Gore Vidal - Empire

“Open doors.” Everyone, including Martha, repeated the magic meaningless phrase.

“I would rather be known for that than for ‘Little Breeches.’ ”

“I’m afraid, sonny,” said Adams contentedly, “your future fame will rest on an ever greater vulgarity, ‘Perdicaris alive…’ ”

“ ‘… or Raisuli dead!’ ” the others intoned.

“The fatal gift for phrase,” sighed Adams, as happy as Hay had ever seen him, with Lizzie beside him, and all the remaining Hearts in the room. Then, as if to complete Adams’s felicity, the door to the Bright study now framed the thick rotundity of his houseguest, whose bald head shone in the winter light, like Parian marble, whose great eyes looked merrily but shrewdly on the company. “I have,” intoned Henry James, “already, in the literal sense, merely, broken my fast, but as rumors of a late-ah, collation is being served à la fourchette , so much tidier than au canif , I have hurried home from my morning round of calls, filling the city with a veritable blizzard of pasteboard.” Then, ceremoniously, James greeted Lizzie and Martha, while Adams took a calling-card from his vest pocket, and presented it to James.

“What-or, rather, who is this?” James held the card close to his eyes.

“Delivered by its owner while you were out.”

“ ‘George Dewey,’ ” James read in a voice resonant with awe, “ ‘Admiral of the Navy.’ My cup runneth over, with salt water. Why,” he addressed the room, “would a national hero, whom I’ve not had the pleasure-honor-distinction of meeting, descend, as it were, from the high, glorious-ah, poop-deck of his flagship, which I can imagine moored with chains of gold in the Potomac, all flags unfurled, and submit himself to dull earth in order to pay a call on someone absolutely unknown in heroic circles, and less than a ripple, I should think, in naval ones?”

Hay found James in his old age far more genial and less alarming than in his middle age. For one thing, the appearance was milder since he had shaved off his beard; in fact, the resulting combination of bald head and rosy smooth ovoid face put one in mind of Humpty Dumpty. “You are a fellow celebrity,” said Hay. “That’s all. The press, which defines us all, celebrates both you and him. Now he comes to celebrate you and, in the act, celebrates himself yet again.”

“He is a wondrous fool,” said Adams. “Stay longer and I’ll invite him here.”

“No. No. No. The ladies of America are waiting for me to tell them about Balzac. So much-ah, money can be earned by lecturing, I had no idea.”

James had not been in Washington since 1882; and he had not been in the United States for some years. “Contemptible, effete snob!” Theodore Rex would roar whenever the name was mentioned. But Theodore was himself sufficiently a snob, if not effete, to realize that since the reigning novelist of the English-speaking world had come home to take one last long look at his native land, the President must invite him to the Diplomatic Reception. With each passing year in the White House, Theodore became more royal, and his receptions and dinner parties now had a definite Sun King style to them. Therefore, protocol required that America’s great writer be received by his sovereign. James had been delighted and, wickedly, amused by the invitation; his view of the President was every bit as dark as the President’s of him, but where Theodore thundered, James mocked softly; Theodore Rex was simply a noisy jingo, not to be encouraged.

“We are,” observed James, as Adams led them into the dining room, where silver and crystal sparkled, and William stood at benign attention, “re-creating the house-party at Surrenden Dering. Mrs. Cameron. The delicious Martha-now grown. Ourselves…”

Hay thought, with a sudden guilty pang, of Del, whom he almost never thought of any more. James, aware that the party had lost a member to death, shifted swiftly to Caroline. “What of her?” he asked. Adams told him. James was interested, as always, in variations from the usual. A young American woman who chose to publish a newspaper was not quite within his grasp, but Hay had the sense that by the time James’s visit to what he called “the city of conversation” was over, Caroline would be defined in Jamesian terms.

Lizzie asked James, point-blank, what he thought of Washington. The Master’s frown was not without charm, as he affected an air of total concentration, like a man doing a complex sum in his head. “The subject so-vast. The language so-inadequate,” he began, a stick of Maggie’s cornbread breaking off in his hand. “One must be subjective, no other approach will do, so-to live here, for me, not John, a great minister of state or, in short, a statesman in his proper state, the capital, or Henry, the historian, the observer, the creator of theories of history and-ah, energy , what better place to watch the world from? You, too, Mrs. Cameron, are of this world, though divided in allegiance, I suspect, with a bias for our shabby old European world, but I see you here, glittering at the center, with Mrs. Hay and, perhaps, Martha, too, but as for me-ah, my passion for crudely chipped beef is still remembered in this house.” James filled his plate without dropping so much as a single syllable of a speaking style which hardly varied now from his novels, which were, for Hay, unlike the writer himself, too long of wind for the page while delightful when accompanied by James’s beautiful measured voice, far less British in its accent than that of Henry Adams, who sounded exactly like the very Englishmen who had so resolutely snubbed him and his father during the latter’s ministry to St. James’s. “… as for me to live here would be death and madness. The politics are of no account when one is not a politician, while the constellation-not to mention promiscuous congregation-of celebrities would quite smother me…”

CAROLINE WAS SURPRISED at how few disagreements there were between herself and Blaise. The new publisher knew his job, if not Washington. Trimble continued to put out the paper. Caroline gladly surrendered to Blaise the task of wringing advertising money from their mutual relatives, and everyone else. He had gone twice to Mrs. Bingham’s; and showed no great disdain. Although Frederika was helping him furnish the palace, he seemed to have no particular interest in her, or in anyone. He had become, in some mysterious way, a creature of Hearst. It was as if their close association had made it impossible for him to find anyone else interesting; yet Blaise did not much like Hearst personally. Obviously, this was a case of inadvertent fascination. Luckily, it was a very useful one for the Tribune . Blaise, was, by any standard, an excellent publisher.

As Marguerite helped Caroline dress for the Diplomatic Reception, she counted the number of days which would bring her to the magic, if not exactly joyous in itself, twenty-seventh birthday: fifty-two days, and she would be able to soar, on eagle-wings of gold. But soar where? What would change? other than the constant dull worry that money was in short supply. John had paid his debts; and remained, at her request, in New York. Jim seldom missed a Sunday; and she was reasonably content. But Marguerite, who was not always-as opposed to usually-wrong, was right when she said that so ridiculous a situation could not go on forever. Mrs. Belmont had made it possible, if not exactly fashionable, to divorce a husband and still remain within the world. That was progress. But divorce implied an alternative, in the form of yet another marriage, and except for Jim, there was no one who interested her; and Jim was beyond her reach, even if she had been so minded to reach out, which she was not. Still, it was now an absolute fact that Caroline had no more use for John Apgar Sanford; and he had none for her. Only Emma was satisfactory.