Gore Vidal - Empire

“I’ve heard something very like that. I don’t see how it’s possible. I mean who-what are they?”

“It is very odd that the press has not picked it up.” Adams turned to Caroline. “Why didn’t you use the story?”

“Because we get so many stories like that, out of nowhere. Also, Mr. Trimble couldn’t tell whether the machine wasn’t just another sort of glider, like the one that took off from the Eiffel Tower.”

“I shall write them, I suppose.” Langley was glum. “I am so close now, so very close to the workable machine…”

“What use is a flying machine?” Caroline was genuinely curious, not so much about the tinkering with machinery, a male madness, but the uses to which something so impractical might be put.

“Flight will change everyone’s life,” said Langley. “People can be transported at great speed over long distances.”

“I suppose that’s a good thing.” Caroline was dubious; her magnolia tree had died as a result of Alice Roosevelt’s assault upon it with a highly powered swift-moving arrangement of metal.

“It will change warfare.” Adams was thoughtful. “One could carry explosives over the enemy’s territory and blow up-anything, I suppose.”

Langley nodded. “Even in our Civil War, balloons were used, most effectively. Now, with powered air-craft…”

“But they will promptly discover a way of knocking them out of the sky.” Caroline recalled one of the President’s recent arias. He was talking of the Kaiser, whom he had come to like, thanks to Speck, the ever-charming link between the two bellicosities. Speck, according to Roosevelt, had described how the ingenious maker of munitions Krupp handled the Kaiser. “Apparently Krupp is a superb statesman.” The President’s pince-nez glittered with a light all its own. “He goes to the Kaiser and says, ‘I’ve invented a steel plating that no bullet can pierce.’ So the Kaiser immediately orders quantities of steel plating. Then, a year later, Krupp, looking very sad, comes back to the Kaiser and says, I’m afraid we’ve invented a bullet that will pierce the impenetrable steel plating.’ So the poor Kaiser must order several tons of these magical bullets, to be followed by ever-newer impenetrable plating that will eventually be penetrated by newer bullets. The Kaiser has warned me not to be taken in, the way he’s been.” When Caroline repeated this to Adams and Langley, they exchanged knowing glances; and Langley said, “The Kaiser wants us to fall behind, which is why, should there be war, we must have the first flying-machine.”

“But if they find a way to shoot it down…”

“We will invent something that cannot be shot down…” began Langley.

“Until it is,” said Caroline. “If I may give you a matronly view, this sort of contest is endless.” Caroline had been much impressed by the President’s story.

“Progress, once started, is endless.” Langley was sententious.

“Progress,” said Caroline, “implies that one is moving from one known place to another. Isn’t the problem, here, not knowing the proper terminus?”

“Serendipity is sovereign.” Adams was not his usual candid, pessimistic self.

“We proceed because we must,” said Langley. “It is like evolution.”

“You have reminded me that I am Catholic, and in no way connected, genealogically, with any monkey, no matter how charming.” Caroline rose to go.

“You were taken from Adam’s rib, as we all know, to our delight.” After Caroline had said her farewell to Langley, Adams led her out onto the landing, which smelled of out-of-season lilies-of-the-valley; in fact, the house, always overheated and filled with flowers, reminded her of the White House conservatories, now a thing of the past. “Sell Blaise a part of the paper.”

“He will try to get all of it.”

“Don’t let him. You are a clever child.” Adams patted her hand; and William showed her out.

JOHN HAY SAT ALONE in his moving parlor, and watched through newly washed windows the United States rush by. The Casetts of the Pennsylvania Railroad had provided the Secretary of State with their ornately furnished private car, and specially trained Negro attendants. At the President’s insistence, Hay had agreed to attend the World’s Fair at St. Louis, where he would make an address which, high-minded, witty and elegant, would be the opening gun in the coming battle for the presidency. There was no doubt that Theodore would be nominated by the Republican Party in June; there was little doubt that he would beat Bryan or Hearst or Parker or any Democrat in November. But Theodore saw lions everywhere in his path; and so he had sent the now always ailing Hay to the West. Clara had insisted that Henry Adams, an aficionado of world fairs, accompany them; and Adams had insisted on bringing his real-life niece, Abigail, a plain but interesting and interested girl.

Hay wrote slowly in a notebook. Speech-writing no longer came easily to him; but then nothing did. In addition to the pleasures of a diseased prostate, he had now developed angina pectoris, a new and boisterous ailment which could be counted on to stab him in the middle of a speech, leaving him breathless and faint. He had always known that life would end; he was constantly amazed that so many of his acquaintances were astonished when death at last came their way. On the other hand, he had not counted on all the games that were being played within his body, which seemed to him now rather like one of Henry’s dynamos, breaking down for lack of whatever it is that keeps a dynamo serenely humming.

Theodore was one of those who could not imagine his own death, or anyone else’s, which explained, perhaps, his unnatural passion for war. The one time that Theodore was forced to look death not once but twice in its bony face-when wife and mother simultaneously died-he had literally fled, like that traveller to-or was it from?-Samarra. He had abandoned his just-born daughter, career, world; to hide in the Wild West, where, presumably, the distances were so great and the terrain so flat that death could be seen coming and so avoided, by further flight, if necessary. The fact that the Secretary of State was now dying did not in the least distress Theodore, who thought only of the coming election, and his own continuing glory. John Hay was now the fine figurehead of the Republican Party, which would be a half-century old in July. Therefore, Lincoln’s young secretary and Roosevelt’s aged minister must be borne like an icon about the country, mouthing platitudes so that Theodore might become, in his own right, president, and no longer His Accidency.

Hay’s rather loose handwriting seemed to grow ever more loose with age, as he constructed his pieties and platitudes, and reined in his wit, which would never do in so crucial a year. As usual, there was the problem of the people-those famous people that the Ancient had so mysteriously exalted that hot muggy day at Gettysburg; government of, by, and for the people? Had ever a great man said anything so entirely unrealistic, not to mention, literally, demagogic? The people played no part at all in the government of the United States in Lincoln’s time, and even less now in the days of Theodore Rex. Lincoln had tended to rule by decree, thanks to the all-purpose “military necessity” which gave legitimacy to his most arbitrary acts. Roosevelt pursued his own interests in his own surprisingly secretive way; he was for empire at any cost. The people, of course, were always more or less there; they must be flattered from time to time; exhorted to do battle, or whatever the Augustus at Washington wanted them to do. The result was a constant tension between the people at large and a ruling class that believed, as did Hay, in the necessity of concentrating wealth in the hands of the few while keeping the few as virtuous as possible, at least in appearance. Hence the periodic attacks on trusts. But labor was a more delicate matter, and though Theodore was as hostile to the working-man’s demands as any Carnegie, he knew that he must appear to be their tribune, and so, to Hay’s amusement and annoyance, Roosevelt had given, in 1903, a Fourth of July speech at, significantly, Springfield, Illinois, where he had declared, “A man who is good enough to shed his blood for his country is good enough to be given a square deal afterward. More than that no man is entitled to, and less than that no man shall have.” This breathtaking announcement had caused rage in the better clubs of the republic and less than euphoria amongst those to whom the mysterious square deal had been promised. They would vote for Bryan anyway.