Gore Vidal - Empire

“They will invent anything,” said Brisbane sadly. The two founding fathers of invented news were not pleased to find themselves being reinvented by others no less scrupulous. The irony was not lost on Blaise.

“The Chicago American’s got close to three hundred thousand circulation.” Hearst’s mind worked rather like a newspaper’s front page, a number of disparate items crowded together, some in larger type than others. “I’m going to add the word ‘American’ to the Journal here. Particularly now. Croker’s leaving Tammany Hall. Murphy’s taking his place. The saloon-keeper, who was also dock commissioner. The one we caught owning stock in that ice company.”

“Even so,” Brisbane sounded confident, “I’m willing to bet he’ll nominate you for governor next fall.”

“I’m not so sure.” The right foot now began to waggle, and the drumming fingers were still as the energy moved to the body’s opposite end. “Maybe you should try him out. See if he’ll nominate you for Congress in the Eleventh Ward. All you have to pay is your first year’s congressional salary. After that, they leave you alone in Washington, except on votes that concern the city, which nobody else cares about.” The Chief stared at Blaise.

“But I don’t want to go to Congress,” began Blaise.

“I was talking to Brisbane.” The Chief was equable.

“We’ve discussed it before.” Brisbane’s urbane whiskerless face looked, suddenly, statesmanlike. He had, it was rumored, socialist tendencies. “A sort of trial balloon. The Chief needs to win one high office before 1904, and governor of New York is the one that will put him in the White House.”

“What about Colonel Roosevelt? He’s bound to run again.” Blaise could not imagine the Chief, for all his journalistic skills, as a match for the dynamic, evangelical Roosevelt. More to the point, the Chief hated public speaking; hated crowds; hated shaking hands-his limp damp grip was much imitated along Newspaper Row.

A sub-editor entered with a newspaper proof. “The President’s message to Congress. We just got it on the wire.” Hearst took the long sheets of paper, and read rapidly; found what he was looking for; read aloud, imitating Roosevelt’s falsetto, not so different from his own: “Leon, however his name’s pronounced, was, according to our new president, ‘inflamed by the teachings of professed anarchists…’ ”

“Poor Emma Goldman,” said Brisbane.

“ ‘… and probably also by the reckless utterances of those who, on the stump and in the public press,’ that’s me, I hope Mother doesn’t read this, ‘appeal to the dark and evil spirits of malice and greed, envy and sullen hatred. The wind is sowed by the men who preach such doctrines, and they cannot escape their share of responsibility for the whirlwind that is reaped.’ ”

Hearst made a ball of the sheets of paper, and aimed it, successfully, at the waste basket beside Brisbane. Then he swung his feet off the desk, opened a drawer and withdrew a revolver, which he slipped into his coat pocket. “I’ve been getting death threats,” he said to Blaise. “And Mr. Roosevelt’s speech won’t help. Well, we’ll get him, too, one of these days.”

“With another bullet, to put him on his bier?” Blaise found dark comedy in the Chief’s melodramatic view of the world.

“Heaven forbid.” Hearst turned pale. “I hate violence. I was sick to my stomach when I heard about McKinley. Frightful. Frightful.” Blaise realized that, in some curious way, Hearst lived in a kind of dream where real people were turned, by his yellow art, into fictional characters that he could manipulate as he pleased. On those rare occasions when his fictions and the real world coincided, he was genuinely shocked. It was all very well for him to report that one Jack had taken a ride into Heaven aboard a bean stalk and quite another thing for an actual bean stalk to lift him up above the world.

Brisbane left them. The President’s message must be printed and commented on. Then Hearst asked for news of the Baltimore newspaper, and Blaise told him the truth. “It’s just a stepping-stone.”

“To where?”

“I want Washington. After all, you have everything else worth having.”

“You could run one of my papers.” Hearst stared at the snow, which was now sticking to the glass of the window. The room was filled with an odd refracted blue light.

“ You run them. I want my own.”

“In Baltimore?”

“The Examiner’s a beginning until…” But Blaise did not know where or what the “until” would be.

“She’d probably have sold, if the Hay boy hadn’t been killed.” Hearst liked to analyze Caroline. By and large, women did not interest him as people. But Caroline was now beyond mere womanhood, she was a publisher.

“I’m not so sure. She likes owning a newspaper.”

“I know the feeling.” Hearst made one of his rare mild jokes about himself. “Well, I’ll miss you around here.” With that, Blaise was dismissed. He was no longer of financial use to the Chief, whose mother’s fortune was even larger than when her son first set out to spend it all. Now that Blaise was himself a publisher, there was no need to continue the master-apprentice relationship. “Are you going to live in Baltimore?” The Chief seemed genuinely curious.

“No. The management’s good enough as it is, without me.” This was untrue, but Blaise was not going to tell Hearst that he was already planning a raid on the Chicago American’s editorial staff. He had an excellent managing editor in view, who would have to be paid more than Hearst paid him, which was far too much, but if anyone could salvage the Baltimore Examiner it would be one Charles Hapgood, a native of Maryland’s eastern shore and eager to abandon Chicago’s arctic winters and tropical summers for equable Baltimore.

“You should do well.” Hearst did not sound passionately convinced. “I mean, you’ve got the money, that’s what counts. Buy the best people and-that’s the ticket.” The pale gray eyes glanced for a brief instant in Blaise’s direction; and Blaise decided that the Chief knew about Hapgood. “You been giving any thought to the magazines?” This was the Chief’s new interest. He had been impressed by the amount of advertising that certain ladies’ magazines could command. But when he had tried to buy one of them, he had been put off by the cost. He would now have to start one-or two, or a thousand.

“I don’t know enough about how they work.” Blaise was direct. “Neither do you. Why bother?”

“Well, we could learn the business, I reckon. I’ve been thinking about, maybe, a magazine called Electrical Machine or something…”

“For ladies?”

“Well, they drive, too. But I’d aim that at men. Just a thought. I’m marrying Miss Willson one of these days.”

Blaise was surprised. “ Before the election?”

“Well, that part’s up in the air. Maybe I’ll…” The thin voice trailed off. Obviously, Hearst was afraid that scandal might be made of his long liaison with a showgirl; although marriage would silence the sterner moralists, might it not draw attention to the earlier liaison?

Blaise rose to go. The Chief gave him several limp soft fingers to squeeze.

“Which one?” asked Blaise, as he walked toward the door.

“Which one what?”

“Which Miss Willson are you marrying?”

“Which…?” For an instant, Hearst seemed entirely to have lost his train of thought. Marriage often had that effect on men, Blaise had noticed. “Anita,” said Hearst. Then corrected himself. “I mean Millicent, of course. You know that,” he added, with a hint of accusation. Hearst was that rare thing, the humorless man who could recognize humor in others, and even at his own expense. “Your French lady,” Hearst began a counter-attack.