The maid-of-all-work appeared with tea. Caroline had planned to move to larger quarters and hire what the Apgars would call a proper staff, but John’s liabilities had used up her own income for the year; fortunately, the newspaper had begun, shyly, to flourish, and she could live, comfortably, as a Mrs. Sanford in Georgetown instead of the Mrs. Sanford, which she would not be until March 5, 1905, some fifteen months in the future. Worse, she suspected that John had even greater debts than he had admitted to. Even worse, she suspected that Blaise knew just how insolvent her unexpected bridegroom was, because he had only recently suggested that she sell him the Tribune, if she were so minded. She was not so minded, she said, and continued to watch, as did all Washington, his palace take shape on Connecticut Avenue, rivalling in its ornate marble splendor those Dupont Circle palaces where reigned the Leiters and now the Pattersons, whose daughter, Eleanor, known as Cissy, a restless nineteen-year-old, entered on the arm of the most elegant member of the House of Representatives, one Nicholas Longworth of Ohio, a dapper figure in his early thirties, most glitteringly bald. One day it was rumored that he was supposed to marry Marguerite Cassini; the next, Alice Roosevelt; the day after, no one at all, for “he is,” his mother had confided to the press, “a born bachelor.”
Caroline poured tea; made conversation, not that much of that ever had to be made in a room containing Alice, who never stopped talking, particularly when inspired to shock, and Long-worth seemed her particular butt of the moment. While Marguerite Cassini glowed, in her Tartar way, and Alice spoke rudely of the House of Representatives, Cissy Patterson told Caroline her problems. Cissy’s face was that of a dull red-haired Pekinese, with a small pink nose; eyes, too, for she had been weeping. “Yes, I’ve been crying on Nick’s shoulder,” she murmured to Caroline.
“The Pole?”
“The Pole. I can’t believe Mother is doing this to me.”
“But he is handsome…”
“I don’t think I care for men,” said Cissy, staring at Caroline in a way that made that new mother-new woman, too-somewhat uneasy; the gaze was too like Mlle. Souvestre’s.
“Oh, you’ll get used to them. They are too large, of course, for most uses.” Caroline thought fondly of Jim, who visited her every Sunday, after his ride along the canal. He smelled, always, of horse. In fact, she now so connected sex with horses that she had suggested that perhaps he send her the horse on a Sunday, and himself go home to Kitty. He had been shocked.
“It’s not that. At least, I don’t think it is. Of course, I’m a virgin.”
“Of course,” said Caroline. “We all were once. Such happy carefree days.”
“I don’t know about happy. But Joseph is deeply impressed by my virginity. Apparently, there are no virgins in Europe.”
“Very few, certainly.” Caroline was eager to be agreeable. Cissy’s uncle was Robert McCormick, whose wife’s family published the Chicago Tribune, and he was eager to buy Caroline’s Tribune. Cissy’s brother, Joe Patterson, was a reporter for her uncle’s paper; and so, like a law of nature, Pattersons had begun to gravitate toward Sanfords, printer’s ink, in its way, as binding as blood. Cissy had literary dreams; she would write novels, she said; and promptly picked up Mr. James’s latest effort, The Ambassadors, inscribed to Henry Adams, who had recommended it to Caroline, who had given up reading fiction now that she herself, a newspaper publisher, was a principal purveyor of that evanescent product.
“He’s too long-winded now.” Cissy had learned to say what everyone else said, a moment or two before perfect staleness made dust of the conventional wisdom. As a result, she was thought clever. “He’s getting a million,” she whispered into Caroline’s ear, while biting off, one by one, the points of one of Huyler’s very special thin chocolate leaves.
“Count Gizycki?”
Cissy nodded, tragically; mouth full of chocolate.
“That’s fair, I suppose.” Caroline was judicious. “In Europe, the bride brings the money while the husband provides the title, the name and the castle. There is a castle?”
“In Poland.” Cissy sighed. “He doesn’t love me, you know.”
“Then why marry him?”
“Mother wants me to be a countess. Father will pay, of course. But it’s very un-American, buying a husband.”
“It may be un-American but Americans do it all the time. Look at Harry Lehr and the poor Drexel girl. Or read your uncle’s paper, or mine, or-if you’re really innocent-any of Mr. Hearst’s. It’s common.”
“Common!” Cissy looked as if she might burst into tears. “I wish,” she said unexpectedly, “I had your mouth.”
“I’ll give it to you, on your wedding day-in the form of a kiss,” added Caroline, uneasily aware that she was now the recipient of a “crush.”
Marguerite Cassini joined them, leaving, unwisely, thought Caroline, Nick Longworth to the predatory Alice, who had her father’s need to be always the center of attention. She was capable of marrying anyone, if she thought that that was the only way of gaining everyone’s complete attention. Of the Republican dollar princesses, Alice was the most interesting, and the most doomed, Caroline decided, to unhappiness. It was all very well to be the most famous girl in the United States, but then, more soon than late, all-powerful presidents turned into obscure ex-presidents, while glamorous girls became women, wives, mothers, forgotten. She could not imagine Alice old; it would be against nature. Meanwhile, the beautiful Cassini was consoling Cissy, with countessly wisdom. “The family is a great one-for Poland, of course. And his best friend is very close to us, Ivan von Rubido Zichy, who says Joseph is over the heels head in love with you!”
“These names sound,” said Caroline, “like characters in The Prisoner of Zenda.”
“You are so literary,” said Marguerite, disapprovingly. “You must get it from having to read all those newspapers.”
“My White House marriage will be the first since poor Julia Grant married Prince Cantacuzene.” Alice hurled herself at center stage.
“Nellie Grant, Julia’s mother, was married in the White House.” Longworth was languidly pedantic. “That was the last White House marriage. Julia was married in Newport…”
“And my father, representing the Tsar, had to give permission, which he wouldn’t, of course, because Julia’s aunt, Mrs. Potter Palmer, wouldn’t come up with a dowry on the ground that Julia was pretty enough to be married for herself alone.”
“Hardly true,” all three girls echoed as one.
“So Father said to Mrs. Potter, ‘How much do you pay your cook?’ Then he explained that a newlywed prince and princess must also have enough money to pay their cook. He was overwhelming. Of course, the Prince was rich in his own right…”
Caroline cut short Marguerite’s tsarist vainglory. “Alice, you must tell us when your White House wedding will take place; and with whom…”
Alice was brisk. “In 1905, probably. After Father’s reelected. I haven’t picked anyone yet. Blaise is very rich, isn’t he?”
“Very.” Caroline had often thought what a good match it would be for him, not to mention the publisher of the Tribune. In or out of the White House, the Roosevelts would be colorful, if nothing else. “You’d also have that new palace of his to live in.”