Hollywood by Gore Vidal Read Free Book Online Page B

Wilson as well as to Mrs. Roosevelt and Mrs. Taft. It had been suggested that as Edith Boiling Galt had never been included in Mrs. Hagner’s list of those who were invitable to the White House, Miss Hagner herself was no longerto be found there with her lists, her files, her telephones at the desk below the fan window. Kitty had talked of nothing else for a week; and Burden had listened less than usual.
    “I do hope Mrs. Day will come to tea April twelfth.” This was Mrs. Benham’s greeting.
    Burden said that he hoped that she would, too. “Edith is a treasure,” said Edith. “Of course, she’s Navy. We’re surrounded by Navy here. You know Admiral Grayson.” A small trim handsome man in mufti had come out of the southwest suite. “Senator,” he shook Burden’s hand; another Southerner, Burden duly noticed, more amused than not that it had taken Virginia less than a half-century to reconquer the White House with Woodrow Wilson, who had, as a boy, actually gazed upon the sainted features of Robert E. Lee in the days of their common country’s terrible ruin. Now the South had returned in triumph to its true home, city, nation; and the President was surrounded, as was proper, by Virginians. “He’s doing very well, sir.” Grayson spoke to Burden but looked at Edith. “Only don’t tire him. He’s strong as an ox but susceptible to strain. The digestive system …”
    “… is the first to record the disagreeable.” Edith smiled, like a little girl, Burden noted; hence the President’s famous nickname for her, “little girl,” which had caused much mirth considering Edith’s ship-like tonnage, inevitably decorated, festooned, bannered with orchids. “I was horrified when I first learned about Mr. Wilson’s breakfast …”
    “Two raw eggs in grape juice.” Grayson was prompt. “It solved the dyspepsia as much as one can. Anyway, let him conduct the conversation.” Grayson gave more instructions, to Burden’s deep annoyance. He was perfectly capable of talking politics in his own way to what, after all, was just another politician, no matter how elevated and hedged round with state. Then Edith led him into the bedroom.
    Woodrow Wilson was propped up by four pillows; he wore a plaid wool dressing gown; and his famous pince-nez. Beside the bed, on a chair, sat his brother-in-law Randolph. Between them, on the coverlet, there was a Ouija board, and each had a hand on top of the table-like contraption that moved as if of its own will over a wooden board on which had been drawn the alphabet, stopping, as the spirit dictated, at this or that letter, which Randolph duly noted on a pad of paper. Wilson held a finger to his lips as Burden and Edith sat beside the bed, a huge affair of carved dark wood that Edith had had moved from the so-called Lincoln bedroom at the other end of the corridor. Actually, the “Lincoln bedroom” had been Lincoln’s office whilethe bed, known reverently as
his
bed, was never used by him. All that anyone could recall was that Mrs. Lincoln had bought it for a guest room. In any case, Burden regarded the bed as singularly hideous despite its provenance; but then he disliked anything to do with the Civil War era. Red plush, horsehair stuffing, gas-lamps were mingled with his own memories of growing up poor in the Reconstruction South before his family had moved west.
    While the two men played with the Ouija board, Edith whispered to Burden. “The place was—is—so run-down. You must ride herd on everyone here twenty-four hours a day, which poor Mrs. Wilson, being sick, couldn’t do, and Mrs. Taft was too grand to do. Now, of course, all the money goes to Preparedness and so we just scrimp along.”
    But they scrimped most pleasantly, thought Burden. A fire burned in the fireplace, while above the mantel a splendid American landscape afforded some relief from all those replicas of dim politicians and their wives that gave the White House rooms a sense of being mere