Gore Vidal - Empire

Before January, it had never occurred to Blaise that Captain Dreyfus might be innocent. But the more that he investigated the case, the more certain he was that Dreyfus had indeed been falsely accused. When “that French dirty writer,” as Hearst always called him, “you know, the one whose name begins with Z, like Zebra,” Emile Zola, accused the French government of covering up the truth, he was obliged to flee to England. That was when the Chief gave orders for the Buccaneer to stand by. He himself would lead the attack on Devil’s Island, with Blaise as his eager second-in-command. But then Spain not France became the enemy of Truth and Civilization; and the spring and summer were devoted to the expansion of the Journal’s circulation and, incidentally, the American empire. Now, as Colonel Roosevelt ran up yet another hill, as a politician, Hearst was prepared, at the least, to offer himself to the world as a hero; at the most, to change world history by precipitating a war with France.

The Chief put his feet upon the desk, and daydreamed, eyes half-shut. “We’ll need, maybe, a thousand men. We might hire some of Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, that’d embarrass him.” The Chief giggled. Blaise, his eyes on Bonaparte, wondered if that world hero was prone to daydreaming and giggling. “Check out the Rough Riders. Don’t tell them what we’ve got in mind. Just say a filibuster. You know, an adventure. In Latin America. Go after the tough ones, the real Westerners. We don’t want any New York swells.”

Blaise felt that he should interpret the latest news from Paris. “The government’s just promised a new trial for Dreyfus.”

“Court-martial is the phrase, I heard.” Just when Blaise had decided that Hearst was totally ineducable, not to mention in thrall to his own daydreams, he would suddenly demonstrate that in his crude but highly intuitive way he had got the point, usually before anyone else. “They’ll drag it out another year at least. We need a good story for the fall. Before November. Before election. This should do in Roosevelt.”

“How can you and Captain Dreyfus lose him an election in New York State?” Usually Blaise could follow Hearst’s peculiar logic: the key to it was entertainment. What would most excite the average uneducated man?-who would then part with a penny to read the Journal .

Hearst opened very wide his pale blue eyes and the usually straight brows arched with what looked to be wonder: he was ready to part with that penny. “Don’t you see? It’s all the same. Teddy winning a battle that was already won but getting the credit because he is who he is and all the newspaper boys were right there with him because I’m selling the war to the world. He couldn’t lose because I couldn’t lose. Well, if I break into Devil’s Island and free that poor innocent Jew, why, no one will pay any more attention to Teddy, who’ll be last summer’s news while I’m this fall’s news, and so Van Wyck gets elected.”

In a lunatic way, Blaise saw the point. Hearst’s meddling in French internal affairs, successful or not, would certainly be a sensation; and a diversion from the election. Blaise was also beguiled by the fact that Hearst could never remember Dreyfus’s-or any Frenchman’s-name.

“You’ve got the plans of the fort, haven’t you?” Hearst gazed out the window at the Hoffman House, where a line of carriages were depositing the guests for some sort of Democratic meeting. As the Fifth Avenue Hotel was sacred to the Republicans, so the Hoffman House was to the Democrats.

“Yes, Chief. They’re in your safe at the office. Also, the size-estimated-of the garrison, and the number of guards that look after Dreyfus.”

“I don’t suppose we could free all the frog prisoners.” Hearst’s imagination seemed now to be positively Mosaic, as he led all of those who had been slaves into the promised land of Manhattan.

“I think you’ll have quite enough to do just freeing Dreyfus.”

“I suppose you’re right. Well, I’ll go over all this with Karl Decker. He’ll be your side-kick. He’s got a real gift for these… uh, things.”

Karl Decker was a knowledgeable journalist who had managed to free from a Cuban prison an attractive young woman, who had been a passionate-what else?-enemy of Spain and its beast-like governor. Hearst had got a lot of play out of that adventure; now he wanted more. “I expect you to be right there with us, in the lead, after me.” The Chief looked very much like a small boy about to play pirate.

“I’d like nothing better.”

“Because you’re the only one who can talk to what’s-his-name. You know? In French. I never could pick up the lingo. You think you like publishing?” The small boy pirate had suddenly turned into a bland full-grown businessman, the worst of pirates.

“Oh, yes!” Blaise was as enthusiastic as he sounded. “I think it’s more exciting than anything else, especially the Journal .”

“Well, I have my critics.” The blandness was now absolute. Although Hearst was daily denounced by all right-thinking men and women, he seemed perfectly indifferent to the opinions of others. He liked stories, adventures, fun. He liked being number one in circulation if not yet in advertising, “I’ve also pretty much used up my mother’s… present. These wars can cost you a lot of money.”

Blaise was surprised not that Hearst had spent the seven and a half million dollars that Phoebe Hearst had given him three years earlier but that Hearst would admit it; however, that was part of the Chief’s enigmatic charm, to know who was what and how he should be treated. Employees were always treated with grave politeness; and Hearst’s voice was seldom raised. He was generous, in every sense; all he wanted in return was the absolute best of its kind. But he did not make friends with those he hired, even the editors. He was not to be seen in the bars around Printing House Square. He was also not to be seen in the men’s clubs of his class for the excellent reason that a cannonade of black balls would have shot down any proposal that he might be made a member of any one of them. “I’ve also been on the outside here,” he would say, more to himself than to Blaise; and Blaise decided that the Chief was quite happy to remain where he was, outside, yes, but terrorizing those inside.

When Blaise had left Yale in his junior year, Colonel Sanford had been furious. “What will you do? What are you equipped to do in life?” Blaise was too tactful to point out that the Colonel himself had not been equipped to do anything at all in life except spend the money that he had inherited from his family; although to be fair-something Blaise found difficult to be with a father who had always embarrassed him-the Colonel had, rather absently, made a second fortune after the war in railroading, using Delacroix money, a source of irritation to the family of Blaise’s mother, since none of it ever came their way.

“My son’s a Delacroix,” Sanford would say expansively, “you’ll get it back through him.” But when that same son left Yale, and moved to New York, and said that he wanted to go into the newspaper business, the Colonel was appalled; he was even more distressed when Blaise, who had always been fascinated by newspapers, declared that it was his ambition to be exactly like William Randolph Hearst, whose very name was a synonym for cad in the Sanford world. But the Colonel had yielded to the extent of instructing his lawyer, Dennis Houghteling, to arrange a meeting between Blaise and the dark-or rather bright yellow-prince of journalism.

Hearst had been gravely interested in the young man. “The business part’s easy to learn,” he said. “You just hang around the people who sell the advertising, and the people who do the accounting, and then you try to figure out how the more papers I sell, the more money I lose, and the more red ink they write their numbers with.” Hearst’s smile was not exactly winning. “The other end, the paper…”