Gore Vidal - Empire

Root nodded thoughtfully. “I confess that to betray without cynicism is the sign of a master politician.”

“Certainly, the sign of an original.” Hay started to the door. “I must visit the Major.”

“I must go to work.” Root opened the door, and stood to one side so that the senior Cabinet member could go first. Hay paused in the doorway. Adee was at his desk, back to them; thus, wrapped in impenetrable silence. Hay looked at Root and said, “You know who the Major wants for vice-president?”

“Don’t tell me Teddy…”

“Never Teddy. He wants,” Hay studied Root’s face, “you.”

Root was impassive. “The Republican National Committee wants me,” he said precisely. “I don’t know that the President was ever influenced by them.”

“He isn’t.”

“It is,” said Root, “a long time until next summer and your-not my-twentieth century.”

Behind Adee’s back, Hay bet Root ten dollars, even money, that the new century began the coming first of January, 1900, and not a year from that day.

FOR CAROLINE, MARRIAGE TO DEL was postponed until he had returned from Pretoria, in a year’s time. Yes, she would come to South Africa to see him. No, she did not want a formal engagement. “A woman does that sort of thing for a mother, and I am not so burdened.” They came to these terms in the large victoria which was used by the Secretary of State for weddings, and funerals.

They drove through a light rain across Farragut Square to the K Street house of Mrs. Washington McLean, who, with her daughter-in-law Mrs. John R. McLean, as vice-reine, presided jointly over Washington society in a way that no President’s wife could, even were she not epileptic. The senior Hay had decided not to attend the afternoon reception for Mrs. Washington McLean’s daughter, Millie, now wife to Admiral Dewey. As head of Ohio’s Democratic Party and proprietor of the Cincinnati Enquirer , John McLean, now the Admiral’s brother-in-law, was particularly unpopular with the Administration. But Del saw no reason why he shouldn’t go, and Caroline was eager to meet her fellow publisher, Mr. McLean. Thus far, their paths had not crossed in Washington’s jungle. But then Caroline had kept pretty much to her own bailiwick throughout the summer, which had proved to be as equatorial as Cousin John had promised. Fortunately, to Caroline’s surprise, she had proved as strong as she had boasted. There was no gasping retreat to Newport, Rhode Island, or Bar Harbor, Maine. She had divided the furnace-season between Georgetown and Market Square; and duly noted that by mid-July the city was entirely African. The President had retreated to Lake Champlain. Congress had gone home and the gentry had fled to cool northern spas. As a result, she had never so much enjoyed Washington. For one thing, there was the newspaper to be fathomed. For another, there were the legal maneuverings of Houghteling and Cousin John. To make no progress was Houghteling’s masterly aim; and no progress had been made. Meanwhile, Trimble taught Caroline the newspaper business, which seemed to have very little to do with news, and even less with business, in a profitable sense. Yet circulation had begun, slowly, to increase, thanks to Caroline’s bold imitation of Hearst. Both the Post and the Star had sent reporters to interview her, but she had refused to see them.

In a city where all power was based on notoriety, she was thought eccentric-a rich young woman perversely playing at being a newspaper proprietor. She was not distressed by what they wrote. She now knew, at first hand, that nothing written in a newspaper should ever be taken seriously. She might herself not know how to produce a successful newspaper but she certainly had learned how to read one. Simultaneously, Trimble had shown an unexpected, even original, interest in the corruption of city officials, and though she doubted that the subject was of much general interest, she encouraged him to reveal what crimes he could. Meanwhile, she exulted in the river’s catch of beautiful bodies, often torn, literally, to bits by raging passions. She was now experimenting with abandoned live babies in trash-cans, having failed to ignite the city’s compassion with abandoned dogs and cats.

“How long will you keep it up?” asked Del. In front of them, Admiral Farragut, all in metal, rested a spy-glass on his raised left knee. Farther on, off the square in K Street, stood the McLean mansion.

“Oh, forever, I suppose.” Their carriage now joined a long, slow line in front of the K Street mansion.

“But doesn’t the paper lose a good deal of money?”

“Actually, there is a small profit.” She did not add that the profit still came from calling-cards, and now that Congress was due to assemble in December, orders were coming in at rather more than the seasonal rate. “Anyway, I do it to amuse myself, and others.”

Del tried not to frown; squinted his eyes instead. Caroline had come to know all his expressions; there were not many but they were, for the most part, agreeable to her. He had grown more confident since his diplomatic appointment; and somewhat stouter. He was his mother’s child. “You do find quite a lot of crime here.” Del tried to sound neutral. “I suppose people like to read about that.”

“Yes, there is a lot of crime to be found here. But the real point is,” and Caroline frowned, not for the first time, at the thought, “does it make any difference if you tell people what is actually happening all around them? or do you ignore the real life of the city and simply describe the government in the way that it would like you to?”

“You are a realist. Like Balzac. Like Flaubert…”

“Like Hearst, I’m afraid. Except that Hearst’s realism is to invent everything because he wants to own everything, and if you’ve invented the details of a murder or a war, why, then it’s your murder, your war, not to mention your readers, your country.”

“Do you invent?”

“We- I do nothing, really. Like Queen Victoria I encourage, advise and warn-we sometimes put in what others leave out…”

“As a matter of good taste…”

Caroline laughed. “Good taste is the enemy of truth!”

“Who is truth’s friend?”

“No one in Washington-that I’ve met, anyway. I hope my peculiar métier doesn’t embarrass you.” To say that Del was conventional was to say everything.

“No, no. You are like no one else, after all.”

“You will do well in…”

“Diplomacy?”

“Pretoria.” They both laughed; and entered the “sumptuous mansion,” as the Tribune always described any home with a ballroom, at whose center stood the splendid Mrs. Washington McLean, flanked by her daughter Millie, a handsome little woman, aglitter with diamonds, and the happy white-haired, teak-faced, gold-braided bridegroom. Although Caroline had not been to many of Washington’s hard-pan affairs (so named because these new rich had, often as not, made their millions with a hard pan in some Western creek, prospecting for gold), she recognized from her own newspaper’s reports numerous city celebrities, permanent residents, often from the West, builders of new palaces along Connecticut and Massachusetts Avenues, those two great thoroughfares of the fashionable West End. She herself always caused something of a stir, as a grand Northern or European, or whatever she was, personage who had taken on the proprietorship of a dull small-town newspaper and made it incontrovertibly and shockingly yellow. No one could guess her motive. After all, she was a Sanford; engaged, more or less, to the equally rich Del Hay; yet she spent her days in Market Square, dealing in murders and, lately, civic corruption; and her evenings at home, where few of Washington’s cliff-dwellers or hard-panners were ever invited, assuming that they would come to the house of so equivocal a maiden.