Empire

by Gore Vidal

  “Oh, you depress me! I had hoped to make a brilliant State of the Union address. Full of epigrams, and giant dwarfs. Well, all right. No dwarfs.”

  “We must extend the hand of friendship,” Hay intoned, “through every open door that we can find.”

  Roosevelt laughed; or, rather, barked; and started to march about the room. “The thing to remember about the Germans is this. They simply haven’t got the territory to support their population. They’ve got France and England to the west-and us back of them. They’ve got your giant dwarf to the east, and back of it China. There’s really no place, anywhere, for a German empire…”

  “Africa,” Hay broke in.

  “Africa, yes. But Africa what? A lot of territory, and no Germans willing to go there. In the last ten years, one million Germans-the best and the pluckiest of them all-moved out of Germany. And who got them? We did-or most of them. No wonder the Kaiser’s eager to set up his own empire in China. But he’ll have to deal with us if he moves into Asia…”

  “Suppose he moves into Europe?” Hay’s back pains had returned; and Bamie Cowles’s coffee had created turbulence in a digestive system more than usually fragile.

  “Spring-Rice thinks he might, one day. I like Germans. I like the Kaiser, in a way. I mean, if I were in his situation, I’d try for something, too.”

  “Well, we did not like them in ’98, when they tried to get England to join them to help Spain against us.”

  “No. No. No. But you can see how tempting it must have been for the Kaiser. He wanted the Philippines. Who didn’t? Anyway, the British were with us.” Roosevelt suddenly frowned.

  “Canada claims,” Hay began.

  “Not now! Not now, dear John. The subject bores me.”

  “Bores you? Think of me, hour after hour, day after day, in close communion with Our Lady of the Snows…”

  “Boring Lady, in my experience.”

  “Now, Thee.” Edith’s warning voice was a bit lower than her normal voice; but no less effective.

  “But, Edie. I was just commiserating with John…”

  “I suppose,” said young Ted, “that I will be able to endure Groton another term.”

  “Is this a cry for attention?” asked the father, balefully clicking his teeth.

  “No, no. It was just an observation…”

  “Where is Alice?” asked the President, turning to his wife.

  “Farmington, isn’t she?” Edith turned to her sister-in-law.

  “In my house, yes. Or she was. She’s very social, you know.”

  “I don’t know where she gets that from.” Theodore appealed to Hay. “We are not-never have been-fashionable.”

  “Perhaps this is an advance, a new hazard for an old fortune-”

  “No fortune either!” sighed Edith. “I don’t know how we’ll live now. This black dress,” she slowly turned so that her husband could appreciate her sacrifice, “cost me one hundred and thirty-five dollars at Hollander’s this morning. That’s ready-made, of course, and then I had to buy a truly hideous hat with black crepe veil.”

  “One can only hope that there will be numerous similar funerals for you to attend,” said Hay, “of elderly diplomats, of course, and senators of any age.”

  Theodore was staring at himself in a round mirror; he seemed as fascinated by himself as others were. Then he confided, “I have to go to Canton after the services here.” Then he spun around, and sat in a chair, and was suddenly still. It was as if the toy had finally run down. He even sat like a doll, thought Hay; legs outstretched, arms loose at his side.

  “Shall I go?” asked Hay.

  “No. No. We can never travel together again, you and I. If something should happen to me, you’re the only president we’ve got.”

  “Poor country,” said Hay, getting to his feet. “Poor me.”

  “Stop sounding old.” The doll, rewound, was on its feet. “I’ll meet with the Cabinet Friday, after Canton; the usual time.”

  “We shall be ready for you. As for Alice, if she does decide to visit Washington, Helen says that she can stay with us.”

  “Alice worships your girls,” said Edith, without noticeable pleasure. “They dress so beautifully, she keeps reminding me.”

  “Alice doesn’t like having poor parents,” said the President, as he led Hay to the door.

  “Give her to us. There’s plenty of room.”

  “We might. Pray for me, John.”

  “I have done that, Theodore. And will, again.”

  3

  BLAISE FOUND THE CHIEF IN, of all places, his office at the Journal. As a rule, he preferred to work at home when he was in New York, which was seldom these days. In Hearst’s capacity as presiding genius of the Democratic clubs, he travelled the nation, rallying the faithful, preparing for his own election four years hence. He had been in Chicago when McKinley was shot.

  Brisbane was seated on a sofa while the Chief sat feet on his desk, and eyes on the window, through which nothing could be seen except falling, melting snow. Neither man greeted Blaise; he was a member of the family. But when Blaise asked, “How bad is it?” Hearst answered, “Bad and getting worse.” Hearst gave him a copy of the World. Ambrose Bierce’s quatrain was printed in bold type. Hearst’s deliberate incitement to murder was the theme of the accompanying story. As Blaise read, he could hear the steady drumming of Hearst’s fingers on his desk, always a sign of nervousness in that generally phlegmatic man. “They’re trying to make out that the murderer had a copy of the Journal in his pocket at Buffalo. He didn’t, of course.”

  “They will invent anything,” said Brisbane sadly. The two founding fathers of invented news were not pleased to find themselves being reinvented by others no less scrupulous. The irony was not lost on Blaise.

  “The Chicago American’s got close to three hundred thousand circulation.” Hearst’s mind worked rather like a newspaper’s front page, a number of disparate items crowded together, some in larger type than others. “I’m going to add the word ‘American’ to the Journal here. Particularly now. Croker’s leaving Tammany Hall. Murphy’s taking his place. The saloon-keeper, who was also dock commissioner. The one we caught owning stock in that ice company.”

  “Even so,” Brisbane sounded confident, “I’m willing to bet he’ll nominate you for governor next fall.”

  “I’m not so sure.” The right foot now began to waggle, and the drumming fingers were still as the energy moved to the body’s opposite end. “Maybe you should try him out. See if he’ll nominate you for Congress in the Eleventh Ward. All you have to pay is your first year’s congressional salary. After that, they leave you alone in Washington, except on votes that concern the city, which nobody else cares about.” The Chief stared at Blaise.

  “But I don’t want to go to Congress,” began Blaise.

  “I was talking to Brisbane.” The Chief was equable.

  “We’ve discussed it before.” Brisbane’s urbane whiskerless face looked, suddenly, statesmanlike. He had, it was rumored, socialist tendencies. “A sort of trial balloon. The Chief needs to win one high office before 1904, and governor of New York is the one that will put him in the White House.”

  “What about Colonel Roosevelt? He’s bound to run again.” Blaise could not imagine the Chief, for all his journalistic skills, as a match for the dynamic, evangelical Roosevelt. More to the point, the Chief hated public speaking; hated crowds; hated shaking hands-his limp damp grip was much imitated along Newspaper Row.

  A sub-editor entered with a newspaper proof. “The President’s message to Congress. We just got it on the wire.” Hearst took the long sheets of paper, and read rapidly; found what he was looking for; read aloud, imitating Roosevelt’s falsetto, not so different from his own: “Leon, however his name’s pronounced, was, according to our new president, ‘inflamed by the teachings of professed anarchists…’ ”

  “Poor Emma Goldman,” said Brisbane.

  “ ‘… and probably also by the reckless utterances of thos
e who, on the stump and in the public press,’ that’s me, I hope Mother doesn’t read this, ‘appeal to the dark and evil spirits of malice and greed, envy and sullen hatred. The wind is sowed by the men who preach such doctrines, and they cannot escape their share of responsibility for the whirlwind that is reaped.’ ”

  Hearst made a ball of the sheets of paper, and aimed it, successfully, at the waste basket beside Brisbane. Then he swung his feet off the desk, opened a drawer and withdrew a revolver, which he slipped into his coat pocket. “I’ve been getting death threats,” he said to Blaise. “And Mr. Roosevelt’s speech won’t help. Well, we’ll get him, too, one of these days.”

  “With another bullet, to put him on his bier?” Blaise found dark comedy in the Chief’s melodramatic view of the world.

  “Heaven forbid.” Hearst turned pale. “I hate violence. I was sick to my stomach when I heard about McKinley. Frightful. Frightful.” Blaise realized that, in some curious way, Hearst lived in a kind of dream where real people were turned, by his yellow art, into fictional characters that he could manipulate as he pleased. On those rare occasions when his fictions and the real world coincided, he was genuinely shocked. It was all very well for him to report that one Jack had taken a ride into Heaven aboard a bean stalk and quite another thing for an actual bean stalk to lift him up above the world.

  Brisbane left them. The President’s message must be printed and commented on. Then Hearst asked for news of the Baltimore newspaper, and Blaise told him the truth. “It’s just a stepping-stone.”

  “To where?”

  “I want Washington. After all, you have everything else worth having.”

  “You could run one of my papers.” Hearst stared at the snow, which was now sticking to the glass of the window. The room was filled with an odd refracted blue light.

  “You run them. I want my own.”

  “In Baltimore?”

  “The Examiner’s a beginning until…” But Blaise did not know where or what the “until” would be.

  “She’d probably have sold, if the Hay boy hadn’t been killed.” Hearst liked to analyze Caroline. By and large, women did not interest him as people. But Caroline was now beyond mere womanhood, she was a publisher.

  “I’m not so sure. She likes owning a newspaper.”

  “I know the feeling.” Hearst made one of his rare mild jokes about himself. “Well, I’ll miss you around here.” With that, Blaise was dismissed. He was no longer of financial use to the Chief, whose mother’s fortune was even larger than when her son first set out to spend it all. Now that Blaise was himself a publisher, there was no need to continue the master-apprentice relationship. “Are you going to live in Baltimore?” The Chief seemed genuinely curious.

  “No. The management’s good enough as it is, without me.” This was untrue, but Blaise was not going to tell Hearst that he was already planning a raid on the Chicago American’s editorial staff. He had an excellent managing editor in view, who would have to be paid more than Hearst paid him, which was far too much, but if anyone could salvage the Baltimore Examiner it would be one Charles Hapgood, a native of Maryland’s eastern shore and eager to abandon Chicago’s arctic winters and tropical summers for equable Baltimore.

  “You should do well.” Hearst did not sound passionately convinced. “I mean, you’ve got the money, that’s what counts. Buy the best people and-that’s the ticket.” The pale gray eyes glanced for a brief instant in Blaise’s direction; and Blaise decided that the Chief knew about Hapgood. “You been giving any thought to the magazines?” This was the Chief’s new interest. He had been impressed by the amount of advertising that certain ladies’ magazines could command. But when he had tried to buy one of them, he had been put off by the cost. He would now have to start one-or two, or a thousand.

  “I don’t know enough about how they work.” Blaise was direct. “Neither do you. Why bother?”

  “Well, we could learn the business, I reckon. I’ve been thinking about, maybe, a magazine called Electrical Machine or something…”

  “For ladies?”

  “Well, they drive, too. But I’d aim that at men. Just a thought. I’m marrying Miss Willson one of these days.”

  Blaise was surprised. “Before the election?”

  “Well, that part’s up in the air. Maybe I’ll…” The thin voice trailed off. Obviously, Hearst was afraid that scandal might be made of his long liaison with a showgirl; although marriage would silence the sterner moralists, might it not draw attention to the earlier liaison?

  Blaise rose to go. The Chief gave him several limp soft fingers to squeeze.

  “Which one?” asked Blaise, as he walked toward the door.

  “Which one what?”

  “Which Miss Willson are you marrying?”

  “Which…?” For an instant, Hearst seemed entirely to have lost his train of thought. Marriage often had that effect on men, Blaise had noticed. “Anita,” said Hearst. Then corrected himself. “I mean Millicent, of course. You know that,” he added, with a hint of accusation. Hearst was that rare thing, the humorless man who could recognize humor in others, and even at his own expense. “Your French lady,” Hearst began a counter-attack.

  “She has retired to the country. I am to see her no more.”

  “So that’s how they do it in France.”

  Blaise left Pennsylvania Station aboard the parlor-car with every intention of stopping in Baltimore, but the sight, from the train window, of those interminable brick row-houses, all alike, with scoured white stone steps, depressed him, and he continued on to Washington.

  During the train journey, Blaise thought, rather more insistently than usual, about himself. He was twenty-six; he was rich; he was attractive to women, even though he was not seriously attracted to them. Anne de Bieville had called him gâté-spoiled. But there was more to it than that, he knew, as the town of Havre de Grace, bleak under snow, moved slowly past his window. He had become too used to being the one wooed; and seduced. Except for occasional visits to the Tenderloin’s more exclusive bordellos, Blaise had made no effort to find himself a mistress, much less a wife. Plon had been amazed, and wondered, solicitously, if Blaise might not be in ill-health, suffering perhaps from some debilitating malady of the sort that begins, as all things French must, with the liver and then moves, inexorably, devastatingly southward. But as Blaise was as sturdy as a young pony, Plon had, finally, come to the sad conclusion that the illness was not of the flesh but the spirit: Anglo-Saxonism, a state of mind notoriously debilitating to the whole man. Plon had suggested more exercise, like tennis.

  Blaise was duly impressed by the renovated lobby of Willard’s, which still extended from street to street. Just behind the monumental cigar stand, the city’s political center, there was a new telephone room. Here he gave the telephone operator the number of the Washington Tribune. She plugged various wires into sockets.

  “Your number is ready.” She indicated a booth.

  When Blaise lifted the receiver and asked for Caroline, a deep Negro voice said, “There is no Miss Sanford here. This is the Bell residence.”

  “But isn’t this number-”

  “No, sir, it isn’t. We have been getting wrong numbers here all week.” The man hung up. After two more attempts, Blaise got through to the Tribune.

  Caroline was delighted with Blaise’s misadventure. “Now we can write the story. Everyone in Washington knows that the only telephone that never works properly is Alexander Graham Bell’s. ‘Inventor without honor.’ How’s that for a head? But, of course, he’s got plenty of honor for inventing the telephone. Perhaps ‘Inventor without a repairman.’ ” Caroline agreed to meet Blaise at Mrs. Benedict Tracy Bingham’s “ ‘palatial home.’ The occasion is humble. She is pouring tea for the new members of Congress. I have to be there. You don’t, of course. Oh, but you do. You’re a publisher, too-at last!” she added, with bright, impersonal malice.

  Mrs. Bingham stood before a palatial fireplace, taken from a Welsh castl
e, she said, belonging to Beowulf, an ancestor of Mr. Bingham on the maternal side. As usual the milk lord of the District of Columbia was nowhere to be seen. “We are surrounded by Apgars,” said Caroline, who had met Blaise at the door. But Blaise could not tell an Apgar from anyone else in the crowded room, where the new congressmen and their ladies looked supremely ill at ease despite Mrs. Bingham’s deep-throated welcomes. Although she was not learned in matters of history, much less myth, she had the politician’s ability to remember not only names but congressional districts. After many consultations with Caroline, it had been decided that Mrs. Bingham’s destiny was to fill the void at the center of Washington’s social life and become a political hostess. There had been no proper salon in years. The Hay-Adams drawing room was far too rarefied for mere mortals, much less itinerant politicians; embassies were out of bounds, while the White House was essentially a family-even tribal-affair now that the Roosevelts were all arrived. So Caroline had encouraged Mrs. Bingham to move to the high-relatively high-ground; and there set her standard.

  “Blaise Sanford!” she exclaimed, as Caroline approached, half-brother on her arm. Blaise found himself transfixed by dull onyx eyes, and a powerful handclasp. “Baltimore is closer than New York, and blood,” she added, significantly, “thicker than water.”

  “Yes.” Blaise had never found talking to American ladies, as opposed to girls, easy. But then ladies like Mrs. Bingham had conversation enough for two. An occasional “yes” or “no” could see a young man safely through this sort of encounter. “You’ll live here, naturally. Baltimore is out of the question. Washington’s more convenient, in every way. Caroline, have you heard? Alice Roosevelt has lost all her teeth, and only eighteen years old. I think that’s so romantic, don’t you? Such a great calamity, at so tender an age.”

  “How,” asked Caroline, “did she lose the teeth?”

  “A horse kicked her.” Mrs. Bingham looked almost youthful as she bore, yet again, ill tidings. “Now she’s developed an abscess in her lower jaw, and all the teeth fell crashing out…”