straw hat, no jacket, red suspenders. He chewed a cigar and pounded a typewriter as if it were a candidate, while from time to time he snapped his suspenders, rather as if he felt himself in need of spurring, like a horse.
Joe hailed Peter in front of the California delegation, all gloomily pledged to their favorite son, Herbert Hoover. “Out of the West, yet again,” intoned Joe, “strides a giant, a leader, a man.”
“Hubert Hoofer?” Peter supplied the latest line. A few days earlier, on radio, an announcer had said, “Ladies and gentlemen of the radio audience, I have the honor to introduce to you the former president of the United States, Mr. Heebert Hoobert … I mean Mr. Hoobert Hover … uh, Mr. Hubbard …” Mercifully, the now deranged announcer was dragged off-microphone in a swirl of static and the unlovely voice of the former president was heard in the land.
On the stage the handsome Republican national chairman, John D. M. Hamilton, was conferring with a number of henchmen. “Hamilton told us he’d like to second the nomination of Willkie but as party chairman he shouldn’t take sides.” Joe Alsop had an odd whinnying chuckle when he wished to express disapproval. He did so now. “He’s afraid his days are numbered now.”
“Why are you so certain it’s going to be Willkie?”
“The polls …” Joe was now looking up at a balcony to which had been attached the state seal of Maine. In the balcony several important-looking personages were taking their seats. “Isn’t that Rudy Vallee?”
Peter recognized the singer-bandleader who originally came from Yale and who sang nasally, but thinly, through a megaphone.
“I guess he’d have to be a Republican.” Peter was actively neutral on the subject. But Joe was whinnying again, this time with pleasure. “He’s priceless. He asked to have lunch with me last winter. He said that he was seriously thinking about entering the Maine primary.”
“For president?”
“For president. I said that he must. The country needs him. I told Cousin Eleanor, who said she couldn’t wait to tell Franklin. I hope she did. He loves that sort of thing.”
Joe took a seat in the Connecticut delegation as if he belonged there, which in a sense he did; certainly, all the state’s delegates greeted him. “Our secret weapon,” he said to Peter, who remained standing beside the railing that contained the delegation, “is Hadley Cantrill. He works for Dr. Gallup. He helps the good doctor formulate his questions and pick his interviewees. Very important that. No Yale accents, no Rudy Vallee types to be allowed within earshot of a blue-collar worker in Berwyn, Illinois. Class speaks best to class. Hadley is a master of getting us the results we want.”
What Peter had always suspected was true was true if Joe could be believed; the polls were rigged. But Joe anticipated him. “We get more or less what we want but we can’t just make up majorities—so far. Cantrill’s working for British intelligence and for the White House. Our current problem—other than nominating Willkie—is getting fifty elderly destroyers to England before the English starve to death. But the American people don’t want Franklin to just give away any part of our fleet. So you start, unknown to Dr. Gallup, to rearrange his questions. You ask the Average American, our crafty master, ‘Which of these two things do you think is more important for the United States to try to do—to keep out of war ourselves, or to help England win, even at the risk of getting into war?’ Straightforward stuff, you’d think, if you’re not used to thinking. Last week when the questions were asked like that, sixty percent said, in answer to question two, that they’d want to help England win, which is what we wanted to hear. On the other hand, the true isolationist will seize on question number one, which means, finally, that only forty-four percent are willing to risk war by helping England, and that isn’t enough, is it?”
“The possibilities are endless?”
“For the unscrupulous, too,” Joe spoke with mock piety just as the Philadelphia Orchestra began a triumphant rendering of a recent patriotic hymn, “Ballad for Americans,” by what was rumored to be a young communist. The thundering music and proletarian words had taken the country by storm. Now, in a full orchestral version, it had all the emotional effect of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” The last word was “America,” and ended on a sigh like an echo.
Next a prayer from the archbishop of Philadelphia, Cardinal Dougherty. He requested divine guidance for the delegates in their selection of a candidate. Then the Boy Governor of Minnesota gave the keynote speech. He spoke for an hour, to the consternation of the delegates. His message was indomitable: “Americans must keep burning the light of liberty.”
By the time he finished, Peter had f
ound Tim and his crew at the front of the upper tier. Tim was amused. “Same speech as St. Paul. But lots more adjectives.”
“Bigger audience, too.”
When Stassen finally stopped talking, there was mild applause and then a group to the right of Tim’s camera shouted, in unison, “We want Willkie!” This was repeated several times; and that was that.
5
The next days were a blur for Peter. He sat in a streetcar with a former vice president of the United States but could not recall his name. He went from hotel suite to hotel suite. Open house was the order of the day. Strangers came and went. Twice he visited Willkie’s two-room suite down the hall from Tim’s bedroom. Willkie was losing what voice he had. There was a living room off the corridor; back of this front room, double doors opened into a bedroom where two large windows were constantly open. Air conditioning had not yet come to Philadelphia.
Willkie himself stood at the center of the front room, gazing with pale blind eyes upon the parade of handshakers who came and went, each ritually grabbing the offered paw. Willkie’s face was unhealthily pale; he was sweating heavily; waistcoat unbuttoned. He pretended to listen to those who wanted to tell him something. All the while, he kept repeating over and over again, “Ah’d be a lahr if ah said ah didden won be prez You Nigh Stays.” Peter, after the second visit to the candidate’s suite, quite believed him. How anyone could want something so badly was beyond him. But then Peter had never not known more than he had ever wanted to know about the various residents of the house on Pennsylvania Avenue; yet the city that he knew spoke rarely of that house and its occupants—the plural in Peter’s case was not the long parade of presidents but, for most of his conscious life, the Roosevelt family. He just barely recalled Herbert Hoover, who, suddenly, on Tuesday evening had appeared in the convention hall as the orchestra played “California, Here I Come.”
Peter had stationed himself next to Tim’s crew, for whom the police had cordoned off a small section of the gallery, which had filled up the moment the doors were opened. There was again confusion over seating. Ernest Cuneo was seated within Tim’s magic circle.