Empire: A Novel

by Gore Vidal

  “Oh, the Saunterer is not that much of an ogre. Believe me. You must get on with supper.” He rose, as champagne arrived, a present from Mr. Rector. “Mr. Houghteling tells me that everything is going nicely now, which is plain,” he spread his hands as if to embrace the young couple, “to even my Saunterer’s eyes!” Colonel Mann moved on to the next room, and the men’s bar.

  “He’s a monster. How can you talk to him like that?”

  “I’m fascinated by monsters. How does he find out things? You know, dark secrets?”

  Blaise toasted the air; and drank. Caroline satisfied herself with a single sip: this was not a time to be unalert. “He bribes servants mostly, and he pays people like Harry Lehr to give him gossip. They say he has a safe which is full-up with the dirt on everyone famous in the town.”

  “Break into it!”

  “What?” Blaise stared at her, as dumbly as his sharp features could allow.

  “Well, wouldn’t that be a coup for the Chief? To publish the contents of Colonel Mann’s safe.”

  “They might really run him out of town, if he did that.” Thus announced, the Chief himself appeared, with two young girls; all three in evening dress. Blaise introduced Caroline to Mr. Hearst, and the two Misses Willson. Hearst’s presence at Rector’s caused considerable excitement. Admirers shook his hand; detractors turned away. The Chief stared intently at Caroline and then, as the orchestra, this time in Hearst’s honor, began to play “There’ll be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight,” he said, in an odd thin voice, “Would you like to see me put the Journal to bed?”

  “I thought the Journal never slept …”

  “It goes to bed when they make it up, the front page, for the last time before they print.” Blaise was helpful.

  Hearst was forceful. “Come on,” said the Chief. The Misses Willson continued to smile in unison. Hearst took Caroline’s arm, most politely. “Miss Sanford,” he said. She looked up at him; he was well over six feet tall. Caroline smiled; and understood why her brother found Hearst so exciting: he was one of those rare creatures who make, as Mlle. Souvestre would say, the weather.

  A perilous old elevator, operated by an ancient Negro, took them to the second floor of the Tribune Building, where several men were still at work in a long ink-smelling room, rather like a livery stable except that instead of bridles and saddles attached to walls or mounted on sawhorses, there were long sheets of galley paper, drawings, photographs. The overhead electric light bulbs on their cords swayed whenever a heavy wagon made its way along Park Lane. The editor, Willis Abbott, both dapper and deeply weary, presided over a mock-up of the front page, whose principal headline advised the reader that President McKinley was to make a major address on the Philippines, in St. Louis.

  “Oh, no,” said Hearst mildly. “Unless we can tell them something they don’t know—like he’s going to annex the whole place, or burn down Manila …”

  “A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” sounded, unbidden, in Caroline’s head. With both amusement and awe, she watched as Hearst put a number of strips of text and squares of illustration on the floor and then got down on his knees and, like a child happy with a puzzle, began to create—no other word—the next day’s news. But news was not the right word. This was not news but entertainment for the masses. A murder at the bottom of the page began, inexorably, to move higher and higher up the page. A drawing of the murdered woman, idealized to a Madonna-esque purity, found its way to the page’s center while the President sank to the page’s bottom, and a statement by Secretary of State Hay moved to the third page. During this, the Willson girls practiced a new dance step at the far end of the room beneath a large drawing of the Yellow Kid, a cartoonist’s invention for the World which Hearst had appropriated for the Journal (along with the cartoonist), causing the aggrieved Mr. Pulitzer to engage a new creator of Yellow Kids and, in the process, giving the generic word “yellow” to popular journalism.

  “The Chief’s amazing,” Blaise murmured in Caroline’s ear. “He’s like a painter.”

  “But is it always murder first?” Caroline’s voice was low, but Hearst, now on all fours, heard her. “Rape’s better,” he said, “if you’ll forgive the word.”

  The Willson girls shrieked with delight. Hearst received an enlarged headline from a copy-boy: “Murdered Woman Found!” He placed it above the Madonna face. “We also like a good fire.”

  “And a good war,” said Mr. Abbott dutifully.

  “Look,” said Blaise. On the wall opposite, beneath an American flag, the huge headline “Journal’s War Won!”

  “Your war, Mr. Hearst?”

  “Pretty much, Miss Sanford. McKinley and Hanna weren’t ever going to fight. So we got the war going so they’d have to …” Hearst sat on his heels, a strand of blond dull hair in one eye. “Mr. Abbott, wasn’t the murdered woman found nude?”

  “Actually, no, Chief. She was wearing a sort of gingham dress …”

  “Well, make that a slip … a torn slip.” Hearst smiled up at Caroline. “I hope this doesn’t shock you.”

  “No. Blaise has prepared me.”

  “Blaise has got a real knack for this.” The great man then started in on page two, with running commentary to Abbott, mostly asking for more pictures and large headlines; also, “We’re giving too much space to that dude Roosevelt. Remember. We’re for Van Wyck. And sound government, and all that.”

  “You mean Tammany, Chief?” Abbott smiled.

  “Platt’s better than Tammany any day. But Van Wyck’s our crook. Roosevelt’s theirs. But we’ll clean up this city one of these days.”

  “Reform?” asked Caroline, who knew in theory what the word meant; knew, in practice, what it meant when applied to New York City’s politics; knew nothing of what the word meant to Hearst.

  “Yes, Miss Sanford. The whole country, too. Bryan’s hopeless. McKinley’s just a front for old moneybags Hanna.” Hearst stood up. On the floor, his masterpiece: the front page for the next morning’s edition of the New York Journal. “So we need somebody new, clean.”

  “That’s what they say Roosevelt is.” Blaise was cautious.

  “He’s Platt’s candidate. How can Platt be reformed? Anyway, he’s going to lose. Mr. Abbott.” Hearst turned to the editor just as that more than ever weary figure was presenting the intricate mosaic of the front page to the printer.

  “Yes, Chief.”

  “I’ve decided on our next president.” Even the Willson girls stopped dancing when they heard this. Everyone looked very solemn; even Caroline was impressed.

  “Yes, Chief?” The editor was imperturbable. “Who?”

  “Admiral Dewey. Hero of Manila. ‘You may fire when you are ready, Gridley.’ That’s as good as ‘Don’t shoot till you see the whites of their eyes.’ ”

  “But did Admiral Dewey really say those—those inspiring words?” Caroline was now caught up in the excitement of inventing history, not to mention of creating presidents.

  “Well, we said he said it, and I suppose he probably did say something like it. Anyway, he hasn’t denied it, and that’s what matters. Besides, he beat the Spaniards and got us Manila. Do you know him?” Although Hearst was looking at Caroline, the question was to Abbott.

  “No, Chief. But I suppose we could write or cable him and inquire …”

  “Nothing in writing!” Hearst was firm. “Send someone to Manila, to sound him out. If he’s willing, we’ll nominate him to run against McKinley.”

  “Is the Admiral a Democrat?” asked Blaise.

  “Who cares? I’m sure he doesn’t.”

  “But,” asked Caroline, “does he want to be president?”

  “Oh, everyone does over here. That’s why we call ourselves a democracy. Fact, just about anyone can be president, particularly if the Journal promotes him right.”

  “You, too?” Caroline was bold; despite Blaise’s evident dismay.

  But Hearst was bland. “Do you like Weber and Fields?”

  “The shoemaker
s?” Caroline had heard the names before. “In Bond Street.”

  The Willson girls giggled in harmonic unison. “No. Comedians. In vaudeville. I can’t get enough of them. We must take her with us sometime,” Hearst said to Blaise; then to Caroline, “Now get this. Weber and Fields are in this fancy French restaurant, and the waiter comes up after dinner and the waiter asks Weber if he wants a demitasse, and Weber says yes. Then the waiter asks Fields if he’d like a demitasse, too, and Fields says, ‘Yes,’ ” at this point Hearst began to laugh, “ ‘Yes, I’d like a demitasse, too, and,’ ” Hearst was now shaking with laughter while the Willson sisters clung to one another, giggling, “ ‘and I’d also like a cup of coffee.’ ” The office echoed with laughter; and Caroline assumed that her question had been dramatically answered.

  Blaise drove her back to the Waldorf-Astoria; escorted her to the suite where old Marguerite, in her night-dress, greeted him with a cascade of pent-up French. “She will not learn English,” said Caroline, presenting Blaise with a new bottle of brandy, which he opened. As he filled a glass for each, Marguerite delivered herself of a tirade celebrating the beauties and comforts of Saint-Cloud-le-Duc as contrasted with the horrors of New York; then she went to bed.

  Every vase in the Louis XVI sitting room was filled with chrysanthemums despite Marguerite’s piteous pleas that they be taken away, for, as the civilized world knows, chrysanthemums are flowers suited only to memorialize the dead. Although Caroline told her not to be superstitious, she herself was somewhat troubled by those memento mori. But she kept them where they were, all bronze and yellow, as a proof of her new unsuperstitious Americanism.

  “Do you like the Chief?” Blaise sipped at his cognac. Caroline poured herself Vichy water.

  “I don’t think I’d ever find him very easy to like. But he’s certainly fascinating to watch—to listen to. Is he so powerful?”

  Blaise nodded. “He can really make someone president …”

  “But he didn’t say someone. He said anyone.”

  “Well, he exaggerates at times.”

  Caroline laughed. “At times? I should think that that’s his power. He exaggerates all the time.”

  “It sells newspapers.”

  “That’s all that he cares about?”

  Blaise refused to be led into deeper waters. “As a publisher, yes. That’s what I want to be.”

  “With Mr. Hearst?”

  “No. I want to be my own Mr. Hearst.”

  “He doesn’t know that yet, does he?”

  “How can you tell?” Blaise gave her his best boyish smile; and it was still most boyish even though she knew the amount of adult calculation that went into it. Charm was Blaise’s most formidable weapon. Charm was Caroline’s most fragile defense.

  “The way he treats you. With everyone else, he is very grand seigneur. He is polite, the way we are to servants. But he treats you as an equal, which means that he expects you to invest money—perhaps all your money—in his papers.” Caroline had not intended to get so directly to the will but she trusted her instinct about Hearst’s attitude to Blaise.

  Blaise frowned, not at all boyishly. In fact, he looked like his father at the card table, trying to recall the bidding. “I’m not about,” he said finally, “to make this kind of investment.”

  “But you’ve allowed him to think that you will.” Caroline understood Blaise. Did he, she wondered, hardly for the first time, understand her? “That could be dangerous, with a man so—unusual.”

  “Father meant twenty-seven.” Blaise struck hard. “Mr. Houghteling ought to know. He was his lawyer. He says there is no doubt of intention.”

  Caroline sat very straight in her chair. Back of Blaise’s head a mass of bronze chrysanthemums were arrayed as for a funeral. An omen? If so, his funeral or hers? “It was a lucky accident for you that Father’s pen slipped. We both know what he meant. But what I want to know is what you mean. Why do you want my share of the estate? Surely, there’s enough for both?”

  “There isn’t. For what I want to do.” Blaise looked at her bleakly.

  “To start a newspaper?”

  Blaise nodded. “I’m learning how it’s done now. When I’m ready, I’ll start my own, or buy one. Maybe here …”

  For once, Caroline could not stop herself from smiling. “In competition with Mr. Hearst?”

  “Why not? He’d understand.”

  “There’s no doubt he’d understand! He’d understand that you had betrayed him. He’d also understand that if you tried to compete with him, he’d be obliged to crush you, as he seems to have crushed Mr. Pulitzer.”

  “The World’s doing all right. Mr. Pulitzer just isn’t number one any more.”

  “So there might yet be Hearst, Pulitzer and Sanford?”

  “Yes,” Blaise said; and said no more.

  Caroline was impressed; and appalled. “You will lose the entire inheritance.”

  “No,” Blaise said; and said no more.

  “Lose or gain, for six years you will have the use of my capital. Then—what happens?”

  “According to Mr. Houghteling,” Blaise was deliberate, “you’ll inherit the amount which represents half the estate at the time the will was probated.”

  Caroline began to see her way through the labyrinth; and not as a victim but as the Minotaur. “Should you double my share of the estate, you will keep half?”

  “That seems only fair. I will have doubled it, not you.”

  “If you lose …”

  “I won’t lose …”

  “If you lose, what do I get?”

  Blaise’s smile was radiant: “Half of nothing.”

  “So I lose everything if you are unfortunate and gain nothing if you are lucky.”

  “You’ll be paid thirty thousand dollars a year for the next six years. You can live very nicely on that here. Even better, back at Saint-Cloud.”

  Caroline began to see a way through to—the treasure. She was not yet sufficiently New York predator to demand living flesh for her dinner. She had begun by wanting what was hers. Now she was eager to take what was his, as well. Although family history had always bored her, she had been sufficiently intrigued by her father’s cryptic references to the fact that Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler, her grandfather, had been an illegitimate son of Aaron Burr. At Mlle. Souvestre’s school she had had the good luck to have a history teacher who did not, like all the others, disdain American history. Together they had read all that they could—which was not much—about her great-grandfather, who seemed more artist than rogue, more Lord Chesterfield than Machiavelli—and, of course, Burr was her maternal ancestor, not Blaise’s, which gave her an advantage if there should be anything to the laws or, rather, whims of heredity. Burr had been narrowly cheated of the presidency; had been rather less narrowly, to say the most, cheated of the crown of Mexico; had lived long enough to see another illegitimate son, if the gossip was true, become president. Burr had been called a traitor but, in actual fact, he had been something far worse and more dangerous to his world, a dreamer. Because of this sublime subversive trait, he had enchanted Caroline. Finally, as Aaron Burr had treated his only legitimate child as if she were a son, so Caroline had vowed when she left Europe for America that she would now become Burr’s great-grandson, and live out, on the grandest scale possible, that subtle creature’s dream of a true civilization with himself as its center, whether in the provincial capital Washington or the even more unlikely Mexico. But where the man Burr had wanted high office—even a crown—his great-grand self-styled son was, after all, unmistakably and completely a woman, and so for Caroline there would be no high office in a nation where only males were allowed to occupy such visible places; yet there was something far better than mere office, and she had got a glimpse of it that evening on the second floor of the Tribune Building in Park Lane; there was, simply, true power. Although money was the source of power in this rude place, now even less of a civilization than it had been in Burr’s day, what she had seen an
d heard of Hearst that night had convinced her that the ultimate power is not to preside in a white house or open a parliament while seated on a throne but to reinvent the world for everyone by giving them the dreams that you wanted them to dream. She doubted if Blaise—heir to prosaic Delacroix but not to the arch-dreamer Burr—grasped this. He saw simply an exciting game to play, with money and the illusion of power as its reward. While she saw herself creating a world that would be all hers, since she, like Hearst, would have reinvented all the players, giving them their dialogue, moving them in and out of wars: “Remember the Maine,” “Cuba Libre,” “Rough Riders,” “Yellow Kids” … Oh, she could do better than any of that! She too could use a newspaper to change the world. She felt giddy with potentiality. But, first, she must see to her inheritance. She got to her feet. Blaise did the same.

  “I suppose,” she said, “we’ll next meet in court.”

  Blaise blinked. “You have no case.”

  “I shall accuse you of altering the will.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “I know you didn’t. But the accusation will always be there, all your life. Mr. Hearst can afford not to be respectable. You can’t.”

  “You can’t prove a thing. And I’ll still win.”

  “I wouldn’t be so certain. Anyway, remember this.”—Remember the Maine! Had Aaron Burr ever so rapturous a vision?—“I shall do anything to get what’s mine.”

  “All right.” Blaise turned to go. “I’ll see you in court.” He opened the door to the suite. “Do you know how much litigation costs here?”

  “I took the liberty of removing the four Poussins from Saint-Cloud. They are in London, with a dealer. He says they should fetch a marvellous price.”

  “You stole my pictures?” Blaise was white with fury.

  “I took my pictures. When we divide the estate, evenly, I’ll give you your half of what I get from the sale. Meanwhile, I shall be able to buy quite a lot of wonderful American law.”

  “Comme tu est affreuse!”

  “Comme toi-même!”

  Blaise slammed the door hard behind him. Caroline remained standing in the center of the room, politely smiling, and singing, rather loudly, and to her own surprise, verse after verse of “There’ll be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.”