by Gore Vidal
“You are a lion,” said Caroline.
Supper was served in the new dining room, where a number of tables for ten had been set. Henry James was placed at the President’s table, a Cabinet lady between them. Saint-Gaudens was also at the monarch’s table, with Caroline to his right. Edith Roosevelt had come to depend upon Caroline for those occasions where the ability to talk French was necessary, not that the great American Dublin-born sculptor, despite his name, spoke much French. He lived in New Hampshire, not France. Of Lizzie Cameron, who had posed for the figure of Victory in Saint-Gaudens’s equestrienne monument to her uncle General Sherman, he said, “She has the finest profile of any woman in the world.”
“How satisfactory, to have such a thing, and to have you acknowledge it.”
Unfortunately, a table of ten was, for the President, no place for the ritual dinner-party conversation: first course, partner to right; second course, partner to left; and so on. The table for ten was Theodore’s pulpit, and they his congregation. “We must see more of Mr. James in his own country.” Theodore’s pince-nez glittered. As James opened his mouth to launch what would be a long but beautifully shaped response, the President spoke through him, and James, slowly, comically, shut his mouth as the torrent of sound, broken only by the clicking of teeth, swept over the table. “I cannot say that I very much like the idea of Mark Twain in our Academy.” He looked at James, but spoke to the table. “Howells, yes. He’s sound, much of the time. But Twain is like an old woman, ranting about imperialism. I’ve found there’s usually a physical reason for such people. They are congenially weak in the body, and this makes them weak in nerves, in courage, makes them fearful of war…”
“Surely,” began James.
The President’s shrill voice kept on. “Everyone knows that Twain ran away from the Civil War, a shameful thing to do…”
To Caroline’s astonishment, James’s deep baritone continued under the presidential tirade. The result was disconcerting but fascinating, a cello and a flute, simultaneously, playing separate melodies.
“… Mr. Twain, or Clemens, as I prefer to call him…”
“… testing of character and manhood. A forge…”
“… much strength of arm as well as, let us say…”
“… cannot flourish without the martial arts, or any civilization…”
“… distinguished and peculiarly American genius…”
“… desertion of the United States for a life abroad…”
“… when Mr. Hay telephoned Mr. Clemens from the Century Club to…”
“… without which the white race can no longer flourish, and prevail.” The President paused to drink soup. The table watched, and listened, as Henry James, master of so many millions of words, had the last. “And though I say-ah, tentatively, of course,” the President glared at him over his soup spoon, “the sublimity of the greatest art may be beyond his method, his-what other word?” The entire table leaned forward, what would the word be? and on what, Caroline wondered, was James’s astonishing self-confidence and authority, even majesty, based? “Drollery, that so often tires, and yet never entirely obscures for us the vision of that mighty river, so peculiarly august and ah-yes, yes? Yes! American.”
Before the President could again dominate the table, James turned to his post-soup partner, and Caroline turned to Saint-Gaudens, who said, “I can’t wait to tell Henry. The reason he won’t set foot ever again in this house is that he’s never allowed to finish a sentence and no Adams likes to be interrupted.”
“Mr. James is indeed a master.”
“Of an art considerably higher than mere politics.” Saint-Gaudens reminded Caroline of a bearded Puritan satyr, if such a creature was possible; he seemed very old in a way that the lively Adams, or the boyish if ill Hay, did not. “I wish I had read more in my life,” he said, as a fish was offered up to them.
“You have time.”
“No time.” He smiled. “Hay was furious at Mark Twain, who wouldn’t answer the telephone. We knew he was home, of course, but he didn’t want to join us at the Century Club. What bees are swarming in that bonnet! Twain’s latest bogey is Christian Science. He told me quite seriously, after only one Scotch sour, that in thirty years Christian Scientists will have taken over the government of the United States, and that they would then establish an absolute religious tyranny.”
“Why are Americans so mad for religion?”
“In the absence of a civilization,” Saint-Gaudens was direct, “what else have they?”
“Absence?” Caroline indicated James, who was smiling abstractedly at the President, who was again in the conversational saddle, but only at his end of the table. “And you. And Mr. Adams. And even the Sun King there.”
“Mr. James is truly absent. Gone from us for good. Mr. Adams writes of Virgins and dynamos in France. I am nothing. The President-well…”
“So Christ Scientist…”
“Or Christ Dentist…”
“Sets the tone.” Caroline never ceased to be amazed at the number of religious sects and societies the country spawned each year. Jim had told her that if he were to miss a Sunday service at the Methodist church in American City, he would not be re-elected, while Kitty taught Sunday school, with true belief. If for nothing else, Caroline was grateful to Mlle. Souvestre for having dealt God so absolute a death blow that she had never again felt the slightest need for that highly American-or Americanized-commodity.
The voice of Theodore was again heard at table. “I stood in the Red Room, I remember, on election night, and I told the press that I would not be a candidate again. Two terms is enough for anyone, I said, and say again.” Henry James stared dreamily at the President, as if by closely scrutinizing him he might distil his essence. “Politicians always stay on too long. Better to go at the top of your form, and give someone else a chance to measure up, which is what it is all about.”
“Measure up,” James murmured, with mysterious, to Caroline, approval. “Yes, yes, yes,” he added to no one, as Theodore told them how he had invented, first, Panama, and then the canal. He did not lack for self-esteem. James kept repeating, softly, “Measure up. Measure up. Yes. Yes.”
3
BLAISE DELIVERED WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST into the eager presence of Mrs. Bingham. “I can never thank you enough,” said Frederika, as she and Blaise stood at one end of the Bingham drawing room and together watched Mrs. Bingham’s perfect ecstasy at so great a catch. The Chief could now talk and smile at the same time, a valuable political asset that he had finally acquired.
“I hope Mr. Sullivan has not been invited.” Blaise looked at Frederika with a sudden fondness, the result of having got to know, at last, someone well. The experience of furnishing a house with another person was, he decided, the ultimate intimacy: each comes to know the other through and through until the very mention of Louis XVI sets off endless reverberations in each.
“Mr. Sullivan has been warned away. Did you hear Mr. Hearst’s speech yesterday?”
Blaise nodded. “He was remarkably good.” Sullivan, an iconoclastic Democrat, had seen fit to attack Hearst on the floor of the House. Until that moment, Hearst had never made a speech; he also left to others the presentation of his own bills, of which the latest, to control railroad rates, had distressed Sullivan. The attack on Hearst as an absentee congressman was answered with an attack on Sullivan in the New York American. Sullivan again rose in the House, and this time he inserted into the record a libellous attack on Hearst, made years earlier in California. Hearst was depicted as a diseased voluptuary, a blackmailer and bribe-taker, to the delight of the nation’s non-Hearstian press. Sullivan described Hearst as “the Nero of modern politics.”
The Chief then rose to make his maiden speech to the House. He spoke more in sorrow than in anger, a style he had become remarkably good at. The California attack had been made by a man who was once indicted for forgery in New York State; and fled to California, under another name. As for Sullivan, Hearst shook
his head sadly. He remembered Sullivan altogether too well from his Harvard days. Sullivan and his father were proprietors of a saloon that Hearst had never visited, as he was temperance. But the saloon was known to everyone in Boston after a drunken customer was beaten to death by Sullivan and his father.
Blaise was seated with Brisbane in the crowded press gallery when the House exploded with joy and fury. Various friends of Sullivan shouted at the Speaker to stop Hearst, but Mr. Cannon, a Republican, was delighted by this battle between two Democrats, and Hearst was allowed to end his attack with the pious hope that he would always be considered the enemy by the criminal classes.
Later, the Chief had been in an exuberant but odd mood. “I won that,” he said, “but I can’t win the party. I’ve got to start a third party. That’s the only way. Or knock off half the politicians in the country, which I could do, if I really wanted to get even.” When Blaise asked how this might be done, the Chief had looked very mysterious indeed. “I’ve got a lot of research on everybody.” Meanwhile, he was preparing to run for governor of New York in 1906; and from Albany, he would try again for the presidency in 1908.
James Burden Day introduced Blaise to a recently elected Texas congressman. “John Nance Garner,” said James Burden Day. “Blaise Sanford.” Once again, Blaise felt somehow nude without the third all-defining name so valued by his countrymen. Garner was a cheerful young man with quick bright eyes.
“We were talking about Mr. Hearst,” said Frederika. “And Mr. Sullivan.”
“Sullivan’s a polecat,” observed Garner. “I’m for Hearst. We all are in my neck of the woods, now Bryan’s drifted off.”
Blaise looked at Jim, who seemed tired and distracted. The previous fall, he had failed to be elected to the Senate; and he was restive in the House. Kitty was a good political partner, but nothing more. Blaise suspected that Jim had another woman. But Blaise did not ask; and the prudent Jim did not volunteer. On the other hand, Jim had been delighted to go with Blaise to New York’s most elegant bordello, in Fifth Avenue. Here Jim had performed heroically, and surpassed in popularity Blaise, who was never more contented than when he could play sultan in his rented harem, with a friend like Jim. “I like our colleague,” said Jim, indicating Hearst’s back, “but those who don’t really don’t.”
“A third party?” Blaise repeated not only the phrase but imitated the Chief’s tone of voice.
“They don’t work, ever,” said Garner. “Look at the Populists. They’re going nowhere like a bat through hell.”
“So are we.” Jim was grim. “The country’s Republican now, and we can’t change it. TR’s pulled it off. He talks just like us and acts just the way the people who pay for him want him to act. Hard to beat.”
Mrs. Bingham drew Blaise into her orbit where Hearst now moved, larger than life. “He is my ideal!” she exclaimed.
“Mine, too.” Blaise winked at Hearst, who blinked, and smiled, and said, “I’m running for mayor of New York. This year.”
Mrs. Bingham emitted a tragic cry. “You’re not going to leave us? Not now. We need you. Here. You are excitement.”
“Oh, he’ll be back.” But Blaise wondered how anyone with the Chief’s curious personality could prevail in politics. Then he thought of those cheering delegates in St. Louis; and of the sizeable majorities Hearst obtained in his congressional district. “What about Tammany?” asked Blaise. The Democratic candidate for mayor was almost always a Tammany creature.
“I’m running on a third-party ticket.” The Chief looked suddenly mischievous, and happy. “Tammany’s going to run McClellan again. I’m going to beat him.”
Blaise was amused by the Chief’s confidence. George B. McClellan, Jr., son of the Civil War general, had been a New York City congressman; now he was the city’s mayor. Despite the support of “Silent” Charlie Murphy, the head of Tammany, McClellan was honest and civilized and, Blaise thought, impregnable. “But I’ll beat him. I’m putting together my own machine.”
“Like Professor Langley.” Mrs. Bingham could be tactless.
“This won’t crash.” Hearst was serene. “I’m coming out for the public ownership of all utilities.”
“Isn’t that socialism?” Mrs. Bingham’s eyes widened, and her lips narrowed.
“Oh, not really. Your cows are safe,” he added.
“Mr. Bingham’s cows. I’ve never met them.”
“Have you done ‘research’ on McClellan?” Blaise was still intrigued by the Chief’s reference to what sounded like police dossiers on his enemies.
“ ‘Research’?” The Chief stared blankly. “Oh, yes. That. Maybe. I know a lot now. But I can’t say how, or what.”
As it turned out, two weeks later, Blaise knew what the Chief knew. The Tribune was now housed in a new building in Eleventh Street, just opposite the department store of Woodward and Lothrop. Blaise’s office was on the first floor, in one corner; Caroline was installed in the opposite corner; between them, Trimble; above them, the newsroom; below them, the printing presses.
In front of Blaise stood a well-dressed young Negro, who had been admitted, after considerable discussion, by Blaise’s disapproving stenographer. In Washington even well-dressed Negroes were not encouraged to pay calls on publishers. The fact that the young man was from New York City had, apparently, tipped the scale, and Mr. Willie Winfield was admitted. “I’m a friend of Mr. Fred Eldridge.” Winfield sat down without invitation; he gave Blaise a big smile; he wore canary-yellow spats over orange shoes.
“Who,” asked Blaise, perplexed, “is Mr. Fred Eldridge?”
“He said you might not remember him, but even so I was to come see you, anyways. He’s an editor at the New York American.”
Blaise recalled, vaguely, such a person. “What does Mr. Eldridge want?”
“Well, it’s not what he wants, it’s maybe, what you want.” The young man stared at a painting of the gardens of Saint-Cloud-le-Duc.
“So what do I-want?”
“Information about people, you know, bigwigs. Like senators and that stuff. You know John D. Archbold?”
“Standard Oil?”
“Yeah. The same. He looks after politicians for Mr. John D. Rockefeller. Well, my stepfather is his butler in the big house in Tarrytown, and Mr. Archbold, a very fine man, by the way, got me this job as office boy at Twenty-eight Broadway, where the Standard Oil is.”
Blaise tried not to look interested. “I’m afraid we’ve no openings here for an office boy,” he began.
“Oh, I’m out of that business now. Me and my partner, we’re opening up a saloon on a Hundred Thirty-fourth Street. Anyways, me and my partner, we went through Mr. Archbold’s files, where he has all these letters from the bigwigs in politics who he pays money to so they’ll help Standard Oil do different things. Anyways, I happened to come across Mr. Eldridge about that time, last December it was, and he asked me to bring the letters round to the American where he could photograph them, and then I could put them back in the files, so nobody’d know they was ever missing.”
Hearst had the letters. That was plain. But how would he use them? More to the point, how would-or could-Blaise make use of them? “I assume Mr. Eldridge told you that I might be a customer for the letters…”
“That’s about the size of it. Mr. Hearst paid us pretty good for the first batch. Then, a couple weeks ago, Mr. Archbold fired us, my partner and me. I guess we didn’t always put things back in the right order, or something.”
“Does he know which letters you photographed?”
Winfield shook his head. “How could he? He doesn’t even know that any of them was photographed. Because that was something only somebody like Mr. Eldridge could do, at a newspaper office-like this.”
There was a long silence, as Blaise stared at the window, which now framed a most convincing rainstorm. “What have you got to sell?” he asked.
“Well, when we was fired, I’d taken out this big letterbook for the first half of 1904. I’ve still got it…
”
“Then you’ll go to jail when Mr. Archbold reports the theft…”
Winfield’s smile was huge. “He won’t report nothing. There’s letters in there from everybody. How much he paid this judge, how much he paid that senator, and other things, too. I offered to sell it to Mr. Eldridge, but he says the price is too high, and Mr. Hearst’s got enough already.”
“Did you bring the letterbook?”
“You think I’m crazy, Mr. Sanford? No. But I made out a list for you of some of the people who wrote Mr. Archbold thanking him for money paid, and so on.”
“Could I see that list?”
“That’s why I’m here, Mr. Sanford.” Two sheets of paper were produced; each filled with neatly typewritten names. Blaise put them on his desk. Where once railroads had bought and sold politicians, now the oil magnates did the same; and Mr. Archbold was Mr. Rockefeller’s principal disperser of bribes and corrupter-in-chief. The names, by and large, did not surprise Blaise. One could tell by the way certain members of Congress habitually voted who paid for them. But it was startling to see so many letters from Senator Joseph Benson Foraker of Ohio, the man most likely to be the Republican candidate for president in 1908. Blaise was relieved not to find Jim’s name on the first page. He picked up the second page. The first name at the head of the column was “Theodore Roosevelt.”
Blaise put down the page. “I think,” he said, “we can do business.”
FIFTEEN
1
ON MARCH 3, 1905, John Hay wrote a letter to the President, whose inauguration was to take place the next day. Adee stood attentively by, combing his whiskers with a curious oriental ivory comb. “Dear Theodore,” Hay wrote. “The hair in this ring is from the head of Abraham Lincoln. Dr. Taft cut it off the night of the assassination, and I got it from his son-a brief pedigree. Please wear it tomorrow; you are one of the men who most thoroughly understand and appreciate Lincoln. I have had your monogram and Lincoln’s engraved on the ring.” Hay affixed one of his favorite tags from Horace to the letter, and hoped that he had got the Latin right. He sealed the letter and gave it to Adee, with the small velvet box containing the ring. “It is the laying on of hands,” he said, and Adee, who was staring at him, nodded. “You are the last link.” Once Adee had left the room, Hay walked over to the window and looked out at the gleaming White House, where, as usual, visitors were coming and going at a fast rate. The sky was cloudy, he noted; wind from the northeast. There would be rain tomorrow. But there was almost always bad weather at inaugurations. Hadn’t there been snow at Lincoln’s second? Or was that Garfield’s? He found it hard to concentrate on anything except the pain in his chest, which came and went as always, but now, each time it came, stayed longer. One day it would not go; and he would.