“He also says that if the Democrats were to come out for nationalizing the railroads, they would sweep the country.”
“Why not?” was the response of the co-author of Tales of Erie, easily the most savage indictment ever made of the railroad owners, and their exuberant, never-ending corruption of courts, Congress, White House. Then, triumphantly, “Here they come!”
Hay managed to be perpendicular when Lizzie Cameron entered the room with her daughter, Martha, who was, at eighteen, larger, darker, duller than her mother, who was still, in Hearts’ eyes at least, the world’s most beautiful woman, the Helen of Troy of Lafayette Park, now resident, mysteriously, at the Lorraine, a New York City residential hotel in Forty-fifth Street, convenient to the theaters, and Rector’s, and museums, where Martha was to be finished off at last and then, her mother prayed, grandly married. “La Dona.” Adams welcomed his beloved with a deep bow; bestowed a kiss on Martha’s cheek. “I never thought to see the two of you here again.”
“Oh, yes, you did. John,” Lizzie took Hay’s hand and gave him the cold appraising Sherman look, “go to Georgia. This minute. You are mad to stay on here. I’ll wire Don…”
“I’d be madder to go now we’ve got you back, if only for the Diplomatic Reception.” Lizzie had asked Henry to put her and Martha on the guest list for the January 12 Diplomatic Reception at the White House. This would be, in effect, Martha’s official, and inexpensive, social debut.
“I’m a pauper!” Lizzie let drop her ermine cape on the small chair by the fire, where Adams always sat. Then she sat on the cape.
“You’re not a pauper. Don’t be dramatic, Mother.” Martha had her father’s weighty manner if not actual weight. “Mother wants to reopen Twenty-one. I think she’s mad.”
“Everyone, it would appear, is mad today.” Hay sat on a sofa’s arm, from which he could stand up without effort. “Don’t discourage your mother. We want her back. Next door to us. Forever.”
“See?” Lizzie stared up at Martha, whose body now blocked the fire. In the bright air Hay watched as motes of dust floated and glittered like minuscule fragments of gold, a pretty sight-if of course he was not having another seizure like the one where he had imagined himself in Lincoln’s office. He dared not ask the others if they, too, noted the bright dust.
Then Clara greeted mother and daughter, and their diminished circle was closed at last. “What sort of husband would you like?” asked Clara, as if she herself could provide one, according to Martha’s specifications.
“Rich.” Lizzie was still radiant, Hay decided; and unchanged.
Adams was still besotted with her; and unchanged. “The rich are boring, La Dona.”
“I think I’d like Mr. Adams.” Martha was cool. “He is never boring, except when he sees a dynamo.”
Clara, a master of small talk, disliked idle talk. “Blaise Sanford. He’s the right age. He’s built himself a palace in Connecticut Avenue. He’s half-owner of the Tribune, so he has something to do, always important. And he lives part of the year in France. I think,” she turned to Hay, “we should set things in motion.”
“You set them in motion, I have the Russians to deal with. They’ve just surrendered Port Arthur to the Japanese.” Hay held up the folder containing the Moscow dispatches.
Adams was suddenly alert. “Now the pieces rearrange themselves. Brooks predicted this, you know. Now let’s see if his next prediction comes true. Russia will undergo some sort of internal revolution, he says, and their empire will then fall apart or, if they survive the revolution, expand at our expense. England is at an end, civilization shudders to a halt, and…”
“I cannot get enough of your gloom.” Hay did enjoy the Porcupine’s chiliastic arias. “But we’ve got Japan to deal with in Asia, and a peace to be made in order to keep…”
“Open doors.” Everyone, including Martha, repeated the magic meaningless phrase.
“I would rather be known for that than for ‘Little Breeches.’ ”
“I’m afraid, sonny,” said Adams contentedly, “your future fame will rest on an ever greater vulgarity, ‘Perdicaris alive…’ ”
“ ‘… or Raisuli dead!’ ” the others intoned.
“The fatal gift for phrase,” sighed Adams, as happy as Hay had ever seen him, with Lizzie beside him, and all the remaining Hearts in the room. Then, as if to complete Adams’s felicity, the door to the Bright study now framed the thick rotundity of his houseguest, whose bald head shone in the winter light, like Parian marble, whose great eyes looked merrily but shrewdly on the company. “I have,” intoned Henry James, “already, in the literal sense, merely, broken my fast, but as rumors of a late-ah, collation is being served à la fourchette, so much tidier than au canif, I have hurried home from my morning round of calls, filling the city with a veritable blizzard of pasteboard.” Then, ceremoniously, James greeted Lizzie and Martha, while Adams took a calling-card from his vest pocket, and presented it to James.
“What-or, rather, who is this?” James held the card close to his eyes.
“Delivered by its owner while you were out.”
“ ‘George Dewey,’ ” James read in a voice resonant with awe, “ ‘Admiral of the Navy.’ My cup runneth over, with salt water. Why,” he addressed the room, “would a national hero, whom I’ve not had the pleasure-honor-distinction of meeting, descend, as it were, from the high, glorious-ah, poop-deck of his flagship, which I can imagine moored with chains of gold in the Potomac, all flags unfurled, and submit himself to dull earth in order to pay a call on someone absolutely unknown in heroic circles, and less than a ripple, I should think, in naval ones?”
Hay found James in his old age far more genial and less alarming than in his middle age. For one thing, the appearance was milder since he had shaved off his beard; in fact, the resulting combination of bald head and rosy smooth ovoid face put one in mind of Humpty Dumpty. “You are a fellow celebrity,” said Hay. “That’s all. The press, which defines us all, celebrates both you and him. Now he comes to celebrate you and, in the act, celebrates himself yet again.”
“He is a wondrous fool,” said Adams. “Stay longer and I’ll invite him here.”
“No. No. No. The ladies of America are waiting for me to tell them about Balzac. So much-ah, money can be earned by lecturing, I had no idea.”
James had not been in Washington since 1882; and he had not been in the United States for some years. “Contemptible, effete snob!” Theodore Rex would roar whenever the name was mentioned. But Theodore was himself sufficiently a snob, if not effete, to realize that since the reigning novelist of the English-speaking world had come home to take one last long look at his native land, the President must invite him to the Diplomatic Reception. With each passing year in the White House, Theodore became more royal, and his receptions and dinner parties now had a definite Sun King style to them. Therefore, protocol required that America’s great writer be received by his sovereign. James had been delighted and, wickedly, amused by the invitation; his view of the President was every bit as dark as the President’s of him, but where Theodore thundered, James mocked softly; Theodore Rex was simply a noisy jingo, not to be encouraged.
“We are,” observed James, as Adams led them into the dining room, where silver and crystal sparkled, and William stood at benign attention, “re-creating the house-party at Surrenden Dering. Mrs. Cameron. The delicious Martha-now grown. Ourselves…”
Hay thought, with a sudden guilty pang, of Del, whom he almost never thought of any more. James, aware that the party had lost a member to death, shifted swiftly to Caroline. “What of her?” he asked. Adams told him. James was interested, as always, in variations from the usual. A young American woman who chose to publish a newspaper was not quite within his grasp, but Hay had the sense that by the time James’s visit to what he called “the city of conversation” was over, Caroline would be defined in Jamesian terms.