Gore Vidal - Empire

Blaise recalled a conversation with a manufacturer at Mrs. Fish’s dinner table: “The Germans are the best workers, if they haven’t been told about socialism and labor unions. The Irish are the worst, and always drunk. Dagos and niggers are lazy. All in all, the best worker is still your average Buckwheat.” A “Buckwheat,” it turned out, was the name employers gave to any sturdy young native-born Protestant from the countryside. The Buckwheat obeyed orders, worked hard and stayed sober. If he dreamed, he dreamed only the right sort of dreams, which might even come true. Anne found all of this mystifying. In France everyone knew his place; and wanted to change it or, more exciting, change someone else’s for the worst. Of course, France was filled up, while the United States was still relatively empty. Although the frontier had ended with the invention of California, the newly acquired Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean were now American lakes, filled with rich islands and opportunities, and the far-away look could once again be detected in the noble Buckwheat’s eyes. Blaise had composed a panegyric to the Buckwheat, and gave it to the managing editor, Arthur Brisbane, who took out everything original, including the word “Buckwheat,” and published it in the Sunday Journal: “No derogatory nicknames for the native-born American,” said Brisbane.

The Chief told the chauffeur to drive them downtown. “I want to see the arch lit up,” he said. “I want to see Dewey,” he added, looking at Blaise, as if Blaise were the Admiral’s keeper. “I want to talk to him.”

Blaise did his best to give an impression that he would deliver the Admiral to the Journal offices for the next day’s editorial meeting. “The messenger to Manila,” as the Chief’s courier was known at the paper, had got nothing at all out of the old hero, who seemed interested only in his new admiral-ate. Mention of the presidency bored him, the courier had reported.

As the motor car glided through the cool autumnal darkness of Central Park, the Willson girls broke beautifully into song: “I Met Her by the Fountain in the Park,” a particular favorite of the Chief, as well as of the girls, whose father, a buck-and-wing dancer-singer, had made the song famous in vaudeville. Hearst’s high toneless voice joined in. Anne beat time with a gloved hand, and smiled at Blaise, who felt embarrassed. It was always hard to present the Chief to the world as a serious man; yet he was.

Just north of Madison Square on Fifth Avenue, the crowds began. Everyone was moving toward the arch which had been built over the avenue at Twenty-third Street. Special lights had been craftily arranged to illuminate the white magnificence of what the Journal had called the most splendid triumphal arch ever shaped by the hand of man. Mr. Brisbane, not Blaise, was the author of this hyperbole. But the huge version of Rome’s arch of Septimius Severus was indeed impressive, despite the streetcars that passed, diagonally, in front of it, toward Broadway as it converged with Fifth Avenue. Three sets of columns on either side of the avenue made an approach to the arch. On top of the arch, a statue of Victory held a laurel wreath. Life-size military figures, entwined with banners, sabres, guns, adorned column-bases; upon the arch itself, the Admiral was depicted, a latter-day Nelson come home to glory in a confusion of flood-lights, hansom cabs, motor cars and red-white-and-blue bunting, courtesy of Knox’s Hats on the Avenue’s east side. The Hearst car stopped in front of Knox’s, and even the Chief was impressed by the masses of people who, although it was after midnight, wanted to pay homage to the hero-or his monument.

As the horse of a hansom cab predictably reared in passing the alien motor car, the Chief observed with predictable pleasure, “Roosevelt must be chewing up the carpet with those big teeth of his.” But Anne said, shrewdly, Blaise thought, “Why should he chew? The Admiral’s old. He’s young.”

“Dewey’s sixty-two. That’s not too old to be president.” The Chief looked uncharacteristically sullen. “He’s in love.”

“At sixty-two?” The Willson girls spoke as one; and everyone laughed. A newsboy, selling the Journal , waved a paper in Hearst’s face. “Evening, Chief!”

“Hello, son.” The Chief was again smiling; he gave the boy ten cents, to the ragged accompaniment of a group of Sixth Avenue types who were now singing “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.” Opposite them, beneath a column, a well-dressed woman wept. “He’s all set to marry John McLean’s sister. She’s a general’s widow. He’s a widower. She’s Catholic ,” the Chief added, brightening somewhat.

“There is still such a feeling against Catholics?” Madame de Bieville looked almost her age by the harsh light of a street lamp directly overhead. Blaise wished she would turn her head to the left an inch, and allow flattering shadows to mask her. Talk of age always disturbed him when she was present. The Willson girls had already worked out his relationship to what, in their eyes, despite her foreign glamour, was an old woman. If the Chief suspected, he made no allusion. But then, in sexual matters, he had a maiden’s tact.

“Well, it’s the Irish mostly that keep on giving Catholics such a bad name,” said Hearst vaguely. “Germans, too, I guess. He’s a powerhouse, her brother.” The Chief looked at Blaise, without reproach, which was the worst reproach of all.

John R. McLean was the owner of the Cincinnati Enquirer . He lived in Washington where his mother and wife jointly reigned much as Mrs. Astor did, alone, in New York. McLean was fierce, partisan, powerful. He would do anything to keep Hearst out of Washington. Blaise’s failure to buy the Tribune was a blow to Hearst, who was not about to begin, from nothing, a newspaper in the capital. The Tribune had been an ideal acquisition, and Blaise could never adequately explain to his partner-employer no longer: Blaise merely lent the Chief money at the going rate-that he had lost the paper to his own sister, who, to his surprise, eight months later, was still, if only barely, in business. They now communicated through lawyers. Anne thought that he should come to terms with Caroline, but Blaise refused. He would fight her to the end, which would come, rather anti-climactically, one way or another, in five years.

“Who built the arch?” Anne changed the dangerous subject.

“A committee,” said Blaise. “The National Sculpture Society.”

“The American style.” She smiled into the light; and the resulting lines made Blaise both nervous and sad. “And what is the arch made of? Marble? or stone?”

“Plaster and cheap wood,” said the Chief with obscure pleasure. “And lots of white paint.”

“But then when the winter comes…”

“It will fall apart.” The Chief’s tone was dreamy.

“But there’s a subscription to rebuild it in marble. This is just the model.” As a young, new New Yorker of means, Blaise had already made his contribution to the fund.

“It doesn’t look at all temporary.” Anne was admiring.

“That’s the American way ,” said the Chief. America personified, Hearst thought of himself; and, perhaps, thought Blaise, he was. Everything here was equally new, self-invented, temporary.

THE SECRETARY OF STATE and the new Secretary of War, Elihu Root, stared at one another across Hay’s desk. Root had replaced Alger in August. A New York lawyer of uncommon brilliance and sly wit, Root gave Hay more pleasure than the rest of the admittedly dim Cabinet combined. Root’s hair was cut short like Julius Caesar’s, with a dark fringe over the brow, and a modest moustache. The black eyes were as quick as the wit; and the swift smile was both frank and agreeably murderous. “If you really want the Philippines,” said Hay, “you can have them. I’ve got too much on my hands as it is.”