Empire (21 page)

Blaise was nervous. He had never met the Governor; he was, of course, used to him (“habituated,” he said to himself, reverting to French). By now he had watched the energetic figure on a dozen stages, the incarnation of, if nothing else, energy. Now the Chief wanted the Governor interviewed; thought the time was right for Blaise to try his hand at the deceitful art; wanted certain things asked, which Blaise had written down on a pad of paper, already smudged from sweaty fingers.
He was nervous; and wondered why. Was he not
habituated
to the great? He was a Sanford; a Delacroix, too. He reminded himself of his father’s deep contempt for all politicians, which had been deeply and permanently satisfied at Newport, Rhode Island, when President Chester A. Arthur had made the mistake of visiting the Casino, where everyone had blithely ignored him. Worse, when it came time for Mr. Arthur to leave, he was obliged to stand, quite alone, while the carriages of Astors, Belmonts, Delacroixs, Vanderbilts swept past him, as he himself shouted, “The President’s carriage!” Colonel Sanford had revelled in the situation. But Blaise lacked his father’s patrician disinterestedness.

At eight-thirty of a Saturday morning, the Fifth Avenue Hotel was uncommonly tranquil. A few guests were to be seen in the distant lobby, while several potential justices of the peace from upstate tentatively occupied the Amen Corner. They reminded Blaise of the sort of furtive men one saw in the Mulberry Street police station, standing in the criminal line-up.

Two members of New York’s police force guarded the door to the private dining room where their one-time commissioner was breakfasting, heartily—the usual adverb—on chicken pan-fried steak, with a pair of fried eggs, like magnified eyes on the steak, and a quantity of fried potatoes. Blaise had questioned the maître d’hôtel earlier. Apparently, the Governor was a big eater, in the Western frontiersman style; he liked his “grub” plain and plentiful and always fried.

Suddenly, a large, round, dark-waistcoated belly, packed with fried meat, appeared in the dining room’s doorway; the belly’s attachment, Governor-Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, said something to the two policemen which made them frown, and which made their old commissioner hoot with laughter, like a screech-owl, thought Blaise, swooping down upon a nocturnal rodent. The Governor was accompanied by the pale and more than ever weary-looking Platt. To Blaise’s surprise they had breakfasted without aides or—witnesses, he immediately thought. The Chief’s dark conspiratorial view of the world was contagious; and probably correct.

The policemen then saluted the Governor, who crossed to Blaise, ignoring the would-be supplicants. “Mr. Sanford? From the
Journal
. Our favorite paper, isn’t it, Mr. Platt?”

“There are worse, I suppose,” moaned Platt softly, moving toward his familiar settee; he was like the now proverbial man with a hoe come home to rest. “Mr. Sanford,” he murmured, touching Blaise’s hand
with his own delicate one. Then Senator Platt sank onto his throne in the Amen Corner, ready to rule as well as reign, while the nominal ruler of the state was left free to charm and delight a young journalist. As supplicants surrounded Platt, the boss waved Governor and Blaise a mournful farewell.

“Well, now, Mr. Sanford, why don’t you drive uptown with me to my sister’s house. We can talk on the way.” During this Roosevelt had taken Blaise’s left elbow into his right hand, a curious gesture which might seem a demonstration of intimacy or at least good feeling to an observer, but to the victim, so Blaise felt himself, it was more like a gesture of physical control, as the Governor forced him to walk rapidly alongside him, and in perfect step; again he was reminded of the Mulberry Street police station. But although the Governor was like a policeman, he was hardly the robust physical specimen that legend proclaimed. Roosevelt was as short as Blaise, who had spent a half-dozen years praying for half as many inches more; but he had stopped growing at sixteen. Yet where Blaise was muscular, Roosevelt was simply rubbery, with an enormous head and neck, the first emerging from the second like a tree’s section. The belly was definitely fat; the limbs were definitely thick but not muscular. Nevertheless, Roosevelt walked swiftly, purposefully, like an athlete with an appointment on some as yet undetermined playing field. Meanwhile, Blaise was bemused to discover that the Governor’s conversation was exactly as recorded by the press. In the lobby, when strangers asked to shake his hand and wish him well, he would flash those huge rock-like teeth and exclaim, in three distinct syllables, “Dee-light-ed!” When told something that he approved of, he would actually say “Bully!” like a stage Englishman. He even responded, in the street, to cries of “Teddy,” a name that Blaise knew no one ever dared call him in or out of the family.

A light April rain was dampening Fifth Avenue, if not Governor Roosevelt, who leapt inside his carriage, using Blaise’s elbow, still held in his right hand, as fulcrum. Blaise was happy to note that the brougham was closed. Otherwise, he had an image of the exponent of “the strenuous life,” the title of a lecture recently given in the Midwest, riding up Fifth Avenue in a rainstorm, shouting “Bully!” at the elements.

“You should go west,” said the Governor, predictably. “A boy like you should develop his body, and morals.”

Blaise found himself blushing, not at the word “morals,” a subject
that he, the French-reared young man, could have lectured the Governor on, but the word “body”; he prided himself on a musculature unequalled by any Yale classmate, the work of nature, admittedly, but still all his own, unlike the thick suet-pudding beside him. Close to, Roosevelt did not look young; but then, for Blaise, forty was not exactly a man’s optimum age. Deep lines radiated from behind the gold-framed pince-nez. The short-cropped hair was grizzled. Like a parenthesis of hair, the Chinese-style moustache framed—and disguised?—red, full, curiously voluptuous lips. The eyes were bright and quick and of no distinctive color, other than bright. The body was unhealthily fat. “I can beat you,” said Blaise, to his own amazement, “at Indian arm-wrestling.”

The Governor, who had been staring out the window, hoping to be recognized by a passing umbrella, turned an astonished gaze on Blaise. The spectacles were allowed to drop from his nose onto his chest—where they swung on their chain like a pendulum. The eyes, Blaise could see at last, were blue. “You! A city dude?” There was a burst of high laughter; then: “You’re on,” said the Governor.

The two men then arranged themselves on the back seat so that each could rest an elbow on the middle cushion as they interlocked forearms. Blaise was perfectly confident; he was stronger, he knew, as he began to force down the older man’s arm. But Roosevelt was heavier; finally, faced with defeat, he simply cheated. Aware that he was about to be beaten, he surreptitiously slid his feet under the folding seat opposite and, with this leverage, abruptly forced Blaise’s arm down. “There!” shouted the Governor, delighted.

“You had your feet under the seat.”

“I did not …”

“Look!” Blaise pointed; the feet were quickly withdrawn.

“An accident. They slipped.” For an instant Roosevelt looked furious, like a small child caught out. Then he roared. “Bully for you, my boy! Come on in. You’re no city dude. Whatever you are. A Sanford. Which Sanford?”

The family game was swiftly played through. The Colonel, a perfect snob like so many tribunes of the people, was quite at home with a Sanford; but somewhat intimidated by a Delacroix. As they got out of the carriage in front of 422 Madison Avenue, the brownstone house of the Governor’s youngest sister, Mrs. Douglas Robinson (Blaise took meticulous notes), Roosevelt said, “Do you box?”

“Yes,” said Blaise, who did.

“We’ll go put on the gloves in the basement, once breakfast’s settled.”

Mrs. Robinson, addressed as Conie by her brother, was a dark, bright-eyed woman, who led them into a small parlor, dominated by the head of a buffalo shot by the Governor when he was a cowboy in the West. The resemblance, Blaise noted, was eerie between victim-beast and victor-man. “I used to be a taxidermist myself,” said Roosevelt. “Birds, mostly. But I really wanted to be an ornithologist, a naturalist. Why Hearst?”

“Well, why not, sir?” Blaise sat in a William Morris rocking chair while Roosevelt worked off his breakfast by walking vigorously, if pointlessly, about the room. From the back parlor, a telephone rang from time to time and a low masculine voice would answer it. Apparently, the state of New York was being strenuously governed even as they spoke.

“He is against reform, of course. He is a Democrat, not that I am strict in such matters. But I think Boss Croker is, perhaps, unsavory, even by Tammany standards.”

“That’s true, sir. But he did stand by when you were running for governor, and you won by eighteen thousand votes because he wouldn’t really go all out for Judge Van Wyck.”

Roosevelt chose not to hear this. “Last week, Mr. Hearst was at the Tammany Hall dinner, in Grand Central Palace, presided over by our friend Croker, home from Ireland, or
away
from home, in Ireland.
I
would not want to be so closely allied with such a man.”

“I think, sir, the Chief was there to listen to Mr. Bryan.”

“I can’t think why a newspaper publisher, who went to Harvard, should want to involve himself in politics when he has, as far as I can tell, no politics at all.”

Although Blaise had been more amused than bemused by the Chief’s sudden obsession with politics and the holding of high office, he could not tell Roosevelt that much of the Chief’s interest had been created not, as many thought, by the career of his father, Senator George Hearst, but by that of the thick small restless shrill-voiced man who was marching about the room like a toy soldier that someone had wound up but forgot to point in any particular direction. Blaise had now given up on conducting an interview with the Governor. Those whom Roosevelt regarded as social equals, and Blaise was one, were not treated as a part of the solemn consistory of reforming angels at work with bucket and shovel in the stables of the republic; rather, they were
treated as a fellow boy by a boy who despite—or because of—small stature and bad eyesight, was a born bully and, perhaps, leader, too, if anyone could be persuaded to follow him. Certainly, whatever crossed his plainly quick mind, he felt obliged to express.

Hearst now ceased to interest the Colonel. Instead, he was distracted by a model of a battleship, not, Blaise was reasonably certain, a treasured possession of Mrs. Robinson’s. “I was given this when I was assistant secretary of the Navy.
Build more
, I said. Have you read Admiral Mahan on sea-power? Published nine years ago. An eye-opener. I reviewed it in the
Atlantic Monthly
. We are fast friends. Without sea-power, no British empire. Without sea-power, no American empire, though we don’t use the word ‘empire’ because the tender-minded can’t bear it. Like Andrew Carnegie, that old scoundrel, who says that if we don’t give freedom to our little brown brothers in the Philippines, we will be cursed. By what? His money? He told Mr. Hay that if an American soldier fires—as they’ve had to do—on the Filipinos, we will lose our republic at home. Incredible! Thanks to Mr. Carnegie and his friends our government was obliged to fire on a great many American workers at the time of the Haymarket riots, and the old fraud was dee-light-ed. Hypocrite. But Mahan’s not.
He’s
a patriot. The torpedo boats. I have him to thank for the theory. The Navy has me to thank for arming us, in time …”

“… and you to thank for Admiral Dewey.” Blaise took advantage of a pause during which Roosevelt clicked his teeth together three times, like a dog; the sound was as disconcerting as the expression of the face was alarming. “Well, I did get him the job in the Pacific. Took a bit of doing. Had to get a
senator
to sponsor him first. Imagine! What a country! If we hadn’t found us a senator to sponsor him, another officer would have got the job, and we’d not be in Manila. Good man, Dewey. Good officer. They’ll try to run him for president, of course. I hope he’s wise. And stays out.”

“Mr. Hearst thinks the Admiral would be better than Bryan …”

“Dear boy,
you’d
be better than Bryan. Didn’t my sister Anna visit your father a few years ago?”

“Did she go to Allenswood?” Suddenly Blaise remembered a charming, excessively plain, large-toothed woman, very much at home in France.

“No. But she studied with Mlle. Souvestre when she still had her school in France. Before she moved to England …”

“My sister Caroline was there, too. In England …”

Roosevelt talked through him. “… did wonders for Bamie’s French and general knowledge but I’m not so sure of morals. She’s now a freethinker, like Mlle. Souvestre …”

“Who’s an atheist, actually.”

Roosevelt ground his teeth in a lively imitation of rage. “So much the worse for my sister. And yours …” Like so many politicians who never ceased to talk, he heard what others said even through the comforting cascade of his own words. “At least mine learned perfect French. What about yours?”

“She already spoke perfect French. She was obliged to learn perfect English, which she did.”

“We’re sending my niece to her this year. We have hopes …” But the Governor looked grim.

“That would be the daughter of Mr. Elliott Roosevelt, sir?”

“Yes. My brother is well known to your readers.” The Governor threw himself into an armchair; and glowered at Blaise, as if he were Hearst, the devil. Four years earlier, Elliott Roosevelt had died, under an assumed name, in 102nd Street, where he had been living with his mistress and a valet. Although he had been a heavy drinker for years, Blaise’s father had always said that if any Roosevelt could be said to have true charm, it was Elliott, who had spent quite a lot of time in Paris, much of it at the Chateau Suresnes, a place of refuge—or containment—for wealthy alcoholics. Some years earlier, the Governor had publicly declared his brother insane, to the delight of the press. The Chief, in particular, found it almost impossible to let the Roosevelt family skeleton rest peacefully in its closet; he also never let pass an opportunity to remind New Yorkers that in order to avoid taxes, Theodore Roosevelt used to give as his place of residence not New York State but the District of Columbia. Because of this confusion over residence he had come close to losing the nomination for governor; but then the brilliant Elihu Root, a lawyer without peer, as the
Journal
would say, had talked the nominating convention around. All in all, Blaise was pleased that he himself had no political ambitions. Between private life and public, there was, for him, no contest. What, he sometimes wondered, would they do with the Chief’s private life when he decided to enter the arena?