Empire

3

MRS. JAMES BURDEN DAY (“You may call me kitty, Miss Sanford”) was at home on Easter day, and Caroline, accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Trimble, helped fill her home in Mintwood Place, on a bluff just off Connecticut Avenue, with a wild, even primordial, view of Rock Creek Park, abloom with white and pink dogwood and flowering Judas.

“We should get to know the Democrats,” said Caroline to Mr. Trimble, who was himself a Bryan man, and found it difficult to follow Caroline’s circumspect line in regard to Roosevelt. The Tribune was intended to be read by everyone, and this meant that true political controversy, of the sort that Mr. Trimble affected to like, was not possible in a city dominated by the Roosevelt family with its ever-increasing royal style of entertaining. The novelty of a patrician in the White House had quite undone not only Washington’s old guard, so used to looking down on White House occupants, but the diplomatic corps, traditionally condescending when it came to the social arrangements of what was still thought to be a rustic republican capital, set in the Maryland woods. Since Caroline was popular with the Roosevelts, she was careful not to do anything that might jeopardize her useful, for the Tribune, entree. Of all the Roosevelts, she was most charmed by the serene Edith, who managed the Roosevelt circus with what looked to be no effort at all.

The plump, noisy, small President, in his passion to be thought sinewy, eloquent and tall, had taken to vigorous exercise in the White House, where wrestlers and acrobats were always welcome, and he would join in their gymnastics, with such gusto that a medicine ball, stopped by his red perspiring face, had nearly knocked out one of his eyes. Although this had been kept secret from the press, Caroline had discovered from Alice what had happened; from other sources, she had later discovered that the President was blind in one eye. But the public knew nothing of this; and he continued his strenuous life, riding horses at full speed along Rock Creek’s dangerously steep trails and bridle-paths, shouting at those in his path, “Stand aside! I am the President!”

Between court life and the rarefied world of the Hay-Adams house, Caroline was far removed, as Trimble accused, from those readers who were plain folk, and followers of Bryan. “But the Post is the Democratic paper. Why shouldn’t we be the Republican?” Caroline had thought Mr. Trimble unreasonable; but, of course, he was right in the sense that a newspaper that existed largely to entertain need not ally itself so exclusively with one faction. To please him, she had taken advantage of Mrs. Day’s invitation.

The Days lived in one of a row of similar houses, with steep porches, Gothic windows, and a roof that sprouted unexpected crenellations. The overall effect was of a fortress built to dominate Rock Creek.

Kitty sat behind her silver teapot, her silver coffeepot, and her regiment of cups. With the help of what looked to be an elder sister, she poured and greeted, and spoke of the weather. Caroline recognized a number of Democratic legislators, by face if not by name. Only the minority leader of the House, John Sharp Williams of Mississippi, was known to her from dinner-parties. A sardonic, dishevelled man, never entirely sober, he was feared for his wit. He collected her by, simply, putting his arm through hers, most indecorously, and guiding her toward the dining room, where a lonely decanter of whiskey had been placed, for his use. “I’m Jim Day’s boss, you know. He’s got to look after me.” While Williams poured himself whiskey, Caroline noted the nice pattern that a number of dark tea leaves made at the bottom of her cup, escapees from Kitty’s coarse strainer. “I didn’t know you knew Kitty, Miss Sanford.”

“I don’t. I know her husband.” Caroline paused; then added, “Slightly, when he was at the comptroller’s office.”

“He’ll go far, with Kitty’s father behind him.”

“The Judge?”

“The Judge. Oh, he’s a powerhouse, that man. He’s only got the one leg, you know. He got Jim the election.”

“Is that why Mr. Day married the Judge’s daughter?” Caroline softened the bluntness of the question with what she hoped was a deprecatory laugh. “I am a working journalist, Congressman.”

“Didn’t know the Tribune went in for that kind of story.” Williams’s round red face became solemn, a look that Caroline had come to know: the politician who has said to the press more than he intended to say, and fears the result.

“We don’t. My ‘Society Lady’ might hint around if I let her. But I won’t. Marriage is sacred to us.”

“Spoken like a true guardian of the morals of this republic, which you are, Miss. I make no bones about that.” Williams looked about the room. “Why, there’s the Speaker.”

“Mr. Cannon?” Caroline looked about her, eager to see this august personage. But Williams was mistaken. Someone who bore a slight resemblance to the Speaker had entered the parlor. Caroline recognized the man, a Washington realtor whose specialty was getting members of Congress “settled.” “It’s not Mr. Cannon.” Williams seemed relieved. “But then, most everybody’s headed back home by now. I’m surprised so many of us are still lingering on…”

“Potomac fever?”

“That’s for when you’re defeated. Then you can’t leave the town, ever. But we still come and go, and the more we go-home, that is-the longer we can stay around here.”

“I can’t wait until you all come back in November.”

“That’s kind of you, Miss Sanford.” Williams beamed at her, and for an instant, Caroline felt a hand lightly brush against her hip. At least, she had been spared a pinch of the sort certain notorious senators were known to bestow on ladies whose contours pleased them, often leaving blue-black badges on delicate flesh.

“I was not thinking of Congress in general,” said Caroline, deftly sliding a dining-room chair between them, “but the arrival of William Randolph Hearst.”

Williams scowled. “He’s already sent me his first orders. He wants to be on the Ways and Means Committee and on Labor.”

“You have obliged him?”

“In hell, yes. That’s where he’ll get those committees, not from me. You know, that fool is getting himself up to run for president. He takes the cake, that one.”

“Surely, he’s not the first fool to do that, or,” Caroline added, aware that Day was approaching her, “the first fool to be elected, if he is, of course.”

Williams laughed a loud whiskey laugh. “That’s pretty funny, Miss Sanford. Yes. There have been fools galore in the White House, and there are times when I think we have a precious one there right now, with all that ‘Bully!’ nonsense, and double-dealing… Jim, I never knew you aspired to the higher social circles.”

Day smiled, at Caroline; shook her hand. “We’re old friends, or so I like to think. I knew young Mr. Hay,” he said to Williams, who looked appropriately grave.

“Struck down, as if by lightning, in his prime,” intoned John Sharp Williams; then, whiskey in hand, he left host with guest.

“We’ve not done so well,” observed Day, neutrally, an angel food cake between them from which one large slice had been taken. Ladies hovered at the table’s other end, eating small pink shiny cakes, balancing teacups, gossiping.

“You mean the election?”

“That’s all we ever mean here.” He looked at her; the eyes were what the Society Lady had lately taken to referring to as “candid blue.” Lately, Caroline had rather hoped to encounter a pair of duplicitous blue eyes, which she could confound the Society Lady with. Meanwhile, the Society Lady herself, hugely incarnate, was working her way, methodically, through a plate of ladyfingers: it was her method to begin with the “fingernail,” a glossy blanched almond, and then, in two bites, to finish off the finger, and mourn the unbaked hand that she could not bite though it fed her, thought Caroline, rather wildly, head aswim with metaphors involving food, and all because the young man, towering beside her, was attractive, and made her think of-food. Was there a connection? Would she turn praying mantis, and devour him, as if he were angel food cake, or would she surrender to him, as all the romances-and the insistent Marguerite-required, her flesh mere cake to his sweet tooth? Perhaps, she decided, tiring of food metaphors, neither would devour the other; instead, they would resemble naked statuary in the gardens of Saint-Cloud-le-Duc, where, marble arms entwined, they would strike poses, in the rain-yes, she saw