Gore Vidal - Empire

“But I don’t.”

“But she does. She’s just started one for girls, up at the Cathedral. Maybe the two of us could go there and teach the girls-you know, journalism.” The Chief had come as close as Blaise had ever heard him to a smutty remark. “Give my regards to your sister.”

“If I see her,” said Blaise. “She moves in refined circles.”

IN MARCH CAROLINE had arrived at the outermost ring of the republic’s circles, when she rented a small rose-red brick house in N Street, which ran through a part of dilapidated Georgetown, reminiscent of Aswan in Egypt, where she had once wintered with her father and his arthritis. There was hardly a white face to be seen; and the owner of the house, a commodore’s widow of pronounced whiteness, hoped that she would not mind “the darkies.” Caroline pronounced herself entranced; and hoped, she said, to hear tom-toms in the night. The widow said that as there were, happily, no Indians nearby, tom-toms would not sound; on the other hand, a good deal of voodoo was practiced between the Potomac River and the canal. She did not recommend it, in practice. The commodore’s widow left behind her a large black woman, who would “help out.” It was agreed that Caroline would take the house for at least one year. On the brick sidewalk in front of the house two vast shiny-leaved magnolia trees put the front rooms in deepest shadow, always desirable, Caroline had remarked, when living in the tropics. Predictably, Marguerite was stunned to find herself marooned in Africa, with an African in the kitchen.

From the outermost circle, Caroline moved to the innermost: the dining room of Henry Adams, where breakfast was served for six each mid-day and no one was ever invited; yet the table was never empty except for this particular morning, when Caroline ate Virginia smoked ham and biscuits made with buttermilk, and the host, more round than ever, discussed his departure the next day for New York; and then a tour of Sicily with Senator and Mrs. Lodge. “After that, I shall spend the summer in Paris, in the Boulevard Bois de Boulogne. The Camerons are there. She is there, at least. No more coffee, William,” he said to the manservant, William Gray, who poured him more coffee, which he drank. “Do you know a young poet, an American, named Trumbull Stickney?”

Caroline said, accurately, that she knew very few Americans in Paris. “While we don’t seem to know any French,” said Adams, judiciously. “We go abroad to see one another. I gather that Mrs. Cameron is Mr. Stickney’s muse this spring. If I were young, I would not be jealous. As it is, I writhe.” But Adams seemed not to be writhing at all. “You must come over-or back in your case-and show us France.”

“I don’t know France at all.” Caroline was again accurate. “But I know the French.”

“Well, I can show you France. I tour the cathedrals yet again. I brood on the relics of the twelfth century.”

“They are… energetic?”

Adams smiled, almost shyly. “You remembered? I’m flattered.”

“I’d hoped for more instruction. But just as I move to Washington, you go away. I feel as if you had created me, a second Mrs. Lightfoot Lee, and then left me in mid-chapter.” Caroline was now on forbidden territory. No one was ever supposed to suggest that Adams might be the author of the novel Democracy , whose heroine, a Mrs. Lightfoot Lee, settles in Washington in order to understand power in a democracy; and is duly appalled. Caroline had delighted in the book, almost as much as she did in its author. Of course, there were those who thought that John Hay had written the novel (he had been photographed holding a copy of the French edition and wearing a secret smile); others thought that the late Clover Adams, a born wit, was the author. But Caroline was certain that Adams himself had written his quintessential book of Hearts. He never, with her, denied-or affirmed-it. “The lesson of that amorality tale is-stay away from senators.”

“That’s not difficult.”

“In Washington? They are like cardinals in Renaissance Rome. You can’t avoid them. That’s why I flee to the twelfth century, where there were only three classes: the priest, the warrior and the artist. Then the commercial sort took over, the money-lenders, the parasites. They create nothing; and they enslave everyone. They expropriated the priest-don’t you like to hear all this at breakfast?”

“Only when there is honey in the comb,” said Caroline, spreading the wax and honey over a piece of hot cornbread. “I can take quite a lot of priests expropriated. And the warriors…?”

“Turned into wage-earning policemen, to defend the money-men, while the artists make dresses or paint bad portraits, like Sargent…”

“Oh, I like him. He never tries to disguise how much his sitters bore him.”

“That is our last revenge against money. See? I count myself an artist; but I am only a rentier , a parasite. Why Washington?”

Caroline was not certain how much she should confide in this brilliant old professional uncle. “My brother and I have disagreed…”

“Yes, we’ve heard all about that. There is nothing to do with money that we don’t seem to hear about. We have lost our spirituality.”

“Well, I may lose something far worse, my inheritance.” Where was it that she had read that there was a certain honey that made one mad? She had just eaten it, plainly; she confided: “Blaise could control everything for five years. He worships Mr. Hearst, who loses money on a scale that makes me very nervous.”

“The terrible Mr. Hearst could end up losing the Sanford money, too?”

As Caroline took more honey, she noted, in the comb, a tiny grub. Perversely, she ate it. “That’s my fear. Anyway, while our lawyers duel, Blaise lives in New York and I have come here to Aswan, to observe democracy in action, like Mrs. Lee.”

“Then,” said Adams, pushing back from the table, and lighting a cigar, with a by-your-leave gesture, “there is Del.”

“There is Del.”

“He is next door, even as we speak. Are you tempted?”

“My teacher-”

“The formidable Mlle. Souvestre, now established at Wimbledon. She has advised you?”

“No. She gives no advice. That is her style. I mean no practical advice. But she is brilliant, and she has never married, and she is happy, teaching.”

“You want to teach?”

“I have nothing to teach.”

“Neither have I. Yet I run a school for statesmen, from Lodge to Hay. I am also Professor Adams, late of Harvard.”

“I am not so ambitious. But I am curious what it would be like to remain single.”

“With your-appearance?” Adams laughed; an appreciative bark. “You will not be allowed to stay single. The forces will be too great for you. Unlike you, your Grande Mademoiselle had neither beauty nor a fortune.”

“In time, I shall lose the first, and in an even shorter time could lose the second. Besides, she is very handsome. She has had suitors.”

“Perhaps,” said Adams, “she prefers the company of serious ladies, like an abbess of the twelfth century.”

Caroline flushed, not certain why. Mademoiselle had had a partner when the school first began at Les Ruches. There had been quarrels; they parted. Mademoiselle had reigned alone ever since. No, this was not what she herself would prefer in the way of a life alone. But then she had had no experience, of any kind. “I have not the vocation,” she said, “of an abbess, even a worldly one.”

The honey’s power released her. Adams led her into the library, her favorite American room. The overall effect was meant to be medieval, Romanesque even, with windows so sited that one could ignore the White House across the square by looking slightly upward, to Heaven. The room’s focal point was the fireplace, carved from a pale jade-green Mexican onyx shot through with scarlet threads; she had never seen anything like it before, but unlike so many things never seen before, the extraordinary silk-like stone fascinated her. On either side of the fireplace Italian cinquecento paintings were arranged, as well as a Turner view of the English countryside lit by hell-fire; best of all, there was a crude drawing by William Blake of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, on all fours, munching grass in his madness. “It is the portrait of my soul,” Adams had said when he showed it to her for the first time. The room smelled of wood-smoke, narcissi and hyacinth. The leather chairs were low, built to suit Adams and no one else. They quite suited Caroline, who settled in one, and said, “You must tell me when I’m to go.”