The fact that each Saturday the Governor came down the river from Albany to breakfast with the Easy Boss indicated the nature of their relationship, or so the Chief darkly maintained.
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
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 maitre d’hotel 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
“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
