Empire (16 page)

Blaise told her about the Brooklyn Bridge. “The Chief decided that after all the fuss about the bridge—you know, the biggest and the best and so on—that the bridge was about to fall down. So we ran a series on how it’s about to collapse. Lovely stuff. Except there was nothing wrong with the bridge. Then when people found out that the bridge was safe, everyone was so mad at the Chief that he goes and publishes a big front-page story, saying that Brooklyn Bridge is safe at last, thanks to the
Journal
. It was a wonderful series!”

“Doesn’t it bother …” Caroline shifted tactfully from “you” to, “him that these things aren’t true?”

Blaise shrugged; and looked, momentarily, French. “It’s just for circulation. No one cares. There’s always another story tomorrow. Anyway, he makes things happen.”

“You mean, they
seem
to happen.”

“It’s all the same here. It’s not like other places. Where’s Del?”

“In New Hampshire, I think.”

“You like him?” Again the bright blue eager stare.

“Do you like him?” Caroline was curious.

“Yes. He’s very—old-fashioned, I guess. Is he going to work, or is he just going to be a clubman?”

“Oh, he’ll work, I suppose. He talks about the law. He talks about the diplomatic service.”

“Well, he’s set up there. Old Hay’s back on top.”

“Old Hay is not so well, I think. I liked them, the old people, this summer.”

“I can’t stand old people.” Blaise scowled. “They always act like they are judging us.”

“I don’t think they notice us at all.”

“Oh, they do! They notice the Chief anyway. The only old person he knows is his mother, and she’s jolly enough, for an old lady.”

“I hadn’t realized that you had developed this phobia for—old folks.”

“It’s New York!” Blaise grinned. “It’s the only place to be young in.”

“Well, I intend to do my best,” said Caroline, ready now to broach the delicate subject. But the one person in all New York who ought never to know their business approached the table. It was the infamous Colonel William D’Alton Mann. Florid, white-bearded, definitely elderly and thus entirely unacceptable to Blaise, the gentle-seeming Colonel, whose style of address was antebellum courtly—he had actually been a colonel in the war—was known to all New York as the city’s preeminent blackmailer. He published the irresistible weekly
Town Topics
, where, as “the Saunterer,” he confided to his readers a man-about-town’s inside knowledge of society’s dark side. The Saunterer gave the impression that he was more than eager to print not only devastating truths but ingenious libels about the rich and powerful. But this vivid impression was, largely, for effect. In actual fact, a truth too devastating or a libel too ingenious would first be submitted to the victim, who then had the opportunity to buy off the Colonel, usually with a loan of money, at a nominal interest rate, that became, in due course, a thoroughly bad debt. Smaller truths and minor libels were kept out of print by the payment of fifteen hundred dollars a year for a subscription to the Colonel’s luxurious annual volume, called, rather pointedly,
Fads and Fancies of Representative Americans
. Caroline was
delighted to meet a villain of such stature. Blaise was less than pleased.

“Dear boy.” said the Colonel, seating himself uninvited in an empty chair beside Caroline. “How I revel in what the Chief is doing to the Secretary of War. Mr. Alger is indeed a murderer, just as the Chief says, killing American soldiers with poisoned beef, the same old trick that was played on us who fought in the War Between the States. You must give him my compliments. He is the best thing to happen to journalism since—”

“Since
Town Topics
was revived by you,” said Caroline, eager to show that she was up-to-date. To her pleasure the Colonel’s dull red face began to take on a purple coloring at the edge of the snow-white whiskers.

Colonel Mann was all honey. “How rare it is to find a young lady who appreciates—well, courage, I suppose is the word.”

“That’s one word,” said Blaise.

“
The
word,” said Caroline. “I can’t get enough of your newspaper, and I don’t know why so many people I know are made uneasy by your … saunterings.” Caroline flattered.

“I am, at times,” the Colonel’s confession gave every appearance of shyness, “unkind, even—yes, a fault admitted is a fault mitigated—unfair. For instance, there is something about Mrs. Astor that annoys me, possibly because we’re all good Democrats, aren’t we? Well, the jewels that she wears in just one evening could rebuild the thousand and one Astor tenements that paid for them.”

“The Colonel’s turned socialist.” Blaise had not yet learned how to turn social disgust to fascinated rapture. Caroline had been well taught by Mlle. Souvestre.

“No, my boy. I simply voted the way the
Journal
told me to vote, for Bryan.” He took a pinch of snuff from a silver box. “Have I your permission, Miss Sanford?”

“Of course! How nice to know one another without being introduced. Versailles must have been just like … Rector’s.”

“God,” said Blaise to the oysters that had just arrived.

“You will live here, I hope?”

Caroline nodded. “It is the city of the future, and so perfect for someone like me who has no past, as you know best of all.”

“Oh, the Saunterer is not that much of an ogre. Believe me. You must get on with supper.” He rose, as champagne arrived, a present from Mr. Rector. “Mr. Houghteling tells me that everything is going nicely now, which is plain,” he spread his hands as if to embrace the young couple,
“to even my Saunterer’s eyes!” Colonel Mann moved on to the next room, and the men’s bar.

“He’s a monster. How can you talk to him like that?”

“I’m fascinated by monsters. How does he find out things? You know, dark secrets?”

Blaise toasted the air; and drank. Caroline satisfied herself with a single sip: this was not a time to be unalert. “He bribes servants mostly, and he pays people like Harry Lehr to give him gossip. They say he has a safe which is full-up with the dirt on everyone famous in the town.”

“Break into it!”

“What?” Blaise stared at her, as dumbly as his sharp features could allow.

“Well, wouldn’t that be a coup for the Chief? To publish the contents of Colonel Mann’s safe.”

“They might really run him out of town, if he did that.” Thus announced, the Chief himself appeared, with two young girls; all three in evening dress. Blaise introduced Caroline to Mr. Hearst, and the two Misses Willson. Hearst’s presence at Rector’s caused considerable excitement. Admirers shook his hand; detractors turned away. The Chief stared intently at Caroline and then, as the orchestra, this time in Hearst’s honor, began to play “There’ll be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight,” he said, in an odd thin voice, “Would you like to see me put the
Journal
to bed?”

“I thought the
Journal
never slept …”

“It goes to bed when they make it up, the front page, for the last time before they print.” Blaise was helpful.

Hearst was forceful. “Come on,” said the Chief. The Misses Willson continued to smile in unison. Hearst took Caroline’s arm, most politely. “Miss Sanford,” he said. She looked up at him; he was well over six feet tall. Caroline smiled; and understood why her brother found Hearst so exciting: he was one of those rare creatures who make, as Mlle. Souvestre would say, the weather.

A perilous old elevator, operated by an ancient Negro, took them to the second floor of the Tribune Building, where several men were still at work in a long ink-smelling room, rather like a livery stable except that instead of bridles and saddles attached to walls or mounted on sawhorses, there were long sheets of galley paper, drawings, photographs. The overhead electric light bulbs on their cords swayed whenever a heavy wagon made its way along Park Lane. The editor, Willis
Abbott, both dapper and deeply weary, presided over a mock-up of the front page, whose principal headline advised the reader that President McKinley was to make a major address on the Philippines, in St. Louis.

“Oh, no,” said Hearst mildly. “Unless we can tell them something they don’t know—like he’s going to annex the whole place, or burn down Manila …”

“A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” sounded, unbidden, in Caroline’s head. With both amusement and awe, she watched as Hearst put a number of strips of text and squares of illustration on the floor and then got down on his knees and, like a child happy with a puzzle, began to create—no other word—the next day’s news. But news was not the right word. This was not news but entertainment for the masses. A murder at the bottom of the page began, inexorably, to move higher and higher up the page. A drawing of the murdered woman, idealized to a Madonna-esque purity, found its way to the page’s center while the President sank to the page’s bottom, and a statement by Secretary of State Hay moved to the third page. During this, the Willson girls practiced a new dance step at the far end of the room beneath a large drawing of the Yellow Kid, a cartoonist’s invention for the
World
which Hearst had appropriated for the
Journal
(along with the cartoonist), causing the aggrieved Mr. Pulitzer to engage a new creator of Yellow Kids and, in the process, giving the generic word “yellow” to popular journalism.

“The Chief’s amazing,” Blaise murmured in Caroline’s ear. “He’s like a painter.”

“But is it
always
murder first?” Caroline’s voice was low, but Hearst, now on all fours, heard her. “Rape’s better,” he said, “if you’ll forgive the word.”

The Willson girls shrieked with delight. Hearst received an enlarged headline from a copy-boy: “Murdered Woman Found!” He placed it above the Madonna face. “We also like a good fire.”

“And a good war,” said Mr. Abbott dutifully.

“Look,” said Blaise. On the wall opposite, beneath an American flag, the huge headline “
Journal
’s War Won!”

“
Your
war, Mr. Hearst?”

“Pretty much, Miss Sanford. McKinley and Hanna weren’t ever going to fight. So we got the war going so they’d have to …” Hearst sat on his heels, a strand of blond dull hair in one eye. “Mr. Abbott, wasn’t the murdered woman found nude?”

“Actually, no, Chief. She was wearing a sort of gingham dress …”

“Well, make that a slip … a
torn
slip.” Hearst smiled up at Caroline. “I hope this doesn’t shock you.”

“No. Blaise has prepared me.”

“Blaise has got a real knack for this.” The great man then started in on page two, with running commentary to Abbott, mostly asking for more pictures and large headlines; also, “We’re giving too much space to that dude Roosevelt. Remember. We’re for Van Wyck. And sound government, and all that.”

“You mean Tammany, Chief?” Abbott smiled.

“Platt’s better than Tammany any day. But Van Wyck’s our crook. Roosevelt’s theirs. But we’ll clean up this city one of these days.”

“Reform?” asked Caroline, who knew in theory what the word meant; knew, in practice, what it meant when applied to New York City’s politics; knew nothing of what the word meant to Hearst.

“Yes, Miss Sanford. The whole country, too. Bryan’s hopeless. McKinley’s just a front for old moneybags Hanna.” Hearst stood up. On the floor, his masterpiece: the front page for the next morning’s edition of the
New York Journal
. “So we need somebody new, clean.”

“That’s what they
say
Roosevelt is.” Blaise was cautious.

“He’s Platt’s candidate. How can Platt be reformed? Anyway, he’s going to lose. Mr. Abbott.” Hearst turned to the editor just as that more than ever weary figure was presenting the intricate mosaic of the front page to the printer.

“Yes, Chief.”

“I’ve decided on our next president.” Even the Willson girls stopped dancing when they heard this. Everyone looked very solemn; even Caroline was impressed.

“Yes, Chief?” The editor was imperturbable. “Who?”

“Admiral Dewey. Hero of Manila. ‘You may fire when you are ready, Gridley.’ That’s as good as ‘Don’t shoot till you see the whites of their eyes.’ ”

“But did Admiral Dewey really say those—those inspiring words?” Caroline was now caught up in the excitement of inventing history, not to mention of creating presidents.

“Well, we said he said it, and I suppose he probably did say something like it. Anyway, he hasn’t denied it, and that’s what matters. Besides, he beat the Spaniards and got us Manila. Do you know him?” Although Hearst was looking at Caroline, the question was to Abbott.

“No, Chief. But I suppose we could write or cable him and inquire …”

“Nothing in writing!” Hearst was firm. “Send someone to Manila, to sound him out. If he’s willing, we’ll nominate him to run against McKinley.”

“Is the Admiral a Democrat?” asked Blaise.

“Who cares? I’m sure he doesn’t.”

“But,” asked Caroline, “does he want to be president?”

“Oh, everyone does over here. That’s why we call ourselves a democracy. Fact, just about anyone can be president, particularly if the
Journal
promotes him right.”

“You, too?” Caroline was bold; despite Blaise’s evident dismay.

But Hearst was bland. “Do you like Weber and Fields?”

“The shoemakers?” Caroline had heard the names before. “In Bond Street.”

The Willson girls giggled in harmonic unison. “No. Comedians. In vaudeville. I can’t get enough of them. We must take her with us sometime,” Hearst said to Blaise; then to Caroline, “Now get this. Weber and Fields are in this fancy French restaurant, and the waiter comes up after dinner and the waiter asks Weber if he wants a demitasse, and Weber says yes. Then the waiter asks Fields if he’d like a demitasse, too, and Fields says, ‘Yes,’ ” at this point Hearst began to laugh, “ ‘Yes, I’d like a demitasse, too, and,’ ” Hearst was now shaking with laughter while the Willson sisters clung to one another, giggling, “ ‘and I’d also like a cup of coffee.’ ” The office echoed with laughter; and Caroline assumed that her question had been dramatically answered.

Blaise drove her back to the Waldorf-Astoria; escorted her to the suite where old Marguerite, in her night-dress, greeted him with a cascade of pent-up French. “She will not learn English,” said Caroline, presenting Blaise with a new bottle of brandy, which he opened. As he filled a glass for each, Marguerite delivered herself of a tirade celebrating the beauties and comforts of Saint-Cloud-le-Duc as contrasted with the horrors of New York; then she went to bed.