by Gore Vidal
– 2 –
THE SECRETARY of State and the new secretary of war, Elihu Root, stared at one another across Hay’s desk. Root had replaced Alger in August. A New York lawyer of uncommon brilliance and sly wit, Root gave Hay more pleasure than the rest of the admittedly dim Cabinet combined. Root’s hair was cut short like Julius Caesar’s, with a dark fringe over the brow, and a modest moustache. The black eyes were as quick as the wit; and the swift smile was both frank and agreeably murderous. “If you really want the Philippines,” said Hay, “you can have them. I’ve got too much on my hands as it is.”
“I don’t want them, dear fellow. I’ve got quite enough with Cuba.” Root lit a cigar. “In fact, I’ve told the President that State should have all our island possessions. War just isn’t suited to run a peacetime colonial government. Of course, Cuba isn’t really a colony.” Root frowned. “I wish we could think of a better word than ‘possession’ for our …”
“Possessions?” Hay smiled; the pains in his back were in remission. A summer in New Hampshire had restored if not his weary soul his spinal column. “We must face what they are.”
“I’ve just divided Cuba into four military districts, rather the way we did the South in 1865. In due course, we’ll come home, but then what happens to Cuba?”
“Germany?” Lately the “German menace” was much discussed at Cabinet, where it was generally thought that the German fleet was making itself too much at home in both the Caribbean and the Pacific; and all—or almost all—agreed that if Germany were to obtain a single port anywhere in the Caribbean, there would be war.
The Major’s recent discovery of the Monroe Doctrine had been galvanizing. But then, as Henry Adams always said, his family’s masterpiece only came to irritable life once every other generation or so. Plans were now afoot to buy the Virgin Islands from Denmark; unfortunately, the Danes had assumed that the government of the United States was so corrupt that it would be necessary to pay off the relevant officials. Hay himself had been crudely approached; severely, he had told the eager Dane, “You must pay off Senator Lodge first. He is the key, and a very expensive one, too, because he is from Massachusetts, and their senators still idolize—and emulate—Daniel Webster, who was ‘retained’ by everyone.” Cabot had not been amused by the subsequent advances. Adams had not stopped laughing for a day.
“I don’t think Germany is going to amount to much on this side of the Atlantic.” With a forefinger, Root dusted the silver-framed portrait of the Prince of Wales. “Poor man. He’ll never be king, will he?”
“Queen Victoria cannot live forever, as far as we know. She has been queen all my life; yours, too. She adds whiskey to her claret at table.”
“That explains her longevity. It’s going to be Leonard Wood in Cuba.”
“As governor-general?”
Root nodded. “Or whatever we’ll call him. He wants to clean up, literally, Cuba. You know, collect the garbage. Educate the children. Give them a constitution where only men of property can vote.”
Hay inhaled the smoke from Root’s cigar: Cuban, he noted, of the best quality. “No one can ever accuse us of exporting democracy. Poor Jefferson thought that he had won, and now we are all Hamiltonians.”
“Thanks to the Civil War.”
Adee opened the door, and put his elegant head into the room. “They are coming, Mr. Hay,” he softly quacked.
“Who,” asked Hay, “are they?”
A high screeching falsetto shouting “Bully!” promptly identified one of them.
“I should have warned you,” said Root, baring his teeth in an anticipatory smile.
“Theodore approaches.…” Hay held on to the edge of his desk, as if battening down, whatever that nautical verb meant, a hatch.
“With his invention …”
The door was flung open and in the doorway stood the portly young Governor of New York, and the portly old Admiral Dewey. “There you two are! We’ve been with Secretary Long. Nice to have the three of you all in the same building. You look bully, Hay.”
“I feel … bully, Theodore.” Hatch battened down, Hay had risen to his feet with some pain. Root’s murderous smile was now in place. He started to shake the Admiral’s right hand; and was given the left. “My arm’s still paralyzed from shaking hands in New York,” he said. Dewey was small and sunburned, with snow-white hair and moustache.
“The hero of the hour,” said Root, reverently.
“Hour? The century!” shouted Roosevelt.
“Which ends in less than two months.” Hay was pleased to deflate Theodore. “Then we shall be, all of us, adrift in the frightening unknown of the twentieth century.”
“Which begins not in two months but in a year and two months from now.” Root was pedantic. “On January one, 1901.”
“Surely,” Hay began; but Roosevelt broke in.
“Why frightening?” The Governor removed his glasses and cleaned them with a silk handkerchief. “The twentieth century—whenever it starts—will see us at our absolute high noon. Isn’t that right, Admiral?”
Dewey was staring out the window at the White House. “I don’t,” he said, “suppose it’s very difficult, being president.”
The three men were too startled to react either in or out of character. “I mean, it’s just like the Navy. They give you your orders and you carry them out.”
“Who,” said Root, the first to recover, “do you think will give you your orders, President Dewey?”
“Oh, Congress.” The Admiral chuckled. “I’m a sailor, of course, and I have no politics. But I know a thing or two about the trade. My wife, as of tomorrow my wife, that is, likes the idea. So does her brother, John R. McLean. He’s very political, you know. In Ohio.”
Hay was watching Roosevelt during this astonishing declaration—or, more precisely, meditation. Theodore’s teeth were, for once, entirely covered by lips and moustache. The blue eyes were astonished; the pince-nez fallen.
“The house is certainly an enticement.” Dewey indicated the White House, with a martial wave. “But, of course, I have a house now, at 1747 Rhode Island Avenue. The people’s gift, which I’ve just deeded over to my wife-to-be.”
Hay was speechless. For the first time in American history, a subscription had been raised to reward an American hero with a house. When General Grant had died in poverty, editorials were written about Blenheim Palace and Apsley House, national gifts to Britain’s victorious commanders. Did not the United States owe her heroes something? Shortly after Admiral Dewey’s return, a house in the capital was presented to him, according to his reasonably modest specification: the dining room must seat no fewer than fourteen people, the Admiral’s idea of the optimum number. Now the Admiral had blithely given away the nation’s gift. “Is this wise?” asked Hay. “The people gave you the house.”
“Exactly. Which means that it’s mine to do with as I please, and I want Mrs. Hazen to have it now that she’s to be Mrs. Dewey. All in all,” he continued, without a pause, “I think one must wait till the people tell you just when they want you to be president before you yourself say or do anything. Don’t you agree, Governor?”
Roosevelt’s screech sounded to Hay’s ear like a barnyard chicken’s first glimpse of the cook’s kitchen knife.
As always, Root rallied first; and said smoothly, “I’m sure that the thought of being president has never occurred to Colonel Roosevelt, who is interested not in mere office or its trappings or, indeed, the housing that goes with office. No. For the Governor, service is all. Am I not right, Colonel?”
Roosevelt’s huge teeth were again in view, but not in a smile; rather, he was clicking them like castanets, and Hay shuddered at the sound of bony enamel striking bony enamel. “You certainly are, Mr. Root. I set myself certain practical goals, Admiral. At the moment, as governor, I wish to tax the public franchise companies so that—”
“But doesn’t your legislature tell you what you should do?” The Admiral’s homely dull face was turned no
w toward the Governor.
“No, it doesn’t.” The teeth snapped now like rifle shots. “I tell them what to do. They’re mostly for sale, as it is.”
“May I quote you, Governor?” Root’s killer’s smile gave Hay great joy.
“No, you may not, Mr. Root. I have enough troubles …”
“The Albany mansion is comfortable,” said the Admiral thoughtfully: plainly, housing was much on his mind.
“Perhaps you might want to be governor of New York,” Hay proposed, “when Colonel Roosevelt’s term ends, next year.”
“No. You see, I don’t like New York. I’m from Vermont.”
Hay changed the delicious subject. After all, the Admiral was a McKinley-made hero, and to tarnish him would, in the end, tarnish the Administration. “How long do you think it will take us to pacify the rebels in the Philippines?”
It was hard to tell whether or not the Admiral was smiling beneath the huge moustaches, like a snowdrift on his monumental face. “Forever, I suppose. You see, they hate us. And why not? We promised to free them, and then we didn’t. Now they are fighting us so that they can be free. It’s really quite simple.”
Roosevelt was very still in his self-control. “You do not regard Aguinaldo and his assassins as outlaws?”
Dewey looked at Roosevelt with something dangerously like contempt. “Aguinaldo was our ally against Spain. My ally. He’s a pretty smart fellow, and the Filipinos are a lot more capable of self-government than, say, the Cubans.”
“That,” said Root, “will be the position the Democrats take next year.”
“Damnable traitors!” Roosevelt exploded.
“Oh, I don’t think that’s quite right.” Dewey was mild. “There’s a lot to be said for good sense, Governor.”
Adee was again at the door. “Admiral Dewey, the reporters are waiting for you in the Secretary’s office.”
“Thank you.” Dewey turned to Roosevelt. “So you agree with me that when it comes to the presidency we just bide our time until the nation calls?”
A strangled cry was Roosevelt’s only response. Smiling graciously, Admiral Dewey bade the three men of state a grave farewell. When the door shut behind him, Hay and Root broke into undecorous laughter; and Roosevelt slammed Hay’s desk three times with the palm of his right hand. “The greatest booby that ever sailed the seven seas,” he pronounced at last.
“I’m told that Nelson was also a fool.” Hay was judicious; and highly pleased that he had witnessed Theodore’s embarrassment, for he had, from the beginning, taken full credit for Dewey’s career and famous victory.
“Let’s hope,” said Root, mildly disturbed, “he’ll keep quiet about the Philippines in front of the press. Let’s also,” he smiled sweetly, “hope that he remembers to tell them about that house.”
“The man’s mad.” Roosevelt was emphatic. “I hadn’t realized it. Of course, he’s old.”
“He’s my age,” said Hay gently.
“Exactly!” boomed Roosevelt, not listening.
“At the moment,” said Root, “Dewey could probably have the Democratic nomination.”
“And McKinley would win again,” said Roosevelt. “I am not, by the way, gentlemen, at all interested in the vice-presidential nomination next year. If nominated, I warn you, I won’t accept.”
“Dear Theodore,” Root’s smile glittered like sun on Arctic ice, “no one has even considered you as a candidate because—isn’t it plain?—you are not qualified.”
That does it, thought Hay, Theodore will bolt the party and we shall lose New York.
But Roosevelt took this solid blow stolidly. “I’m aware,” he said, quietly, for him, “that I am considered to be too young, not to mention too much a reformer for the likes of Mark Hanna—”
“Governor, no one fears you as a reformer.” Root was inexorable. “ ‘Reform’ is a word for journalists to use, and the editor of The Nation to believe in. But it’s not a word that practical politicians need take seriously.”
“Mr. Root,” the voice had attained now its highest register, “you cannot deny that I have the bosses on the run in New York State, that I have—”
“You don’t have breakfast any more with Senator Platt. That’s true. But if you run again, you and Platt will work together again, as you always have, because you’re highly practical. Because you’re full of energy. Because you are admirable.” Root’s fame as a lawyer rested on an ability to pile up evidence—or rhetoric—and then to his opponent’s consternation, turn all of it against the point that he appeared to be making. “I take it for granted that you must be president one day. But today is not the day, nor even tomorrow, because of your passion for the word ‘reform.’ On the other hand, the day that you cease to use that terrible word, so revolting to every good American, you will find that the glittering thing will drop—like heavenly manna—into your waiting lap. But, for now, we live in the age of McKinley. He has given us an empire. You—you,” if air could bleed, Root’s razor-like smile would now so have cut it that there would be only a crimson screen between him and the stunned Roosevelt, “you have given us moments of great joy, ‘Alone in Cuba,’ as Mr. Dooley expressed it, referring to your book on the late war. You also gave us Admiral Dewey, a gift to the nation we shall never cease to honor you for—or let the nation forget. You say unpleasant things about arrogant corporations, whose legal counsel I happen to be. And I thrill at your fierce words. You have been inspiring in your commentaries on the iniquities of the insurance companies. Oh, Theodore, you are a cornucopia of lovely things! But McKinley has given us half the islands of the Pacific and nearly all the islands of the Caribbean. No governor of New York can compete with that. McKinley, working closely with his God, has made us great. Your time will come, but not as vice-president to so great a man. It is also too soon to remove yourself from the active life of strenuous reformation, not to mention the vivacious private slaughter of animals. You must allow yourself to grow, to see points of view other than the simple, deeply held ones that you have evolved so sincerely and so publicly. Work upon understanding our great corporations, whose energy and ingenuity have brought us so much wealth …”
With a cry, Roosevelt turned to Hay. “I said it was a mistake to put a lawyer in the War Department, and a corporation lawyer at that …”
“What,” asked Root, innocently, “is wrong with a corporation lawyer? What, after all, was President Lincoln?”
“What indeed?” Hay was enjoying himself hugely. “Of course, Lincoln was just beginning to make money as a railroad lawyer when he was elected president, while you, Mr. Root, are the master lawyer of the age.”
“Do not,” whispered Root, with a delicate gesture of humility, “exaggerate.”
“Oh, you are both vile!” Roosevelt suddenly began to laugh. Although he had no humor at all, he had a certain gusto that eased relationships which might have proven otherwise to be too, his favorite word, strenuous. “Anyway, I don’t want the vice-presidency, which others, Mr. Root, want for me, starting with Senator Platt …”
Root nodded. “He will do anything to get you out of New York State.”
“Bully!” The small blue eyes, half-hidden by the plump cheeks, shone. “If Platt wants me out I must be a pretty good reformer.”
“Or simply tiresome.”
Roosevelt was now on his feet, marching, as to war, thought Hay. He never ceased to play-act. “I’m too young to spend four years listening to senators make fools of themselves. I also don’t have the money. I have children to pay for. On eight thousand dollars a year, I could never afford to entertain the way Morton and Hobart did.” At the mantel, he stopped; he turned to Hay. “How is Hobart?”
“He is home. In Paterson, New Jersey. He is dying.” The President had already warned Hay that in accordance with the Constitution, the Secretary of State would soon become, in the absence of an elected vice-president, heir to the presidency should the President himself die. Hay was agreeably excited at the thought. As for poor
Hobart himself, Hay had only a secular prayer; and the practical hope that were the Vice-President to die, Lizzie Cameron could return to the Tayloe house in Lafayette Square a year before she had planned, thus keeping happy the Porcupinus, who was still in Paris, porcu-pining for Lizzie, who, in turn, was in love with an American poet, twenty years her junior. As she had made Adams suffer, so the poet made her suffer; thus, love’s eternal balance was maintained: he loves her, and she loves another who loves—himself. Hay was quite happy to have forgotten all about love. He had not Adams’s endless capacity; or health.
“I’ve proposed you, Mr. Root, for governor, if I don’t run again.” Roosevelt gave a small meaningless leap into the air.
“I have never said that you were not kindness itself.” Root was demure. “But Senator Platt has already told you that I’m not acceptable to the organization.”
“How did you know?” There were times when Hay found the essentially wily Roosevelt remarkably innocent.
“I have an idle interest in my own affairs.” Root was equally demure. “I hear things. Happily, I don’t want to be governor of New York. I don’t want to know Platt any better than I do; and then, like Admiral Dewey, I dislike Albany.”
“But the Admiral does like the governor’s mansion,” Hay contributed.
“He is a simple warrior, with simple tastes. I am sybaritic. In any case, Governor, you’ll be happy to know that I have surrendered to you. Next month your friend Leonard Wood will become military governor of Cuba.”
“Bully!” Two stubby hands applauded. “You won’t regret it! He’s the best. Who’s for first governor-general of the Philippines?”
“You?” asked Root.
“I would find the task highly tempting. But will the President tempt me?”
“I think he will,” said Root, who knew perfectly well, as did Hay, that the farther away McKinley could send Roosevelt, the happier the good placid President would be. The Philippines were Roosevelt’s anytime he wanted them, once the bloody task of pacification was completed. Tens—some said hundreds—of thousands of natives had been killed, and though General Otis continued to promise a complete submission on the part of Aguinaldo and the rebels, they were still at large, dividing the United States in what would soon be an election year, while Mark Twain’s answer to Rudyard Kipling would, Hay had been told by their common friend Howells, soon be launched. Meanwhile, the old Mississippi boatman, now of Hartford, Connecticut, had told the press that the American flag’s stars and stripes should be replaced with a skull and crossbones, acknowledging officially the United States’ new role as international pirate and scavenger.