Gore Vidal - Empire

Blaise arrived in a motor car, with a handsome uniformed driver, who helped Caroline into the back seat, where Blaise was resplendent in white tie. “We are,” Caroline observed, “a couple.”

“For the purposes of Diplomatic Receptions, anyway.” He was more relaxed with her now. The meeting on the river-boat had been their lowest moment. Relations could only improve, or break off entirely. They had improved. “Court will be unusually brilliant tonight.” Caroline turned into the Society Lady. “Mr. Adams is not coming, but he is sending not only Henry James but Saint-Gaudens and John La Farge-literature, sculpture, painting will celebrate our sovereign and decorate his court.”

“He is so full of himself.”

“No more than Mr. Hearst.”

“Hearst’s an original. He’s done something.”

“Isn’t the… the… the Panama Canal something?”

“Nothing compared to reporting…”

“… and inventing…”

“… news.” This was an old debate between them, or, rather, discourse, since they were generally in agreement. To determine what people read and thought about each day was not only action but power of a kind no ruler could, with such regularity, exercise. Caroline often thought of the public as a great mass of shapeless modelling clay which she, in Washington, at least, could mould with what she chose to put in the columns of the Tribune . No wonder that Hearst, with eight newspapers, and a magazine or two, felt that he could-even should-be president. No wonder Theodore Roosevelt genuinely hated and feared him.

The East Room of the White House had been simplified to the point of brilliance, and the result was more royal than republican. Also, the Roosevelts had increased the number of military aides, their gold-braid loopings complementing the quantities of gold-and-silver braid worn by the diplomatic corps. The astonishing McKinley pumpkin seats, each fountaining a sickly palm, had long since vanished; the mustard rug was now only a memory of a time when the East Room was like the lobby of a Cleveland hotel. The floor was now shining parquet, the chandeliers were more elaborate than ever, while the sparse furniture was much gilded and marbled. Red silk ropes were everywhere, in order to control the public, which were allowed, at certain hours, to wander through their sovereign’s palace.

The President and Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt stood at the room’s center, shaking hands, as glittering aides discreetly moved the guests along. Theodore was more than ever stout, and hearty, and delighted with himself, while Edith Roosevelt was her usual calm self, ever ready to curb her volatile mate, whose self-love was curiously contagious.

“Very sound. Very sound on Japan, Mrs. Sanford,” was his greeting to Caroline. “Things are about to happen.” Then he looked very grim, as Cassini, dean of the diplomatic corps, approached, Marguerite in tow. Caroline exchanged amiable whispers with Edith Roosevelt, and moved on. President and Russian Ambassador had nothing to say to each other, and contrary to all diplomatic usage said nothing to each other. Marguerite looked worn. She had had a love affair that had gone wrong, and now the word was that Cassini was to be replaced. End of glory, thought Caroline, as Henry James, the embodiment of all literary glory, shook her hand warmly and said, “At last. At last.”

“It has been almost seven years since Surrenden Dering,“ Caroline observed, with some not entirely banal wonder at the rapidity of time’s passage.

“You never come to our side of the water, so I’ve come to yours.” James lowered his voice in mock fear, as if Theodore might be listening. “Ours. Ours! What have I said? Lèse majesté des États-Unis .”

“I shall be on the other side this summer,” said Caroline, as they crossed the room, for the most part filled with people that she knew. Washington was indeed a village still; and so a newcomer like Henry James was a mild sensation. Once the diplomatic reception was concluded, there would be a supper for the chosen few, among them James and Caroline but not Blaise.

They paused in an empty corner, as the Hays made their entrance. “Our Henry refuses to come,” James observed with quiet satisfaction. “He was here earlier this month, and he has now declared that he has had his absolute fill of the sublime Theodore, whilst conceding how strenuous, vigorous and, yes, let us acknowledge it, supple , our sovereign is, the sun at the center of the sky, with us as… as…”

“Clouds,” Caroline volunteered.

James frowned. “I once was obliged to let go an excellent typewriter-operator because whenever I paused for a word, she would offer me one, and always not simply the wrong word, but the very worst word.”

“I’m sorry. But I quite like us as clouds.”

“Why,” asked James, “with the delicious exception of yourself, are there no beautiful women at court?”

“Well, there is Mrs. Cameron-if not Martha.”

“Alas, not Martha. But Mrs. Cameron’s a visitor. What I take to be the local ladies here are plainer than what one would find at a comparable-if anything in poor shabby London could be compared to this incomparability-reception.”

Caroline repeated the Washington adage that the capital was filled with ambitious energetic men and the faded women that they had married in their green youth. James was amused. “The same doubtless applies to diplomats…”

They were joined by Jules Jusserand, the resplendent French ambassador, and the three lapsed into French, a language James spoke quite as melodiously as his own. “What did the President say to you?” asked Jusserand. “We were all watching the two of you, with fascination.”

“He expressed his delight-the very word he used, as, apparently, he always does-at my-and his-election to something called the National Institute of Arts and Letters, which has, parthenogetically, given birth to an American Academy, a rustic version of your august French Academy, some half a hundred members whose souls if not achievements are held to be immortal.”

“What,” said Jusserand, “will you wear?”

“Ah, that vexes us tremendously. As the President and I tend to corpulence, I have proposed togas, on the Roman model, but our leader John Hay favors some sort of uniform like-Admiral Dewey’s.” James bowed low, as the hero passed by them. “He is my new friend. We have exchanged cards. I know,” James swept the air with an extended arm, “ everyone at last.”

“You are a lion,” said Caroline.

Supper was served in the new dining room, where a number of tables for ten had been set. Henry James was placed at the President’s table, a Cabinet lady between them. Saint-Gaudens was also at the monarch’s table, with Caroline to his right. Edith Roosevelt had come to depend upon Caroline for those occasions where the ability to talk French was necessary, not that the great American Dublin-born sculptor, despite his name, spoke much French. He lived in New Hampshire, not France. Of Lizzie Cameron, who had posed for the figure of Victory in Saint-Gaudens’s equestrienne monument to her uncle General Sherman, he said, “She has the finest profile of any woman in the world.”

“How satisfactory, to have such a thing, and to have you acknowledge it.”

Unfortunately, a table of ten was, for the President, no place for the ritual dinner-party conversation: first course, partner to right; second course, partner to left; and so on. The table for ten was Theodore’s pulpit, and they his congregation. “We must see more of Mr. James in his own country.” Theodore’s pince-nez glittered. As James opened his mouth to launch what would be a long but beautifully shaped response, the President spoke through him, and James, slowly, comically, shut his mouth as the torrent of sound, broken only by the clicking of teeth, swept over the table. “I cannot say that I very much like the idea of Mark Twain in our Academy.” He looked at James, but spoke to the table. “Howells, yes. He’s sound, much of the time. But Twain is like an old woman, ranting about imperialism. I’ve found there’s usually a physical reason for such people. They are congenially weak in the body, and this makes them weak in nerves, in courage, makes them fearful of war…”