by Gore Vidal
But at Beverly Farms, news was slow in coming. Don Cameron relied on visitors to bring him day-old newspapers. As there was neither telephone nor telegraph office nearby, Caroline wondered if she should go back to Washington, to her command post at the Tribune. But Lizzie said, “There’s no one in the government left in town. What news there is is at Buffalo, and who wants to go there?”
Kiki began to bark; visitors had appeared on the piazza of the house. Brooks Adams and his wife, Daisy, waved to the group on the lawn. Then Brooks shouted, “Teddy!”
“Teddy what?” responded Cameron, getting first to his knees; then, laboriously, onto his feet.
“Teddy Roosevelt,” roared Brooks, as his wife, frowning, put her hands over her ears, “is president of the United States.”
“Oh, God,” murmured Cameron.
Caroline crossed herself. The poor good McKinley was now as vanished from the story as Del. Then to Kiki’s delight, everyone ran toward the house.
“When-how?” asked Lizzie.
“Yesterday evening. Friday the thirteenth. Gangrene set in. At two-fifteen this morning, he died. Teddy was off in the woods, somewhere. But he should be in Buffalo by now, being sworn in. The Cabinet’s all there except for Hay, who’s in Washington, holding together the government. No one knows the extent of the conspiracy. The Spanish-Cubans are thought to be behind it, out of revenge, for what McKinley did-and did not do-in Cuba.” Brooks spoke rapidly, without a pause for breath. Then, like a child, he began to jump up and down on the porch; and Kiki jumped alongside him. “Teddy’s got it all now! Do you realize that he occupies a place greater than Trajan’s at the high noon of the Roman empire?” Brooks, like his brother, never spoke when he could lecture. “There has never been so much power given a man at so propitious a time in history! He will have the opportunity-and the means-to subjugate all Asia, and so give America the hegemony of the earth, which is our destiny, written in stars! Also,” Brooks came to earth with a crash, “today is a day of great importance to Daisy and me. It is our wedding anniversary.”
“History does seem to have us by the throat,” said Lizzie mildly. “Come inside.”
“Champagne,” said Cameron, brightening. “For your anniversary…”
“And for Theodore the Great, whose reign has, at last, begun.”
“No period of mourning for Mr. McKinley?“ asked Caroline, who felt, suddenly, an intense grief for Del, the Major and, not least, herself, bereft.
“The King is dead.” Brooks was cold. “Long live the King.”
2
IN THE BRIGHTLY ILLUMINATED reception room of the Pennsylvania Station, John Hay sat in a gilded armchair. Adee stood beside him, while a half-dozen Secret Service men prowled about the small, ornate, musty room reserved for dignitaries. The train from Buffalo was due to arrive at eight-thirty; aboard was the new president, and the body of his predecessor. Hay had arranged for the White House ushers to escort Mrs. McKinley and Cortelyou to the mansion, where McKinley would lie in state, while his family helped Mrs. McKinley to pack her belongings, a melancholy task that Hay had twice before witnessed when the widows of Lincoln and Garfield had each been obliged to deal with a life’s end in the most humiliating and public way.
Once again, to Hay’s amazement, as there would be no vice-president for another four years, he was constitutional heir to the President. If only for this reason, he was confident that Roosevelt would replace him as secretary of state. The President-the youngest in history at forty-two-must not have as his potential successor a sixty-two-year-old wreck, which is how Hay thought of himself, literally a wreck in body-mind, too. The death of Del had shaken him; the death of McKinley had sunk him into a melancholy of a sort that he had never before experienced. “I am a harbinger of death,” he would say aloud, dramatically, when alone: he had yet to find the person with whom he could share his desolate vision of himself. In the nation’s history, only three presidents had been murdered in office, and each had been a close friend of John Hay. It was curious, too, how essentially benign the three murdered men had been; it was not as if they had been tyrants, tempting the gods. Although, and Hay began to redefine “tyrant,” many Filipinos and Spanish-Cubans did view McKinley as a tyrant. But, thus far, the Secret Service had been unable to link Czolgosz’s anarchists to those Spanish-Cubans who were supposedly eager to avenge wrongs done them by McKinley.
Although Roosevelt had announced in Buffalo that, as he was simply a continuation of McKinley, he would keep the Cabinet intact, Hay expected, after a decent interval, to be let go. On Sunday morning Hay had written Roosevelt a letter of commiseration and congratulation, all couched in a valetudinarian style: “My official life is at an end-my natural life will not be long extended, and so in the dawn of what I am sure will be a great and splendid future, I venture to give you the heartfelt benediction of the past.” Hay had wept when he wrote that line; now, recalling it, his eyes again filled with tears, for all the selves that he had been; and would be no more.
Suddenly, Hay heard the noise of a crowd outside the reception room. As he got to his feet, and started across the room, the station master flung open the door and said, “The President”; and disappeared.
Theodore Roosevelt, thick, sturdy, small, bounded across the room, and shook Hay’s hand. Teeth bared but not smiling, he spoke rapidly. “I’ve seen your letter. Of course you will stay on with me, to the end, or as long as you like. As for your talk of age, that’s affectation. You’re not old. It’s not your true nature to be old, any more than it’s mine.”
“Mr. President-” Hay began.
“Theodore, please. As I have always, disrespectfully, called you John, you must call me Theodore, as you’ve always done, except, of course, when people are about and we must both acknowledge the majesty of our estate…”
“You are too kind… Theodore.” Hay was amused at the Rooseveltian vehemence. Obviously, on the long train ride, he had been busy working out how protocol would affect his various personal relationships.
“I don’t want to cut myself off from old friends socially, the way the other presidents have tended to do. I want to be able to dine like any guest at your house, or Cabot’s, but, of course,” he became very grave, somber even with majesty, “I must preserve the prerogative of the initiative.” Before Hay could think of a response, Roosevelt was off on another tangent. “Root swore me in. It was very moving, all of us in that parlor. Root couldn’t say the oath of office for some ten minutes. Odd. I never think of him as being an emotional man. For the time, I want to keep the Philippines in his department. You don’t mind?”
“No, no. I have quite enough to do. Your wife and young Ted are here. They arrived this afternoon.”
“Good! Let’s join them.”
Theodore grabbed Hay’s arm, and marched him, rather too fast for Hay’s perfect comfort, into the main waiting room of the station, where a small crowd cheered the new president, who solemnly raised his hat, but did not, Hay was relieved to note, mar the occasion with the huge, toothy Roosevelt smile. A dozen policemen then made a ring about them, and escorted them outside.
In the distance, the dome of the Capitol was illuminated like a confectionery skull, thought Hay. Since Hay had ordered the White House to make no announcement, there was no crowd outside the station; the public did not expect the new president to arrive until the next day. Neither Roosevelt nor Hay chose to notice the huge ebony hearse, with its six black horses, ready to bear McKinley’s body to the White House. For a moment, Roosevelt paused on the sidewalk; started to speak; said nothing.
“You needn’t wait,” said Hay.
Roosevelt looked relieved; and sprang into the presidential carriage, followed by Hay. “Seventeen thirty-three N Street,” said Roosevelt, as if he were in a taxi-cab.
“They know,” said Hay, amused. “It’s their job.”
“Quite right. I must get used to that. I must get used to a lot of things now, like the White House. I want the stationery changed
. I can’t stand ‘The Executive Mansion.’ From now on, we’ll just call it ‘The White House.’ Less pompous. How many bedrooms are there?”
“Five in the living quarters; and three of them are pretty small.”
“What’s on the third floor?”
“I haven’t been up there since Tad Lincoln mixed up all the bells in the mansion-house, that is-and I had to unmix them.”
“I suppose we can make extra rooms up there. Alice must have her own room now that she’s about to be eighteen.” Roosevelt stared at the post office, where an illuminated flag was at half-mast.
“All flags should be taken down at sunset. It’s depressing,” he added, uncharacteristically. “To come here as president, and everyone is mourning.”
“Murder is always depressing-and alarming.”
“Do we know who’s behind that anarchist?”
“The Secret Service wants to arrest everyone in sight. They remind me of Stanton after Lincoln was shot.”
“Let’s hope with better result. I wouldn’t mind being shot-like Lincoln, that is, not poor McKinley. Lincoln never knew what happened.”
Hay shuddered, involuntarily. “I’m not so sure. When we were writing his life, I read the autopsy report. Apparently the bullet entered not the back of his head but the left temple, which meant that he had heard Booth at the door to the box, and that he had turned around to see who it was…”
“And saw?”
“And saw, for an instant, the gun.”
“How grisly!” Roosevelt was plainly delighted by this macabre detail.
In front of the N Street house of Anna Roosevelt Cowles, two policemen stood guard. From a second-story window a huge American flag drooped at half-mast. “Why don’t they take down these flags?” Roosevelt was querulous; and, Hay suspected, somehow discomfited by the tribute to his predecessor.
In the downstairs parlor, Roosevelt greeted his wife, Edith; sister, Anna, whom he called Bamie; and son, Ted. The ladies wore mourning; they were in excellent spirits. The ladies made much of Hay, who was pleased to be treated like a piece of rare porcelain from an earlier time. He was helped into an armchair, and encouraged to smoke a cigar, which he refused. Meanwhile, the new president was prancing about the room, asking everyone questions to which he alone had the answers. During this display, the admirable Edith maintained her stately calm. Hay had always preferred her to the noisy-no other word-Theodore.
Edith Kermit Carow was descended from Huguenots who had intermarried with the family of Jonathan Edwards. She had known Theodore all her life. The Carow family had lived in New York’s Union Square next door to the house of Theodore’s grandfather. Edith had been a bookish girl, no great recommendation in their world, but a link to the high-strung asthmatic Theodore, who was not only bookish but, to compensate for physical weakness, doggedly athletic as well.
Hay had always thought that Theodore took too much for granted his perfect wife. Certainly, he had taken her so much for granted that, perhaps to her surprise-who would ever know, as she was all tact and reserve?-Theodore, on his twenty-second birthday, had married a beautiful girl named Alice Lee, and Edith Carow had, serenely it was reported, been a guest at the wedding. In due course, Alice Lee gave birth to a daughter, Alice; not long after, Alice Lee died within a day of Theodore’s mother. The two sudden deaths drove Theodore out of politics-he had been a member of New York’s State Assembly; out of New York City, too. He bought a ranch in the Badlands of the Dakotas; lost money on cattle; and wrote with marvellously contagious self-love of his own bravery. Four Eyes, as the bespectacled Theodore was known to the Western toughs, was very much a hero in his own eyes, while giving much pleasure to his friends the Hearts, if not in the way that he might have liked. After all, he was a mere dude compared to Clarence King.
As Hay listened to this most unlikely of American presidents, he was reminded of the chilling prescience of Henry Adams’s letter from Stockholm, which had arrived on the day that the President was shot. “Teddy’s luck” was the letter’s theme; fate’s too, as it proved. Theodore was, Adams had proclaimed, “pure act,” like God: endless energy without design.
Finally, Roosevelt had returned from the West, poorer than when he had left but better-known to magazine readers. After losing an election for mayor of New York in the autumn of 1886, he and Edith Kermit Carow were married, most fashionably, at St. George’s in Hanover Square, London; the groomsman was Cecil Spring-Rice, the Hearts’ favorite British diplomat. Then the Roosevelts returned to the ugly comfortable house that he had built on Sagamore Hill at Oyster Bay, Long Island. Here he wrote the six-volume history Winning the West; filled the house with children; and plotted, with Henry Cabot Lodge, a political career that had been interrupted not only by personal tragedies but by a mistrust of the Republican Party’s leader James G. Blaine; fortunately, this dislike had not led to apostasy of the sort that had caused the truly virtuous to bolt the party and raise high the banner of Independence and Mugwumpery. Roosevelt and Lodge were too practical for this sort of idealistic gesture. They stayed with Blaine, who lost to Cleveland in 1884.
While Theodore was turning out biographies of Thomas Hart Benton and Gouverneur Morris and essays in celebration of Americanism of the sort that had given Henry James such exquisite pain, he was also busy president-making. One president thus made was Benjamin Harrison; and Theodore’s political carpentry was rewarded with a place on the Civil Service Commission.
Both President and Theodore had been eager for him to be under secretary of state, but the secretary, James G. Blaine himself, had the usual politician’s long memory, and Theodore was forced to content himself with Civil Service reform, an Augean stable where not even Hercules would have dreamed of putting hand to shovel. Although Theodore was no Hercules, he was, by nature, busy. In 1889, at the age of thirty, he made himself the commission’s head. He railed against the spoils system, and the press enjoyed him. When Republican President Harrison was replaced by Democratic President Cleveland, Roosevelt was kept on. During the six years he served on the commission, he entered the lives of the Hearts. In 1895, a reform mayor of New York City appointed Roosevelt president of the board of police commissioners. Roosevelt proved to be a fierce unrelenting prosecutor of vice; and the press revelled in his escapades. Since the law that forbade saloons to dispense their poisons on the Sabbath was often flouted, Roosevelt closed down the saloons, which meant that the saloonkeepers need no longer pay protection to Mr. Croker of Tammany Hall. But Mr. Croker was more resourceful than Roosevelt; he got a judge to rule that as it was not against the law to serve alcohol with a meal, a single pretzel ingested while drinking a bottle of whiskey made lawful the unlawful.
Roosevelt was also introduced to a world from which he had always been sheltered, the poor. He took for his guide a Danish-born journalist named Jacob Riis, who had written a polemical book called How the Other Half Lives. Roosevelt was shown not only the extent of poverty in the great city but the complacence of the ruling class, which included his own family.
Hay had never been much impressed by Theodore’s occasional impassioned denunciations of the “malefactors of great wealth”; after all, as Henry Adams liked to say, they were all of them consenting parties to the status quo. Though the Police Commissioner got himself a reputation for the disciplining of dishonest policemen, when the journalist Stephen Crane-previously admired by Roosevelt-testified in court against two policemen who had falsely arrested a woman for soliciting, Roosevelt had sprung to the defense of the policemen, and denounced Crane, an eyewitness to the arrest. Since Crane was much admired by the Hearts, Roosevelt had been taken to task. But he stood by his men, like a good commander in a war.
In March, 1897, the thirty-eight-year-old Roosevelt met, as it were, his luck. The new president, McKinley, appointed him assistant secretary of the Navy, ordinarily a humble post, but with a weak and amiable secretary, Roosevelt, in thrall to the imperial visions of Captain Mahan and Brooks Adams, was now in a position to b
uild up the fleet without which there could be no future wars, no glory, no empire. The next four years were to wreathe with laurel the stout little man who now stood, if not like a colossus athwart the world, like some tightly wound-up child’s toy, dominating all the other toys in power’s playroom, shrill voice constantly raised. “Germany, John. There’s the coming problem. Coming? No, it’s here. The Kaiser’s on the move everywhere. He’s built a fleet to counter us-or the British, one or the other, but not-not both together-yet. Also, if he makes the bid, he will have to look to his rear, for there is savage Russia, huge and glacial, waiting for the world to fall like a ripe fruit into its paws.” Theodore smote together his own paws. Hay tried to imagine the world smashed in those pudgy hands. “Russia is the giant of the future,” Theodore proclaimed.
Hay felt obliged to intervene. “I don’t know about the future-but at the moment the only kind of giant that Russia is is a giant dwarf.”
Theodore laughed; and clicked his teeth. Bamie was now pouring coffee, with Edith’s assistance. Neither paid much attention to Theodore; but their absent-mindedness was benign. “I’ll use that, John, with your permission.”
“Don’t you dare. I can say such things in private. But you can’t, ever. We have enough trouble here with Cassini, with Russia. You may think such things,” Hay conceded, “but the president must always avoid wit…”
“And truth?”
“Truth above all, the statesman must avoid. Elevated sentiment and cloudy tautologies must now be your style…”