Gore Vidal - Empire

Hay himself was not entirely at ease with all the implications of a national policy in which he had, for the most part, cheerfully participated. Nevertheless, he defended, “Surely, we have a moral -yes, I hate the word, too-duty to help less fortunate nations in this hemisphere…”

“And sunny Hawaii, and poor Samoa, and the tragic Philippines? John, it is empire you all want, and it is empire that you have got, and at such a small price, when you come to think of it.”

“What price is that?” Hay could tell from the glitter in Adams’s eye that the answer would be highly unpleasant.

“The American republic. You’ve finally got rid of it. For good. As a conservative Christian anarchist, I never much liked it.” Adams raised high his teacup. “The republic is dead; long live the empire.”

“Oh, dear.” Hay put down his cup, which chattered at him in its monogrammed saucer. “We have all the forms of a republic. Isn’t that enough? Isn’t that everything ? Why else am I now hurtling across Ohio, or wherever we are, to make a speech to persuade the folks to vote?”

“We let them vote so that they will feel wanted. But as we extend, in theory, the democracy, the more it runs out of gas.” In imitation of Clarence King, Adams now liked to use new slang expressions, often accompanied by a faintly raffish tilt to his head, like a Boston Irish laborer.

“I don’t weep.” Hay had made his choice long ago. A republic-or however one wanted to describe the United States-was best run by responsible men of property. Since most men of property tended, in the first generation at least, to criminality, it was necessary for the high-minded patriotic few to wait a generation or two and then select one of their number, who had the common-or was it royal?-touch and make him president. As deeply tiring as Theodore was on the human level, “drunk with himself,” as Henry liked to put it, he was the best the country had to offer, and they were all in luck. For good or ill, the system excluded from power the Bryans if not the Hearsts. Hay was aware that the rogue publisher was a new Caesarian element upon the scene: the wealthy maker of public opinion who, having made common cause with the masses, might yet overthrow the few.

Lincoln had spoken warmly and winningly of the common man, but he had been as remote from that simple specimen as one of Henry’s beloved dynamos from an ox-cart. One rode public opinion, Hay had more than once observed. Theodore thought that public opinion could be guided by some splendid popular leader like himself, but, in practice, Roosevelt was mildness itself, never appearing above the parapet of his office when hostile bullets were aimed his way. Hearst was different; he could make people react in ways not predictable; he could invent issues, and then solutions-equally invented but no less popular for that. The contest was now between the high-minded few, led by Roosevelt, and Hearst, the true inventor of the modern world. What Hearst arbitrarily decided was news was news; and the powerful few were obliged to respond to his inventions. Could he, also, a question much discussed amongst the few, make himself so much the news that he might seize one of the high-if not the highest-offices of state? Theodore sneered at the thought-had the American people ever not voted for one of the respectable few? And if nothing else, it was agreed by everyone (except, perhaps, the general indifferent mass of the working class) that Hearst was supremely unrespectable. Even so, Hay had his doubts. He feared Hearst.

The train clattered to a stop at the depot of a small town called, according to the paint-blistered sign, Heidegg. Clara and Abigail appeared in the doorway to the parlor. “We’re stopping,” Clara announced, in a loud authoritative voice.

“Actually, my dear, we’ve stopped.” Hay vaulted to his feet, an acrobatic maneuver which involved falling to the right while embracing with his left arm the back of the chair in front of him; gravity, the ultimate enemy, was, for once, put to good use.

Adams pointed to a small crowd at the back of the train. “We should go amongst the people in whose name we-you and Theodore, that is-govern.”

“We’ll be here fifteen minutes, Uncle Henry,” said Abigail, and led him to the back of their private car, where a smiling porter helped them onto the good Ohio (or was it now Indiana?) earth. Hay stepped into the cool day, which had been co-existing separately from that of the railroad car, whose atmosphere was entirely different, warmer, redolent of railway smells, as well as of a galley where a Negro chef in a tall white cap performed miracles with terrapin.

For a moment, the earth itself seemed to be moving beneath Hay’s feet, as if he were still on the train; slightly, he swayed. Clara took his fragile arm in her great one and then the four visitors from the capital of the imperial republic, led by John Hay, the Second Personage in the Land, mingled with the folks.

The American people, half a hundred farmers with wives, children, dogs, surrounded the Second Personage in the Land, who smiled sweetly upon them; and lapsed into his folksy “Little Breeches” manner which could outdo for sheer comic rusticity Mark Twain himself. “I reckon,” he said, with a modest smile, “that well as I know all the country hereabouts-” He was positive that he was now in Indiana, but one slip… “-I’ve never had the luck to be in Heidegg before. I’m from Warsaw myself. Warsaw, Illinois, as I ’spect you know. Anyway, we’re on our way now to the big exhibition in St. Louis, and when I saw that sign saying Heidegg, I said, let’s stop and meet the folks. So, hello.” Hay was well pleased with his own casualness and lack of side. He did not dare look at Henry Adams, who always found amusing, in the wrong sense, Hay’s Lincolnian ease with the common man.

The crowd continued to stare, amicably, at the four foreigners. Then a tall thin farmer came forward, and shook Hay’s hand. “Willkommen,” he began; and addressed the Second Personage in the Land in German.

Hay then asked, in German, if anyone in Heidegg spoke English. He was told, in German, that the schoolteacher spoke excellent English, but he was home, sick in bed. Hay ignored the strangled cries of Henry Adams, trying not to laugh. Fortunately, Hay’s German was good, and he was able to satisfy the crowd’s curiosity as to his identity. The word had spread that he was someone truly important, the president of the railroad, in fact. When Hay modestly identified himself, the information was received politely; but as no one had ever heard of the-or even a-secretary of state, the crowd broke up, leaving the four visitors alone on a muddy bank where new grass was interspersed with violets. As Abigail collected violets, Adams was in his glory. “The people!” he exclaimed.

“Oh, do shut, up, Henry!” Hay had seldom been so annoyed with his old friend, or with himself for having handled with unusual clumsiness an occasion fraught with symbolism of a sort that Adams would never cease to remind him.

As they dined, Adams talked and talked. Clara ate and ate, course after course, marvelling, occasionally, at what remarkable dishes were emerging from the small galley. Abigail stared out the window at a great muddy river, surging through the twilight, from the Great Lakes to New Orleans. “You must-Theodore must- someone must,” Adams declared, “cross the country, like this, by car, and stop-but I really mean stop, and stay, and look and listen. The country’s full of people who are strange to us, and we to them. That river,” Adams pointed dramatically at the river on whose banks were set square frame houses with square windows in which lights now began to gleam; each house was set in its own yard, strewn with scrap iron, scrap paper, cinders, “could be an estuary of the Rhine or the Danube. We are witnessing the last of the great tides of migration. We are in Mitteleuropa , surrounded by Germans, Slavs and-what were the people of Heidegg?”