Halloween with Gore Vidal
Autumnal atmosphere in the Caroline Sanford trilogy
Readers unfamiliar with Empire, Hollywood, and The Golden Age may prefer to read these notes only after reading the story.
Gore Vidal's fictional use of autumnal atmosphere and traditional seasonal lore creates several brief and surprising interludes in his three novels centering on the character Caroline Sanford. The moments are fleeting. Like weather reports in Hemingway, Chandler, and Robert B. Parker, they suggest more as counterpoint than they openly state.
Halloween attracts writers. It registers liminality, par excellance.
Vidal prided himself on a strong grasp of history. He often explored the transitional periods between religions, culminating in crossings from local and atomized practices to sky-god monotheism.
Vidal’s bourgeois liberal pronouncements on contemporary politics usually struck an over-rehearsed note. But in his fiction, there are subtler reflective tempers. They allow reader access to a character’s subjective and metaphysical moods.
Empire (1987) begins with simple seasonal autumnal associations. Early in the novel, as Caroline explains her financial woes to Mrs. Cameron, for instance, we note Vidal’s first use of “equinox” since the 1984 essay on Calvino’s death:
Now Mrs. Cameron wanted to know what would become of the Colonel’s celebrated place at Saint- Cloud. Caroline said, truthfully, that she did not know. “Everything has been left to Blaise and me. But the will hasn’t been properly— what is the word?”
“Probated,” said the goddess brightly. “Let us hope the division will be equal.”
“Oh, I’m sure it probably is.” But Caroline had her doubts. Over the years, Colonel Sanford had progressed from pronounced eccentricity to the edge of madness, obliging the butler to double as taster at mealtimes: the Colonel feared poison. In the warm weather, the Colonel preferred daughter to son; then, just as the leaves started to turn, he preferred son to daughter. During alternating equinoxes, new wills would be drawn. As luck would have it, he had died in cold weather, when the horse he was riding across the railroad track at Saint- Cloud shied, and threw him in the path of the Blue Train itself. Death was swift….
Later autumnal moments in the Empire are free of this jocular morbidity. Subjective senses of the unseen or impalpable are not yet manifest, but are hinted at. These perceptions are left to Blaise Sanford, registering autumnal color and climate, but cross-hatching horrific risks of national and individual psychological engulfment personified in the person of Theodore Roosevelt.
King answered, as if he had looked into Hay’s mind. “When I went mad that day in the lions’ house in Central Park, I was positive that I had seen God, and He was, simply, a huge mouth, maw, with teeth, sharp, sharp— and hungry, oh, so hungry to dine on us. That’s why we exist, I thought, to feed Him. Then a Negro— someone’s butler from a house in Madison Avenue— enraged me, and I struck him. One tends to violence in the lion house, particularly in the presence of one’s Maker who is also one’s devourer, and I was taken away by the police in a state of purest ecstasy, and committed to the Bioomingdale Asylum…
“On Halloween,” said Adams, happy to contemplate, yet again, the sacred story. “Then we went off to Cuba in February. There were no lions there.”
“Ah, but there was that maw, always in attendance. Always hungry. Is Theodore as dreadful as ever, now he’s vice- president?”
“I had hoped that name would not be spoken on this day of days,” said Adams. “Theodore’s luck is relentless and inexorable, like the Chicago Express.”
And here, late in the novel, we have a last foreshadowing of the Gotterdamerung cabinet room meeting between Hearst and Theodore Roosevelt. Blaise Sanford is again our witness, talking with T.R.
“What does Hearst want to do? Wreck our political system?”
“If you put it like that, sir, yes, he does.”
Roosevelt did not acknowledge so truthful if radical a response. “What letters of mine has he got?” This was sudden. The President, whose back was to Blaise, turned round. The bright red and yellow leaves of autumn as seen through the window back of him made him look as if he were incongruously trapped in a stained- glass window.
Three years later, Vidal’s seasonal register is at a higher level. The word Halloween appears for the first time. As does All Souls’ Eve.
In Hollywood (1990) Caroline and Blaise witness the great men and women of the period pushing the U.S. to war in 1917, and later to the normalcy of Teapot Dome, all cross-referenced with Hollywood’s reshaping of national identity. Hearst appears again, but the most compelling character is, remarkably, Warren Harding. This is certainly testament to Vidal’s skill as a novelist.
Autumnal notes crop-up early:
[….] After one of the hottest summers in memory, autumn had been hot, too; and now, in October, the leaves had not turned but simply burned and fallen and the Capitol looked chalky and bare on its brown hill.
Later in the book, Caroline and her filmmaker mate Timothy X. Farrell attend an evening party at Blaise’s estate:
[….] Caroline stood on the terrace of Laurel House and looked down at the river. “It is All Souls’ Eve,” she observed to no one but herself. Blaise and Frederika had decided to entertain everyone in Washington, and, somehow, they had picked the evening of November I, when the souls of the dead were abroad or asleep or somewhere, waiting to be— what?— propitiated: she could not remember exactly what. Mlle. Souvestre had driven all religion out of her soul, including the attractive pagan.
The night was ominously warm, and a last summer storm was approaching the house. Time of equinox, she thought, time of change. But then was this the equinox? The science teacher had not been as successful in filling the niches in her mind which Mademoiselle had so ruthlessly emptied of their idols.
Tim had come out on the terrace. He wore evening dress; and looked older than he was. “Do they do nothing here but talk politics?”
“The gentry talk horses— and blood lines. Theirs and the horses. My father talked about music,” she added, wondering how that curious man had suddenly slipped back into her memory. “All Souls’,” she said, in explanation to herself. “My father’s spirit is abroad tonight. But I’d rather see my mother’s.”
“Your namesake.”
“Partly. Emma de Traxler Schuyler d’Agrigente Sanford. It is too long for a marquee.”
“What about for a life?”
“I don’t think she thought so. But I don’t know. I don’t remember her.”
From the lower terrace, a couple emerged from the darkness. Plainly, they had been at the pool house. “Young lovers,” said Caroline tolerantly, holding up the lorgnette that was both a decoration and necessary to see with.
“Not so young,” said Tim, whose far- sightedness complemented her myopia.
“Caroline,” said Alice Longworth, with a bright smile. “What a lovely party. What a lovely place. What a lovely film star you are. Act for us.”
“I am acting for you. I am smiling tolerantly, and recalling the fevers of my long- past youth. I am Marschallin at last.”
Senator Borah found none of this amusing. He shook hands solemnly with Caroline and Tim. “We were looking over the place,” he said. “I hadn’t realized it was so big.”
“The pool house is a great success,” said Caroline. “It is All Souls’ Night.” She turned to Alice, handsome in blue and as happy as that restless creature could be.
“So it is. I think I’ve met them all by now. After all, everyone who’s interesting is dead. We better go join them— in hell, I suppose.”
“You do. I’m going inside.” The Lion of Idaho opened the French door and stepped into the crowded drawing room.
Readers of Vidal’s 1967 novel Washington D.C. will recall its pool house opening.
The Golden Age (2000) ended a ten year hiatus for Vidal’s historical roman fleuve.
Halloween 1941 comes up early in the novel. Caroline joins the presidential party for an evening river cruise aboard the Potomac. The chapter offers a convincing portrait of Franklin Roosevelt as Machiavellian prince of schemes. Later she joins her friend Harry Hopkins out on deck.
Caroline found the presidential boat—“yacht” was too elegant a word for the Potomac—completely comfortable, while the river from which it took its name was looking-glass-still as they headed toward Mount Vernon on the far side. The sun was beginning to set and the lights in the salon had been turned up as Filipino stewards in white jackets set out an elaborate curry dinner. The President had not yet emerged from his cabin; a half-dozen aides and assistants were either below or in the bow. For the moment, Caroline and Hopkins shared the cushions at the ship’s stern. The air off the water was hotter than the breeze from the ship’s wake, and Caroline, with her hand, tried to discern the dividing line. Hopkins looked more dead than asleep as he slouched alongside her. But, as always, he could see through what looked to be shut lids….
When the dinner table was cleared, the men settled down to a poker game while Caroline and Grace Tully sat in the stern and watched the dark rounded hills of Virginia glide slowly past. The air had suddenly cooled; heat no longer rose from the river. “It’s autumn now,” said Grace. “Just like that. Summer’s gone [….]”
“Can Russia survive?”
“Not if there should be a mild winter.”
“There never is.”
“So that’s your answer. Hitler’s overextended. He must keep an army in the west. And another in the east, moving on Moscow.”
“We are in the same situation.”
Hopkins turned his head and opened his eyes. “How?”
“The German fleet in the east. The Japanese fleet in the west. Blaise’s new friend—don’t laugh—Herbert Hoover …” Hopkins laughed. “… is convinced that we are deliberately provoking a war with Japan.”
Hopkins looked away. “We don’t have that much control over events, sad to say.”
“Hoover thinks that Prince Konoye was our last chance to make some sort of settlement with the Japanese but the President refused to meet him.”
“August was a bad time for a meeting with the Japanese. The Boss had to meet Churchill in Newfoundland. Then he was sick …”
“He was stalling? Why?”
Hopkins stared through the open salon door at the back of the President’s head, which its owner tended to use like a conductor’s baton to provide the tempo for those about him. “This wasn’t the best of times for him. Old Sara died. Then Eleanor’s alcoholic wreck of a brother died in Poughkeepsie. I’ve never seen either one of them so upset before.”
“Then he does have feelings for others”
Hopkins gave her a somewhat suspicious sidelong glance. “Grace?”
“Grace? Innocent. Me. Caroline. Observation of Eleanor, really. She will suddenly blurt out something startling. Even—bitter.”
“I know. Anyway, one good thing. With the old lady gone, Eleanor will finally start to feel at home in Hyde Park.” Hopkins’ smile was crooked. “After only thirty-six years. Funny, the Boss and Eleanor are closer now than I’ve ever seen them before. The wicked witch is dead. Witch.” He repeated the word. “You know, the day the old lady died, the tallest oak on the property just fell over. And there wasn’t a breath of wind. No repayment for five years.”
“No what for five years?”
“No repayment of the loan to the Soviet Union. And no interest. We rely on your skill to indicate that this is a desirable form of bookkeeping.” On the shore closest to them, a number of shadowy figures could be seen dancing about a bonfire.
“What’s that?”
“Halloween,” said Hopkins. “It’s tonight.”
“So it is!” Caroline shuddered with— what? Nostalgia? “The night of all souls. In France they believe that for this one night the dead are abroad among the living.”
“Have you ever seen a ghost?” The question was serious.
“How could I? I’ve not been analyzed.”
“Low blow.”
“I always thought in my movie days that the shadow of oneself on the screen is the true ghost preserved forever, at least in theory.”
“I believe ghosts come to us in dreams.”
“That’s because you sleep in Mr. Lincoln’s office.”
“Well, I’ve never seen him. But one does feel trouble in that room. Almost as much as one feels it in the Boss’s bedroom down the hall when he’s having his breakfast in bed and looking at newspapers and cables and endless bad news.”
“He’s lucky to have you.”
“Lucky for me to have him. For the country, too.” A match blazed as Hopkins lit a cigarette. “For the record, Prince Konoye was no prince of peace. He was simply the most civilized of the Japanese politicians. The Boss saw no point in meeting someone who would soon be gone, which is what he was, two weeks ago, when General Tojo formed the military cabinet.”
“Had the President bothered to meet Konoye, he might still be in power.”
Hopkins coughed through the cigarette smoke. “Or maybe not. Anyway, for once, we have good information. They are finally ready for a war with us. But we won’t be ready for several months. So that’s why we stall for time.”
Caroline realized then that, as was so often the case at this imperial court, the truth was often a mirror reflection of reality, an obverse image intended both to mislead and signal.
She looked into the salon at the cardplayers. Each must know something of what was to come but only the President, in his shirtsleeves, understood the entire web that he was spinning all across the earth.
Caroline looked over the dark slow-moving water at the fires on the shore. What spirits, she wondered, were abroad tonight? “You know, it was on All Souls’ Eve, twenty years ago, that I turned over most of my shares in the paper to Blaise and moved home to France.”
(This was the scene at The Laurels quoted above when discussing Hollywood.)
“Home?”
“Yes. Home.” She allowed herself to frown in the dark. “Home that was, anyway. Now I’m a ghost abroad, too, for this one night at least.” The light from the bonfire on the Potomac shore illuminated Hopkins’ face, like a cheerful goblin’s.
“We are waiting,” he said, with what Caroline took to be a goblin’s Delphic gravity, not to mention his own special gnomic eloquence—if gnomes were ever eloquent, “for the other shoe to drop.”
Caroline recalled the prayer that her nurse had taught her. “Commemoratio omnium fidelium defunctorum …” she began.
“Defunctorum are the dead?”
“Yes.”
“There will be plenty of new ones soon enough.”
“I don’t doubt it. You should have put out some food in your room for Mr. Lincoln. The dead like it when they come home on this night.”
“I’m sure he’s in Springfield, Illinois, tonight.”
The bonfire suddenly flared and so lit up the boat that for a moment it looked to Caroline like a painting in which they were, all of them, forever fixed on canvas, and dead….
This is Vidal’s strongest synthesis of season, holiday, historical cross-current, and individual reflection. Both Caroline and Hopkins spare thought for the once and future dead. For Caroline these seasonal reflections are a product of her own sense of herself as an actor, and of the nation's history expressed in seasonal metaphors.
After its war chapters, The Golden Age reshuffles its characters for the long denouement. But our last glimpse of Caroline slingshots the reader right back to poignant earlier Halloween nights:
Caroline had made only one condition in her will: “Peter Sanford must keep on publishing The American Idea now that he has the money to keep it going until, at least, the end of the century, during which time he will have been a voice arguing for reason in a society that is now susceptible to every sort of manipulation. He once said to me that he hoped to live long enough to see a civilization strike root in our somewhat arid land. I said that I’d hoped to see the same, though I can’t say I ever totally shared his admirable optimism. Now, I will never know what comes next, but Peter Sanford may live to see and—enjoy?—what I would not in the least mind coming back for a brief visit to witness, preferably on some All Saints’ Eve guided tour. But I suspect that the rules of another place require one’s constant presence at the heart of Henry Adams’ beloved Dynamo, where one is simply swirling atomic dust, fueling energy and creating power in order to achieve metamorphosis from what was human to …”
The Golden Age is Vidal’s most thorough engagement with Halloween’s fictional potential as a transmission belt for poetic symbolism over mere fact and chronology.
Such focus on belatedness is also displayed in the openings of novels like The Judgment of Paris and Messiah, and at the end of that remarkable late 1970s fiction of Homo sapien doom, Kalki.
H.G. Wells, Olaf Stapledon, and M. P. Sheil intermittently achieved this same effect. It is a rare authorial skill: knowing when and how to combine a long view of history with emotions of terror and immensity and make of them an art sublime.
Jay
