Authors: Gore Vidal
“Such as going to war?” Caroline, like everyone else in the world, wanted to know what the President intended to do about the European war in which, thus far, no gun had been fired. Caroline suspected that no one, including the President, had the slightest notion what was going to happen next. The next move would be, as usual, Hitler’s.
“Caroline!” The resonant voice filled the room as Franklin rolled himself out from behind his desk. She was well used, by now, to the fact that the totally paralyzed legs were like two sticks beneath the extra-thick flannel of trousers calculated to disguise the heavy metal braces that he always wore whenever he knew he would have to be got to his feet in public. Tonight he was not wearing the braces. But then he had always been at home with Caroline since they had first met twenty years earlier when he had been the vigorous athletic assistant secretary of the Navy. She had found him charming if somewhat lightweight and altogether too conscious of the great name he—and Eleanor—together and separately bore. She was President Theodore Roosevelt’s niece; Franklin was merely that president’s fifth cousin. Eleanor and Caroline did enjoy one thing in common: Eleanor Roosevelt Roosevelt had married a cousin as had Caroline Sanford Sanford; only Eleanor’s marriage to Franklin had been a state affair while Caroline’s marriage of mild inconvenience to a dim cousin was the result of her unexpected pregnancy by a handsome married statesman, James Burden Day, now a senator, eager to replace Franklin in the White House next year unless, of course, the master politician were to run for a third term, something no president had ever done before. “Nor will I run,” he had assured Caroline her first evening in the White House, “unless there’s war.…” But, thus far, there was no shooting war, though she knew it was coming, and so she carefully answered his questions about the part of France where she lived and the mood of the people, which she described, accurately she thought, as “resigned.”
In order to minimize the effect of his useless legs, the President never used a proper wheelchair. Instead he had taken a plain armless
chair to which rollers had been added as well as discreet side wheels which he could turn by hand to get himself about. Since he appeared supremely unconscious of his disability, others ceased to notice it. But there was a great deal of careful stage-managing so that the public would not notice. If he was to be photographed seated, a valet would lift his right leg and decorously cross it over his left. Trouser cuffs were pulled down to touch the tops of his shoes, hiding the ends of the braces. When he “walked,” he would start out of view of the public, his arm through that of an aide or one of his large sons. Then as he stepped into the limelight, head thrown back, the great smile glittering, he would swing first one leg forward, then back as he simultaneously swung the other forward so that he appeared to be walking in a somewhat swaying nautical manner.
Eleanor had confided, “The worst times are at the end of a speech, particularly in the old days. Franklin must hold himself up with both hands on the lectern and still be able to use one of them to turn the pages of his speech, all the while trying to keep his balance on those braces, which are locked just before he starts his walk, which is a terrible effort. Then, when he finishes, we have to get him off the stage—that’s usually fifteen feet to be negotiated. In the old days when we all wore such huge skirts, the ladies would surround him—at least the tall ones like me—and we’d screen him from the audience while two men would then carry him into the wings. That was then, of course. But, even now, with all the Secret Service, it’s still not easy.” Eleanor’s matter-of-factness always charmed Caroline, who would have been tempted to dramatize the situation had she been an actor in so extraordinary a script. Nevertheless, there was sufficient drama in the fact that although there must be numerous photographs of the President caught off-guard in his rolling chair, none had ever appeared in an American newspaper. Why? she wondered. Instinctive self-preservation? In a world where dictators strode and strutted toward war, Americans instinctively did not want to publicize the fact that their own leader could not even walk.
“We have only the cocktail hour,” said Franklin, “before Eleanor’s young communists join us for dinner.”
That morning Caroline had heard on the radio in Blaise’s office reports from a congressional committee deeply concerned with something known as “un-American activities.” Various youth organizations had been testifying about
their
suspect activities. Apparently, the September pact between Germany and Russia had been a political earthquake on Capitol Hill, where the President’s New Deal, already sternly labeled communist by American conservatives, was now looking especially vulnerable. With what seemed, to Caroline, either exemplary courage or plain lack of judgment, late the previous evening Eleanor had come down from New York in order to attend the meeting of the House committee, thus demonstrating her sympathy with the young witnesses who wanted no part in old Europe’s war.
Early that morning, in a green dress, she had left for the Capitol with Caroline, who wanted to hear her testify, but Eleanor had said, “You’re better off at the
Tribune
, influencing Blaise. I’ll drop you off.”
As it turned out, Mrs. Roosevelt caused a sensation in the Caucus Room: First Ladies were almost never seen in the legislative halls of the republic. She had been received courteously by the congressmen, who had invited her to sit with them on their dais. Gracefully, she had said that she preferred just to sit in the back where she could keep her cold gray alert eyes upon the congressmen while projecting her patented brand of motherly solicitude for the young firebrands.
“Now she’s asked six of them to dinner.” Franklin sighed theatrically.
“Are they communists?”
“Some, I suppose. Or they think they are this week. I shall be benignly noncommittal.”
“Your greatest role.”
“Do you think so?” Franklin placed a cigarette in a holder. Caroline lit it for him. “We have some other actors here tonight. For dinner, there’s Melvyn Douglas and his wife, Helen Gahagan. Loyal New Dealers, I’m happy to say. She’s very political and never too shy to advise me. Now you tell me about Daladier.” The President’s love of gossip, Caroline had decided, came from the fact that as he could not move about, either literally or symbolically as president, he must pump
others. Although he often acknowledged that the peripatetic Eleanor acted as his eyes and ears, he also acknowledged, privately to Caroline, that Eleanor was far too noble ever to meanly gossip, “and since you are too far away in France, all I’ve got, at the moment, is Liz Whitney. She drives over from that place of hers in Virginia and just barges in. Without an appointment. Then she asks me about all the news that was in the papers that morning, which she never reads. Patiently, I tell her. Then she rivets
me
with all the problems that Jock Whitney and David Selznick had in making
Gone With the Wind
, which is about to open at last.”
During this, a black steward had placed a tray full of bottles and glasses on the President’s desk, to which he now returned. “I think a martini will hit the spot.” The Roosevelt special. Caroline loathed gin but gamely drank the President’s astonishing concoction, whose secret ingredients were two brands of vermouth, each sweeter than the other, and a dash of absinthe to destroy the palate. As he shook the martini, he returned to Daladier, the premier of France.
“We say that he is more the Veal,” said Caroline, “than what he likes to be called, the bull of Vaucluse.”
“Yes. Bullitt says he’s scared to death of Hitler. But who else is there?”
“Léon Blum.” Caroline was particularly fond of the socialist intellectual, whose Popular Front government had been denounced in America as—what else?—communist, even by Blaise. Caroline had long since given up trying to explain the difference between communism and socialism to Americans.
The President tasted his martini. “Now that is just about right.” He poured her a glass. They toasted peace.
“I wouldn’t mind talking to Blum, face to face. Particularly now. But we’re all so cut off from each other. So far apart, geographically. So many misunderstandings. You’re back with Tim Farrell, I gather?”
“No. No. Just friends, as they say. You were going to ask him to dinner tonight.”
“If I was, I did.” Franklin laughed. “I’m not sure how much he’ll like Eleanor’s young friends.”
“But that’s exactly what he wants. He’s making a documentary. About the war. About how Americans feel about the war.”
The President moved his chair directly across from Caroline’s. He rubbed his eyes; for an instant he looked to be without energy. “I don’t envy him,” he said at last. “A film
now?
When anything can happen.” He shook his head. “Look at Finland. Whoever dreamed that Russia would invade them? Certainly not our State Department,” he added, with an unpleasant smile. “But then whoever dreamed they could defeat a Russian army? For the moment, anyway.” He raised the martini shaker and turned to Caroline. “Another sippy?”
At that moment two giants, Mr. and Mrs. Melvyn Douglas, appeared in the doorway.
“Come in, Helen, Mel. What shall I make you?” The President was once again his airy light-hearted social self, as he prepared yet another Roosevelt special, all the while talking to the handsome Helen Douglas while her husband introduced himself to Caroline. She had never found him attractive on the screen—nose too large, lips too thin—but his voice was seductive, and he was also the only American-born movie star who had no difficulty playing high comedy, when allowed. Had he been older, he would have been a perfect leading man for Emma Traxler, the Black Pearl of—where was it her publicity had said she was from? Alsace-Lorraine?
“I grew up watching your movies,” he said; then frowned. “There I go, you weren’t making movies when I was a kid back in Georgia and you were a child in—where was it?”
“Washington, D.C. I was the child publisher of the
Tribune
before 1917 and Hollywood and the birth of my dreaded other self, Emma Traxler.”
“I’ve just met your brother, Blaise.”
“Did you quarrel?”
Douglas blinked his eyes; then smiled a thin-lipped smile. “Yes. How did you know?”
“He doesn’t like the Roosevelts. You do.”
“And you do?”
Caroline gave him the Emma Traxler left-three-quarter-right-eyebrow-raised
close-shot look, quite aware that, with age, she must now resemble the moon’s far side if it had one. “I never said, Mr. Douglas, that Blaise liked me either.”
He laughed. “One of those families.” The room began to fill up. A pair of bureaucrats, each with a wife, had shyly entered the presence. Franklin was now jovial, as he peddled yet another Roosevelt special—rum, vermouth, and pineapple juice. He seemed to absorb energy from an audience.
“He
is
an actor,” said Caroline to herself, unaware that she was sharing her not particularly original insight with Douglas, who said, “Of course he is. But one who gets to write his own play.”
“His? Don’t you think Hitler and Stalin are going to get co-credits for this one?”
“Certainly not if the Screen Writers Guild arbitrates!”
Caroline changed the subject; complimented him on a film that he had just made in which, according to the press, the moody Swede, Greta Garbo, had finally laughed on screen. “That was a lot more than I ever did,” said Douglas, raising a practiced eyebrow.
“Is she so dull?” Caroline was fascinated by Garbo’s androgynous charm.
“ ‘Selfish’ is more the word.” Why, Caroline wondered, was she herself no longer young and in competition with this new generation? But Tim had now joined them and her instant of self-pity passed. Douglas moved on to join his wife, whose lips had never ceased to move since she had stationed herself beside the President.
Tim was little changed. “I’d like to work with him.” He indicated Douglas. “He shouldn’t let himself get trapped in all those drawing-room comedies, particularly as a second lead.”
“He does get Garbo at the end of
Ninotchka
.”
“Yes,” said Tim, “and she’s getting the boot from Metro soon.”
Caroline was slipping more and more into her previous existence. Soon they would be discussing the grosses of films and the latest studio preview, in Bakersfield. Meanwhile, she was interested to learn that Garbo’s principal audience was European, not American, and once the war became hot the studios would no longer be able to distribute their
“product” abroad and so the expensive Garbo would no longer be asked to make movies for MGM. “Anyway, she
says
she wants to retire. Where’s the President?”
“He’s over there.” But the President was not over there at the desk. In fact, he was nowhere in the room. An usher approached Caroline and Tim. “He is in the West Hall with Mrs. Roosevelt. They’ll be going down to dinner presently.”
Caroline explained Eleanor’s young people to Tim, who said, “I wish I could film them.”
“Tonight’s out of bounds.” As they started to the door, Tim stepped in front of a strange metal piano. “What’s that?”
“A mechanical pipe organ. A gift to the President. He told me that for his entire first term, he tried to learn to play it, but so far the thing has defeated him. I suspect he’s tone-deaf.”
“Can we talk?”
“After dinner. He goes to bed early.”
The West Hall was simply the west end of the long corridor, closed off by two ill-matching Chinese screens. The sounds of the young were clearly audible as well as the high-fluting tones of Eleanor herself.
“I think we can start down now. Let’s walk. The lift tends to get stuck.”
“It’s just like home.
My
home, that is. In South Boston.”
“It is,” said Caroline, “democracy.”
The dinner was reasonably chaotic. Eleanor presided at one end of the family dining table, her six young Americans to her left, Melvyn Douglas and the bureaucrats to her right. Tim had been placed next to Caroline.
The President made his entrance after everyone was seated. As an aide pushed his chair into place at the head of the table, everyone rose. He waved for them to be seated. “Lovely to have you here,” he said with a most genuine-looking smile in the direction of Eleanor’s brood.