Gore Vidal - Empire

“I’ve always hoped that in my senility I wouldn’t, like the first three Adamses, turn against democracy. But I detect the signs. Racing pulse, elevated temperature; horror of immigrants-oh, the revelation in Heidegg! Even John was horrified to what an extent we’ve lost our country. Roman Catholics are bad enough. Yes, my child, I know you’re one, and even I tend, at times, to the untrue True Church, but the refuse of the Mediterranean, the detritus of Mitteleuropa , and the Jews, the Jews…”

“You will have a stroke, Uncle Henry.” Caroline was firm. “One day your hobby-horse will throw you.”

“I can’t wait to be thrown. But I’m always astride. That’s because I’m nobody. Power is poison, you know.”

“I don’t know. But I’d like to taste it.”

“The problem is what I call Bostonitis. The habit of the double standard, which can be an inspiration for a man of letters, but fatal to a politician.” Adams picked up a folder beside his chair. “Letters to John Hay. Letters by John Hay. Clara’s been collecting them. She wants to publish.”

Caroline had, from time to time, received a note from Hay. He was a marvellous letter-writer, which meant that he was always indiscreet. “Is that a good idea?”

“Probably not. I’m sure Theodore will think not. Hay liked him, but saw all his faults. Worse, his absurdities. Great men cannot bear to be thought, ever, absurd.”

“Publish! And be praised.”

“I think I will edit them.”

“Why not write his life?”

Adams shook his head. “It would be my life, too.”

“Write that, then.”

“After St. Augustine, I’d look more than usually inept. He did best what cannot be done at all-mix narrative and didactic purpose and style. Rousseau couldn’t do it at all. At least Augustine had an idea of a literary form-a notion of writing a story with an end and object, not for the sake of the object, but for the form, like a romance. I come at the wrong time.”

“But you occupy the right space,” said Caroline. “Anyway, I don’t believe in time…”

“Are you content?” Adams looked at her closely.

“I think so. I wanted to be-myself, not just a wife or mother or…”

“Niece?”

“That I wanted most of all.” Caroline was entirely serious. “But then I have never confessed to you just how ambitious I am. You see,” she took the great plunge, “I wanted to be a Heart.”

“Oh, my child!” Adams struck a note that she had never heard before. There was no irony, no edge to that beautiful voice. “You are one. Didn’t you know?”

“I wanted to-know.” She was tentative.

“That is it. That is all there is, to want to know…”

Elizabeth Cameron and Martha entered; each was dressed appropriately for the White House dinner.

“We’ve heard from Whitelaw Reid,” said Lizzie, after her usual warm but not too warm greeting of Caroline. “Martha’s to be presented at court, June the first, and you know what Martha said?”

“ ‘I’d rather stay in Paris’ is what Martha said,” said Martha.

“You must give pleasure to Whitelaw. He has so many presentations to make and so few presentables.” Adams had greeted Whitelaw Reid’s appointment as ambassador to the Court of St. James’s with exuberant derision. Reid’s pursuit of office and its attendant pomp had, finally, been rewarded by the President, who had required that all ambassadors and ministers resign after the election. Everyone had now been moved round-or out.

“I do it for Mother.” Martha would never be beautiful, Caroline decided, but she might yet cease to be plain.

The clocks were carefully checked, and it was agreed that the three ladies share the same carriage to get them across the perilous wintry waste of Pennsylvania Avenue, a matter of so many icy yards.

Adams rose and showed them to the door of his study; he kissed each on the cheek.

“I hope Cabot won’t be there,” said Lizzie. “I have a permanent grudge against him, since John died.”

“Be forgiving, Dona.” Adams smiled his secret smile. “Life is far too long to hold a grudge.”

The Lodges were not present; the dinner was relatively small; and there was no theme, which Caroline enjoyed. Of the Cabinet, only Hay’s successor, Elihu Root, was present. He and Caroline gravitated toward each other in the Red Room, where the company was gathered before dinner. The Roosevelts never made their regal entrance until everyone was present.

“What is your brother doing?” was Root’s less than ceremonious greeting.

“He is travelling through New York State, enjoying the scenery.”

“I am alarmed. We’re all alarmed. You know, Hearst was really elected mayor of New York. Then Tammany destroyed the ballots.”

“Then why are you alarmed? When he’s elected governor, Tammany will just burn the ballots all over again. Fraud is the principal check-or is it balance?-of your-sorry, our -Constitution.”

Root’s mock alarm was replaced by, if not real alarm, unease. “We can’t rely on our most ancient check this time. Hearst has made a deal. He’s going to be Tammany’s candidate.”

“Is this possible?” Caroline was startled.

“Everything’s possible with those terrible people. Warn your brother away.”

As Caroline was explaining why Blaise accepted no warnings from her, Alice Roosevelt and her new husband, Nicholas Long-worth, made their entrance. Root looked at his watch. “Amazing! She’s arriving before her father. Nick’s influence, obviously.”

Alice looked, if not blooming, as in a rose, bronze, as in a chrysanthemum, while her husband’s bald head was scarlet from sunburn. They had been married in mid-February, with great pomp, in the East Room; then they had gone to Cuba for their honeymoon. This was their first White House function, as man and wife. Alice joined Root and Caroline. “Well, I’ve been to the top of San Juan Hill, and it’s absolutely nothing. I looked for the jungle-remember the famous jungle? where Father stood among the flying bullets, ricocheting off trees, and parrots and flamingos-I always added them to every description-sailed about? Well, the place couldn’t be duller. The hill’s a bump, and there is no jungle. All that fuss about so little. But they gave us something called a daiquiri, made with rum. After that, I remember nothing.”

The President and Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt were announced, rather as if they were the Second Coming, and Theodore conducted himself rather as if he were God, surveying, with quiet satisfaction, His Creation. Edith Roosevelt looked tired, as befitted God’s conscientious consort.

The President greeted Caroline with his usual amiability, usual because the Tribune usually supported him. As a reward, he would occasionally ask her to the White House, where he would give her a story-usually minor-that no one else had yet printed. He was even stouter and redder this season, she noted; apparently, the vigorous, strenuous life he advocated for others and practiced himself was not, of itself, thinning. “You must come to lunch, and tell me about France. I envy you last summer. If I ever get away from here…”

“Come to us, Mr. President.”

“Delighted!”

“What, if I may cease to be a lady at court for an instant, is going to happen to the Hepburn Bill?” This was a commanding work of legislation which the House of Representatives had passed the previous year. The regulation of railroad rates was, somehow, at the center of the national psyche. The progressive saw it as a necessary means of controlling the buccaneer railroad operators, while the conservative courts and Senate saw it as the first fine cutting edge of socialism, the one thing that all Americans were taught from birth to abhor. Characteristically, Roosevelt was vacillating. When he had needed money for his presidential campaign he had asked the railway magnate E. H. Harriman to dinner at the White House; no one knew what promises were exchanged. Yet Caroline had taken heed of one of Adams’s truisms which was so true as to be ungraspable by minds shaped from birth by an American education: “He who can make prices for necessaries commands the whole wealth of all the nation, precisely as he who can tax.” That said it all. But the ownership of the country controlled both Supreme Court and Senate, and so they need not give up anything, ever. “I shall stand fast, of course. I always do. To Principle. I’m sure I can bring Senator Aldrich around. One thing I won’t accept will be an amended bill.”