Gore Vidal - Empire

“I’ve no intention,” said Clarence.

“Good boy. Poor Del.” Hay’s chest seemed to constrict a moment; and his breath stopped. But, for once, there was no sense of panic. Either he would breathe again, or he would not, and that was that. He breathed; he sighed. “But Del’s life was splendid for someone so young. We got used to that, my generation, to dying young. Just about everybody I knew my age was killed in that terrible trouble. Name me a battle, and I can tell you which of my friends fell there, some never to rise again. Say Fredericksburg and I see Johnny Curtis of Springfield, his face blown away. Say…” But already Hay was beginning to forget both battles and youths. Things had begun to fade; past, present mingled.

“I thought I’d die young, and here I am. I thought I wouldn’t amount to much and… I really believe that in all history, I never read of a man who has had so much-and such varied-success as I have had, with so little ability and so little power of sustained industry. Nothing to be proud of. Something to be grateful for.” Hay looked at Clarence, thoughtfully, and was somewhat surprised-and mildly irritated-to find him reading a stack of letters.

“You’re busy, I see.” Hay struck the sardonic note.

“You should be, too.” Clarence did not look up. As he finished reading a letter, he would let it fall to the floor of the verandah, in two piles. Obviously one pile was to be answered; the other not. Who used to do that? Hay wondered. Then he thought of himself again, soon to be no self at all, and he wondered why he had been he and not another, why he had been at all and not simply nothing. “I have had success beyond all the dreams of my boyhood,” he proclaimed. But that was not true. The poet John Hay, heir to Milton and Poe, had come to nothing but a pair of very “Little Breeches.” “My name is printed in the journals of the world without descriptive qualifications.” Who had said that that was the only proof of fame, as opposed to notoriety? It sounded like Root, but Hay had forgotten.

Hay turned to Clarence, who was now on his feet. For the first time Hay noticed that the boy had grown a long pointed beard, not the style of the young these days. He must tell him, tactfully, that when the summer was over he must face the world clean-shaven.

“The President wants to see you,” said Clarence.

Hay leapt-to his own amazement-to his feet, and crossed the crowded corridor to the President’s office. Obviously he had been dreaming of New Hampshire while napping in the White House, awaiting Theodore’s summons. The Japanese…

In the office, Hay found the President staring out the window at the Potomac, and blue Virginia beyond. The President was hunched over, and was unlike his usual exuberant noisy self. Over the fireplace, the portrait of Jackson glowered at the world.

“Sit down, John.” The familiar high voice sounded deathly tired. “I’m sorry you’ve been sick.”

“Thank you, Mr. President,” and Hay realized that he had made a mistake in hurrying so quickly across the corridor. Exhausted, he sat in the special visitor’s chair with all the maps of battle in full view, and a yellow curtain ready to cover them up, if the visitor was not to be trusted.

Abraham Lincoln turned from the window, and smiled. “You look pretty seedy, Johnny.”

“You don’t look too good yourself, if I may say so, sir.”

“When did I ever?” Lincoln went to his pigeon-holed desk, and took out two letters. “I’ve got a couple of letters for you to answer. Nothing important.” Lincoln gave Hay the letters; then he sat very low in the chair opposite, so that the small of his back would press against hard wood, while one long leg was slung over the chair’s arm. Hay realized with some excitement that he had, at last, after so many years, been able to remember Lincoln’s face from life as opposed to ubiquitous effigy. But what was he thinking? This was the President, he realized, on a Sunday afternoon, in summer. “I can’t sleep,” the Ancient was saying. “I think I’m sleeping but then I find I’m only day-dreaming and I wake up, and by the time it’s morning, I am plumb worn out, or as the preacher said to his wife…”

Hay felt, suddenly, as one with the President, as the melancholy dark green walls, picked out with tiny golden stars, swirled all about the two of them like the first attack of sleep which always starts, no matter how restless one has been, with a nothingness out of which emerges, first, one image, then another, and, finally, mad narratives unfold which take the place of the real world stolen now by sleep, unless sleep be the real world stolen by the day, for life.

CAROLINE HAD PROMISED to look in on Adams before the White House dinner in celebration, for once, of nothing; and true to her word, she arrived, wearing in her hair the diamonds that she had inherited that autumn from Mrs. Delacroix, who had proved, after all, not to be immortal; who had proved, above all, to be grateful for whatever “expiation” that Caroline might have made in her coming to terms with Blaise, and their common past.

Adams sat beside his Mexican onyx fireplace, looking more small and isolated than usual. “I see no one. Except nieces. I am no one. Except an uncle. You are beautiful as nieces go…”

“You should be happy.” Caroline settled before the fire; and refused William’s offer of sherry. “You have Mrs. Cameron in the Square. What more can you want?”

“Yes, La Dona makes a difference.” The previous year, Mrs. Cameron had reinstalled herself and Martha at 21 Lafayette Square. She was, again, queen of Washington, for what that might be worth: to Adams, apparently, nothing. Although a year had passed, he was still not reconciled to John Hay’s death on July 1, 1905. Adams had been in France when the news came; and so had not been able to go to Cleveland, where Hay was buried, beside Del, in the presence of all the great of the land. Ironically, Adams had been with Cabot and Sister Anne Lodge when the news came; and it was said that the Benevolent Porcupine had, one by one, shot each of his poisoned quills into the fragile senatorial hide, blaming, not entirely unfairly, Lodge for Hay’s death.

“Anyway, I’m bored. I’m mouldy. I’m breaking fast. I’ve nothing, nothing to live for…”

“Us. The nieces. Your twelfth-century book, which you must have finished for the twelfth time now. And, best of all, as you said yourself, you will never again have to see, in this life, Theodore Roosevelt.”

Adams’s eyes were suddenly bright. “You do know how to cheer me up! You’re absolutely right. I shall never set foot in that house again. The relief is enormous. I have also quarantined Cabot, and if it weren’t for Sister Anne, I’d relieve myself of all Lodges. Why are you going tonight?”

“I am still a publisher. I’m also the only publisher of the Tribune who’s welcome. The President is furious with Blaise, for helping out in the Hearst campaign.”

“Hearst.” Adams managed to hiss the “s”; thus the serpent in Eden celebrated evil. “If he is elected governor of New York, he’ll be living over there in two years’ time.”

Caroline tended to agree. Although Hearst had lost the election for mayor of New York, in a three-way race, he had come within a handful of votes of winning it. Only a last-minute burning of ballots by Murphy of Tammany Hall had secured the election for McClellan. Hearst was now behaving like a Shakespearean tragic hero, in search of a fifth act.

With remarkable skill, Hearst had created his own political machine within New York State, and now he was prepared to seize the governorship, with Blaise’s help. Caroline was not certain quite why her apolitical brother had decided to come to the aid of a publishing rival, unless that was the reason. If Hearst were to become governor, president-Cawdor, Scotland-he might be obliged to sell off his newspapers, and Blaise would want them. So, for that matter, would Caroline.