Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [193]
Roosevelt seemed to have no such doubts. He rambled on about how young Republicans might help him win in November. Both he and Moore were aware that, even as they talked, an Old Guard stalwart lay near death in the reddening hills of western Pennsylvania. Senator Matthew Quay, master manipulator of so many national conventions, had bought his last delegate. So had Mark Hanna, already nothing more than a name set in stone in Cleveland.
Farther west still, in Wisconsin, the political careers of John Coit Spooner and Henry Clay Payne were in decline. Governor LaFollette had completed his takeover of that state’s organization, and was threatening to send a radical delegation to Chicago. “The last consignment of Great Captains of the Republican Party are passing into the twilight,” the New York Sun mourned. Even that venerable newspaper, expositor of corporate conservatism for so many years, had had its day. Its famous symbol—an orb half hidden behind a black mountain—looked more like dusk than dawn.
The President beamed at his visitor, showing no regret for temps perdu. Few people realized it, but Roosevelt loved Quay, probably the most despised politician of the last twenty years. He had made a secret pilgrimage to say good-bye, and been moved by Quay’s lament, “I do wish it were possible for me to get off into the great north woods and crawl out on a rock in the sun and die like a wolf!” Public men of the future must face a brighter, more businesslike light, the shadow-free light of Cooper-Hewitt lamps and popping press bulbs and Luxfer office windows. George Cortelyou—stenographer, scheduler, filer, colorless as onionskin, the quintessential modern bureaucrat—did not blink at this kind of light. Neither did Moore’s young Republicans.
“Go see Cortelyou as soon as you can,” the President said. “And tell him,” he added ingratiatingly, “I want him to work with you.”
CHAPTER 21
The Wire That Ran Around the World
“I hope ye’re satisfied,” he says. “I am,” says Jawn Hay.
AT SIXTY-FOUR years of age, Ion Perdicaris—“Jon” to boyhood friends in New Jersey—felt that he had found his final home in Tangier, Morocco. His dividends from United States cotton and gas stocks financed a palatial villa outside of town, on the slopes of Djebal Kebir.
This did not mean that Mr. Perdicaris had severed all American ties. Cultured and suave, he made a point of entertaining visiting compatriots, and enjoyed his role as dean of Tangier’s little English-speaking colony. When the mood struck him, he was capable of crossing to New York, renting the Fifth Avenue Theatre, and putting on a show scripted by himself, with sets by “I. Perdicaris,” and his own stepdaughter as star. Such shows might open on Monday and close the following Thursday; but Mr. Perdicaris was wealthy enough to be philosophical, returning always to the peace of his Moroccan retreat.
He sat there now on the cool evening of 18 May 1904, relaxed in dinner jacket and pumps, surrounded by his family and the luxurious jumble of a cosmopolitan life. Tiny amphorae on the mantel testified to his birth in Athens, where his father had been United States Consul General. Oriental rugs and American skins bestrewed the floor; Moorish tables and shelves displayed a collection of objets d’art from three continents; William Morris wallpaper hinted that the lady of the house was an Englishwoman. Mrs. Perdicaris, however, was as happily expatriate as her husband. She liked to cuddle two Brazilian monkeys, who ate orange blossoms out of a pouch slung round her waist.
The other male member of the party was her son, Cromwell