Gore Vidal: Empire

“Our first man of destiny since Mr. Lincoln-the President, who else? The Major himself. Mr. McKinley. Don’t laugh!” Adams frowned severely. “I know he is supposed to be a creature of Mark Hanna and all the other bosses, but it’s plain to me that they are his creatures. They find him money-a useful art-so that he can deliver us an empire, which he has! The timing is exquisite, too. Just as weak England begins to loosen her grip on the world, just as Germany and Russia and Japan are jostling one another to take England’s place, the Major preempts them all, and the Pacific Ocean is ours! Or soon will be, and the new poles of power will be Russia on the eastern landmass and the United States on the west, with England, ours at last, in between! Oh, to be your age, Miss Sanford, and to see the coming wonders of our Augustan age!”

“In Paris, Mr. Adams, you once told me that you were a lifelong pessimist.”

“That was on earth. I am now in Heaven, dear Miss Sanford, and so my pessimism ended with my earthly life. Up here, I am not even a porcupine.” The moustache twitched at the corners as he looked up at her-how small he was, she thought, angelic and diabolic.

They were joined by Don Cameron, who smelled of whiskey, and by the stout, bald, bearded figure of Henry James, who had just arrived from his house at Rye. When Caroline was very young, the novelist had been brought to Saint-Cloud by the Paul Bourgets. She had been impressed when James had spoken to her entirely in unaccented French; she had also been intrigued by an American whose two Christian names were affixed to no family name-Henry James What? she asked her father. The Colonel neither knew nor cared. He disliked literary men, except for Paul Bourget, whose aggressive snobbism gave Sanford quiet pleasure: “Can’t read his books. But he knows le monde de la famille .” When the Colonel did use a French phrase, it was always eerily mispronounced; yet the Colonel had a good ear; and loved music if not musicians. He had even written an opera about Marie de’Medici, which no one would put on unless he himself paid for the production. But as he was the sort of man who would never spend a penny that might give himself pleasure, there was no production of the opera in his lifetime; no life, either. Caroline vowed that she would not make the same mistake.

Don Cameron’s voice was slow, rumbling, hoarse. “Well, you could at least try it out.”

“But, my dear Senator, I am already so beautifully machined . At Lamb House, I am fitted out like the latest, most modern manufactory, geared for the most intense production, with a chief engineer who is hopelessly wedded to that intricate, fine-grinding mill that he performs upon with a positively virtuoso’s touch…” Henry James spoke in a low, deep resonant voice, well-produced by a huge barrel of a chest that contained a singer’s lungs, thought Caroline, for his breath never gave out, no matter how long and intricate the sentence.

Cameron was persistent. “You’ll never regret trying it out. I know. I tried it out. I’m no writer but it could change your life.”

“Ah, that !” began James.

Adams broke in. “What is it ?”

“I already showed you.” The small, red, suspicious eyes turned toward Caroline now. “I’m selling the thing-the rights, that is-for Europe. Exclusive rights.”

“Our senatorial friend,” Caroline noted that Henry James had taken a very deep breath before he spoke; thanks to the Colonel, she knew rather a lot about the tricks of opera singers as well as opera, “has now in his exile… no, his highly thoughtful refuge from the clamorous Senate House, turned the full ripeness of his attention onto a commercial object which he quite rightly suspects is, to me, of all people here, at least, of poignant importance-and interest, although whether or not the Senator, as emptor-or tempter-will make on Miss Sanford the same profound effect that he has made on me, with his description-ever so lucid, so compelling, even-of that commercial object of which you, my dear Henry, now inquire the identity, I cannot, at hazard, guess. Mais en tout cas , Mademoiselle Sanford, I cannot think that you, as the chatelaine of the great palace of Saint-Cloud-le-Duc, would even find Senator Cameron’s utensil of any intrinsic-or even extrinsic, I am impelled to add-interest save…”

“What… what is it ?” cried Henry Adams, as the sentences slowly looped around them, verbal equivalents of Laocoön’s serpent.

“It’s this typewriter I’ve been promoting,” said Senator Cameron.

“For an instant, I thought it was some sort of home guillotine,” said Caroline.

“ Homely utensil?” Adams asked; then answered his own question. “Well, why not? We could certainly use one in Lafayette Square.”

“Now if Mr. James would just give us an endorsement,” began Senator Cameron.

“But I am wedded, Senator, to another. I am-let me pronounce once and for all the honorable name- united to the Remington typewriter-machine, and have been for close to two wonderfully contented and happy years.”

“You manipulate it yourself?” Caroline could not visualize the ponderous Mr. James confronting a metal machine, stubby fingers tapping.

“No,” said Henry Adams. “He paces about the garden room of his house and unfurls his sentences into the ear of a typewriter-machinist who turns them into Remingtonese.”

“Which is, at its best, so like English,” added Henry James, eyes sparkling. Caroline vowed that she must one day really read him. Except for Daisy Miller , required reading for every American girl in Europe, Caroline had always steered clear of the books of the man that so many knowing Americans in Paris referred to as the Master.

“I’ll bring it over to your place anyway.” Cameron was dogged. “Get your man to try it out. There’s a fortune in these new gadgets. Where’s Lizzie?”

No one knew. She was not in the room. As Cameron made his way through a group of children to the hallway, Mr. Eddy bowed low to the statesman, who did not see him.

“Our good Don is persistent,” said Henry Adams; and though the tone was agreeable, the expression of the face was not. Caroline saw that James had noticed, too.

“It must be very hard, no longer being in the Senate, after so many years, at the center.” James was uncharacteristically tentative.

“Oh, I think he has a good enough time. He’s rich, after all. He’s got the place in South Carolina to worry about…”

“It must be even harder for La Dona, as you, not I, call her.” James was studying Adams’s face with acute interest.

“She has not been well.” Adams was neutral; flat. “That’s why Don and I formed our syndicate, to take this place for the summer, to unite us all.”

“She is thriving then?”

But Henry Adams was saved from answering by the butler, who was at last permitted to come into his brilliant own. The long cadaverous figure of Mr. Beech stood very straight in the doorway, as his basso voice ecstatically proclaimed, “His Excellency, the Ambassador of the United States of America, and Mrs. John Hay.”

“I shall now say ‘hurrah’ three times, I think,” said Henry James, “and very loud, too.”

“Don’t,” said Adams.

The Hays were a curious-looking couple. He was small, slender, bearded, with, at a distance, a boy’s face that, close up, was like a delicate much-wrinkled beige chamois skin. Hay wore a pointed beard, like all the others; his full head of hair was parted in the middle and dyed the same dull chestnut color as the hair of his tall, fleshy, large-faced wife, who looked even larger and more formidable than she was when standing beside her husband. Caroline could see Del’s face peering out of Clara’s; but except for the turned-up nose, saw no resemblance to Del at all in Hay, who came toward them, hand outstretched to greet Henry James. They were old friends.