Gore Vidal - Empire

“You must come see me, Miss Sanford.” The huge dark wig was aglitter with rubies. “You, too, Mr. Sanford, though I have heard that you have no time for old ladies.”

Blaise blushed becomingly. “We’ve only arrived, Mrs. Astor, my step-brother and me…”

“The Prince has a great deal of time for ladies,” said Mrs. Jack in her low drawl, “of any and every age.”

“How you comfort me.” Mother-in-law smiled with dislike at daughter-in-law, who was now examining Blaise speculatively.

“Don’t,” said Mrs. Jack, “get married.”

“I have no intention of marrying.” Blaise recovered his poise. He was a match for Mrs. Jack if not her mother-in-law.

“Like dear Harry?” asked Mrs. Astor, finally acknowledging the fawning creature at her side.

“I don’t know about that.” Blaise was staring boldly at Mrs. Jack, who suddenly looked away. Was she cold? Caroline wondered; and what, after all, was coldness but a strategy in the dangerous American world where a lady’s fall from grace could cause her extrusion-no matter how resonant her name or heavy her wealth-from the only world that mattered? Paris was filled with extruded American ladies, paying dearly for adulteries of the sort for which a French lady would have been applauded.

“I won’t be a bachelor forever,” Lehr trilled. The Drexel girl pursed her lips, as if to kiss the air. She was the one, poor creature, thought Caroline. But, then, perhaps, they were well-matched. She might be another Mlle. Souvestre.

“We are told,” said Mrs. Astor, “that you and Mamie-so original, isn’t she?-” Mrs. Astor’s malice was royal in its self-assurance-“plan to give a dinner for dogs.”

“Dogs?” Mrs. Jack’s deep voice dropped to an even lower, almost canine register.

“Dogs, yes.” Lehr yelped. “Each with its owner, of course.”

“How amusing.” Mrs. Astor made of “amusing” three full evenly emphasized syllables.

“At the same table?” asked Caroline.

“There will be different tables, of course.”

“So that you can tell the dogs from their masters?” As Caroline spoke, she knew that she had, once again, gone too far. Wit had always been disliked and feared at Newport, while wit in a woman was sufficient cause to be burned as a witch anywhere in the republic.

The Astor ladies chose to ignore Caroline’s slip. But she knew that each would give damning evidence should she, indeed, be tried for witchcraft.

Lehr took charge of the Astor ladies and swept them into the party. “He’s awful,” said Blaise.

“But think how much duller this place would be without him.”

“Plon needs a rich widow.” Blaise changed the subject.

“Don’t look at me. I’m no help. I’m outside this world. In Washington…”

“Why don’t you take him there, in the fall?”

“I’ll take Plon anywhere, of course. I adore him, as you know…”

“As I know.” They stared at each other. The orchestra was now playing Tales of Hoffmann . “I hear that Cousin John’s wife is dead.”

Caroline merely nodded; and said, “How is Mr. Houghteling?”

“Lawyers!” Blaise let the subject go. Neither had much emotion left to bear on the subject of the money that divided them. “I’ve told Plon that Mrs. Astor-the young one-only flirts.”

“I think he’s worked that out. But he thinks that he understands American women better than he does because he has seduced so many of them in Paris,”

“Does he tell you such things?”

“Doesn’t he tell you?”

“Yes, but I’m a man.”

“Well, I’m not an American woman. Anyway, what those creatures do in Paris is one thing.” Caroline thought of the beautiful Mrs. Cameron with her beautiful boy poet, of the majestic antlers once again sprouting from Don Cameron’s head, not to mention a delicate unicorn’s horn from the pink marble baldness of Henry Adams’s brow.

Lord Pauncefote joined them, having no doubt exhausted Helen Hay with his notorious and habitual long answers to questions not put to him. “Your friend Mr. Hearst is in splendid form.” He acknowledged Blaise’s identity. “He accuses poor Mr. Hay of being England’s creature.”

“Oh, that’s just to fill space,” said Blaise.

“Between murders,” Caroline added:

“Actually, he’s going to have some more fun with Roosevelt!”

Pauncefote shut his eyes for a long instant, always a sign that he was interested; that a message to the Foreign Office would soon be encoded. “Yes?” Pauncefote’s eyes were again open…

“The Chief’s been in touch with some of the leading goo-goos…”

“The leading what?”

“Goo-goo,” said Caroline, “is what reformers of the American system are called by those who delight in the system. Goo-goo is an-abbreviation?-of the phrase ‘good government,’ something Governor Roosevelt, like all good Americans, holds in contempt. Isn’t that right, Blaise?”

“Not bad.” Her brother’s praise was grudging.

“Goo-goo,” murmured Pauncefote without relish.

“The goo-goos are attacking Roosevelt because he’s a creature of the bosses but likes to talk about reform, which he’s really as much against as Senator Platt. The Chief’s going to have some fun with all this when the campaign starts.”

“I suppose,” said Pauncefote, “Governor Roosevelt is too much the soldier for this-heady political life.”

“Soldier!” Blaise laughed delightedly. “He’s just a politician who got lucky in Cuba.”

“But that was a famous victory over Spain, and he was part of it.”

“As architect, yes,” said Blaise, and Caroline was surprised that her brother seemed to know of the plotting that had gone on amongst Roosevelt and Lodge and the Adamses and Captain Mahan. “But not as a soldier. The real story in Cuba-which the Chief will never print-is not how we bravely defeated the Spanish but how seven hundred brave Spaniards nearly beat six thousand incompetent Yanks.”

Pauncefote stared, wide-eyed, at Blaise. “I have never read this in any newspaper.”

“You never will, either,” said Blaise. “In this country, anyway.”

“Until I publish it.” Caroline was indeed tempted to puncture the vast endlessly expanding balloon of American pomposity and jingoism.

“You won’t.” Blaise was flat. “Because you’d lose the few readers you’ve got. We create news, Lord Pauncefote.”

“Empires, too?” The Ambassador had recovered his professional ministerial poise.

“One follows on the other, if the timing’s right.” Blaise was indifferent; and most Hearstian, thought Caroline.

“I shall reexamine the careers of Clive and Rhodes, with close attention to the Times of their day.”

“Lord North’s career would be more to the point.” Blaise was hard. Caroline wondered who had been educating him; certainly not Hearst. Plon joined them; and Pauncefote withdrew.

“Have you found a rich lady?” asked Caroline.

“Oh, they are-what do the English say?-thick upon the ground. But they cannot talk.”

“Bring him to Washington.” Caroline turned to Plon. “We are rich in ladies whose husbands are under the ground. And they talk-the ladies, that is.”

“Perhaps we’ll both come, after the election.” Blaise stared, idly, at a pale blond girl who was approaching them, on the arm of a swarthy youth. What color, wondered Caroline, would the children of so contrasted a couple be? “But New York is more Plon’s sort of oyster.”

“Oyster?” Plon’s grasp of idiom was weak. “Huître?” He translated, tentatively.

To Caroline’s amazement the blond girl greeted her warmly. “Frederika, Miss Sanford.” The voice was Southern; the manner shy; the profile, turned to Caroline, noble. “I’m Mrs. Bingham’s daughter. From Washington. Remember?”