Gore Vidal - Empire

“That’s all right. Colonel Bryan and I are, as always, as one. We complement each other.” Blaise knew that the Chief had never worked out the differences between “compliment” and “complement”; fortunately, he did not have to.

“Would you join us, Mr. Brisbane?” This was the Chief’s polite way of telling everyone else to go, including the Willson sisters, who continued to stare at the great actor, who smiled gravely at them, as they passed him in a glitter of gold thread, a cloud of heavy perfume.

Brisbane sat opposite Bryan; he was no enthusiast of Bryan for the simple reason that no man in history had ever been great without blue eyes. When Blaise had mentioned Julius Caesar, Brisbane had replied that the written evidence was not clear; also, what evidence there was about Caesar’s life indicated sexual irregularity of the sort that would preclude greatness. Blaise thought that the conquest of the world might weigh something in the balance, but Brisbane was an American moralist, and there was no arguing with him.

“Colonel Bryan is here,” said Hearst, grasping his own lapels in imitation of Bryan, “to discuss his European tour.”

Brisbane nodded. “I’ve made all the travel arrangements, sir. You will leave in two weeks’ time; the terms are-as agreed.”

“They were, when last we corresponded, agreeable. I am, after all, just a country newspaper editor.” Blaise was both surprised and impressed. Somehow, Hearst had managed to put the Great Commoner on his payroll. Obviously, the Chief would do anything to secure the nomination in 1904, and why not? If the party’s leadership could be bought, he would pay the price. He had made, as it were, a first down payment by signing up William Jennings Bryan to tour Europe and write a series of articles for the Hearst press, now six newspapers, soon to be eight. There was something Napoleonic in the way the Chief went about his conquest of the Democratic Party; and the republic for which it hardly stood.

Brisbane spoke of details. Hearst gazed at the ceiling. Bryan seemed more than ever a monument to the common man. “I’m sending one of our best writers with you. His name is Michelson, and he’ll do the actual writing. Naturally, you’ll decide what you want to cover, of course.”

“Of course. I want to meet Tolstoi, the Russian count.” Bryan was unexpected. “From what I read of him, we have a lot in common. Fact, I am said to have had a great influence on his own speeches-books, I mean. Also, Russia is important for us, very important, and it seems that he speaks for their common man as I speak for ours.”

“I hadn’t realized,” said Brisbane, plainly startled, “that you were a reader of Count Tolstoi’s books.”

“No, I can’t say I’ve ever read one of them. But I’ve read a whole lot about him, in the magazines mostly, as he has read about me. We’ll get on like two houses afire.” Bryan rose, as a monument must rise, thought Blaise. The other three men did, too; and bowed low to the embodiment of the people. There was something formidable about the man’s gravity and serene confidence. “I look forward to the food,” he said, as he and Hearst parted at the door. “You know, I have spent most of my life at railroad counters, eating on the run, between speaking engagements. I think it was one of your reporters who wrote that Colonel Bryan has probably eaten more hamburgers than any other American.”

At this, even Hearst remembered to laugh. Then Bryan was gone.

“He’s washed up,” said Brisbane.

“But will he support me, like I supported him both times?” Hearst was fidgety; could not sit down.

“Why not? There’s no one else on the scene.”

“He’ll want it for himself, again,” said Blaise, who now understood as well as anyone the nature of the American political animal.

Hearst nodded gloomily, and said, “Which means if he can’t get it, he’ll make it impossible for me-or anyone else-to win.”

“We’re going to be sued by a lot of people.” Brisbane’s mind was on Madison Square.

“Let them try.” Hearst was indifferent. “Act of God, the law calls it.”

“Act of Hearst, Mr. Pulitzer will call it,” said Blaise.

“Same thing,” Brisbane chortled.

Hearst simply stared at both of them, hands gripping his lapels as if he could, thus, summon forth Bryan’s eloquence. This time, Blaise noted, he forgot to laugh. “Bryan’s only forty-two,” said Hearst. “Roosevelt’s forty-three. I’ll be forty in April. I’m pretty far behind. I’m taking Elihu Root’s house in Lafayette Park, right down from the White House.”

“Then you’ll only have to move across the street two years from now.” Brisbane seemed, truly, to believe in the inevitability of Hearst. Blaise did not. He saw the Chief as someone rather greater than a mere president, who did things that were news only if Hearst himself were to decide whether or not those acts were to be recorded, or reinvented, or ignored. Hearst was something new and strange and potent; and Blaise gave Caroline full credit for having perceived this novelty before anyone else that he knew. Now Hearst, the creator, was trying to create himself. It was as if a mirror, instead of reflecting an image, were to project one out of itself. Hearst could alter, in any fashion, what was there, but what was there must first be there before he could perform his curious magic. Could a distorting glass reflect itself when nothing at all was placed before it? Was Hearst real? That was the question. Blaise was glad that he would be living in Washington during Hearst’s term as congressman.

MRS. JAMES BURDEN DAY (“You may call me kitty, Miss Sanford”) was at home on Easter day, and Caroline, accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Trimble, helped fill her home in Mintwood Place, on a bluff just off Connecticut Avenue, with a wild, even primordial, view of Rock Creek Park, abloom with white and pink dogwood and flowering Judas.

“We should get to know the Democrats,” said Caroline to Mr. Trimble, who was himself a Bryan man, and found it difficult to follow Caroline’s circumspect line in regard to Roosevelt. The Tribune was intended to be read by everyone, and this meant that true political controversy, of the sort that Mr. Trimble affected to like, was not possible in a city dominated by the Roosevelt family with its ever-increasing royal style of entertaining. The novelty of a patrician in the White House had quite undone not only Washington’s old guard, so used to looking down on White House occupants, but the diplomatic corps, traditionally condescending when it came to the social arrangements of what was still thought to be a rustic republican capital, set in the Maryland woods. Since Caroline was popular with the Roosevelts, she was careful not to do anything that might jeopardize her useful, for the Tribune , entree. Of all the Roosevelts, she was most charmed by the serene Edith, who managed the Roosevelt circus with what looked to be no effort at all.

The plump, noisy, small President, in his passion to be thought sinewy, eloquent and tall, had taken to vigorous exercise in the White House, where wrestlers and acrobats were always welcome, and he would join in their gymnastics, with such gusto that a medicine ball, stopped by his red perspiring face, had nearly knocked out one of his eyes. Although this had been kept secret from the press, Caroline had discovered from Alice what had happened; from other sources, she had later discovered that the President was blind in one eye. But the public knew nothing of this; and he continued his strenuous life, riding horses at full speed along Rock Creek’s dangerously steep trails and bridle-paths, shouting at those in his path, “Stand aside! I am the President!”