Empire (30 page)

Root nodded. “He will do anything to get you out of New York State.”

“Bully!” The small blue eyes, half-hidden by the plump cheeks, shone. “If Platt wants me out I must be a pretty good reformer.”

“Or simply tiresome.”

Roosevelt was now on his feet, marching, as to war, thought Hay. He never ceased to play-act. “I’m too young to spend four years listening to senators make fools of themselves. I also don’t have the money. I have children to pay for. On eight thousand dollars a year, I could never afford to entertain the way Morton and Hobart did.” At the mantel, he stopped; he turned to Hay. “How is Hobart?”

“He is home. In Paterson, New Jersey. He is dying.” The President had already warned Hay that in accordance with the Constitution, the Secretary of State would soon become, in the absence of an elected vice-president, heir to the presidency should the President himself die. Hay was agreeably excited at the thought. As for poor Hobart himself, Hay had only a secular prayer; and the practical hope that were the Vice-President to die, Lizzie Cameron could return to the Tayloe house in Lafayette Square a year before she had planned, thus keeping happy the Porcupinus, who was still in Paris, porcu-pining for Lizzie, who, in turn, was in love with an American poet, twenty years her junior. As she had made Adams suffer, so the poet made her suffer; thus, love’s eternal balance was maintained: he loves her, and she loves another who loves—himself. Hay was quite happy to have forgotten all about love. He had not Adams’s endless capacity; or health.

“I’ve proposed you, Mr. Root, for governor, if I don’t run again.” Roosevelt gave a small meaningless leap into the air.

“I have never said that you were not kindness itself.” Root was demure. “But Senator Platt has already told you that I’m not acceptable to the organization.”

“How did you know?” There were times when Hay found the essentially wily Roosevelt remarkably innocent.

“I have an idle interest in my own affairs.” Root was equally demure. “I hear things. Happily, I don’t want to be governor of New York. I don’t want to know Platt any better than I do; and then, like Admiral Dewey, I dislike Albany.”

“But the Admiral does like the governor’s mansion,” Hay contributed.

“He is a simple warrior, with simple tastes. I am sybaritic. In any case, Governor, you’ll be happy to know that I have surrendered to you. Next month your friend Leonard Wood will become military governor of Cuba.”

“Bully!” Two stubby hands applauded. “You won’t regret it! He’s the best. Who’s for first governor-general of the Philippines?”

“You?” asked Root.

“I would find the task highly tempting. But will the President tempt me?”

“I think he will,” said Root, who knew perfectly well, as did Hay, that the farther away McKinley could send Roosevelt, the happier the good placid President would be. The Philippines were Roosevelt’s anytime he wanted them, once the bloody task of pacification was
completed. Tens—some said hundreds—of thousands of natives had been killed, and though General Otis continued to promise a complete submission on the part of Aguinaldo and the rebels, they were still at large, dividing the United States in what would soon be an election year, while Mark Twain’s answer to Rudyard Kipling would, Hay had been told by their common friend Howells, soon be launched. Meanwhile, the old Mississippi boatman, now of Hartford, Connecticut, had told the press that the American flag’s stars and stripes should be replaced with a skull and crossbones, acknowledging officially the United States’ new role as international pirate and scavenger.

“The Major,” Hay was cautious, “has said you’d be an ideal governor once the fighting stopped.”

“I might be helpful there,” said Roosevelt, wistfully: he truly liked war, as so many romantics who knew nothing of it tended to. One day’s outing with bullets in Cuba was not Antietam, Hay thought grimly, where five thousand men died in less than an hour. It was generally assumed that because Roosevelt’s father had so notoriously stayed out of the war, the son, filled with shame, must forever make up for his father’s sin of omission. Hay could never decide whether he very much liked or deeply disliked Roosevelt. Adams was much the same: “Roosevelts are born,” he had observed, “and never can be taught,” unlike Cabot Lodge, a creature of Adams’s own admittedly imperfect instruction.

“Save yourself, Governor.” Root rose; and stretched. “We have so much to do right now. There is an ugly mood out there.” An airy wave of an arm took in the mud-streaked glass of the White House conservatories. “And an election next year.”

“Ugly mood?” Roosevelt sprang to his feet. For a man so plump, he did exert himself tremendously, thought Hay, whose every rise from a chair was a problem in logistics, and a source of pain.

“Yes,” said Hay. “While you have been enjoying the company of Platt and Quay and the refinements of the Albany mansion, we—the Cabinet and the Major—have been ricocheting about the country for the last six weeks. As there were elections in—”

“Ohio and South Dakota. I’m a Dakotan myself. When I—” Roosevelt got everything back to “I.”

Root raised a hand. “We shall all read
The Winning of the West
. To think! You are not only our Daniel Boone but our Gibbon, too!”

Roosevelt blew out his upper lip so that lip and moustache fluttered
against the tombstone teeth. “I hate irony,” he said with, for once, perfect sincerity.

“It will do you no harm,” said Root. “The fact is the labor unions are giving us more and more trouble, particularly in Chicago. We barely squeaked through in Ohio, where the President made a special effort, and though Mark Hanna spent more money than ever before, John McLean engineered a big victory in Cleveland for the Democrats.”

“Out of the twelve states voting, we carried eight.” Roosevelt was brisk. “Only cranks opposed us …”

“But in our own party,” Hay began.

“
Every
party has its lunatic fringe.” Roosevelt’s recent coinage of this phrase had given him great pleasure, which he shared with the world. “Luckily for us, the Democrats have Bryan. He’s just carried
his
Nebraska with a fusion ticket, which means he’ll be nominated, which means we will win.”

“Unless the Admiral hears the unmistakable cry of a grateful people,” said Hay, working himself out of his chair, “and puts himself forward as a candidate opposed to the very same empire that he—guided by you, Theodore—brought us. Now that would be a splendid
big
election.”

“That would be a nightmare,” said Root.

“That won’t happen,” said Roosevelt.

Adee appeared yet again in the doorway. “Colonel Roosevelt, Admiral Dewey wants to know if you would be willing to submit yourself,” for some reason, today, of all days, Adee was more than ever quacking like a duck, thought Hay, as he shoved himself to his feet, “to something of a photographical nature, which sounds like—our telephone has developed a strange sea-like sound, like the inside of a sea-shell when you hold it to your ear …”

“Mr. Adee is stone-deaf,” said Hay to the others, his face averted from Adee, who could then neither hear his voice nor read his lips.

“Sounds like
what
?” Roosevelt’s eyes gleamed. He loved all forms of publicity.

“Biograph, Governor.”

“Biograph?” Hay was puzzled.

“It is a
moving-picture
,” said Roosevelt, bounding toward the door. “Gentlemen, good day.”

“Do nothing, Governor,” Root was beaming, “until you hear the unmistakable call of the people.”

“You,” said Roosevelt, waving a fist at Hay, “and Henry Adams have
a great deal to answer for, with your deprecatory ironic style, which is like … like yellow fever, this
unremitting
cynicism.” Roosevelt was gone.

Hay looked at Root and said, “If nothing else, Teddy’s more fun than a goat.”

“Unremitting cynicism.” Root laughed. “He comes to Washington as a candidate for vice-president with the backing of Platt and Quay, the two most corrupt political bosses in the union.”

“Doubtless, he means to betray them, virtuously, in the interest of good government and, of course, reform …”

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.

F
OR 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 though 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 …”