Gore Vidal - Empire

“I don’t know about happy. But Joseph is deeply impressed by my virginity. Apparently, there are no virgins in Europe.”

“Very few, certainly.” Caroline was eager to be agreeable. Cissy’s uncle was Robert McCormick, whose wife’s family published the Chicago Tribune , and he was eager to buy Caroline’s Tribune . Cissy’s brother, Joe Patterson, was a reporter for her uncle’s paper; and so, like a law of nature, Pattersons had begun to gravitate toward Sanfords, printer’s ink, in its way, as binding as blood. Cissy had literary dreams; she would write novels, she said; and promptly picked up Mr. James’s latest effort, The Ambassadors , inscribed to Henry Adams, who had recommended it to Caroline, who had given up reading fiction now that she herself, a newspaper publisher, was a principal purveyor of that evanescent product.

“He’s too long-winded now.” Cissy had learned to say what everyone else said, a moment or two before perfect staleness made dust of the conventional wisdom. As a result, she was thought clever. “He’s getting a million,” she whispered into Caroline’s ear, while biting off, one by one, the points of one of Huyler’s very special thin chocolate leaves.

“Count Gizycki?”

Cissy nodded, tragically; mouth full of chocolate.

“That’s fair, I suppose.” Caroline was judicious. “In Europe, the bride brings the money while the husband provides the title, the name and the castle. There is a castle?”

“In Poland .” Cissy sighed. “He doesn’t love me, you know.”

“Then why marry him?”

“Mother wants me to be a countess. Father will pay, of course. But it’s very un-American, buying a husband.”

“It may be un-American but Americans do it all the time. Look at Harry Lehr and the poor Drexel girl. Or read your uncle’s paper, or mine, or-if you’re really innocent-any of Mr. Hearst’s. It’s common.”

“Common!” Cissy looked as if she might burst into tears. “I wish,” she said unexpectedly, “I had your mouth.”

“I’ll give it to you, on your wedding day-in the form of a kiss,” added Caroline, uneasily aware that she was now the recipient of a “crush.”

Marguerite Cassini joined them, leaving, unwisely, thought Caroline, Nick Longworth to the predatory Alice, who had her father’s need to be always the center of attention. She was capable of marrying anyone, if she thought that that was the only way of gaining everyone’s complete attention. Of the Republican dollar princesses, Alice was the most interesting, and the most doomed, Caroline decided, to unhappiness. It was all very well to be the most famous girl in the United States, but then, more soon than late, all-powerful presidents turned into obscure ex-presidents, while glamorous girls became women, wives, mothers, forgotten. She could not imagine Alice old; it would be against nature. Meanwhile, the beautiful Cassini was consoling Cissy, with countessly wisdom. “The family is a great one-for Poland, of course. And his best friend is very close to us, Ivan von Rubido Zichy, who says Joseph is over the heels head in love with you!”

“These names sound,” said Caroline, “like characters in The Prisoner of Zenda .”

“You are so literary,” said Marguerite, disapprovingly. “You must get it from having to read all those newspapers.”

“ My White House marriage will be the first since poor Julia Grant married Prince Cantacuzene.” Alice hurled herself at center stage.

“Nellie Grant, Julia’s mother, was married in the White House.” Longworth was languidly pedantic. “That was the last White House marriage. Julia was married in Newport…”

“And my father, representing the Tsar, had to give permission, which he wouldn’t, of course, because Julia’s aunt, Mrs. Potter Palmer, wouldn’t come up with a dowry on the ground that Julia was pretty enough to be married for herself alone.”

“Hardly true,” all three girls echoed as one.

“So Father said to Mrs. Potter, ‘How much do you pay your cook?’ Then he explained that a newlywed prince and princess must also have enough money to pay their cook. He was overwhelming. Of course, the Prince was rich in his own right…”

Caroline cut short Marguerite’s tsarist vainglory. “Alice, you must tell us when your White House wedding will take place; and with whom…”

Alice was brisk. “In 1905, probably. After Father’s reelected. I haven’t picked anyone yet. Blaise is very rich, isn’t he?”

“Very.” Caroline had often thought what a good match it would be for him, not to mention the publisher of the Tribune . In or out of the White House, the Roosevelts would be colorful, if nothing else. “You’d also have that new palace of his to live in.”

“Oh, I’d never live here ! Too dull. Scenes of former glory sort of thing. I don’t want to be a fixture. No, I could never live here. I want New York, Paris, London…”

“Oyster Bay is probably what you’ll get,” said Longworth. “And deserve.”

“Better that than Cincinnati.” Alice’s eyelashes were, Caroline noticed, remarkably thick; she fell just short of actual beauty. Did she care?

Then Longworth proceeded to amuse them with an impression of Theodore Roosevelt, which made even his daughter laugh: and Alice was always alert to condemn lèse-majesté . But Nick, like the President, was a member of Harvard’s Porcellian Club and so nearly an equal.

“I was in his office Monday, talking about some business in the House, and he was in a bad mood-for him, that is. So I was getting a bit uneasy because I’d promised this young Cincinnati reporter that I’d get him into the President’s office for a minute or two, and he was waiting in the next room. Anyway, after we finished our business, I said, ‘You know, Colonel, there’s a young journalist who’d like to say hello…’ ” With that, Longworth began a rendition of Theodore Roosevelt-snarling, grimacing, charging about the room, fists punching wildly at the air. “ ‘Never! Never, Nick! You presume too much! You are a fellow Pork, true. We are bound together by the ties that bind all gentlemen, but, no! Of course, I am the First Magistrate, and I am accessible, in theory , to every citizen. But if I saw them all, there would be no time left for me to magistrate…’ ‘ First magistrate,’ I ventured. ‘Execute’ ” the voice was now an inhuman shriek, “ ‘my office. What’s his name?’ I told him. ‘Never heard of him. What’s the newspaper?’ I told him. ‘Never heard of it!’ I was desperate. ‘His father, so-and-so, led the movement that denied General Grant a third term.’ ‘I don’t believe it. Send him in.’ Well, the young man entered, filled with awe, and the President practically embraced him. ‘I am thrilled, young man, to make your acquaintance. Do you know why? Because your grandfather was one of the greatest men I have ever had the privilege to meet. How well I remember him arguing to the party’s leaders-such eloquence!-which you’ve inherited, I can see, in the pages of your inspiring journal. Well, sir, on that occasion your grandfather was another Demosthenes, but unlike the original, he stopped the tyrant, and saved the republic from corruption of a sort that it makes me shudder, even now, to contemplate. Go thou, my boy, and do likewise!’ With that the President shook the ecstatic boy’s hand and got him out of the room, a convert to TR for life. Then he turned to me and hissed, ‘Never do that to me again!’ Then he winked.”

As they all laughed, Alice said, thoughtfully, “Father has depths of insincerity not even he has plumbed.”

“It is the nature,” said Longworth, “of our politicians’ art.”