Gore Vidal - Empire

“Around seven thousand,” said Trimble.

“I was told ten last winter.”

“Mr. Vardeman liked to exaggerate, I guess. Our advertising’s increased in the last month,” he added.

“Cousin John got us Apgar’s Department Store. They are having their sales now.”

The political reporter, thin of neck, red of cheek and eye, already partly drunk, approached. “Mr. Trimble, here’s an item. I don’t suppose it’s worth bothering with. From the White House.”

“Oh, dear,” said Caroline. Although she was personally fascinated by politicians if not politics, she found the subject, as dealt with by the press, sinister in its dullness. Only those who were themselves political could find exciting or even fascinating the Tribune’s political news. Happily, most of newspaper-reading Washington was involved in government and they would read any political news. But Caroline, as always in imitation of Hearst, wanted to extend the readership to those who found politics as dull as she did, the majority. Graphic details of murders, robberies, rapes were what people wanted to read, a lurid golden thread running through the gray pages. But she wanted even more diversions for her readers-or readers-to-be. The political reporter, as if sent by Heaven, now gave her exactly what she wanted.

“I was over talking to Mr. Cortelyou…”

“The President’s secretary,” said Caroline, helpfully, to Blaise, who was again turning a healthy pre-transport red.

“He said there’s no news from the Philippines. Then when asked what the President was doing at the moment, he said, ‘He’s out driving,” and I said, ‘Well, that’s not much of a story,’ and he said, ‘Well, he’s driving in a motor car for the first time.’ So there’s an item, I guess. A smallish item, I guess.”

Trimble sighed. “A very smallish item. For the social page.”

“No,” said Caroline. “For the front page.” She had never felt so entirely heroic as she did now, showing off to Blaise.

“What’s the lead?” asked Trimble.

“First president ever to drive in an automobile.” Caroline was prompt.

“But is that true?” asked Trimble.

“Mr. Hearst wouldn’t care, and, I’m afraid, I don’t either.”

“I think it’s true,” said the political reporter. “Grover Cleveland tried to get into a motor car several years ago. But because he’s so fat, he wouldn’t fit. Fact, nothing fits him except this one orange summer suit that his young wife hates, and finally got him to give away when she threatened to denounce him to the Irish as an Ulsterman.”

“Wonderful!” Caroline was indeed pleased. “That’s what we want in your story. Do write it all. Now.”

As the reporter was shuffling toward the Remington, Caroline stopped him. “What sort of motor car was it?”

“A Stanley Steamer, Miss Sanford.”

Caroline turned to Trimble. “Put that in the sub-head. Then we shall ask the Stanley Steamer people to advertise.”

“Well…” Trimble was grinning now; he had got her range. Then both started as the door to the room was slammed shut. Blaise had fled.

“Your brother’s kind of… moody?”

“Well, his mood is certainly black today. He and Mr. Hearst did want this paper, in fact, he just asked me to sell it to him, and I said no.”

Trimble frowned. “Would you make a profit?”

“Yes.”

“You should sell. We haven’t a chance. The Star and the Post have us beat.”

Caroline’s pleasure in the Stanley Steamer story was now replaced by that sense of doom which often visited her when she awakened in the early hours of the morning, and wondered what on earth she was doing in a small house in Georgetown, publishing a newspaper that might, eventually, ruin her. “If it’s so hopeless, why does Hearst want to buy?”

“He’ll pour in money. He don’t care what he loses. And he’ll have a Washington power-base. He’s running for president.”

Caroline was momentarily distracted. “How do you know that?”

“Friend at the Journal told me. Hearst thinks Bryan can’t win, and he can.”

“How curious! The first time I spoke to him, he said he wanted Admiral Dewey.” But Caroline had grasped a point interesting to her in a way that politics was not. “You haven’t been talking to the Journal about a job, have you?”

Trimble’s pale blue eyes now avoided her own, she hoped, steady gaze. “We’re losing circulation every month,” he said.

“Not on the newsstands.”

“That’s no money really. Advertising rates are fixed by your paid subscriptions.”

“Then we’ll hold a-what is it?-you know, money for nothing? A lottery.”

“With what money?”

“If you stay, I’ll go in deeper.”

Trimble looked at her, most curiously. “Why are you doing this?”

“I want to.”

“Is that all?”

“I should think that that was everything.”

“But no woman… no lady has ever run a newspaper that I know of, and there aren’t many men who have the knack either.”

“You will,” said Caroline, no question in her voice and no appeal, “stay.”

Trimble smiled. They shook hands gravely.

FROM ONE END TO THE OTHER of the Brooklyn Bridge, electric lights spelled out “Welcome, Dewey,” so many points of arctic light against the night sky; while downriver, the Admiral’s flagship, the Olympic , was equally illuminated. Sirens blared. Occasional fireworks exploded along the Palisades. The hero of Manila had come home.

Blaise sat beside the Chief in the back of his motor car, the top put down the better to enjoy the display, and the cool autumn night. Madame de Bieville sat in the seat opposite, next to Millicent and Anita Willson. To Blaise’s surprise, Anne was amused by the girls and, like all women, bemused by the Chief. For a week, Anne had taken the girls shopping in order to dress them up-or rather down-for Europe. Hearst had decided to go to Europe in November; winter would be spent aboard a yacht, on the Nile. Although Blaise had been cheated of his return to Europe, Anne’s arrival was consolation. Together they had gone to Newport, Rhode Island, and the fierce Delacroix grandmother had been openly scandalized and privately thrilled by the liaison between her youthful grandson and this French woman of the world. But like all good Newporters, Mrs. Delacroix dearly loved a French lady and a moneyed one was even more loveable. She had installed Madame in the east wing of her Grand Trianon and Blaise in the west wing, and when Mrs. Fish had suggested that there might be wedding bells between June and October, Mrs. Delacroix had said, in a voice, reputedly, of thunder, “Mamie, mind your own business.” Mrs. Fish had done so: a business that included a picnic on the rocks by the sea, with Harry Lehr in charge of an artificial waterfall; but instead of water, champagne, sold by Lehr on commission, cascaded over the rocks.

Anne had said to Blaise that she now understood the French Revolution. Blaise had said that he now understood why there could never be an American revolution. The sumptuous extravagance of the rich suited everyone, particularly the readers of the Journal It was still believed, he was magisterial, that in the United States anyone could strike it rich, like the Chief’s father, and, once rich, “anyone” was obliged to live out every dream that everyone had ever had. There was still wealth to be had for the lucky; as for the rest, they could daydream, their imaginations fed by the Journal . Anne could not believe that it was possible to keep the unlucky forever content with stories of the fortunate and their extravagances, but Blaise thought it possible to string them, as the Chief would say, along forever, or as long as there were still mountains of gold and silver to be broken into and new inventions to be thought of. The native-born American still believed that hard work would earn him all the beef his family required; believed, also, that blind luck might translate him overnight to a palace on Fifth Avenue. The immigrants were somewhat different.