Gore Vidal (117 page)

Diana Phipps, who spent most of the summer on Capri, “half an hour away by boat,” he also saw regularly. Her luxuriant dark hair, self-possession,
and full-figured beauty he found seductive, an exception to his general inclination to be attracted to petite women like Elaine Dundy and Claire. “So it is a time of water fetes,” he told Jason Epstein. The summer brilliance of the Amalfi coast quickly obliterated the dark winter he had had in New York. When Barbara came that same summer with Elizabeth Hardwick, whom he had gotten to know through Lowell and now again through the Epsteins, he rented a boat for an excursion to Capri, and he and Barbara traveled to northern Italy together. They “
waddled from great meal
to worse meal in the high heat of Venice.” Soon he was back at work on
Burr:
“70,000 words written, about a third I should think,” he wrote to Jason in late June. “Odd things are happening to my characters, but then look what happened to their republic?” He wasted little time on recriminations about
An Evening with Richard Nixon
. Anger he enjoyed, and found mostly energizing. It rarely drained him, and he could also put it aside when it suited him, especially for work, for which he lived and for which he had, so it seemed to many, great physical and emotional stamina. His hatred of political and moral evil still focused on the Vietnam War, on the self-serving exploitativeness of church and state in America, on mindless attitudes and policies about sex, drugs, environment, politics, power, and war. A ceaseless polemicist, still convinced his words might make a difference, he rarely missed an opportunity to express his views to the largest possible audience. Despite his reservations, that was why he had agreed to appear with Buckley on television and why he turned his talk-show appearances into discussions about contemporary politics rather than his own books, the newest of which,
Burr
, finished in early 1973 and published in November, was soon a critical success and a huge bestseller. For the first time since
Julian
the laudatory reviews were almost unanimous. Jason, who had visited Ravello the previous summer, was as delighted as Gore. In March, soon after Gore had finished the manuscript, he and Jason met in Nice to initiate an eating tour, which took them through the Dordogne and eventually to Madrid. Both were gastronomes and epicures. Gore loved to eat. He had no interest in cooking, even of the most rudimentary sort. At La Rondinaia there were two servants, one of whom functioned part-time as a cook. Jason loved both to consume and to prepare food. Cooking, some thought, may have been his greatest passion. As they drove from one three-star restaurant to another, they ate and drank the best France had to offer. “I remember at the end of
the tour I handed him
Burr
in two plastic bags. This was in Madrid,” Gore recalled. “We went to the Ritz Hotel. He left and took with him the two plastic sacks.” The Random House alliance had gotten off to a brilliant start.

With the publication of
Burr
, Vidal began to refashion what had been a single historical novel set in the Washington of his childhood into a grand scheme to dramatize his view of the dominant pattern of American history.
Burr
of course takes its name from the infamous Aaron, who succeeded in killing Alexander Hamilton, his political archrival, and came as close as the vice presidency to fulfilling his highest ambition. The present of the novel, set in New York City in the 1830s, is narrated by an invented journalist, Charles Schuyler, and the past by the aged Aaron Burr himself, as past and present are woven together in a story about national and individual parentage. Schuyler's narrative of his young manhood alternates with selections from Aaron Burr's journal of the Revolutionary War period, which the elderly Burr gives him to read. As a journalist, Schuyler is assigned to learn all he can about Burr, increasingly obsessed with the disgraced Founding Father. Amid historical accident Vidal finds the material for the plot of a novel. From the textbook facts he fashions dramatic moments that are vividly given a place and a time, a dramatic and novelistic setting. The two narrative voices have strength, resonance, authenticity. Washington and Jefferson have the reality of their weaknesses as well as their strengths, and Burr is far from the villain of his own story as he takes his place as a foundered Founding Father. In the end Schuyler discovers that he is Burr's illegitimate son.

The success of
Burr
had been anticipated late the previous year with
Homage to Daniel Shays, Collected Essays 1952—1972
. Suddenly readers were aware that there was now a substantial body of formidable essays on literary and political subjects. The title essay, published in August 1972 in
The New York Review of Books
, called for more democracy, not less, as the answer to America's problems. It seemed possible for the first time that “there now exists a potential American majority willing to see its best interests served not through the restrictive Constitution of the elite but through the egalitarian vision of Daniel Shays,” in which human rights were more important than property rights. It was an optimistic reading of the 1960s, partly realized, as Gore observed in the 1972 presidential election season, in the democratization of the Democratic Party's nominating process. “
What do you think of the title
Homage to Daniel Shays?”
he asked Jason. “I think it
works, now that the new (and the last) piece suddenly brings into focus twenty years of political uncertainty and waffling. The last sentence is a new departure.” It was the Constitution itself that needed changing, Vidal had come to believe. As a document, it valued property more than human rights. It had turned both major political parties into mirror images of one another. In this crucial regard there was little to no difference between Republicans and Democrats. Unfortunately, if one wanted to be in politics, there was no alternative. The New or People's Party had failed. “I quit the People's Party,” Gore wrote to a friend, “to avoid the group therapy sessions which were based on a perfect misunderstanding of human society—
any
society from Salem, Mass to Mao-Peking. Possibly the anthropologists will discover our true nature and help restore the lost Eden.” To become successful in politics his grandfather had turned from Populist to Democrat. Senator Gore's grandson had now separated himself from all parties. The Senator had revered the Constitution as sacred. As a young man, he had memorized every word. His grandson now proposed that it be radically revised.

Frequent visits to America, mostly for business, helped Gore keep his finger to the pulse of American politics, which he remained eager to speak up about and contribute to, though as gadfly commentator rather than as participant. For both
Homage to Daniel Shays
and then
Burr
, he put into firm place what had already begun to be his pattern of appearances when he published a book, usually two to four weeks of radio, television, and print-journalism interviews in the major cities—particularly New York, Washington, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco—and about a week in London, usually following the American trip. In Boston, in November 1973, where he did an extensive interview for
Fag Rag
, he met John Mitzel, an activist for homosexual rights, the publisher of Glad Day Books, and later the owner of a Boston bookstore specializing in gay literature. They became friendly. Mitzel admired Gore's outspokenness, particularly on the issue of the legal mistreatment of homosexuals. As to the interview, “
I sounded drunk
when sober; you all the reverse! It is plain that I can never be president now,” Gore wrote to him. He liked and respected Mitzel, though he told Dick Poirier, “I never do see much point to fag-mags—at least for those of us who can write elsewhere and say the same sort of thing. It is the dream of all these papers that the L.A. Chief of Police will become addicted to their style and, finally, like St. P. realize with a sudden blaze that Fags are not only GOOD but BETTER!” Whatever its ideological force, he did not
want as a writer to be associated exclusively with a political or a sexual movement. In San Francisco he resumed his friendship with Joe O'Donohue, living on reduced means, whom he had not seen for almost twenty years and who solicited his help in getting his memoir-in-progress published. He found O'Donohue as amusing as ever, someone to see both for his company and for old times' sake. In autumn 1974 he spent months touring American campuses, speaking to audiences usually in the thousands, his main topics political reform and sexual civil rights. “I was only in town a few days,” he told Louis Auchincloss, “after that 3 months of lecturing, whistle-stopping with splendid
large
crowds of masochists, lusting for my whip! As for such a mood in other times, look to Athens post-Syracuse, to Aristophanes, no mean lash himself and a proto-Myra-creator if ever there was one. Were our pretensions as a people and good luck (until recently) as an empire less then there would be no need for such fierce commentaries and diatribes. But we are deeply conceited … and so the necessary pin-pricks tend to become exercises in butchery. But to a good end, I like to think. The people-out-there, by the way, are a good deal more thoughtful than their rulers; they also know that they are being most beautifully and perfectly fucked…. What next?” As bitterly wounded as the nation still was by the Vietnam War, Nixon's resignation in August 1974 had taken some of the topical sting out of the subject. Clearly it was now only a matter of time before the final withdrawal. In late 1972 Vidal had remarked to Tom Driberg, “I'm sometimes in Ireland and therefore in London in my quest for
any
nationality other than this mark of Cain I bear with the rest of my unlucky countrymen.” Their luck, he felt, was changing, even if slowly. Nixon's departure and the imminent end of the war made a difference.

So too, for him personally, did the success of
Homage
and
Burr
. And so did La Rondinaia, where he now extended the summers into longer stays. “
The house is perfect
—Italy—the gardens are beautiful,” he wrote to Nini. “Ireland has sort of fizzled out for us too,” Howard wrote to Ned Bradford in May 1973. “When you come and pay us a visit here you'll understand why. It's a paradise.” Tom Driberg tried, to no avail, to tempt Vidal to consider buying a villa in Cyprus, with the inference that his own influence there was so great that either residence or citizenship would become available. Actually, Gore surmised, Tom's interest in getting him to Cyprus at least partly expressed his desire to spend more time there himself at little to no expense. Instead Driberg happily settled for frequent visits to La
Rondinaia, where Gore set him up for long periods in one of the guest rooms. Driberg's mission was to improve his health, which was increasingly poor, and to write a candid autobiography. In 1974, after two years of trudging over the steep steps to the entrance to the villa, Gore was able to buy access through the private road, which meant that he and his visitors could walk on a level path from the town square to the house. “We BOUGHT the right to the private road,” he told Elizabeth Hardwick, “so no more climbing when next you come—soon, I hope: June, July?” As usual, Howard oversaw the redecoration at the Via Di Torre Argentina and the renovations at La Rondinaia necessary to make the house comfortable for occupancy during fall and spring as well as summer. With guests and by themselves they enjoyed boating and swimming at Amalfi, excursions to Capri, especially when Diana Phipps was there, the general sense of summertime well-being that Ravello provided. Italy never seemed more attractive to Gore. Especially at La Rondinaia, and also in Rome, he had as much privacy as he wanted for writing, more than he believed he ever could have in New York or Los Angeles. He felt in touch with the things about America he wanted to be in touch with. European television began to cover more American news. The mail brought stacks of newspapers and magazines. Knowledgeable and sophisticated visitors came through Rome regularly. His European life and American identity seemed functional and compatible.

In Rome there was now an absence that pained him. Judy Montagu, witty, tart, full of humor, alive with scowling barbs as well as warm affections, had been at the center of Anglo-Roman life, through both her own charm and her friendships with distinguished people. Whenever Princess Margaret came, Judy and Milton Gendel were her hosts. Their apartment on the Isola Tiberina served as a social and artistic center. Her friends assumed that her English and Roman life with Milton would continue for decades. Literary herself, she was at work on an edition of letters between her mother and the Liberal Prime Minister H. H. Asquith, a frequent subject of discussion with Gore. With her daughter in a British school, in the early 1970s she began to spend more time in London. Gore saw her there in the autumn of 1972. She came over to his hotel for a brief visit. To his surprise, “she had lost an enormous amount of weight. She thought she had cancer. She had a dress which buttoned down the back. She'd lost so much weight that every time she moved, rather painfully, two more buttons would open up, just fall out of the holes, and I would have to rebutton her. I would have thought
there's something very wrong here.” Whatever the cause of her obvious physical decline, apparently she avoided sustained medical care. In early November 1972, in London, just a little short of her fiftieth birthday, she suddenly died, perhaps an adverse reaction to an overuse of prescription drugs by a person severely weakened by illness. “She had never paused to get cured,” her friend Colin Tennant wrote to the
Times of London
, quaintly stating her illness to have been consumption. “I asked Milton,” Gore later recalled, “‘What killed her?' Milton for once was succinct. He said, ‘Excess.' But also in her general personality. She overdid everything.” Apparently some of her friends had realized she was not well. But the seriousness of her condition escaped most of them. “
I feel dreadful about
Judy dying,” Princess Margaret told Gore in December, “as I know that if I had had her staying with me and under my not inconsiderable thumb I would have whipped her into hospital at once and tried to cure her sickness which was her downfall. Her funeral was beautiful with the tiny church packed with people bursting with love and sadness.” Any excuse, including the obvious one of distance, was sufficient for Gore to avoid the service. Though far from one of the principal mourners, his strong affection and regard for her made her loss personal enough to seem principal to him. “Bad times,” he wrote to Tom Driberg. “Grim about Judy.” He had known her since 1948. She had been in England when he had first arrived. Then she had been in Italy as well. For him, her Roman presence had been strong, someone with whom he shared a sense of humor and a delight in chatty and catty talk, in mutual amusement. Both social creatures, they had enjoyed one another's sociability. Rome and life seemed less pleasurable without her.