Title: An Adventure with a Genius: Recollections of Joseph Pulitzer
Author: Ireland, Alleyne
Language: English
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AN ADVENTURE WITH A GENIUS
Recollections of JOSEPH PULITZER.

BY ALLEYNE IRELAND

AUTHOR OF
"DEMOCRACY AND THE HUMAN EQUATION"



DEDICATED
BY KIND PERMISSION
AND
WITH SINCERE REGARD
TO
MRS. JOSEPH PULITZER



PREFACE

In the course of my wanderings about the labyrinth of life it has been
my good fortune to find awaiting me around every corner some new
adventure. If these have generally lacked that vividness of action which
to the eye of youth is the very test of adventure, they have been rich
in a kind of experience which to a mature and reflective mind has a
value not to be measured in terms of dramatic incident.

My adventures, in a word, have been chiefly those of personal contact
with the sort of men whose lives are the material around which history
builds its story, and from which fiction derives all that lends to it
the air of reality.

I have had friends and acquaintances in a score of countries, and in
every station of society--kings and beggars, viceroys and ward-
politicians, judges and criminals, men of brain and men of brawn.

My first outstanding adventure was with a stern and formidable man, the
captain of a sailing vessel, of whose ship's company I was one in a
voyage across the Pacific; one of my most recent was with a man not less
stern or formidable, with the man who is the central figure in the
present narrative.

The tale has been told before in a volume entitled "Joseph Pulitzer:
Reminiscences of a Secretary." The volume has been out of print for some
time, but the continued demand for it has called for its re-issue. The
change in title has been made in response to many suggestions that the
character of the material is more aptly described as "An Adventure with
a Genius."

ALLEYNE IRELAND.
New York, 1920.



CONTENTS

  I. In a Casting Net
 II. Meeting Joseph Pulitzer
III. Life at Cap Martin
 IV. Yachting in the Mediterranean
  V. Getting to Know Mr. Pulitzer
 VI. Weisbaden and an Atlantic Voyage
VII. Bar Harbor and the Last Cruise



CHAPTER I

IN A CASTING NET


A long illness, a longer convalescence, a positive injunction from my
doctor to leave friends and business associates and to seek some spot
where a comfortable bed and good food could be had in convenient
proximity to varied but mild forms of amusement--and I found myself in
the autumn of the year 1910 free and alone in the delightful city of
Hamburg.

All my plans had gone down wind, and as I sat at my table in the Cafe
Ziechen, whence, against the background of the glittering blue of the
Alster, I could see the busy life of the Alter Jungfernstieg and the
Alsterdamm, my thoughts turned naturally to the future.

It is not the easiest thing in the world to reconstruct at forty years
of age the whole scheme of your life; but my illness, and other
happenings of a highly disagreeable character, had compelled me to
abandon a career to which I had devoted twenty years of arduous labor;
and the question which pressed for an immediate answer was: What are you
going to do now?

Various alternatives presented themselves. There had been a suggestion
that I should take the editorship of a newspaper in Calcutta; an
important financial house in London had offered me the direction of its
interests in Western Canada; a post in the service of the Government of
India had been mentioned as a possibility by certain persons in
authority.

My own inclination, the child of a weary spirit and of the lassitude of
ill health, swayed me in the direction of a quiet retreat in Barbados,
that peaceful island of an eternal summer cooled by the northeast
trades, where the rush and turmoil of modern life are unknown and where
a very modest income more than suffices for all the needs of a simple
existence.

I shall never know to what issue my reflections upon these matters would
have led me, for a circumstance, in the last degree trivial, intervened
to turn my thoughts into an entirely new channel, and to guide me,
though I could not know it at the time, into the service of Joseph
Pulitzer.

My waiter was extremely busy serving a large party of artillery officers
at an adjoining table. I glanced through The Times and the Hamburger
Nachrichten, looked out for a while upon the crowded street, and then,
resigning myself to the delay in getting my lunch, picked up The Times
again and did what I had never done before in my life--read the
advertisements under the head "Professional Situations."

All except one were of the usual type, the kind in which a prospective
employer flatters a prospective employee by classing as "professional"
the services of a typewriter or of a companion to an elderly gentleman
who resides within easy distance of an important provincial town.

One advertisement, however, stood out from the rest on account of the
peculiar requirements set forth in its terse appeal. It ran something
after this fashion: "Wanted, an intelligent man of about middle age,
widely read, widely traveled, a good sailor, as companion-secretary to a
gentleman. Must be prepared to live abroad. Good salary. Apply, etc."

My curiosity was aroused; and at first sight I appeared to meet the
requirements in a reasonable measure. I had certainly traveled widely,
and I was an excellent sailor--excellent to the point of offensiveness.
Upon an unfavorable construction I could claim to be middle-aged at
forty; and I was prepared to live abroad in the unlikely event of any
one fixing upon a country which could be properly called "abroad" from
the standpoint of a man who had not spent twelve consecutive months in
any place since he was fifteen years old.

As for intelligence, I reflected that for ninety-nine people out of a
hundred intelligence in others means no more than the discovery of a
person who is in intellectual acquiescence with themselves, and that if
the necessity arose I could probably affect an acquiescence which would
serve all the purposes of a fundamental identity of convictions.

Two things, however, suggested possible difficulties, the questions of
what interpretations the advertiser placed upon the terms "widely read"
and "good salary." I could not claim to be widely read in any
conventional sense, for I was not a university graduate, and the very
extensive reading I had done in my special line of study--the control
and development of tropical dependencies--though it might entitle me to
some consideration as a student in that field had left me woefully
ignorant of general literature. Would the ability to discuss with
intelligence the Bengal Regulation of 1818, or the British Guiana
Immigration Ordinance of 1891 be welcomed as a set-off to a complete
unfamiliarity with Milton's "Comus" and Gladstone's essay on the
epithets of motion in Homer?

On the subject of what constituted a "good salary" experience had taught
me to expect a very wide divergence of view, not only along the natural
line of cleavage between the person paying and the person receiving the
salary, but also between one employer and another and between one
employee and another; and I recalled a story, told me in my infancy, in
which a certain British laboring man had been heard to remark that he
would not be the Czar of Russia, no, not for thirty shillings a week.
But that element in the situation might, I reflected, very well be left
to take care of itself.

I finished my lunch, and then replied to the advertisement, giving my
English address. My letter, a composition bred of the conflicting
influences of pride, modesty, prudence, and curiosity, brought forth in
due course a brief reply in which I was bidden to an interview in that
part of London where fashion and business prosperity seek to ape each
other.

Upon presenting myself at the appointed hour I was confronted by a
gentleman whose severity of manner I learned later to recognize as the
useful mask to a singularly genial and kindly nature.

Our interview was long and, to me at any rate, rather embarrassing,
since it resolved itself into a searching cross-examination by a past-
master in the art. Who were my parents? When and where had I been born?
Where had I been educated? What were my means of livelihood? What
positions had I filled since I went out into the world? What countries
had I visited? What books had I read? What books had I written? To what
magazines and reviews had I contributed? Who were my friends? Was I fond
of music, of painting, of the drama? Had I a sense of humor? Had I a
good temper or a good control of a bad one? What languages could I speak
or read? Did I enjoy good health? Was I of a nervous disposition? Had I
tact and discretion? Was I a good horseman, a good sailor, a good
talker, a good reader?

When it came to asking me whether I was a good horseman AND a good
sailor, I realized that anyone who expected to find these two qualities
combined in one man was quite capable of demanding that his companion-
secretary should be able to knit woollen socks, write devotional verse,
and compute the phases of the moon.

I remember chuckling to myself over this quaint conceit; I was to learn
later that it came unpleasantly near the truth.

Under this close examination I felt that I had made rather a poor
showing. This was due in some measure, no doubt, to the fact that my
questioner abruptly left any topic as soon as he discovered that I knew
something about it, and began to angle around, with disturbing success,
to find the things I did not know about.

At one point, however, I scored a hit. After I had been put through my
paces, a process which seemed to me to end only at the exact point where
my questioner could no longer remember the name of anything in the
universe about which he could frame an interrogation, it was my turn to
ask questions.

Was the person I was addressing the gentleman who needed the companion?

No, he was merely his agent. As a matter of fact the person on whose
behalf he was acting was an American.

I nodded in a non-committal way.

He was also a millionaire.

I bowed the kind of bow that a Frenchman makes when he says Mais
parfaitement.

Furthermore he was totally blind.

"Joseph Pulitzer," I said.

"How in the world did you guess that?" asked my companion.

"That wasn't a guess," I replied. "You advertised for an intelligent
man; and this is simply where my intelligence commences to show itself.
An intelligent man couldn't live as long as I have in the United States
without hearing a good deal about Joseph Pulitzer; and, after all, the
country isn't absolutely overrun with blind millionaires."

At the close of the interview I was told that I would be reported upon.
In the meantime would I kindly send in a written account of the
interview, in the fullest possible detail, as a test of my memory, sense
of accuracy, and literary style.

Nor was this all. As I prepared to take my departure I was handed the
address of another gentleman who would also examine me and make a
report. Before I got out of the room my inquisitor said, "It may
interest you to know that we have had more than six hundred applications
for the post, and that it may, therefore, take some time before the
matter is definitely settled."

I was appalled. Evidently I had been wasting my time, for I could have
no doubt that the gallant six hundred would include a sample of every
kind of pundit, stationary or vagrant, encompassed within the seven
seas; and against such competition I felt my chances to be just
precisely nothing.

My companion observed my discomfiture. and as he shook hands he said,
"Oh, that doesn't really mean very much. As a matter of fact we were
able to throw out more than five hundred and fifty applications merely
for self-evident reasons. A number of school teachers and bank clerks
applied, and in general these gentlemen said that although they had not
traveled they would have no objection to living abroad, and that they
might venture to hope that if they DID go to sea they would prove to be
good sailors.

"Most of them appeared to think that the circumstance of being middle-
aged would off-set their deficiencies in other directions. There are
really only a few gentlemen whom we can consider as being likely to meet
Mr. Pulitzer's requirements, and the selection will be made finally by
Mr. Pulitzer himself. It is very probable that you will be asked to go
to Mentone to spend a fortnight or so on Mr. Pulitzer's yacht or at his
villa at Cap Martin, as he never engages anybody until he has had the
candidate with him for a short visit.

"And, by the way, would you mind writing a short narrative of your life,
not more than two thousand words? It would interest Mr. Pulitzer and
would help him to reach a decision in your case. You might also send me
copies of some of your writings."

Thus ended my interview with Mr. James M. Tuohy, the London
correspondent of the New York World.

My next step was to call upon the second inquisitor, Mr. George Ledlie.
I found him comfortably installed at an hotel in the West End. He was an
American, very courteous and pleasant, but evidently prepared to use a
probe without any consideration for the feelings of the victim.

As my business was to reveal myself, I wasted no time, and for about an
hour I rambled along on the subject of my American experiences. I do not
know to this day what sort of an impression I created upon this
gentleman, but I felt at the time that it ought to have been a favorable
one.

We had many friends in common; I had recently been offered a lectureship
in the university from which he had graduated; some of my books had been
published in America by firms in whose standing he had confidence; I
paraded a slight acquaintance with three Presidents of the United
States, and produced from my pocketbook letters from two of them; we
found that we were both respectful admirers of a charming lady who had
recently undergone a surgical operation; he had been a guest at my club
in Boston, I had been a guest at his club in New York. When I left him I
thought poorly of the chances of the remnant of the six hundred.

Some weeks passed and I heard nothing more of the matter. During this
time I had leisure to think over what I had heard from time to time
about Joseph Pulitzer, and to speculate, with the aid of some
imaginative friends, upon the probable advantages and disadvantages of
the position for which I was a candidate.

Gathered together, my second-hand impressions of Joseph Pulitzer made
little more than a hazy outline. I had heard or read that he had landed
in New York in the early sixties, a penniless youth unable to speak a
word of English; that after a remarkable series of adventures he had
become a newspaper proprietor and, later, a millionaire; that he had
been stricken blind at the height of his career; that his friends and
his enemies agreed in describing him as a man of extraordinary ability
and of remarkable character; that he had been victorious in a bitter
controversy with President Roosevelt; that one of the Rothschilds had
remarked that if Joseph Pulitzer had not lost his eyesight and his
health he, Pulitzer, would have collected into his hands all the money
there was; that he was the subject of one of the noblest portraits
created by the genius of John Sargent; and that he spent most of his
time on board a magnificent yacht, surrounded by a staff of six
secretaries.

This was enough, of course, to inspire me with a keen desire to meet Mr.
Pulitzer; it was not enough to afford me the slightest idea of what life
would be like in close personal contact with such a man.

The general opinion of my friends was that life with Mr. Pulitzer would
be one long succession of happy, care-free days spent along the
languorous shores of the Mediterranean--days of which perhaps two hours
would be devoted to light conversation with my interesting host, and the
remainder of my waking moments to the gaities of Monte Carlo, to rambles
on the picturesque hillsides of Rapallo and Bordighera, or to the genial
companionship of my fellow-secretaries under the snowy awnings of the
yacht.

We argued the matter out to our entire satisfaction. Mr. Pulitzer, in
addition to being blind, was a chronic invalid, requiring a great deal
of sleep and repose. He could hardly be expected to occupy more than
twelve hours a day with his secretaries. That worked out at two hours
apiece, or, if the division was made by days, about one day a week to
each secretary.

The yacht, I had been given to understand, cruised for about eight
months in the year over a course bounded by Algiers and the Piraeus, by
Mentone and Alexandria, with visits to the ports of Italy, Sicily,
Corsica, and Crete. The least imaginative of mortals could make a very
fair and alluring picture of what life would be like under such
circumstances. As the event turned out it was certainly not our
imaginations that were at fault.

As time passed without bringing any further sign from Mr. Tuohy my hopes
gradually died out, and I fixed in my mind a date upon which I would
abandon all expectations of securing the appointment. Scarcely had I
reached this determination when I received a telegram from Mr. Tuohy
asking me to lunch with him the next day at the Cafe Royal in order to
meet Mr. Ralph Pulitzer, who was passing through London on his way back
to America after a visit to his father.

I leave my readers to imagine what sort of a lunch I had in the company
of two gentlemen whose duty it was to struggle with the problem of
discovering the real character and attainments of a guest who knew he
was under inspection.

I found Mr. Ralph Pulitzer to be a slender, clean-cut, pale gentleman of
an extremely quiet and self-possessed manner. He was very agreeable, and
he listened to my torrent of words with an interest which, if it were
real, reflected great credit on me, and which, if it were feigned,
reflected not less credit on him.

As we parted he said, "I shall write to my father to-day and tell him of
our meeting. Of course, as you know, the decision in this matter rests
entirely with him."

After this incident there was another long silence, and I again fixed
upon a day beyond which I would not allow my hopes to flourish. The day
arrived, nothing happened, and the next morning I went down to the
offices of the West India Royal Mail Steam Packet Company and made
inquiries about the boats for Barbados. I spent the afternoon at my club
making out a list of things to be taken out as aids to comfortable
housekeeping in a semi-tropical country--a list which swelled amazingly
as I turned over the fascinating pages of the Army and Navy Stores
Catalogue.

By dinner time I had become more than reconciled to the new turn of
affairs, and when I reached my flat at midnight I found myself impatient
of the necessary delay before I could settle down to a life of easy
literary activity in one of the most delightful climates in the world
and in the neighborhood of a large circle of charming friends and
acquaintances.

On the table in the hall I found a telegram from Mr. Tuohy instructing
me to start next morning for Mentone, where Mr. Pulitzer would entertain
me as his guest for a fortnight, either at his villa or aboard his yacht
Liberty, and informing me that I would find at my club early in the
morning an envelope containing a ticket to Mentone, with sleeper and
parlor-car accommodation, and a check to cover incidental expenses.

The tickets and the check were accompanied by a letter in which I was
told that I was to consider this two weeks' visit as a trial, that
during that time all my expenses would be paid, that I would receive an
honorarium of so much a day from the time I left London until I was
engaged by Mr. Pulitzer or had arrived back in London after rejection by
him, and that everything depended upon the impression I made on my host.

I left London cold, damp, and foggy; and in less than twenty-four hours
I was in the train between Marseilles and Mentone, watching the surf
playing among the rocks in the brilliant sunshine of the Cote d'Azur. In
the tiny harbor of Mentone I found, anchored stern-on to the quay, the
steam yacht Liberty--a miracle of snowy decks and gleaming brass-work--
tonnage 1,607, length over all 316 feet, beam 35.6 feet, crew 60, all
told.

A message from Mr. Pulitzer awaited me. Would I dine at his villa at Cap
Martin? An automobile would call for me at seven o'clock.

I spent the day in looking over the yacht and in trying to pick up some
information as to the general lay of the land, by observing every detail
of my new surroundings.

The yacht itself claimed my first attention. Everything was new and
fascinating to me, for although I had had my share of experiences in
barques, and brigs, and full-rigged ships, in mail boats and tramp
steamers, only once before had I had an opportunity to examine closely a
large private yacht. Ten years before, I had spent some time cruising
along the northern coast of Borneo in the yacht of His Highness Sir
Charles Brooke, Raja of Sarawak; but with that single exception yachting
was for me an unknown phase of sea life.

The Liberty--or, as the secretarial staff, for reasons which will become
apparent later, called her, the Liberty, Ha! Ha!--was designed and built
on the Clyde. I have never seen a vessel of more beautiful lines.
Sailors would find, I think, but one fault in her appearance and one
peculiarity. With a white-painted hull, her bridge and the whole of her
upper structure, except the masts and funnel, were also white, giving to
her general features a certain flatness which masked her fine
proportions. Her bridge, instead of being well forward, was placed so
far aft that it was only a few feet from the funnel. The object of this
departure from custom was to prevent any walking over Mr. Pulitzer's
head when he sat in his library, which was situated under the spot,
where the bridge would have been in most vessels.

The boat was specially designed to meet Mr. Pulitzer's peculiar
requirements. She had a flush deck from the bows to the stern, broken
only, for perhaps twenty feet, by a well between the forecastle head and
the fore part of the bridge.

Running aft from the bridge to within forty feet of the stern was an
unbroken line of deck houses. Immediately afore the bridge was Mr.
Pulitzer's library, a handsome room lined from floor to ceiling with
books; abaft of that was the dining saloon, which could accommodate in
comfort a dozen people; continuing aft there were, on the port side, the
pantry, amidships the enclosed space over the engine room, and on the
starboard side a long passage leading to the drawing-room and writing-
room used by the secretaries and by members of Mr. Pulitzer's family
when they were on the yacht.

The roof and sides of this line of deck houses were extended a few feet
beyond the aftermost room, so as to provide a sheltered nook where Mr.
Pulitzer could sit when the wind was too strong for his comfort on the
open deck.

Between the sides of the deck houses and the sides of the ship there ran
on each side a promenade about nine feet broad, unbroken by bolt or nut,
stanchion or ventilator, smooth as a billiard table and made of the
finest quality of seasoned teak. The promenade continued across the fore
part of Mr. Pulitzer's library and across the after part of the line of
deck houses, so that there was an oblong track round the greater part of
the boat, a track covered overhead with double awnings and protected
inboard by the sides of the deck houses, and outboard by adjustable
canvas screens, which could be let down or rolled up in a few minutes.

About thirty feet from the stern a heavy double canvas screen ran
'thwartships from one side of the boat to the other, shutting off a
small space of deck for the use of the crew. The main deck space was
allotted as follows: under the forecastle head accommodation for two
officers and two petty officers, abaft of that the well space, of which
I have spoken; under the library was Mr. Pulitzer's bedroom, occupying
the whole breadth of the ship and extending from the bulkhead at the
after part of the well space as far aft as the companion way leading
down between the library and the saloon, say twenty-five feet.

A considerable proportion of the sides of this bedroom was given up to
books; in one corner was a very high wash-hand-stand, so high that Mr.
Pulitzer, who was well over six feet tall, could wash his hands without
stooping. The provision of this very high wash-hand-stand illustrates
the minute care with which everything had been foreseen in the
construction and fitting-up of the yacht. When a person stoops there is
a slight impediment to the free flow of blood to the head, such an
impediment might react unfavorably on the condition of Mr. Pulitzer's
eyes, therefore the wash-hand-stand was high enough to be used without
stooping.

In the forward bulkhead of the cabin were two silent fans, one drawing
air into the room, the other drawing it out. The most striking feature
of the room was an immense four-poster bed which stood in the center of
the cabin, with a couch at the foot and one or two chairs at one side.
Hanging at the head of the bed was a set of electric push-bells, the
cords being of different lengths so that Mr. Pulitzer could call at will
for the major-domo, the chief steward, the captain, the officer on
watch, and so on.

The bedroom was heavily carpeted and was cut off from the rest of the
ship by double bulkheads, double doors, and double portholes, with the
object of protecting Mr. Pulitzer as much as possible from all noise, to
which he was excessively sensitive. A large bathroom opened immediately
off the bedroom, and a flight of steps led down to a gymnasium on the
lower deck.

Abaft of Mr. Pulitzer's bedroom there were, on the port side, the cabins
of the major-domo, the captain, the head butler, the chief engineer, an
officers' mess room, the ship's galley, a steward's mess room, and the
cabins of the chief steward and one or two officers.

Corresponding with these there were, on the starboard side, the cabins
of the secretaries and the doctor, "The Cells," as we called them. They
were comfortable rooms, all very much on one pattern, except that of the
business secretary, which was a good deal larger than the others. He
needed the additional space for newspaper files, documents,
correspondence, and so on. Each cabin contained a bed, a wash-hand-
stand, a chest of drawers, a cupboard for clothes, a small folding
table, some book shelves, an arm chair, an ordinary chair, an electric
fan, and a radiator. Each cabin had two portholes, and there were two
bathrooms to the six cabins.

The center of the ship, between these cabins and the corresponding space
on the port side, was occupied by the engine room; and the entrance to
the secretaries' quarters was through a companionway opening on to the
promenade deck, with a door on each side of the yacht, and leading down
a flight of stairs to a long fore-and-aft passage, out of which all the
secretaries' cabins opened.

Abaft the secretaries' cabins, and occupying the whole breadth of the
boat, were a number of cabins and suites for the accommodation of Mrs.
Pulitzer, other members of the family, and guests; and abaft of these,
cut off by a 'thwartships bulkhead, were the quarters of the crew.

The lower deck was given over chiefly to stores, coal bunkers, the
engine room, the stoke-hold, and to a large number of electric
accumulators, which kept the electric lights going when the engines were
not working. There were, however, on this deck the gymnasium, and a
large room, directly under Mr. Pulitzer's bedroom, used to take the
overflow from the library.

The engines were designed rather for smooth running than for speed, and
twelve knots an hour was the utmost that could be got out of them, the
average running speed being about eight knots. The yacht had an ample
supply of boats, including two steam launches, one burning coal, the
other oil.

During my inspection of the yacht I was accompanied by my cabin-steward,
a young Englishman who had at one time served aboard the German
Emperor's yacht, Meteor. Nothing could have been more courteous than his
manner or more intelligent than his explanations; but the moment I tried
to draw him out on the subject of life on the yacht he relapsed into a
vagueness from which I could extract no gleam of enlightenment. After
fencing for some time with my queries he suggested that I might like to
have a glass of sherry and a biscuit in the secretaries' library, and,
piloting me thither, he left me.

The smoking-room was furnished with writing tables, some luxurious arm
chairs, and a comfortable lounge, and every spare nook was filled with
book shelves. The contents of these shelves were extremely varied. A
cursory glance showed me Meyer's Neues Konversations-Lexicon, The Yacht
Register, Whitaker's Almanack, Who's Who, Burke's Peerage, The Almanack
de Gotha, the British and the Continental Bradshaw, a number of
Baedeker's "Guides," fifty or sixty volumes of the Tauchnitz edition, a
large collection of files of reviews and magazines--The Nineteenth
Century, Quarterly, Edinburgh, Fortnightly, Contemporary, National,
Atlantic, North American, Revue de Deux Mondes--and a scattering of
volumes by Kipling, Shaw, Hosebery, Pater, Ida Tarbell, Bryce, Ferrero,
Macaulay, Anatole France, Maupassant, "Dooley," and a large number of
French and German plays. I was struck by the entire absence of books of
travel and scientific works.

I spent part of the afternoon in the drawing-room playing a large
instrument of the gramophone type. There were several hundred records--
from grand opera, violin solos by Kreisler, and the Gilbert and Sullivan
operas, to rag-time and the latest comic songs.

Before the time came to dress for dinner I had met the captain and some
of the officers of the yacht. They were all very civil; and my own
experience as a sailor enabled me to see that they were highly efficient
men. I was a good deal puzzled, however, by something peculiar but very
elusive in their attitude toward me, something which I had at once
detected in the manner of my cabin-steward.

With their courtesy was mingled a certain flavor of curiosity tinged
with amusement, which, so far from being offensive, was distinctly
friendly, but which, nevertheless, gave me a vague sense of uneasiness.
In fact the whole atmosphere of the yacht was one of restlessness and
suspense; and the effect was heightened because each person who spoke to
me appeared to be on the point of divulging some secret or delivering
some advice, which discretion checked at his lips.

I felt myself very much under observation, a feeling as though I was a
new boy in a boarding school or a new animal at the zoo--interesting to
my companions not only on account of my novelty, but because my personal
peculiarities would affect the comfort of the community of which I was
to become a member.

At seven o'clock my cabin-steward announced the arrival of the
automobile, and after a swift run along the plage and up the winding
roads on the hillsides of Cap Martin I found myself at the door of Mr.
Pulitzer's villa. I was received by the major-domo, ushered into the
drawing-room, and informed that Mr. Pulitzer would be down in a few
minutes.



CHAPTER II

MEETING JOSEPH PULITZER


Before I had time to examine my surroundings Mr. Pulitzer entered the
room on the arm of the major-domo. My first swift impression was of a
very tall man with broad shoulders, the rest of the body tapering away
to thinness, with a noble head, bushy reddish beard streaked with gray,
black hair, swept back from the forehead and lightly touched here and
there with silvery white. One eye was dull and half closed, the other
was of a deep, brilliant blue which, so far from suggesting blindness,
created the instant effect of a searching, eagle-like glance. The
outstretched hand was large, strong, nervous, full of character, ending
in well-shaped and immaculately kept nails.

A high-pitched voice, clear, penetrating, and vibrant, gave out the
strange challenge: "Well, here you see before you the miserable wreck
who is to be your host; you must make the best you can of him. Give me
your arm into dinner."

I may complete here a description of Mr. Pulitzer's appearance, founded
upon months of close personal association with him. The head was
splendidly modeled, the forehead high, the brows prominent and arched;
the ears were large, the nose was long and hooked; the mouth, almost
concealed by the mustache, was firm and thin-lipped; the jaws showed
square and powerful under the beard; the length of the face was much
emphasized by the flowing beard and by the way in which the hair was
brushed back from the forehead. The skin was of a clear, healthy pink,
like a young girl's; but in moments of intense excitement the color
would deepen to a dark, ruddy flush, and after a succession of sleepless
nights, or under the strain of continued worry, it would turn a dull,
lifeless gray.

I have never seen a face which varied so much in expression. Not only
was there a marked difference at all times between one side and the
other, due partly to the contrast between the two eyes and partly to a
loss of flexibility in the muscles of the right side, but almost from
moment to moment the general appearance of the face moved between a
lively, genial animation, a cruel and wolf-like scowl, and a heavy and
hopeless dejection. No face was capable of showing greater tenderness;
none could assume a more forbidding expression of anger and contempt.

The Sargent portrait, a masterpiece of vivid character-painting, is a
remarkable revelation of the complex nature of its subject. It discloses
the deep affection, the keen intelligence, the wide sympathy, the
tireless energy, the delicate sensitiveness, the tearing impatience, the
cold tyranny, and the flaming scorn by which his character was so
erratically dominated. It is a noble and pathetic monument to the
suffering which had been imposed for a quarter of a century upon the
intense and arbitrary spirit of this extraordinary man.

The account which I am to give of Mr. Pulitzer's daily life during the
months immediately preceding his death would be unintelligible to all
but the very few who knew him in recent years if it were not prefaced by
a brief biographical note.

Joseph Pulitzer was born in the village of Mako, near Buda Pesth in
Hungary, on April 10, 1847. His father was a Jew, his mother a
Christian. At the age of sixteen he emigrated to the United States. He
landed without friends, without money, unable to speak a word of
English. He enlisted immediately in the First New York (Lincoln) Cavalry
Regiment, a regiment chiefly composed of Germans and in which German was
the prevailing tongue.

Within a year the Civil War ended, and Pulitzer found himself, in common
with hundreds of thousands of others, out of employment at a time when
employment was most difficult to secure. At this time he was so poor
that he was turned away from French's Hotel for lack of fifty cents with
which to pay for his bed. In less than twenty years he bought French's
Hotel, pulled it down, and erected in its place the Pulitzer Building,
at that time one of the largest business buildings in New York, where he
housed The World.

What lay between these two events may be summed up in a few words. At
the close of the Civil War Mr. Pulitzer went to St. Louis, and in 1868,
after being engaged in various occupations, he became a reporter on the
Westliche Post. In less than ten years he was editor and part
proprietor. His amazing energy, his passionate interest in politics, his
rare gift of terse and forcible expression, and his striking personality
carried him over or through all obstacles.

After he had purchased the St. Louis Dispatch, amalgamated it with the
Post, and made the Post-Dispatch a profitable business enterprise and a
power to be reckoned with in politics, he felt the need of a wider field
in which to maneuver the forces of his character and his intellect.

He came to New York in 1883 and purchased The World from Jay Gould. At
that time The World had a circulation of less than twelve thousand
copies a day, and was practically bankrupt. From this time forward Mr.
Pulitzer concentrated his every faculty on building up The World. He was
scoffed at, ridiculed, and abused by the most powerful editors of the
old school. They were to learn, not without bitterness and wounds, that
opposition was the one fuel of all others which best fed the triple
flame of his courage, his tenacity, and his resourcefulness.

Four years of unremitting toil produced two results. The World reached a
circulation of two hundred thousand copies a day and took its place in
the front rank of the American press as a journal of force and ability,
and Joseph Pulitzer left New York, a complete nervous wreck, to face in
solitude the knowledge that he would never read print again and that
within a few years he would be totally blind.

Joseph Pulitzer, as I knew him twenty-four years after he had been
driven from active life by the sudden and final collapse of his health,
was a man who could be judged by no common standards, for his feelings,
his temper, and his point of view had been warped by years of suffering.

Had his spirit been broken by his trials, had his intellectual power
weakened under the load of his affliction, had his burning interest in
affairs cooled to a point where he could have been content to turn his
back upon life's conflict, he might have found some happiness, or at
least some measure of repose akin to that with which age consoles us for
the loss of youth. But his greatest misfortune was that all the active
forces of his personality survived to the last in their full vigor,
inflicting upon him the curse of an impatience which nothing could
appease, of a discontent which knew no amelioration.

My first meeting with Mr. Pulitzer is indelibly fixed in my memory. As
we entered the dining-room the butler motioned to me to take a seat on
Mr. Pulitzer's right hand, and as I did so I glanced up and down the
table to find myself in the presence of half-a-dozen gentlemen in
evening dress, who bowed in a very friendly manner as Mr. Pulitzer said,
with a broad sweep of his hand, "Gentlemen, this is Mr. Alleyne Ireland;
you will be able to inform him later of my fads and crotchets; well,
don't be ungenerous with me, don't paint the devil as black as he is."

This was spoken in a tone of banter, and was cut short by a curious,
prolonged chuckle, which differed from laughter in the feeling it
produced in the hearer that the mirth did not spring from the open,
obvious humor of the situation, but from some whimsical thought which
was the more relished because its nature was concealed from us. I felt
that, instead of my host's amusement having been produced by his
peculiar introduction, he had made his eccentric address merely as an
excuse to chuckle over some notion which had formed itself in his mind
from material entirely foreign to his immediate surroundings.

I mention this because I found later that one of Mr. Pulitzer's most
embarrassing peculiarities was the sudden revelation from time to time
of a mental state entirely at odds with the occupation of the moment. In
the middle of an account of a play, when I was doing my best to
reproduce some scene from memory, with appropriate changes of voice to
represent the different characters, Mr. Pulitzer would suddenly break
in, "Did we ever get a reply to that letter about Laurier's speech on
reciprocity? No? Well, all right, go on, go on."

Or it might be when I was reading from the daily papers an account of a
murder or a railroad wreck that Mr. Pulitzer would break out into a peal
of his peculiar chuckling laughter. I would immediately stop reading,
when he would pat me on the arm, and say, "Go on, boy, go on, don't mind
me. I wasn't laughing at you. I was thinking of something else. What was
it? Oh, a railroad wreck, well, don't stop, go on reading."

As soon as we were seated Mr. Pulitzer turned to me and began to
question me about my reading. Had I read any recent fiction? No? Well,
what had I read within the past month?

I named several books which I had been re-reading--Macaulay's Essays,
Meredith Townsend's Asia and Europe, and Lowes Dickinson's Modern
Symposium.

"Well, tell me something about Asia and Europe" he said.

I left my dinner untasted, and for a quarter of an hour held forth on
the life of Mohammed, on the courage of the Arabians, on the charm of
Asia for Asiatics, and on other matters taken from Mr. Townsend's
fascinating book. Suddenly Mr. Pulitzer interrupted me.

"My God! You don't mean to tell me that anyone is interested in that
sort of rubbish. Everybody knows about Mohammed, and about the bravery
of the Arabs, and, for God's sake, why shouldn't Asia be attractive to
the Asiatics! Try something else. Do you remember any plays?"

Yes, I remembered several pretty well. Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra for
instance.

"Go on, then, try and tell me about that."

My prospects of getting any dinner faded away as I began my new effort.
Fortunately I knew the play very well, and remembered a number of
passages almost word for word. I soon saw that Mr. Pulitzer was
interested and pleased, not with the play as anything new to him, for he
probably knew it better than I did, but with my presentation of it,
because it showed some ability to compress narrative without destroying
its character and also gave some proof of a good memory.

When I reached the scene in which Caesar replies to Britannus's protest
against the recognition of Cleopatra's marriage to her brother, Ptolemy,
by saying, "Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that
the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature," Mr. Pulitzer burst
into an uncontrollable fit of laughter.

I was about to continue, and try to make good better, when Mr. Pulitzer
raised his hands above his head in remonstrance.

"Stop! Stop! For God's sake! You're hurting me," very much as a person
with a cracked lip begs for mercy when you are in the middle of your
most humorous story.

I found out later that, in order to keep in Mr. Pulitzer's good graces,
it was as necessary to avoid being too funny as it was to avoid being
too dull, for, while the latter fault hurt his intellectual
sensitiveness, the former involved, through the excessive laughter it
produced, a degree of involuntary exertion which, in his disordered
physical condition, caused him acute pain.

Mr. Pulitzer's constant use of the exclamations "My God!" and "For God's
sake!" had no relation whatever to swearing, as the term is usually
understood; they were employed exactly as a French lady employs the
exclamation Mon Dieu! or a German the expression Ach, du liebe Gott! As
a matter of fact, although Mr. Pulitzer was a man of strong and, at
times, violent emotions, and, from his deplorable nervous state,
excessively irritable, I do not think that in the eight months I was
with him, during the greater part of which time he was not under any
restraining influence, such as might be exerted by the presence of
ladies, I heard him use any oath except occasionally a "damn," which
appealed to him, I think, as a suitable if not a necessary qualification
of the word "fool." For Mr. Pulitzer there were no fools except damned
fools.

After the excitement about Caesar and Cleopatra had subsided, Mr.
Pulitzer asked me if I had a good memory. I hesitated before replying,
because I had seen enough of Mr. Pulitzer in an hour to realize that a
constant exercise of caution would be necessary if I wished to avoid
offending his prejudices or wounding his susceptibilities; and whereas
on the one hand I did not wish to set a standard for myself which I
would find it impossible to live up to, on the other hand I was anxious
to avoid giving any description of my abilities which would be followed
later by a polite intimation from the major-domo that Mr. Pulitzer had
enjoyed my visit immensely but that I was not just the man for the
place.

So I compromised and said that I had a fairly good memory.

"Well, everybody thinks he's got a good memory," replied Mr. Pulitzer.

"I only claimed a fairly good one," I protested.

"Oh! that's just an affectation; as a matter of fact you think you've
got a splendid memory, don't you? Now, be frank about it; I love people
to be frank with me."

My valor got the better of my discretion, and I replied that if he
really wished me to be frank I was willing to admit that I had no
particular desire to lay claim to a good memory, for I was inclined to
accept the view which I had once heard expressed by a very wise man of
my acquaintance that the human mind was not intended to remember with
but to think with, and that one of the greatest benefits which had been
conferred on mankind by the discovery of printing was that thousands of
things could be recorded for reference which former generations had been
compelled to learn by rote.

"Your wise friend," he cried, "was a damned fool! If you will give the
matter a moment's thought you'll see that memory is the highest faculty
of the human mind. What becomes of all your reading, all your
observation, your experience, study, investigations, discussions--in a
rushing crescendo--if you have no memory?"

"I might reply," I said, "by asking what use it is to lumber up your
mind with a mass of information of which you are only going to make an
occasional use when you can have it filed away in encyclopedias and
other works of reference, and in card indexes, instantly available when
you want it."

I spoke in a light and rather humorous tone in order to take the edge
off my dissent from his opinion, reflecting that even between friends
and equals a demand for frankness is most safely to be regarded as a
danger signal to impulsiveness; but it was too late, I had evidently
overstepped the mark, for Mr. Pulitzer turned abruptly from me without
replying, and began to talk to the gentleman on his left.

This had the twofold advantage of giving me time to reconsider my
strategy, and to eat some dinner, which one of the footmen, evidently
the kind with a memory for former experiences, had set on one side and
kept warm against the moment when I would be free to enjoy it.

As I ate I listened to the conversation. It made my heart sink. The
gentleman to whom Mr. Pulitzer had transferred his attentions was a
Scotchman, Mr. William Romaine Paterson. I discovered later that he was
the nearest possible approach to a walking encyclopedia. His range of
information was--well, I am tempted to say, infamous. He appeared to
have an exhaustive knowledge of French, German, Italian, and English
literature, of European history in its most complicated ramifications,
and of general biography in such a measure that, in regard to people as
well known as Goethe, Voltaire, Kossuth, Napoleon, Garibaldi, Bismarck,
and a score of others, he could fix a precise day on which any event or
conversation had taken place, and recall it in its minutest details.

It was not simply from the standpoint of my own ignorance that
Paterson's store of knowledge assumed such vast proportions, for it was
seldom opened except in the presence of Mr. Pulitzer, in whom were
combined a tenacious memory, a profound acquaintance with the subjects
which Paterson had taken for his province, an analytic mind, and a zest
for contradiction. Everything Paterson said was immediately pounced upon
by a vigorous, astute, and well-informed critic who derived peculiar
satisfaction from the rare instances in which he could detect him in an
inaccuracy.

The conversation between Mr. Pulitzer and Paterson, or, rather,
Paterson's frequently interrupted monologue, lasted until we had all
finished dinner, and the butler had lighted Mr. Pulitzer's cigar. In the
middle of an eloquent passage from Paterson, Mr. Pulitzer rose, turned
abruptly toward me, held out his hand, and said, "I'm very glad to have
met you, Mr. Ireland; you have entertained me very much. Please come
here to-morrow at eleven o'clock, and I'll take you out for a drive.
Good-night." He took Paterson's arm and left the room.

The door, like all the doors in Mr. Pulitzer's various residences, shut
automatically and silently; and after one of the secretaries had drawn a
heavy velvet curtain across the doorway, so that not the faintest sound
could escape from the room, I was chaffed good-naturedly about my debut
as a candidate. To my great surprise I was congratulated on having done
very well.

"You made a great hit," said one, "with your account of Shaw's play."

"I nearly burst out laughing," said another, "when you gave your views
about memory. I think you're dead right about it; but J. P.--Mr.
Pulitzer was always referred to as J. P.--is crazy about people having
good memories, so if you've really got a good memory you'd better let
him find it out."

I was told that, so far as we were concerned, the day's work, or at
least that portion of it which involved being with J. P., was to be
considered over as soon as he retired to the library after dinner. His
object then was to be left alone with one secretary, who read to him
until about ten o'clock, when the major-domo came and took him to his
rooms for the night. As a rule, J. P. made no further demand on the
bodily presence of his secretaries after he had gone to bed, but
occasionally, when he could not sleep, one of them would be called,
perhaps at three in the morning, to read to him.

This meant in practice that, when we were ashore, one, or more usually
two of us, would remain in the house in case of emergency. This did not
by any means imply that we were always free from work after ten o'clock
at night, in fact the very opposite was true, for it was J. P.'s custom
to say, during dinner, that on the following day he would ride, drive,
or walk with such a one or such a one, naming him; and the victim--a
term frequently used with a good deal of surprisingly frank enjoyment by
J. P. himself--had often to work well into the night preparing material
for conversation.

I saw something of what this preparation meant before I left the villa
after my first meeting with J. P. Two of the secretaries said they would
go over to Monte Carlo, and they asked me to go with them; but I
declined, preferring to remain behind for a chat with one of the
secretaries, Mr. Norman G. Thwaites, an Englishman, who was secretary in
a more technical sense than any of the rest of us, for he was a
shorthand writer and did most of J. P.'s correspondence.

After the others had gone he showed me a table in the entrance hall of
the villa, on which was a big pile of mail just arrived from London. It
included a great number of newspapers and weeklies, several copies of
each. There were The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail, The
Morning Post, The Daily News, The Westminster Gazette, Truth, The
Spectator, The Saturday Review, The Nation, The Outlook, and some other
London publications, as well as the Paris editions of the New York
Herald and The Daily Mail.

Thwaites selected a copy of each and then led the way to his bedroom, a
large room on the top floor, from which we could see across the bay the
brilliant lights of Monte Carlo.

He then explained to me that he had been selected to read to J. P.
whilst the latter had his breakfast and his after-breakfast cigar the
next morning. In order to do this satisfactorily he had to go over the
papers and read carefully whatever he could find that was suited to J.
P.'s taste at that particular time of the day. During the breakfast hour
J. P. would not have anything read to him which was of an exciting
nature. This preference excluded political news, crime, disaster, and
war correspondence, and left practically nothing but book reviews,
criticisms of plays, operas, and art exhibitions, and publishers'
announcements.

The principal sources of information on these topics were the literary
supplement of the London Times, the Literary Digest, and the literary,
dramatic, and musical columns of the Athenaeum, The Spectator, and the
Saturday Review.

These had to be "prepared," to use J. P.'s phrase, which meant that they
were read over rapidly once and then gone over again with some
concentration so that the more important articles could be marked for
actual reading, the other portions being dealt with conversationally,
everything being boiled down to its essence before it reached Mr.
Pulitzer's ear.

As it was getting late, and as I knew that Thwaites would be on tap
early in the morning, for J. P. usually breakfasted before nine, and the
"victim" was supposed to have had his own breakfast by eight, I left the
villa and went back to the yacht.

As he said good-night, Thwaites gave me a copy of The Daily Telegraph
and advised me to read it carefully, as J. P. might ask me for the day's
news during the drive we were to take the following morning.

Before going to sleep I glanced through The Daily Telegraph and came
across an article which gave me an idea for establishing my reputation
for memory. It was a note about the death duties which had been
collected in England during 1910, and it gave a list of about twenty
estates on which large sums had been paid. The list included the names
of the deceased and also the amounts on which probate duty had been
paid. I decided to commit these names and figures to memory and to take
an occasion the next day to reel them off to J. P.

Punctually at eleven o'clock I presented myself at the villa to find, to
my dismay, J. P. seated in his automobile in a towering rage. What sort
of consideration had I for him to keep him waiting for half an hour!

I protested that eleven o'clock was the hour of the appointment. I was
absolutely wrong, he said, half-past-ten was the time, and he remembered
perfectly naming that hour, because he wanted a long drive and he had an
engagement with Mr. Paterson at noon.

"I'm awfully sorry," I began, "if I misunderstood you, but really..."

He dismissed the matter abruptly by saying, "For God's sake, don't argue
about it. Get in and sit next to me so that I can hear you talk."

As soon as we had got clear of the village, and were spinning along at a
good rate on the Corniche road, which circles the Bay of Monaco, high on
the mountain side, Mr. Pulitzer began to put me through my paces.

"Now, Mr. Ireland," he began, "you will understand that if any
arrangement is to be concluded between us I must explore your brain,
your character, your tastes, your sympathies, your prejudices, your
temper; I must find out if you have tact, patience, a sense of humor,
the gift of condensing information, and, above all, a respect, a love, a
passion for accuracy."

I began to speak, but he interrupted me before I had got six words out
of my mouth.

"Wait! Wait!" he cried, "let me finish what I have to say. You'll find
this business of being a candidate a very trying and disagreeable one;
well, it's damned disagreeable to me, too. What I need is rest, repose,
quiet, routine, understanding, sympathy, friendship, yes, my God! the
friendship of those around me. Mr. Ireland, I can do much, I can do
everything for a man who will be my friend. I can give him power, I can
give him wealth, I can give him reputation, the power, the wealth, the
reputation which come to a man who speaks to a million people a day in
the columns of a great paper. But how am I to do this? I am blind, I'm
an invalid; how am I to know whom I can trust? I don't mean in money
matters; money's nothing to me; it can do nothing for me; I mean
morally, intellectually. I've had scores of people pass through my hands
in the last fifteen years--Englishmen, Scotchmen, Irishmen, Welshmen,
Germans, Frenchmen, Americans, men of so-called high family, men of
humble birth, men from a dozen universities, self-taught men, young men,
old men, and, my God! what have I found? Arrogance, stupidity,
ingratitude, loose thinking, conceit, ignorance, laziness, indifference;
absence of tact, discretion, courtesy, manners, consideration, sympathy,
devotion; no knowledge, no wisdom, no intelligence, no observation, no
memory, no insight, no understanding. My God! I can hardly believe my
own experience when I think of it."

Set down in cold print, this outburst loses almost every trace of its
intensely dramatic character. Mr. Pulitzer spoke as though he were
declaiming a part in a highly emotional play. At times he turned toward
me, his clenched fists raised above his shoulders, at times he threw
back his head, flung his outstretched hands at arms' length in front of
him, as though he were appealing to the earth, to the sea, to the air,
to the remote canopy of the sky to hear his denunciation of man's
inefficiency; at times he paused, laid a hand on my arm, and fixed his
eye upon me as if he expected the darkness to yield him some image of my
thought. It was almost impossible to believe at such a moment that he
was totally blind, that he could not distinguish night from day.

"Mind!" he continued, raising a cautionary finger, "I'm not making any
criticism of my present staff; you may consider yourself very lucky if I
find you to have a quarter of the good qualities which any one of them
has; and let me tell you that while you are with me you will do well to
observe these gentlemen and to try and model yourself on them.

"However, all that doesn't matter so much in your case, because there's
no question of your becoming one of my personal staff. I haven't any
vacancy at present, and I don't foresee any. What I want you for is
something quite different."

Imagine my amazement. No vacancy on the staff! What about the
advertisement I had answered? What about all the interviews and
correspondence, in which a companionship had been the only thing
discussed? What could the totally different thing be of which Mr.
Pulitzer spoke?

In the midst of my confusion Mr. Pulitzer said, "Look out of the window
and tell me what you see. Remember that I am blind, and try and make me
get a mental picture of everything--everything, you understand; never
think that anything is too small or insignificant to be of interest to
me; you can't tell what may interest me; always describe everything with
the greatest minuteness, every cloud in the sky, every shadow on the
hillside, every tree, every house, every dress, every wrinkle on a face,
everything, everything!"

I did my best, and he appeared to be pleased; but before I had half
exhausted the details of the magnificent scene above and below us he
stopped me suddenly with a request that I should tell him exactly what
had occurred from the time I had answered his advertisement up to the
moment of my arrival at the villa.

This demand placed me in rather an awkward predicament, for I had to try
and reconcile the fact that the advertisement itself as well as all my
conversations with his agents and with his son had been directed toward
the idea of a companionship, with his positive assertion that there was
no vacancy on his personal staff and that he wanted me for another, and
an undisclosed purpose. Here was a very clear opportunity for destroying
my reputation, either for tact or for accuracy.

There was, of course, only one thing to do, and that was to tell him
exactly what had taken place. This I did, and at the end of my recital
he said, "It's simply amazing how anyone can get a matter tangled up the
way you have. There was never a question of your becoming one of my
companions. What I want is a man to go out to the Philippines and write
a series of vigorous articles showing the bungle we've made of that
business, and paving the way for an agitation in favor of giving the
Islands their independence. There'll be a chance of getting that done if
we elect a Democratic President in 1912."

"Well, sir," I replied, "if the bungle has been as bad as you think I
certainly ought to be able to do the work to your satisfaction. I'm
pretty familiar with the conditions of tropical life, I've written a
good deal on the subject, I've been in the Philippines and have
published a book and a number of articles about them, and, although I
don't take as gloomy a view as you do about the administration out
there, I found a good deal to criticize, and if I go out I can certainly
describe the conditions as they are now, and your editorial writers can
put my articles to whatever use they may wish."

"You're going too fast," he said, "and you're altogether too cock-sure
of your abilities. You mustn't think that because you've written
articles for the London Times you are competent to write for The World.
It's a very different matter. The American people want something terse,
forcible, picturesque, striking, something that will arrest their
attention, enlist their sympathy, arouse their indignation, stimulate
their imagination, convince their reason, awaken their conscience. Why
should I accept you at your own estimate? You don't realize the
responsibility I have in this matter. The World isn't like your Times,
with its forty or fifty thousand educated readers. It's read by, well,
say a million people a day; and it's my duty to see that they get the
truth; but that's not enough, I've got to put it before them briefly so
that they will read it, clearly so that they will understand it,
forcibly so that they will appreciate it, picturesquely so that they
will remember it, and, above all, accurately so that they may be wisely
guided by its light. And you come to me, and before you've been here a
day you ask me to entrust you with an important mission which concerns
the integrity of my paper, the conscience of my readers, the policy of
my country, no, my God! you're too cock-sure of yourself."

By this time Mr. Pulitzer had worked himself up into a state of painful
excitement. His forehead was damp with perspiration, he clasped and
unclasped his hands, his voice became louder and higher-pitched from
moment to moment; but when he suddenly stopped speaking he calmed down
instantly.

"You shouldn't let me talk so much," he said, without, however,
suggesting any means by which I could stop him. "What time is it? Are we
nearly home? Well, Mr. Ireland, I'll let you off for the afternoon; go
and enjoy yourself and forget all about me." Then, as the auto drew up
at the door of the villa, "Come up to dinner about seven and try to be
amusing. You did very well last night. I hope you can keep it up. It's
most important that anyone who is to live with me should have a sense of
humor. I'd be glad to keep a man and pay him a handsome salary if he
would make me laugh once a day. Well, good-by till to-night."



CHAPTER III

LIFE AT CAP MARTIN


There was no lack of humor in Mr. Pulitzer's suggestion that I should go
and enjoy myself and forget him. I went down to the yacht, had lunch in
solitary state, and then, selecting a comfortable chair in the smoking-
room, settled down to think things over.

It soon became clear to me that J. P. was a man of a character so
completely outside the range of my experience that any skill of judgment
I might have acquired through contact with many men of many races would
avail me little in my intercourse with him.

That he was arbitrary, self-centered, and exacting mattered little to
me; it was a combination of qualities which rumor had led me to expect
in him, and with which I had become familiar in my acquaintance with men
of wide authority and outstanding ability. What disturbed me was that
his blindness, his ill health, and his suffering had united to these
traits an intense excitability and a morbid nervousness.

My first impulse was to attribute his capriciousness to a weakening of
his brain power; but I could not reconcile this view with the vigor of
his thought, with the clearness of his expression, with the amplitude of
his knowledge, with the scope of his memory as they had been disclosed
the previous night in his conversation with Paterson. No, the fact was
that I had not found the key to his motives, the cipher running through
the artificial confusion of his actions.

I could not foresee the issue of the adventure. In the meantime,
however, the yacht was a comfortable home, the Cote d'Azur was a new
field of observation, J. P. and his secretaries were extremely
interesting, the honorarium was accumulating steadily, and in the
background Barbados still slept in the sunshine, an emerald in a
sapphire sea.

During the afternoon I had a visit from Jabez E. Dunningham, the major-
domo. I pay tribute to him here as one of the most remarkable men I have
ever met, an opinion which I formed after months of daily intercourse
with him. He was an Englishman, and he had spent nearly twenty years
with Mr. Pulitzer, traveling with him everywhere, hardly ever separated
from him for more than a few hours, and he was more closely in his
confidence than anyone outside the family.

He was capable and efficient in the highest degree. His duties ranged
from those of a nurse to those of a diplomat. He produced, at a moment's
notice, as a conjuror produces rabbits and goldfish, the latest hot-
water bottle from a village pharmacy in Elba, special trains from
haughty and reluctant officials of State railways, bales of newspapers
mysteriously collected from clubs, hotels, or consulates in remote and
microscopic ports, fruits and vegetables out of season, rooms, suites,
floors of hotels at the height of the rush in the most crowded resorts,
or a dozen cabins in a steamer.

He could open telegraph stations and post offices when they were closed
to the native nobility, convert the eager curiosity of port officials
into a trance-like indifference, or monopolize the services of a whole
administration, if the comfort, convenience, or caprice of his master
demanded it.

More than this; if, any of these things having been done, they should
appear undesirable to Mr. Pulitzer, Dunningham could undo them with the
same magician-like ease as had marked their achievement. A wave of Mr.
Pulitzer's hand was translated into action by Dunningham, and the whole
of his arrangements disappeared as completely as if they had never
existed. The slate was wiped clean, ready in an instant to receive the
new message from Mr. Pulitzer's will.

Dunningham had come to offer me advice. I must not be disturbed by the
apparent eccentricity of Mr. Pulitzer's conduct; it was merely part of
Mr. Pulitzer's fixed policy to make things as complicated and difficult
as possible for a candidate. By adopting this plan he was able to
discover very quickly whether there was any possibility that a new man
would suit him. If the candidate showed impatience or bad temper he
could be got rid of at once; if he showed tact and good humor he would
graduate into another series of tests, and so on, step by step, until
the period of his trying out was ended and he became one of the staff.

A man of my intelligence would, of course, appreciate the advantages of
such a method, even from the standpoint of the candidate, for once a
candidate had passed the testing stage he would find his relations with
Mr. Pulitzer much pleasanter and his work less exacting, whereas if he
found at the outset that the conditions were not pleasing to him he
could retire without having wasted much time.

One thing I must bear in mind, namely, that each day which passed
without Mr. Pulitzer having decided against a candidate increased the
candidate's chances. If a man was to be rejected it was usually done
inside of a week from his first appearance on the scene.

And, by the way, had I ever noticed how people were apt to think that
blind people were deaf? A most curious thing; really nothing in it. Take
Mr. Pulitzer, for example, so far from his being deaf he had the most
exquisite sense of hearing, in fact he heard better when people spoke
below rather than above their ordinary tone.

Thus, Dunningham, anxious, in his master's interest, to allay my
nervousness, which reacted disagreeably on Mr. Pulitzer, and to make me
lower my voice.

I went up to the villa during the afternoon to look at the house and, if
possible, to have a talk with some of the secretaries.

The villa lay on the Western slope of Cap Martin, a few hundred yards
from the Villa Cyrnos, occupied by the Empress Eugenie. Seen from the
road there was nothing striking in its appearance, but seen from the
other side it was delightful, recalling the drop scene of a theater.
Situated on a steep slope, embowered in trees, its broad stone veranda
overhung a series of ornamental terraces decorated with palms, flowers,
statuary, and fountains; and where these ended a jumble of rocks and
stunted pines fell away abruptly to the blue water of the bay.

The house was large and well designed, but very simple in its furniture
and decorations. The upper rooms on the Western side commanded a superb
view of the Bay of Monaco, and of the rugged hillsides above La Turbie,
crowned with a vague outline of fortifications against the sky.

In a room at the top of the house I found one of the secretaries, an
Englishman, Mr. George Craven, formerly in the Indian Civil Service in
Rajputana. He was engaged in auditing the accounts of the yacht, but he
readily fell in with my suggestion that we should take a stroll.

"Right-ho!" he said. "I'm sick of these beastly accounts. But we must
find out what J. P.'s doing first."

It appeared that J. P. had motored over to Monte Carlo to hear a
concert, and that he wasn't expected back for an hour or more. As we
stopped in the entrance hall to get our hats I struck a match on the
sole of my shoe, intending to light a cigarette.

"By Jove! Don't do that, for Heaven's sake," said Craven, "or there'll
be a frightful row when J. P. comes in. He can't stand cigarette smoke,
and he's got a sense of smell as keen as a setter's."

We went into the garden and followed a narrow path which led down to the
waterside. We talked about J. P. As a matter of fact, J. P. was the
principal topic of conversation whenever two of his secretaries found
themselves together.

Craven, however, had only been with J. P. for a few weeks, having been
one of the batch sifted out of the six hundred who had answered the
Times advertisement. He was almost as much in the dark as I was in
regard to the real J. P. that existed somewhere behind the mask which
was always held out in front of every emotion, every thought, every
intention.

The life was difficult, he found, and extremely laborious. When it
suited his book J. P. could be one of the most fascinating and
entertaining of men, but when it didn't, well, he wasn't. The truth was
that you could never tell what he really thought at any moment; it made
you feel as though you were blind and not he; you found yourself groping
around all the time for a good lead and coming unexpectedly up against a
stone wall.

"I've been with him a couple of months," he said, "and I haven't the
slightest idea whether he thinks me a good sort or a silly ass, and I
don't suppose I ever shall know. By Jove, there he is now!" as we heard
the crunch of tires on the drive. "Excuse me if I make a run for it; he
may want me any minute. See you later."

At dinner that night Mr. Pulitzer devoted his whole attention to laying
bare the vast areas of ignorance on the map of my information. He
carried me from country to country, from century to century, through
history, art, literature, biography, economics, music, the drama, and
current politics. Whenever he hit upon some small spot where my
investigations had lingered and where my memory served me he left it
immediately, with the remark, "Well, I don't care about that; that
doesn't amount to anything, anyhow."

It was worse than useless to make any pretense of knowing things, for if
you said you knew a play, for instance, J. P. would say, "Good! Now
begin at the second scene of the third act, where the curtain rises on
the two conspirators in the courtyard of the hotel; just carry it along
from there"--and if you didn't know it thoroughly you were soon in
difficulties.

His method was nicely adjusted to his needs, for he was concerned most
of the time to get entertainment as well as information; and he was,
therefore, amused by exposing your ignorance when he was not informed by
uncovering your knowledge. Indeed, nothing put him in such good humor as
to discover a cleft in your intellectual armor, provided that you really
possessed some talent, faculty, or resource which was useful to him.

My dinner, considered as a dinner, was as great a failure as my
conversation, considered as an exhibition of learning. I got no more
than a hasty mouthful now and again, and got that only through a device
often resorted to by the secretaries under such circumstances, but which
seldom met with much success.

J. P. himself had to eat, and from time to time the butler, who always
stood behind J. P.'s chair, and attended to him only, would take
advantage of an instant's pause in the conversation to say, "Your fish
is getting cold, sir."

This would divert J. P.'s attention from his victim long enough to allow
one of the other men to break in with a remark designed to draw J. P.'s
fire. It worked once in a while, but as a rule it had no effect whatever
beyond making J. P. hurry through the course so that he could renew his
attack at the point where he had suspended it.

On the particular occasion I am describing I was fortunate enough toward
the end of dinner to regain some of the ground I had lost in my
disorderly flight across the field of scholarship. One of the
secretaries seized an opportunity to refer to the British death duties.
I had intended to arrange for the introduction of this topic, but had
forgotten to do so. It was just sheer good luck, and I made signs to the
gentleman to keep it up. He did so, and the moment he ceased speaking I
took up the tale. It was a good subject, for J. P. was interested in the
question of death duties.

After a preliminary flourish I began to reel off the figures I had
committed to memory the previous night. Before I had got very far Mr.
Pulitzer cried.

"Stop! Are you reading those figures?"

"No," I replied. "I read them over last night in the Daily Telegraph."

"My God! Are you giving them from memory? Haven't you got a note of them
in your hand? Hasn't he? Hasn't he? ..." appealing to the table.

Reassured on this point he said, "Well, go on, go on. This interests
me."

As soon as I had finished he turned to Craven and said, "Go and get that
paper, and find the article."

When Craven returned with it, he continued, "Now, Mr. Ireland, go over
those figures again; and you, Mr. Craven, check them off and see if
they're correct. Now, play fair, no tricks!"

I had made two mistakes, which were reported as soon as they were
spoken. At the end Mr. Pulitzer said:

"Well, you see, you hadn't got them right, after all. But that's not so
bad. With a memory like that you might have known something by now if
you'd only had the diligence to read."

My second score was made just at the end of dinner, or rather when
dinner had been finished some time and J. P. was lingering at table over
his cigar. The question of humor came up, and someone remarked how
curious it was that one of the favorite amusements of the American
humorist should be to make fun of the Englishman for his lack of humor--
"Laugh, and all the world laughs with you, except the Englishman," and
so on. The usual defenses were made--Hood, Thackeray, Gilbert,
Calverley, etc.--and then Punch was referred to.

This gave me the chance of repeating, more or less accurately, a
paragraph which appeared in Punch some years ago, and which I always
recite when that delightful periodical is slandered in my hearing. It
ran something after this fashion:

"One of our esteemed contemporaries is very much worked up in its mind
about Mr. Balfour's foreign policy, which it compares to that of the
camel, which, when pursued, buries its head in the sand. We quite agree
with our esteemed contemporary about Mr. Balfour's foreign policy, but
we fear it is getting its metaphors mixed. Surely it is not thinking of
the camel which, when pursued, buries its head in the sand, but of the
ostrich which, when pursued, runs its eye through a needle."

It was a lucky hit. No one had heard it before, and our party broke up
with Mr. Pulitzer in high good humor.

So the days passed. I saw a great deal of Mr. Pulitzer and went through
many agonizing hours of cross-examination; but gradually matters came
round to the point where we discussed the possibility of my becoming a
member of his personal staff. He thought that there was some hope that,
if he put me through a rigorous training, I might suit him, but before
it could even be settled that such an attempt should be made many things
would have to be cleared up.

In the first place, I would understand what extreme caution was
necessary for him in making a selection. There was not only the question
of whether I could make myself useful to him, and the question of
whether I could be trusted in a relationship of such a confidential
nature, there remained the very important question of whether I was a
fit person to associate with the lady members of his family, who spent
some portion of each year with him.

This matter was discussed very frankly, and was then shelved pending a
reference to a number of people in England and America at whose homes I
had been a guest, and where the household included ladies.

At the end of a week the yacht was sent to Marseilles to coal in
preparation for a cruise, and I went to stay at an hotel near the villa.
It was a change for the worse.

By the time the yacht returned I had had some opportunity of observing
the routine of life at the villa. After breakfast Mr. Pulitzer went for
a drive, accompanied by one, or occasionally by two, of the secretaries.
During this drive he received a rough summary of the morning's news, the
papers having been gone over and marked either the night before or while
he was having his breakfast.

As he seldom let us know in advance which of us he would call upon for
the first presentation of the news, and as he was liable to change his
mind at the last minute when he had named somebody the previous night,
we had all of us to go through the papers with great care, so that we
might be prepared if we were called upon.

On returning from his drive Mr. Pulitzer would either sit in the library
and dictate letters and cablegrams, or he would have the news gone over
in detail, or, if the state of his health forbade the mental exertion
involved in the intense concentration with which he absorbed what was
read to him from the papers, he would go for a ride, accompanied by a
groom and by one of the secretaries. When he went to Europe he usually
sent over in advance some horses from his own stable, as he was very
fond of riding and could not trust himself on a strange horse.

After the ride, lunch, at which the conversation generally took a more
serious turn than at dinner, for at night Mr. Pulitzer disliked any
discussion of matters which were likely to arouse his interest very much
or to stir his emotions, for he found it difficult to get his mind
calmed down so that he could sleep. Even in regard to lunch we were
sometimes warned in advance, either by Dunningham or by the secretary
who had left him just before lunch was served, that Mr. Pulitzer wished
the conversation to be light and uncontroversial.

Immediately after lunch Mr. Pulitzer retired to his bedroom with Herr
Friederich Mann, the German secretary, and was read to, chiefly German
plays, until he fell asleep, or until he had had an hour or so of rest.

By four o'clock he was ready to go out again, riding, if he had not had
a ride in the morning, or driving, with an occasional walk for perhaps
half-an-hour, the automobile always remaining within call. As a rule he
spent an hour before dinner listening to someone read, a novel, a
biography, or what not, according to his mood.

At dinner the conversation usually ran along the lines of what was being
read to him by the various secretaries or of such topics in the day's
news as were of an unexciting nature. The meal varied greatly in length.
If J. P. was feeling tired, or out of sorts, he eat his dinner quickly
and left us, taking somebody along to read to him until he was ready to
go to bed. But, if he was in good form, and an interesting topic was
started, or if he was in a reminiscent mood and wanted to talk, dinner
would last from half-past-seven to nine, or even later.

I shall deal in another place with the different phases of the
conversation and reading which formed so large a part of our duties, but
I may refer here to various incidents of our routine and to some things
by which our routine was occasionally disturbed.

Mr. Pulitzer was very fond of walking. His usual practice was to leave
the villa in the automobile and drive either down to the plage at
Mentone or up the hill to a point about midway between Cap Martin and
the Tower of Augustus. When he reached the spot he had selected he took
the arm of a secretary and promenaded backward and forward over a
distance of five hundred yards, until he felt tired, when the automobile
was signaled and we drove home.

Each of his favorite spots for walking had its peculiar disadvantages
for his companion. Speaking for myself I can say that I dreaded these
walks more than any other of my duties.

If we went on the hillside I had to keep the most alert and unrelaxing
lookout for automobiles. They came dashing round the sharp curves with a
roar and a scream, and these distracting noises always made Mr. Pulitzer
stop dead still as though he were rooted to the ground.

I understand that Mr. Pulitzer was never actually hit by an automobile,
and, of course, his blindness saved him from the agony of apprehension
which his companion suffered, for he could not see the narrowness of his
escape. But I was out with him one day on the Upper Corniche road when
two automobiles going in opposite directions at reckless speed came upon
us at a sharp turn, and I may frankly confess that I was never so
frightened in my life. Had we been alone I am certain we would have been
killed, but fortunately Mann was with us, and it was on his arm that J.
P. was leaning at the critical moment. Mann, who had the advantage of
long experience, acted instantly with the utmost presence of mind. He
made a quick sign to me to look out for myself, and then pushed Mr.
Pulitzer almost off his feet up against the high cliff which rose above
the inner edge of the road.

The machines were out of sight before we could realize that we were
safe. I expected an explosion from J. P. Nothing of the kind! He acted
then, as I always saw him act when there was any actual danger or real
trouble of any kind, with perfect calmness and self-possession.

The intolerable nervous strain of these walks on the hillside was
accompanied by a mental strain almost as distressing. It would have been
bad enough if one's only responsibility had been to keep Mr. Pulitzer
from being crushed against the hillside, or being run over; but this was
only half the problem. The other half was to keep up a continual stream
of conversation--not light, airy nothings, but a solid body of carefully
prepared facts--in a tone of voice which should fail to convey to J. P.
the slightest indication of your nervousness.

When we walked on the plage at Mentone, the difficulties were of another
kind. Here there was always more or less of a crowd, and as the paved
promenade was narrow, and as very few people had the intelligence to
realize that the tall, striking figure leaning on his companion's arm
was that of a blind man, and as fewer still had the courtesy to step
aside if they did realize it, our walk was a constant dodging in and out
among curious gazers interested in staring at the gaunt, impressive
invalid with the large black spectacles.

Conversation was, of course, extremely difficult under such
circumstances; and occasionally things were made worse by some stranger
stopping squarely in front of us and addressing Mr. Pulitzer by name,
for he was a notable personage in the place and was well known by sight.

When accosted in this manner, Mr. Pulitzer always showed signs of
extreme nervousness. He would stamp his foot, raise the clenched fist of
his disengaged arm menacingly, and cry, "My God! What's this? What's
this? Tell him to go away. I won't tolerate this intrusion. Tell him
I'll have him arrested."

More than once I had to push a man off the promenade and make faces at
him embodying all that was possible by such means in the way of threats
to do him bodily injury. It was impossible to argue with these impudent
intruders, because anything like an altercation on a public road would
have meant two or three days of misery for Mr. Pulitzer, in consequence
of the excitement and apprehension he would suffer in such an affair. It
was always with a feeling of intense relief that I saw J. P. safely back
at the villa after our walks.

Although Mr. Pulitzer's intellectual interests covered almost every
phase of human life, there was nothing from which he derived more
pleasure than from music. Once, or perhaps twice a week, he motored over
to Monte Carlo, or even as far as Nice, to attend a concert. On such
occasions he always took at least two companions with him, so that he
never sat next to a stranger.

He preferred a box for his party, but, failing that, the seats were
always secured on the broad cross-aisle, so that he would not have to
rise when anyone wished to pass in front of him. He liked to arrive a
few minutes before the concert commenced, and one of us would read the
program to him. He had an excellent memory for music, and his taste was
broad enough to embrace almost everything good from Bach to Wagner. He
was a keen critic of a performance, and in the intervals between the
pieces he criticized the playing from the standpoint of his musical
experience.

One movement was played too loud, another too fast; in one the brass had
drowned a delightful passage for the violas, which he had heard and
admired the year before in Vienna; in another the brasses had been
subdued to a point where the theme lost its distinction.

It was his habit to beat time with one hand and to sway his head gently
backward and forward when he heard a slow, familiar melody. When
something very stirring was played, the Rakoczy March, for instance, or
the overture to Die Meistersinger, he would mark the down beat with his
clenched fist, and throw his head back as if he were going to shout.

I was tempted at first to believe that, in the concert room, when one of
his favorite pieces was being played, and his hand rose and fell in
exact accord with the conductor's baton, or when, with his head in the
air and his mouth half open, he thumped his knee at the beginning of
each bar, he was absorbed in the music to the exclusion of all his
worries, perplexities, and suffering.

But, after he had once or twice turned to me in a flash as the last note
of a symphony lingered before the outburst of applause and asked, "Did
you remember to tell Dunningham to have dinner served a quarter of an
hour later this evening?" or "Did Thwaites say anything to you about
when he expected those cables from New York?"--I learned that even at
such times J. P. never lost the thread of his existence, never freed
himself from the slavery of his affairs.

Twice during the ten days immediately preceding our long promised cruise
in the Mediterranean we made short trips on the yacht. We went to bed
some nights with all our plans apparently settled for a week ahead. At
eight o'clock the next morning Dunningham would bring J. P. down to
breakfast and then announce that everybody was to be on board the yacht
by midday, as J. P. had slept badly and felt the need of sea air and the
complete quiet which could be had only on board the Liberty.

There would be a great packing of trunks, not only those devoted to the
personal belongings of the staff, but trunks for newspaper files,
encyclopedias, magazines, novels, histories, correspondence, and so on.

The chef and his assistants, the butler and his assistants, the major
domo, and the secretaries would leave the villa in a string of
carriages, followed by cartloads of baggage, and install themselves on
the yacht.

Or the cause of our sudden departure might be that Mr. Pulitzer was
feeling nervous and out of sorts and was expecting important letters or
cables which were sure to excite him and make him worse. On such
occasions Dunningham, who was one of the few people who had any
influence whatever over Mr. Pulitzer, would urge an instant flight on
the yacht as the only means of safeguarding J. P.'s health. He knew that
if we stayed ashore no power on earth could prevent Mr. Pulitzer from
reading his cables and letters when they arrived. Once out at sea we
were completely cut off from communication with the shore, for we had no
wireless apparatus, and Mr. Pulitzer would settle down and get some
rest.

More than once, however, I saw all the preparations made for a short
cruise, everybody on board, the captain on the bridge, the table laid
for lunch, a man stationed at the stem to report the automobile as soon
as it came in sight, and at the last moment a messenger arrive
countermanding everything and ordering everybody back to the villa as
fast as they could go.

These sudden changes were sometimes reversed. We would arrive at Mentone
in the morning. J. P. would announce his intention of spending a week
there. With this apparently settled, J. P. goes ashore for a ride, the
procession makes its way to the villa, the trunks are unpacked, the chef
begins to ply his art, the captain of the yacht goes ahead with such
washing down and painting as are needed, the chief engineer seizes the
chance of making some small engine-room repairs--no ordinary ship's work
of any kind was allowed when J. P. was on board, the slightest noise or
the faintest odor of paint being strictly forbidden--and later in the
day the news comes that Mr. Pulitzer will be aboard again in two hours
and will expect everything to be ready to make an immediate start.

These short cruises might last only for a night, or they might extend to
a day or two, Our custom was to steam straight out to sea and then
patrol the coast backward and forward between Bordighera and Cannes,
without losing sight of land.

The life at Cap Martin was sufficiently arduous, even for those who had
after long experience with J. P. learned to get through the day with
some economy of effort. To me, new to the work, constantly under the
double pressure of Mr. Pulitzer's cross-examinations and of the task of
supplying, however inefficiently, the place of a secretary who was away
on sick leave, the whole thing was a nightmare. I was in a dazed
condition; everything impressed itself upon me with the vividness of a
dream, and eluded my attempts at analysis, just as the delusive order of
our sleeping visions breaks up into topsyturvydom as soon as we try to
reconstruct it in the light of day.

I spent in all about a month at Cap Martin, staying sometimes on the
yacht and sometimes at an hotel, and during that time I worked
practically every day from eight in the morning until ten or eleven at
night. I use the word "work" to include the hours spent with Mr.
Pulitzer as well as those devoted to preparing material for him. Indeed,
the time given to meals and to drives and walks with J. P. was much more
exhausting than that spent in reading and in making notes.

The only recreation I had during this period was one day on leave at
Nice and half a day at Monaco; but there was very little enjoyment to be
got out of these visits, because I was under orders to bring back minute
descriptions of Nice and of the Institute of Marine Biology at Monaco.

Engaged on such missions, the passers-by, the houses, the shops, the
fishes and marine vegetables in their tanks, the blue sky overhead, the
blue sea at my feet assumed a new aspect to me. They were no longer
parts of my own observation, to be remembered or forgotten as chance
determined, they belonged to some one else, to the blind man in whose
service I was pledged to a vicarious absorption of "material."

I found myself counting the black spots on a fish's back, the steps
leading up to Monaco on its hill, the number of men and women in the
Grand Salon at Monte Carlo, of men with mustaches, of clean-shaven men,
of men with beards in the restaurants, of vessels in sight from the
terrace, of everything, in fact, which seemed capable of furnishing a
sentence or of starting up a discussion.

Once or twice I ran over late at night to Monte Carlo, and occasionally
Thwaites and I met after ten o'clock at the Casino of Mentone to play
bowls or try our luck at the tables; but the spirit of J. P. never
failed to attend upon these dismal efforts at amusement. If I heard an
epigram, witnessed an interesting incident, or observed any curious
sight, out came my note book and pencil and the matter was dedicated to
the service of the morrow's duties.

Finally, after several false starts, we all found ourselves on the yacht
with the prospect of spending most of our time aboard until Mr. Pulitzer
sailed for his annual visit to America.



CHAPTER IV

YACHTING IN THE MEDITERRANEAN


Taken at its face value a month in the Mediterranean, on board one of
the finest yachts afloat, with visits to Corsica, Elba, Nice, Cannes,
Naples, Genoa, Syracuse, and the Pirams, should give promise of a
picturesque and entertaining record of sight-seeing, the kind of journal
in which the views of Baedeker and of your local cab driver are blended,
in order that the aroma of foreign travel may be wafted to the nostrils
of your fresh-water cousins.

What my narrative lacks of this flavor of luxurious vagrancy must be
supplied by the peculiar interest of a cruise which violated every
tradition of the annals of yachting, and created precedents which in all
human probability will never be followed so long as iron floats on
water.

It was part of Mr. Pulitzer's scheme of nautical life to shroud all his
movements in mystery. One result of this was that when we were on the
yacht we never knew where we were going until we got there. The compass-
course at any moment betrayed nothing of Mr. Pulitzer's intentions, for
we might turn in at night with the ship heading straight for Naples and
wake up in the morning to find ourselves three miles south of the Genoa
lighthouse.

Apart from Mr. Pulitzer's fancy, our erratic maneuvers were affected by
our need to make good weather out of whatever wind we encountered, on
the one hand because J. P., though an excellent sailor, disliked the
rolling produced by a beam sea, since it interfered with his walking on
deck, and on the other hand, because several of the secretaries suffered
from sea-sickness the moment we were off an even keel.

Mr. Pulitzer was not a man prone to be placated by excuses; but he had
come to realize that neither a sense of duty nor the hope of reward,
neither fear nor courage, can make an agreeable companion out of a man
who is seasick. So, unless there was an important reason why we should
reach port, we always made a head-wind of anything stronger than a light
breeze, and followed the weather round the compass until it was fair for
our destination.

As soon as we left Mentone Mr. Pulitzer began the process of education
which was designed to fit me for his service.

"When you were in New York," he asked, "what papers did you read?"

"The Sun and The Times in the morning and The Evening Sun and The
Evening Post at night," I replied.

"My God! Didn't you read The World?"

"Nothing but the editorial page."

"Why not? What's the matter with it?"

I explained that I was not interested in crime and disaster, to which
The World devoted so much space, that I wanted more foreign news than
The World found room for, and that I was offended by the big headlines,
which compelled me to know things I didn't want to know.

"Go on," he said; "your views are not of any importance, but they're
entertaining."

"Well," I continued, "I think The World was excellently described a few
years ago in Life. There was a poem entitled, 'New York Newspaper
Directory, Revised,' in which a verse was devoted to each of the big New
York papers. I believe I can remember the one about The World, if you
care to hear it, for I cut the poem out and have kept it among my
clippings."

"Certainly, go ahead."

I recited:

"A dual personality is this,
 Part yellow dog, part patriot and sage;
 When't comes to facts the rule is hit or miss,
 While none can beat its editorial page.
 Wise counsel here, wild yarns the other side,
 Page six its Jekyll and page one its Hyde;
 At the same time conservative and rash,
 The World supplies us good advice and trash."

"That's clever," said Mr. Pulitzer, "but it's absolute nonsense, except
about the editorial page. Have you got the clipping with you? I would
like to hear what that smart young man has got to say about the other
papers."

I went to my cabin, got the poem, and read the whole of it to him--witty
characterizations of The Evening Post, The Sun, The Journal, The
Tribune, The Times and The Herald. As soon as I had finished reading,
Mr. Pulitzer said:

"The man who wrote those verses had his prejudices, but he was clever.
I'm glad you read them to me; always read me anything of that kind,
anything that is bright and satirical. Now, I'm going to give you a
lecture about newspapers, because I want you to understand my point of
view. It does not matter whether you agree with it or not, but you have
got to understand it if you are going to be of any use to me. But before
I begin, you tell me what YOUR ideas are about running a newspaper for
American readers."

I pleaded that I had never given the matter much thought, and that I had
little to guide me, except my own preferences and the memory of an
occasional discussion here and there at a club or in the smoking room of
a Pullman. He insisted, however, and so I launched forth upon a
discourse in regard to the functions, duties and responsibilities of an
American newspaper, as I imagined they would appear to the average
American reader.

The chief duty of a managing editor, I said, was to give his readers an
interesting paper, and as an angler baits his hook, not with what HE
likes, but with what the fish like, so the style of the newspaper should
be adjusted to what the managing editor judged to be the public
appetite.

A sub-stratum of truth should run through the news columns; but since a
million-dollar fire is more exciting than a half-million-dollar fire,
since a thousand deaths in an earthquake are more exciting than a
hundred, no nice scrupulosity need be observed in checking the insurance
inspector's figures or in counting the dead. What the public wanted was
a good "story," and provided it got that there would be little
disposition in any quarter to censure an arithmetical generosity which
had been invoked in the service of the public's well-known demands.

So far as politics were concerned, it seemed to me that any newspaper
could afford the strongest support to its views while printing the truth
and nothing but the truth, if it exercised some discretion as to
printing the WHOLE truth. The editorial, I added, might be regarded as a
habit rather than as a guiding force. People no longer looked to the
editorial columns for the formation of their opinions. They formed their
judgment from a large stock of facts, near-facts and nowhere near-facts,
and then bought a paper for the purpose of comfortable reassurance. I
had no doubt that a newspaper run to suit my own taste--a combination of
The World's editorial page with The Evening Post's news and make-up--
would lack the influence with which circulation alone can endow a paper,
and would end in a bankruptcy highly creditable to its stockholders.

This somewhat cynical outburst brought down upon me an overwhelming
torrent of protest from Mr. Pulitzer.

"My God!" he cried, "I would not have believed it possible that any one
could show such a complete ignorance of American character, of the high
sense of duty which in the main animates American journalism, of the
foundations of integrity on which almost every successful paper in the
United States has been founded. You do not know what it costs me to try
and keep The World up to a high standard of accuracy--the money, the
time, the thought, the praise, the blame, the constant watchfulness.

"I do not say that The World never makes a mistake in its news column; I
wish I could say it. What I say is that there are not half a dozen
papers in the United States which tamper with the news, which publish
what they know to be false. But if I thought that I had done no better
than that I would be ashamed to own a paper. It is not enough to refrain
from publishing fake news, it is not enough to take ordinary care to
avoid the mistakes which arise from the ignorance, the carelessness, the
stupidity of one or more of the many men who handle the news before it
gets into print; you have got to do much more than that; you have got to
make every one connected with the paper--your editors, your reporters,
your correspondents, your rewrite men, your proof-readers--believe that
accuracy is to a newspaper what virtue is to a woman.

"When you go to New York ask any of the men in the dome to show you my
instructions to them, my letters written from day to day, my cables; and
you will see that accuracy, accuracy, accuracy, is the first, the most
urgent, the most constant demand I have made on them.

"I do not say that The World is the only paper which takes extraordinary
pains to be accurate; on the contrary, I think that almost every paper
in America tries to be accurate. I will go further than that. There is
not a paper of any importance published in French, German or English,
whether it is printed in Europe or in America, which I have not studied
for weeks or months, and some of them I have read steadily for a quarter
of a century; and I tell you this, Mr. Ireland, after years of
experience, after having comparisons made by the hundred, from time to
time, of different versions of the same event, that the press of America
as a whole has a higher standard of accuracy than the European press as
a whole. I will go further than that. I will say that line for line the
American newspapers actually ATTAIN a higher standard of news accuracy
than the European newspapers; and I will go further than that and say
that although there are in Europe a few newspapers, and they are chiefly
English, which are as accurate as the best newspapers in America, there
are no newspapers in America which are so habitually, so criminally
stuffed with fake news as the worst of the European papers."

Mr. Pulitzer paused and asked me if there was a glass of water on the
table--we were seated in his library--and after I had handed it to him
and he had drained it nearly to the bottom at one gulp, he resumed his
lecture. I give it in considerable detail, because it was the longest
speech he ever addressed to me, because he subsequently made me write it
out from memory and then read it to him, and because it was one of the
few occasions during my intercourse with him on which I was persuaded
beyond a doubt that he spoke with perfect frankness, without allowing
his words to be influenced by any outside considerations.

"As a matter of fact," he continued, "the criticisms you hear about the
American press are founded on a dislike for our headlines and for the
prominence we give to crime, to corruption in office, and to sensational
topics generally; the charge of inaccuracy is just thrown in to make it
look worse. I do not believe that one person in a thousand who attacks
the American press for being inaccurate has ever taken the trouble to
investigate the facts.

"Now about this matter of sensationalism: a newspaper should be
scrupulously accurate, it should be clean, it should avoid everything
salacious or suggestive, everything that could offend good taste or
lower the moral tone of its readers; but within these limits it is the
duty of a newspaper to print the news. When I speak of good taste and of
good moral tone I do not mean the kind of good taste which is offended
by every reference to the unpleasant things of life, I do not mean the
kind of morality which refuses to recognize the existence of immorality-
-that type of moral hypocrite has done more to check the moral progress
of humanity than all the immoral people put together--what I mean is the
kind of good taste which demands that frankness should be linked with
decency, the kind of moral tone which is braced and not relaxed when it
is brought face to face with vice.

"Some people try and make you believe that a newspaper should not devote
its space to long and dramatic accounts of murders, railroad wrecks,
fires, lynchings, political corruption, embezzlements, frauds, graft,
divorces, what you will. I tell you they are wrong, and I believe that
if they thought the thing out they would see that they are wrong.

"We are a democracy, and there is only one way to get a democracy on its
feet in the matter of its individual, its social, its municipal, its
State, its National conduct, and that is by keeping the public informed
about what is going on. There is not a crime, there is not a dodge,
there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which
does not live by secrecy. Get these things out in the open, describe
them, attack them, ridicule them in the press, and sooner or later
public opinion will sweep them away.

"Publicity may not be the only thing that is needed, but it is the one
thing without which all other agencies will fail. If a newspaper is to
be of real service to the public it must have a big circulation, first
because its news and its comment must reach the largest possible number
of people, second, because circulation means advertising, and
advertising means money, and money means independence. If I caught any
man on The World suppressing news because one of our advertisers
objected to having it printed I would dismiss him immediately; I
wouldn't care who he was.

"What a newspaper needs in its news, in its headlines, and on its
editorial page is terseness, humor, descriptive power, satire,
originality, good literary style, clever condensation, and accuracy,
accuracy, accuracy!"

Mr. Pulitzer made this confession of faith with the warmth generated by
an unshakable faith. He spoke, as he always spoke when he was excited,
with vigor, emphasis and ample gesture. When he came to an end and asked
for another glass of water I found nothing to say. It would have been as
impertinent of me to agree with him as to differ from him.

After all, I had to remember that he had taken over The World when its
circulation was less than 15,000 copies a day; that he had been for
thirty years and still was its dominating spirit and the final authority
on every matter concerning its policy, its style, and its contents; that
he had seen its morning circulation go up to well over 350,000 copies a
day; that at times he had taken his stand boldly against popular clamor,
as when he kept up for months a bitter attack against the American
action in the Venezuelan boundary dispute, and at times had incurred the
hostility of powerful moneyed interests, as when he forced the Cleveland
administration to sell to the public on competitive bids a fifty-
million-dollar bond issue which it had arranged to sell privately to a
great banking house at much less than its market value.

Before leaving the subject of newspapers I may describe the method by
which Mr. Pulitzer kept in touch with the news and put himself in the
position to maintain a critical supervision over The World.

An elaborate organization was employed for this purpose. I will explain
it as it worked when we were on the yacht, but the system was maintained
at all times, whether we were cruising, or were at Cap Martin, at Bar
Harbor, at Wiesbaden, or elsewhere, merely a few minor details being
changed to meet local conditions.

In the Pulitzer Building, Park Row, New York, there were collected each
day several copies of each of the morning papers, including The World,
and some of the evening papers. These were mailed daily to Mr. Pulitzer
according to cabled instructions as to our whereabouts. In addition to
this a gentleman connected with The World, who had long experience of
Mr. Pulitzer's requirements, cut from all the New York papers and from a
number of other papers from every part of the United States every
article that he considered Mr. Pulitzer ought to see, whether because of
its subject, its tenor, or its style. These clippings were mailed by the
hundred on almost every fast steamer sailing for Europe. In order that
there might be the greatest economy of time in reading them, the
essential matter in each clipping was marked.

So far as The World was concerned a copy of each issue was sent, with
the names of the writers written across each editorial, big news story,
or special article.

As we went from port to port we got the principal French, German,
Austrian and Italian papers, and The World bureau in London kept us
supplied with the English dailies and weeklies.

Whenever we picked up a batch of American papers, each of the
secretaries got a set and immediately began to read it. My own method of
reading was adopted after much advice from Mr. Pulitzer and after
consultation with the more experienced members of the staff, and I do
not suppose it differed materially from that followed by the others.

I read The World first, going over the "big" stories carefully and with
enough concentration to give me a very fair idea of the facts. Then I
read the articles in the other papers covering the same ground, noting
any important differences in the various accounts. This task resolved
itself in practice into mastering in considerable detail about half a
dozen articles--a political situation, a murder, a railroad wreck, a
fire, a strike, an important address by a college president, for
example--and getting a clear impression of the treatment of each item in
each paper.

With this done, and with a few notes scribbled on a card to help my
memory, I turned to the editorial pages, reading each editorial with the
closest attention, and making more notes.

The final reading of the news served to give me from ten to twenty small
topics of what Mr. Pulitzer called "human interest," to be used as
subjects of conversation as occasion demanded. As a rule, I cut these
items out of the paper and put them in the left-hand pocket of my coat,
for when we walked together J. P. always took my right arm, and my left
hand was therefore free to dip into my reservoir of cuttings whenever
conversation flagged and I needed a new subject.

The cuttings covered every imaginable topic--small cases in the
magistrates' courts, eccentric entertainments at Newport, the deaths of
centenarians, dinners to visiting authors in New York, accounts of
performing animals, infant prodigies, new inventions, additions to the
Metropolitan Museum, announcements of new plays, anecdotes about
prominent men and women, instances of foolish extravagance among the
rich, and so on.

Something of the kind was done by each of us, so that when Mr. Pulitzer
appeared on deck after breakfast we all had something ready for him. The
first man called usually had the easiest time, for Mr. Pulitzer's mind
was fresh and keen for news after a night's rest. The men who went to
him later in the morning suffered from two disadvantages, one that they
did not know what news or how much of it J. P. had already received, the
other that as the day advanced Mr. Pulitzer often grew tired, and his
attention then became difficult to hold.

I remember that on one occasion when he had complained of feeling
utterly tired out mentally I asked him if he would like me to stop
talking. "No, no," he replied at once; "never stop talking or reading, I
must have something to occupy my mind all the time, however exhausted I
am."

This peculiarity of being unable to get any repose by the road of silent
abstraction must have been a source of acute suffering to him. It is
difficult to imagine a more terrible condition of mind than that in
which the constant flogging of a tired brain is the only anodyne for its
morbid irritability.

My own experience of a morning on the yacht, when Mr. Pulitzer's nerves
had been soothed by a good night's sleep, was that he walked up and down
the long promenade deck and got from me a brief summary of the news.

From time to time he pulled out his watch and, holding it toward me,
asked what o'clock it was. He was always most particular to know exactly
how long he had walked. We had arguments on many occasions as to the
exact moment at which we had commenced our promenade, and we would go
carefully over the facts--Mr. Craven had been walking with him from 9.30
to 10.05, then Dunningham had been in the library with him for fifteen
minutes, then Mr. Thwaites had walked with him for ten minutes, taking
notes for a letter to be written to the managing editor of The World;
well, that made it 10.30 when I joined him; but fifteen minutes had to
be taken out of the hour for the time he'd spent in the library, that
made three-quarters of an hour he'd been actually walking, well, we'd
walk for another fifteen minutes and round out the hour.

Often when the appointed moment came to stop walking Mr. Pulitzer felt
able to go on, and he would then either say frankly, "Let's have fifteen
minutes more," or he would achieve the same end by reopening the
discussion as to just how long he had walked, and keep on walking until
he began to feel tired, when he would say: "I dare say you are quite
right, well, now we will sit down and go over the papers."

The question of where Mr. Pulitzer was to sit on deck was not a simple
one to decide. He always wanted as much air as he could get; but as he
suffered a good deal of pain in his right eye, the one which had been
operated on, and as this was either started or made worse by exposure to
wind, a spot had to be found which had just the right amount of air
current. Five minutes might show, however, that there was a little too
much wind, when we would move to a more sheltered spot, or he might
think we'd been too cautious and that he could sit in a breezier spot,
or, after we had found the ideal place, the wind might change, and then
we had to move again.

Settled in a large cane armchair with a leather seat, a heavy rug over
his knees if the weather was at all chilly, Mr. Pulitzer took up the
serious consideration of the news which had been lightly skimmed over
during his walk.

An item was selected, and the account in The World was read aloud. Then
followed the discussion of it from the standpoint of its presentation in
the various papers. On what page was it printed in The World, in what
column, how much space did it fill, how much was devoted to headlines,
what was the size of the type, was the type varied in parts to give
emphasis to the more striking features of the story, what were the
cross-heads in the body of the article, were any boxes used, if so, what
was put in them, what about the illustrations? And so on for each
important item in each paper.

One of the by-products of this reading of the papers was a stream of
cables, letters and memoranda to various members of The World staff in
New York. None of these were ever sent through me, but it was a common
thing for J. P. to say: "Have you got your writing pad with you? Just
make a note: Indianapolis story excellent, insufficient details
lynching, who wrote City Hall story? and give it to Thwaites and tell
him to remind me of it this afternoon."

Mr. Pulitzer would take the matter up with Thwaites, and would send such
praise, blame, reward, criticism, or suggestion as the occasion
demanded.

From time to time I was called upon to make a report on the day's
papers, a task which usually fell to some more experienced member of the
staff. My reports always covered the Sunday issues. They included an
analysis of The Sun, The Herald, The American, The Times, The Tribune
and The World, showing the number of columns of advertising, of news,
and of special articles, a classification of the telegrams according to
geographical distribution--how much from France, from Germany, from
England, from the Western States, from the Southern States, and so on; a
classification of the special articles on the basis of their topics--
medicine, sport, fashions, humor, adventure, children's interests,
women's interests.

This was by no means the only check which Mr. Pulitzer kept upon The
World and its contemporaries. He received regularly from New York a
statistical return showing, for The World and its two principal
competitors, the monthly and yearly figures for circulation and
advertising; and the advertising return showed not only the amount of
space occupied by advertising in each paper, but also the number of
advertisements each month under various heads, such as display
advertising, want ads., real estate, dry goods, amusements, hotels,
transportation, to let ads., summer resorts, and whatever other classes
of advertising might appear.

Whatever Mr. Pulitzer wished to do in the way of business, whether it
concerned the direction of the policy of The World, or the dictating of
an editorial, or the handling of correspondence, was almost always done
in the morning, and by lunch time he was ready to turn his attention to
something light or amusing, or to serious subjects not connected with
current events.

Mr. Pulitzer generally lunched and dined with the staff in the dining
saloon, unless he felt more than usually ill or nervous, when he had his
meals served in the library, one or at most two of us keeping him
company.

When he sat with us he occupied the head of the table. At his side stood
the butler, who never attended to any one but his master. A stranger at
the table, if he were not actually sitting next to J. P., might very
well have failed to notice that his host was blind, so far as any
indication of blindness was afforded by the way he ate. His food was, of
course, cut up at a side table, but it was placed before him on an
ordinary plate, without any raised edge or other device to save it from
being pushed on to the tablecloth.

As soon as he was seated J. P. put his fingers lightly on the table in
front of him and fixed the exact position of his plate, fork, spoon,
water glass and wine glass. While he was doing this he generally spoke a
few words to one or another of us, and as he always turned his face in
the direction of the person he was addressing, the delicate movements of
his hands, even if they were observed, were only those of a man with his
sight under similar circumstances.

Sitting next to him, however, his blindness soon became apparent. As he
began to eat he simply impaled each portion of food on his fork, but
after he had got halfway through a course and the remaining morsels were
scattered here and there on his plate, he explored the surface with the
utmost niceness of touch until he felt a slight resistance. He had then
located a morsel, but in order that he might avoid an accident in
transferring it to his mouth he felt the object carefully all over with
almost imperceptible touches of his fork, and, having found the thickest
or firmest part of it secured it safely.

At times, if he became particularly interested in the conversation, he
put his fork down, and when he picked it up again he was in difficulties
for a moment or two, having lost track of the food remaining on his
plate. On these occasions the ever-watchful butler would either place
the food with a fork in the track of J. P.'s systematic exploration, or
guide Mr. Pulitzer's hand to the right spot.

Like many people in broken health Mr. Pulitzer had a very variable
appetite. Sometimes nothing could tempt his palate, sometimes he ate
voraciously; but at all times the greatest care had to be exercised in
regard to his diet. Not only did he suffer constantly from acute
dyspepsia, but also from diabetes, which varied in sympathy with his
general state of health.

He took very little alcohol, and that only in the form of light wines,
such as claret or hock, seldom more than a single small glass at lunch
and at dinner. Whenever he found a vintage which specially appealed to
him he would tell the butler to send a case or two to some old friend in
America, to some member of his family or to one of the staff of The
World.

After lunch Mr. Pulitzer always retired to his cabin for a siesta. I use
the word siesta, but as a matter of fact it is quite inadequate to
describe the peculiar function for which I have chosen it as a label.
What took place on these occasions was this: Mr. Pulitzer lay down on
his bed, sometimes in pyjamas, but more often with only his coat and
boots removed, and one of the secretaries, usually the German secretary,
sat down in an armchair at the bedside with a pile of books at his
elbow.

At a word from Mr. Pulitzer the secretary began to read in a clear,
incisive voice some historical work, novel or play. After a few minutes
Mr. Pulitzer would say "Softly," and the secretary's voice was lowered
until, though it was still audible, it assumed a monotonous and soothing
quality. After a while the order came, "Quite softly." At this point the
reader ceased to form his words and commenced to murmur indistinctly,
giving an effect such as might be produced by a person reading aloud in
an adjoining room, but with the connecting door closed.

If, after ten minutes of this murmuring, J. P. remained motionless it
was to be assumed that he was asleep; and the secretary's duty was to go
on murmuring until Mr. Pulitzer awoke and told him to stop or to
commence actual reading again. This murmuring might last for two hours,
and it was a very difficult art to acquire, for at the slightest change
in the pitch of the voice, at a sneeze, or a cough, Mr. Pulitzer would
wake with a start, and an unpleasant quarter of an hour followed.

This murmuring was not, however, without its consolations to the
murmurer, for as soon as the actual reading stopped he could take up a
novel or magazine and, leaving his vocal organs to carry on the work,
concentrate his mind upon the preparation of material against some
future session.

The siesta over, the afternoon was taken up with much the same kind of
work as had filled the morning. By six o'clock Mr. Pulitzer was ready to
sit in the library for an hour before he dressed for dinner. This time
was generally devoted to novels, plays and light literature of various
kinds. J. P. often assured me that no man had ever been able to read a
novel or a play to him satisfactorily without having first gone over it
carefully at least twice; and on more than one occasion I was furnished
with very good evidence that even this double preparation was not always
a guarantee of success.

There appeared to be two ways of getting Mr. Pulitzer interested in a
novel or play. One, and this, I believe, was the most successful, was to
draw a striking picture of the scene where the climax is reached--the
wife crouching in the corner, the husband revolver in hand, the Tertium
Quid calmly offering to read the documents which prove that he and not
the gentleman with the revolver is really the husband of the lady--and
then to go back to the beginning and explain how it all came about.

The other method was to set forth the appearance and disposition of each
of the characters in the story, so that they assumed reality in Mr.
Pulitzer's mind, then to condense the narrative up to about page two
hundred and sixty, and then begin to read from the book. If in the
course of the next three minutes you were not asked in a tone of utter
weariness, "My God! Is there much more of this?" there was a reasonable
chance that you might be allowed to read from the print a fifth or
possibly a fourth of what you had not summarized.

Dinner on the yacht passed in much the same way as lunch, except that
serious subjects and especially politics were taboo.

The meal hours were really the most trying experiences of the day. Each
of us went to the table with several topics of conversation carefully
prepared, with our pockets full of newspaper cuttings, notes and even
small reference books for dates and biographies.

But there was seldom any conversation in the proper sense; that is to
say, we were hardly ever able to start a subject going and pass it from
one to the other with a running comment or amplification, partly because
any expression of opinion, except when he, J. P., asked for it, usually
bored him to extinction, and partly because the first statement of any
striking fact generally inspired Mr. Pulitzer to undertake a searching
cross-examination of the speaker into every detail of the matter brought
forward, and in regard to every ramification of the subject.

I may relate an amusing instance of this: A gentleman who had been on
the staff, but had been absent through illness, joined us at Mentone for
a cruise in the Eastern Mediterranean. At dinner the first night out he
incautiously mentioned that during the two months of his convalescence
he had taken the opportunity of reading the whole of Shakespeare's
plays.

Too late he realized his mistake. Mr. Pulitzer took the matter up, and
for the next hour and a half we listened to the unfortunate ex-invalid
while he gave a list of the principal characters in each of the
historical plays, in each of the tragedies, and in each of the comedies,
followed by an outline of each plot, a description of a scene here and
there, and an occasional quotation from the text.

At the end of this heroic exploit, which was helped out now and then by
a note from one of the rest of us, scribbled hastily on a card and
handed silently to the victim, Mr. Pulitzer merely said, "Well, go on,
go on, didn't you read the sonnets?" But this was too much for our
gravity, and in a ripple of laughter the sitting was brought to a close.

The trouble with the meals, however, was not only that we were all kept
at a very high strain of alertness and attention, singularly inconducive
to the enjoyment of food or to the sober business of digestion, but that
they were of such interminable length. The plain fact was that by
utilizing almost every moment between eight o'clock in the morning and
nine o'clock at night we could fortify ourselves with enough material to
fill in the hour or two spent with Mr. Pulitzer, hours during which we
had to supply an incessant stream of information, or run through a
carefully condensed novel or play.

Under such circumstances an hour for lunch or dinner had to be accepted
as an unfortunate necessity; but when it came, as it often did, to an
hour and a half or two hours, the encroachment on our time became a
serious matter.

At about nine o'clock Mr. Pulitzer went to the library. One of the
secretaries accompanied him and read aloud until, on the stroke of ten,
Dunningham came and announced that it was bedtime.

An extraordinary, and in some respects a most annoying feature of this
final task of the day, viewed from the secretary's standpoint, was that
from nine to ten, almost without cessation, Mr. Mann, the German
secretary, played the piano in the dining saloon, the doors
communicating with the library being left open.

In a direct line the piano cannot have been more than ten feet from the
reader's chair; and the strain of reading aloud for an hour against a
powerful rendering of the most vigorous compositions of Liszt, Wagner,
Beethoven, Brahms and Chopin was a most trying ordeal for voice, brain
and nerves. Mr. Pulitzer could apparently enjoy the music and the
reading at the same time. Often, when something was played of which he
knew the air, he would follow the notes by means of a sort of subdued
whistle, beating time with his hand; but this did not take his mind off
the reading, and if you allowed your attention to wander for a moment
and failed to read with proper emphasis he would say: "Please read that
last passage over again, and do try and read it distinctly."

Such was the routine of life on the yacht. It was little affected by our
occasional visits to Naples, Ajaccio and other ports. Some one always
landed to inquire for mail and to procure newspapers, one or two of us
got shore leave for a few hours, but so far as I was concerned, being
still in strict training and under close observation, my rare landings
were made only for the purpose of having my observation and memory
tested.

I brought back minute descriptions of Napoleon's birthplace at Ajaccio,
of his villa in Elba, of the tapestries, pictures and statues in the
National Museum at Naples, of the Acropolis, of the monument of
Lysicrates, of the Greek Theater and of the Roman Amphitheater at
Syracuse, and of whatever else I was directed to observe.

Mr. Pulitzer had had these things described to him a score of times. He
knew which block of seats in the Greek theater at Neapolis bore the
inscription of Nereis, daughter-in-law of King Heiro the Second; he knew
up what stairs and through what rooms and passages you had to go to see
the marble bath in Napoleon's villa near Portoferraio; he knew from
precisely what part of the Acropolis the yacht was visible when it was
at anchor at the Piraeus; he knew the actual place of the more important
pictures on the walls of each room of the Naples Museum--such a one to
the right, such a one to the left as you entered--he knew practically
everything, but specially he knew the thing you had forgotten.

My exhibitions of memory always ended, as they were no doubt intended to
end, in a confession of ignorance. If I described five pictures, Mr.
Pulitzer said: "Go on"; when I had described ten, he said: "Go on"; when
I had described fifteen he said: "Go on"; and this was kept up until I
could go on no more. At this point Mr. Pulitzer had discovered just what
he wanted to know--how much I could see in a given time, and how much of
it I could remember with a fair degree of accuracy. It was simply the
game of the jewels which Lurgan Sahib played with Kim, against a
different background but with much the same object.

In the foregoing description of Mr. Pulitzer's daily life it has been
made abundantly clear that his secretaries were worked to the limit of
their endurance. It remains to add that Mr. Pulitzer never made a demand
upon us which was greater than the demand he made upon himself.

He was a tremendous worker; and in receiving our reports no vital fact
ever escaped him. If we missed one he immediately "sensed" it, and his
untiring cross-examination clung to the trail until he unearthed it.

We had youth, health and numbers on our side, yet this man, aged by
suffering, tormented by ill-health, loaded with responsibility, kept
pace with our united labors, and in the final analysis gave more than he
received.

We brought a thousand offerings to his judgment; many of them he
rejected with an impatient cry of "Next! Next! For God's sake!" But if
any subject, whether from its intrinsic importance or from its style,
reached the standard of his discrimination he took it up, enlarged upon
it, illuminated it, until what had come to him as crude material for
conversation assumed a new form, everything unessential rejected,
everything essential disclosed in the clear and vigorous English which
was the vehicle of his lucid thought.

When I recall the capaciousness of his understanding, the breadth of his
experience, the range of his information, and set them side by side with
the cruel limitations imposed upon him by his blindness and by his
shattered constitution, I forget the severity of his discipline, I
marvel only that his self-control should have served him so well in the
tedious business of breaking a new man to his service.



CHAPTER V

GETTING TO KNOW MR. PULITZER


As time passed, my relations with Mr. Pulitzer became more agreeable. He
had given me fair warning that the first few weeks of my trial would be
more or less unpleasant; a month at Cap Martin and a month on the yacht
had amply verified his prediction.

But this period of probation, laborious and nerve-racking as it was,
enabled me to appreciate how important it was for J. P. to put to a
severe test of ability, tact and good temper any one whom he intended to
attach to his personal staff.

His total blindness placed him completely in the hands of those around
him, and, in order that he might enjoy that sense of perfect security
without which his life would have been intolerable, it was necessary
that he should be able to repose absolute confidence in the loyalty and
intelligence of his companions.

It was not with reference to his blindness alone that the qualifications
of his secretaries were measured. Indeed, to the loss of his sight he
had become, in some measure, reconciled; what really dominated every
other consideration was the need of being able to meet the peculiar
conditions which had arisen through the complete breakdown of his
nervous system.

I have spoken of his extreme sensitiveness to noise. It is impossible to
give any description of this terrible symptom which shall be in any way
adequate. Many of us suffer torment through the hideous clamor which
appears to be inseparable from modern civilization; but to Mr. Pulitzer
even the sudden click of a spoon against a saucer, the gurgle of water
poured into a glass, the striking of a match, produced a spasm of
suffering. I have seen him turn pale, tremble, break into a cold
perspiration at some sound which to most people would have been scarcely
audible.

When we were on the yacht every one was compelled to wear rubber-soled
shoes. When Mr. Pulitzer was asleep that portion of the deck which was
over his bedroom was roped off so that no one could walk over his head;
and each door which gave access to the rooms above his cabin was
provided with a brass plate on which was cut the legend: "This door must
not be opened when Mr. Pulitzer is asleep."

With every resource at his command which ingenuity could suggest and
money procure, the one great unsolved problem of his later years was to
obtain absolute quietness at all times. At his magnificent house in New
York, at his beautiful country home at Bar Harbor he had spent tens of
thousands of dollars in a vain effort to procure the one luxury which he
prized above all others. On the yacht the conditions in this respect
were as nearly perfect as possible; but some noise was inseparable from
the ship's work--letting go the anchor, heaving it up again, blowing the
foghorn, and so on--though most of the ordinary noises had been
eliminated.

As an instance of the constant care which was taken to save Mr. Pulitzer
from noise I remember that for some days almonds were served with our
dessert at dinner, but that they suddenly ceased to form part of our
menu. Being fond of almonds, I asked the chief steward why they had
stopped serving them. After a little hesitation he said that it had been
done at the suggestion of the butler, who had noticed that I broke the
almonds in half before I ate them and that the noise made by their
snapping was very disagreeable to Mr. Pulitzer.

With the best intentions in the world, our meals were now and then
disturbed by noise. A knife suddenly slipped with a loud click against a
plate, a waiter dropped a spoon on a silver tray, or some one knocked
over a glass. We were all in such a state of nervous tension that
whenever one of these little accidents occurred we jumped in our chairs
as though a pistol had been fired, and looked at J. P. with horrified
expectancy.

There could be no doubt whatever as to the effect these noises had upon
him. He winced as a dog winces when you crack a whip over him; the only
question was whether by a powerful effort he could regain his composure
or whether his suffering would overcome his self-restraint to the extent
of making him gloomy or querulous during the rest of the meal.

The effect by no means ceased when we rose from table. If by bad luck
two or three noises occurred at dinner--and our excessive anxiety in the
matter was sometimes our undoing--Mr. Pulitzer was so upset that he
would pass a sleepless night. This in its turn meant a day during which
his tortured body made itself master of his mind, and plunged him into a
state of profound dejection.

Like most people who suffer acutely from noise Mr. Pulitzer was very
differently affected by different kinds of noise. To any noise which was
necessary, such as that caused by letting go the anchor, he could make
himself indifferent; but very few noises were included in this category.

What caused him the most acute suffering was a noise which, while it
inflicted pain upon him, neither gave pleasure to any one else nor
achieved a useful purpose. Loud talking, whistling, slamming doors,
carelessness in handling things, the barking of dogs, the "kick" of
motor boats, these were the noises which made his existence miserable.

At the back of his physical reaction was a mental reaction which
intensified every shock to his nerves. He complained, and with justice,
that, leaving out of consideration an occasional noise which was purely
the result of accident, his life was made a burden by the utter
indifference of the majority of human beings to the rights of others.
What right, he asked, had any one to run a motor boat with a machine so
noisy that it destroyed the peace of a whole harbor? Above all, what
right had such a person to come miles out to sea and cruise around the
yacht, merely to gratify idle curiosity?

He applied the same test to people who shout at one another in the
streets, who whistle at the top of their lungs, or leave doors to slam
in the faces of those behind them.

His resentment against these practices was made the more bitter by the
knowledge that he was absolutely helpless in the matter whenever he came
within hearing distance of an ill-bred person.

There was yet another element in this which added to his misery. He said
to me once, when we had been driven off the plage at Mentone by two
American tourists of the worst type, who at a hundred yards' distance
from each other were yelling their views as to which hotel they proposed
to meet at for lunch, "I can never forget that when I was a young man in
the full vigor of my health I used to regard other people's complaints
about noise as being merely an affectation. I would even make a noise
deliberately in order to annoy any one who forced the absurd pretense
upon my notice. Well, Mr. Ireland, I swear my punishment has been heavy
enough."

To revert, however, to Mr. Pulitzer's dependence on those around him, it
must be remembered that nothing could reach him except through the
medium of speech. The state of his bank account, the condition of his
investments, the reports about The World, his business correspondence,
the daily news in which he was so deeply interested, everything upon
which he based his relation with the affairs of life he had to accept at
second hand.

It might be supposed that under these circumstances Mr. Pulitzer was
easily deceived, that when there was no evil intention, for instance,
but simply a desire to spare him annoyance, the exercise of a little
ingenuity could shield him from anything likely to wound his feelings or
excite his anger. As a matter of fact I have never known a man upon whom
it would not have been easier to practice a deception. His blindness, so
far from being a hindrance to him in reaching the truth, was an aid.

Two instances will serve to illustrate the point. Suppose that I found
in the morning paper an article which I thought would stir J. P. up and
spoil his day: when I was called to read to him I had no means of
knowing whether the man whom I replaced had taken the same view as
myself and had skipped the article or whether he had, deliberately or
inadvertently, read it to him. The same argument applied to the man who
was to follow me. If I read the article to him I might find out later
that my predecessor had omitted it, or, if I omitted it, that my
successor had read it.

In either event one of us would be in the wrong; and it was impossible
to tell in advance whether the man who read it would be blamed for lack
of discretion or praised for his good judgment, as everything depended
upon the exact mood in which Mr. Pulitzer happened to be.

It was an awkward dilemma for the secretary, for, if he did not read it
and another man did, Mr. Pulitzer might very well interpret the first
man's caution as an effort to hoodwink him, or the second man's boldness
as an exhibition of indifference to his feelings, or, what was more
likely still, fasten one fault upon one man and the other upon the
other.

The same problem presented itself from a different direction. Often, Mr.
Pulitzer would take out of his pocket a bundle of papers--newspaper
clippings, letters, statistical reports, and memoranda of various kinds.
Handing them to his companion he would say:

"Look through these and see if there is a letter with the London post
mark, and a sheet of blue paper with some figures on it."

You could never tell what was behind these inquiries. Sometimes he was
content to know that the papers were there, sometimes he asked you to
read them, and as he might very well have them read to him by several
people during the day he had a perfect check on all printed or written
matter once it was in his hands.

In addition to all this his exquisite sense of hearing enabled him to
detect the slightest variation in your tone of voice. If you hesitated
or betrayed the least uneasiness his suspicions were at once aroused and
he took steps to verify from other sources any statement you made under
such circumstances.

It will be readily understood that with his keen and analytic mind Mr.
Pulitzer very soon discovered exactly what kind of work was best suited
to the capacities of each of his secretaries. Thus to Mr. Paterson was
assigned the reading of history and biography, to Mr. Pollard, a Harvard
man and the only American on the personal staff during my time, novels
and plays in French and English, to Herr Mann German literature of all
kinds. Thwaites was chiefly occupied with Mr. Pulitzer's correspondence,
and Craven with the yacht accounts, though they, as well as myself, had
roving commissions covering the periodical literature of France,
Germany, England, and America.

This division of our reading was by no means rigid; it represented Mr.
Pulitzer's view of our respective spheres of greatest utility; but it
was often disturbed by one or another of us going on sick leave or
falling a victim to the weather when we were at sea.

Subject to such chances Pollard always read to Mr. Pulitzer during his
breakfast hour, and Mann during his siesta, while the reading after
dinner was pretty evenly divided between Pollard, Paterson, and myself.

If Mr. Pulitzer once got it into his head that a particular man was
better than any one else for a particular class of work nothing could
reconcile him to that man's absence when such work was to be done.

An amusing instance of this occurred on an occasion when Pollard was
sea-sick and could not read to J. P. at breakfast. I was hurriedly
summoned to take his place. I was dumbfounded, for I had never before
been called upon for this task, and Mr. Pulitzer had often held it up to
me as the last test of fitness, the charter of your graduation. I had
nothing whatever prepared of the kind which J. P. required at that time,
and I knew that upon the success of his breakfast might very well depend
the general complexion of his whole day.

In desperation I rushed into Pollard's cabin, and its unhappy occupant,
with a generosity which even seasickness could not chill, gave me a
bundle of Spectators, Athenaeums, and Literary Digests, with pencil
marks in the margins indicating exactly what he had intended to read in
the ordinary course of things. I breathed a sigh of relief and hastened
to the library, where I found J. P. very nervous and out of sorts after
a bad night.

He immediately began to deplore Pollard's absence, on the ground that it
was impossible for anyone to know what to read to him at breakfast
without years of experience and training. I said nothing, feeling secure
with Pollard's prepared "breakfast food," as we called it, in front of
me. I awaited only his signal to begin reading, confident that I could
win laurels for myself without robbing Pollard, whose wreath was firmly
fixed on his brow.

Alas for my hopes! My very first sentence destroyed my chances, for I
had the misfortune to begin reading something which he had already
heard. Nothing annoyed him more than this; and we all made a habit of
writing "Dead" across any article in a periodical as soon as J. P. had
had it, so that we could keep off each other's trails. I am willing to
believe that this was the first and only time that Pollard ever forgot
to kill an article after he had read it, but it was enough, in the
deplorable state of Mr. Pulitzer's nerves that morning, to inflict a
wound upon my reputation as a breakfast-time reader which months did not
suffice to heal.

With such a bad start Mr. Pulitzer immediately concluded that I was
useless, and he worked himself up into such a state about it that
passage after passage, carefully marked by Pollard, was greeted with,

    "Stop! Stop! For God's sake!" or,

    "Next! Next!" or,

    "My God! Is there much more of that?" or,

"Well, Mr. Ireland, isn't there ANYTHING interesting in all those
papers?"

I bore up manfully against this until he made the one remark I could not
stand.

"Now, Mr. Ireland," he said, his voice taking on a tone of gentle
reproach, "I know you've done your best, but it is very bad. If you
don't believe me, just take those papers to Mr. Pollard when he feels
better; don't disturb him now when he's ill; and show him what you read
to me. Now, just for fun, I'd like you to do that. He will tell you that
there is not a single line which you have read that he would have read
had he been in your place. I hope I haven't been too severe with you;
but I hold up my hands and swear that Mr. Pollard wouldn't have read me
a line of that rubbish."

This was too much! Carefully controlling my voice so that no trace of
malice should be detected in it, I replied:

"I took these papers off Mr. Pollard's table a moment before I came to
you, and the parts I have read are the parts he had marked, with the
intention of reading them to you himself."

I thought I had J. P. cornered. It was before I learned that there was
no such thing as cornering J. P.

Leaning toward me, and putting a hand on my shoulder, he said:

"Now, boy, don't be put out about this. I do believe, honestly, that you
did your best; but you should not make excuses. When you are wrong,
admit it, and try and benefit by my advice. You will find a very natural
explanation of your mistake. Perhaps the passages Mr. Pollard marked
were the ones he did NOT intend to read to me, or perhaps you took the
wrong set of papers; some perfectly natural explanation I am sure."

That night at dinner, when I was still smarting under the sense of
injustice born of my morning's experience, J. P. gave me an opening
which I could not allow to pass unused.

Turning to me during a pause in the conversation, he asked:

"And what have YOU been doing this afternoon, Mr. Ireland?"

A happy inspiration flashed across my mind, and I replied:

"I've been making a rough draft of a play, sir."

"Well, my God! I didn't know you wrote plays."

"Very seldom, at any rate; but I had an idea this morning that I
couldn't resist."

"What is it to be called?" inquired J. P.

"'The Importance of being Pollard,'" I answered, whereupon J. P. and
everyone else at the table had a good laugh. They had all been through a
breakfast with J. P. when Pollard was away, and could sympathize with my
feelings.

Mr. Pulitzer was very sensible of the difficulties which lay in
everybody's path at the times when lack of sleep or a prolonged attack
of pain had made him excessively irritable; and when he had recovered
from one of these periods of strain, and was conscious of having been
rough in his manner, he often took occasion to make amends.

Sometimes he would do this when we were at table, adopting a humorous
tone as he said, "I'm afraid so-and-so will never forgive me for the way
I treated him this afternoon; but I want to say that he really read me
an excellent story and read it very well, and that I am grateful to him.
I was feeling wretchedly ill and had a frightful headache, and if I said
anything that hurt his feelings I apologize."

Once, during my weeks of probation, when J. P. felt that he had carried
his test of my good temper beyond reason, he stopped suddenly in our
walk, laid a hand on my shoulder, and asked:

"What do you feel when I am unreasonable with you? Do you feel angry? Do
you bear malice?"

"Not at all," I replied. "I suppose my feeling is very much like that of
a nurse for a patient. I realize that you are suffering and that you are
not to be held responsible for what you do at such times."

"I thank you for that, Mr. Ireland," he replied. "You never said
anything which pleased me more. Never forget that I am blind, and that I
am in pain most of the time."

A matter which I had reason to notice at a very early stage of my
acquaintance with Mr. Pulitzer was that when he was in a bad mood it was
the worst possible policy to offer no resistance to his pressure. It was
part of his nature to go forward in any direction until he encountered
an obstacle. When he reached one he paused before making up his mind
whether he would go through it or round it. The further he went the more
interested he became, his purpose always being to discover a boundary,
whether of your knowledge, of your patience, of your memory, or of your
nervous endurance.

He never respected a man who did not at some point stand up and resist
him. After the line had once been drawn at that point, and his curiosity
had been gratified, he was always careful not to approach it too
closely; and it was only on the rare occasions when he was in
exceptionally bad condition that any clash occurred after the first one
had been settled.

I put off my own little fight for a long time, partly because I was very
much affected by the sight of his wretchedness, and partly because I did
not at first realize how necessary it was for him to find out just how
far my self-control could be depended upon. As soon as this became clear
to me I determined to seize the first favorable opportunity which
presented itself of getting into my intrenchments and firing a blank
cartridge or two.

It was after I had been with him about a month that my chance came. I
had noticed that his manner toward me was slowly but steadily growing
more hostile, and I had been expecting daily to receive my dismissal
from the courteous hands of Dunningham, or to find myself unable to go
further with the ordeal.

Finally, I consulted Dunningham, and was informed by him, to my great
surprise, that I was doing very well and that Mr. Pulitzer was pleased
with me. This information cleared the ground in front of me, and that
afternoon when I was called to walk with Mr. Pulitzer I decided to put
out a danger signal if I was hard pressed.

Everything favored such a course. J. P. had enjoyed a good siesta and
was feeling unusually well; if, therefore, he was very disagreeable I
would know that it was from design and not from an attack of nerves.
Furthermore, he selected a subject of conversation in regard to which I
was as well, if not better, informed than he was--a question relating to
British Colonial policy.

The moment I began to speak I saw that his object was to drive me to the
wall. He flatly contradicted me again and again, insinuated that I had
never met certain statesmen whose words I repeated, and, finally, after
I had concluded my arguments in support of the view I was advancing, he
said in an angry tone, assumed for the occasion, of course:

"Mr. Ireland, I am really distressed that we should have had this
discussion. I had hoped that, with years of training and advice, I might
hare been able to make something out of you; but any man who could
seriously hold the opinion you have expressed, and could attempt to
justify it with the mass of inaccuracies and absurdities that you have
given me, is simply a damned fool."

"I am sorry you said that, Mr. Pulitzer," I replied in a very serious
voice.

"Why, for God's sake, you don't mind my calling you a damned fool, do
you?"

"Not in the least, sir. But when you call me a damned fool you shatter
an ideal I held about you."

"What's that? An ideal about me? What do you mean?"

"Well, sir, years before I met you I had heard that if there was one
thing above all others which distinguished you from all other
journalists it was that you had the keenest nose for news of any man
living."

"What has that to do with my calling you a damned fool?"

"Simply this, that the fact that I'm a damned fool hasn't been news to
me any time during the past twenty years."

He saw the point at once, laughed heartily and, putting an arm round my
shoulders, as was his habit with all of us when he wished to show a
friendly feeling or take the edge off a severe rebuke, said:

"Now, boy, you're making fun of me, and you must not make fun of a poor
old blind man. Now, then, I take it all back; I shouldn't have called
you a damned fool."

It was from this moment that my relations with Mr. Pulitzer began to
improve.

A few days after the incident which I have just related we dropped
anchor in the Bay of Naples, and Mr. Pulitzer announced his intention of
sailing for New York by a White Star boat the following afternoon. He
asked me to go with him; and I accepted this invitation as the sign that
my period of probation was over.

Everything was prepared for our departure. Dunningham worked
indefatigably. He went aboard the White Star boat, arranged for the
accommodation of our party, had partitions knocked down so that Mr.
Pulitzer could have a private diningroom and a library, and convoyed
aboard twenty or thirty trunks and cases containing books, mineral
waters, wines, cigars, fruit, special articles of diet, clothes, fur
coats, rugs, etc., for J. P.

We all packed our belongings, telegraphed to our friends, sent ashore
for the latest issues of the magazines, and sat around in deck chairs
waiting for the word to follow our things aboard the liner.

After half an hour of suspense Dunningham came out of the library, where
he had been in consultation with J. P., and as he advanced toward us we
rose and made our way to the gangway, where one of the launches was
swinging to her painter.

Dunningham, smiling and imperturbable as ever, raised his hand and said,
"No, gentlemen, Mr. Pulitzer has changed his mind; we are not going to
America. We remain on the yacht and sail this afternoon for Athens."

He disappeared over the side, and an hour or two later returned with the
chef and the butler and one of the saloon stewards, who had gone aboard
the liner to make things ready, and some tons of baggage.

We sailed just as the White Star boat cleared the end of the mole. When
she passed us, within a hundred yards, she dipped her flag. I was
walking with Mr. Pulitzer at the time and mentioned the exchange of
salutes. He was silent for a few minutes. Then he asked, "Has she passed
us?" "Yes," I replied, "she's half-a-mile ahead of us now." "Have you
got your pad with you? Just make a note to ask Thwaites to cable to New
York from the next port we call at and tell someone to send two hundred
of the best Havana cigars to the captain. That man has some sense. Most
captains would have blown their damned whistle when they dipped their
flag. Have a note written to the captain telling him that I appreciated
his consideration."

Our voyage to Athens and thence, through the Corinth Canal, back to
Mentone, was free from incident. J. P. discussed the possibility of
going to Constantinople or to Venice, but our cabled inquiries about the
weather brought discouraging replies describing an unusually cold
season, and these projects were abandoned.

About this time Mr. Pulitzer's health showed a marked improvement, which
was reflected in the most agreeable manner in the general conditions of
life on the yacht. He had been worried for some weeks about his plans
for going to New York, and this had interfered with his sleep, had
increased his nervousness and aggravated every symptom of his physical
weakness. With this matter finally disposed of he could look forward to
a peaceful cruise, during which he would be able to catch up with his
careful reading of the marked file of The World, and thus remove a
weight from his mind.

He detested having work accumulate on his hands, but when his health was
worse than usual this was unavoidable. He always drove himself to the
last ounce of his endurance, and it was only when his condition
indicated an imminent collapse that he would consent to drop everything
except light reading, and to spend a few days out at sea without calling
anywhere for letters, papers, or cables.

It was during this, our last, cruise in the Mediterranean that I
discovered that Mr. Pulitzer was one of the best and most fascinating
talkers I had ever heard. Once in a while, when he was feeling cheerful
after a good night's rest and a pleasant day's reading, he monopolized
the conversation at lunch or dinner. He was generally more willing to
talk when we took our meals at a large round table on deck, for he loved
the sea breeze and was soothed by it.

When he talked he simply compelled your attention. I often felt that, if
he had not made his career otherwise, he might have been one of the
world's greatest actors, or one of its most popular orators. In
flexibility of tone, in variety of gesture, in the change of his facial
expression he was the peer of anyone I have seen on the stage.

To an extraordinary flow of language he added a range of information and
a vividness of expression truly astonishing. His favorite themes were
politics and the lives of great men. To his monologues on the former
subject he brought a ripe wisdom, based upon the most extensive reading
and the shrewdest observation, and quickened by the keenest enthusiasm.
He was by no means a political bigot; and there was not a political
experiment, from the democracy of the Greeks to the referendum in
Switzerland, with the details of which he was not perfectly familiar.
Although he was a convinced believer in the Republican form of
government, having, as he expressed it, "no use for the King business,"
he was fully alive to the peculiar dangers and difficulties with which
modern progress has confronted popular institutions.

When the publication of some work like Rosebery's Chatham or Monypenny's
Disraeli afforded an occasion, Mr. Pulitzer would spend an hour before
we left the table in giving us a picture of some exciting crisis in
English politics, the high lights picked out in pregnant phrases of
characterization, in brilliant epitome of the facts, in spontaneous
epigram, and illustrative anecdote. Whether he spoke of the Holland
House circle, of the genius of Cromwell, of Napoleon's campaigns, or
sought to point a moral from the lives of Bismarck, Metternich, Louis
XI, or Kossuth, every sentence was marked by the same penetrating
analysis, the same facility of expression, the same clearness of
thought.

On rare occasions he talked of his early days, telling us in a charming,
simple, and unaffected manner of the tragic and humorous episodes with
which his youth had been crowded. Of the former I recall a striking
description of a period during which he filled two positions in St.
Louis, one involving eight hours' work during the day, the other eight
hours during the night. Four of the remaining eight were devoted to
studying English.

His first connection with journalism arose out of an experience which he
related with a wealth of detail which showed how deeply it had been
burned into his memory.

When he arrived in St. Louis he soon found himself at the end of his
resources, and was faced with the absolute impossibility of securing
work in that city. In company with forty other men he applied at the
office of a general agent who had advertised for hands to go down the
Mississippi and take up well-paid posts on a Louisiana sugar plantation.
The agent demanded a fee of five dollars from each applicant, and, by
pooling their resources, the members of this wretched band managed to
meet the charge. The same night they were taken on board a steamer which
immediately started down river. At three o'clock in the morning they
were landed on the river bank about forty miles below St. Louis, at a
spot where there was neither house, road, nor clearing. Before the
marooned party had time to realize its plight the steamer had
disappeared.

A council of war was held, and it was decided that they should tramp
back to St. Louis, and put a summary termination to the agent's career
by storming his office and murdering him. Whether or not this reckless
program would have been carried out it is impossible to say, for when,
three days later, the ragged army arrived in the city, worn out with
fatigue and half dead from hunger, the agent had decamped.

A reporter happened to pick up the story, and by mere chance met
Pulitzer and induced him to write out in German the tale of his
experiences. This account created such an impression on the mind of the
editor through whose hands it passed that Pulitzer was offered, and
accepted, with the greatest misgivings, as he solemnly assured us, a
position as reporter on the Westliche Post.

The event proved that there had been no grounds for J. P.'s modest
doubts. After he had been some time on the paper, things went so badly
that two reporters had to be got rid of. The editor kept Pulitzer on the
staff, because he felt that if anyone was destined to force him out of
the editorial chair it was not a young, uneducated foreigner, who could
hardly mumble half-a-dozen words of English. The editor was mistaken.
Within a few years J. P. not only supplanted him but became half-
proprietor of the paper.

Another interesting anecdote of his early days, which he told with great
relish, related to his experience as a fireman on a Mississippi
ferryboat. His limited knowledge of English was regarded by the captain
as a personal affront, and that fire-eating old-timer made it his
particular business to let young Pulitzer feel the weight of his
authority. At last the overwork and the constant bullying drove J. P.
into revolt, and he left the boat after a violent quarrel with the
captain.

Whenever J. P. reached this point in the story, and I heard him tell it
several times, his face lighted up with amusement, and he had to stop
until he had enjoyed a good laugh.

"Well, my God!" he would conclude, "about two years later, when I had
learned English and studied some law and been made a notary public, this
very same captain walked into my office in St. Louis one day to have
some documents sealed. As soon as he saw me he stopped short, as if he
had seen a ghost, and said, "Say, ain't you the damned cuss that I fired
off my boat?"

"I told him yes, I was. He was the most surprised man I ever saw, but
after he had sworn himself hoarse he faced the facts and gave me his
business."

Mr. Pulitzer always declared that the proudest day of his life, the
occasion on which his vanity was most tickled, was when he was elected
to the Missouri Legislature. Things were evidently run in a rather
happy-go-lucky fashion in those early days, since, as he admitted with a
reminiscent smile, he was absolutely disqualified for election, being
neither an American citizen nor of age.

Mr. Pulitzer's anecdotes about himself always ended in one way. He would
break off suddenly and exclaim, "For Heaven's sake, why do you let me
run on like this; as soon as a man gets into the habit of talking about
his past adventures he might just as well make up his mind that he is
growing old and that his intellect is giving way."

It was this strong disinclination for personal reminiscence which
prevented Mr. Pulitzer, despite many urgent appeals, from writing his
autobiography. It is a thousand pities that he adhered to this
resolution, for his career, as well in point of interest as in
achievement and picturesqueness, would have stood the test of comparison
with that of any man whose life-story has been preserved in literature.



CHAPTER VI

WIESBADEN AND AN ATLANTIC VOYAGE


At last the time came when we had to leave the yacht and make a
pilgrimage to Wiesbaden, in order that Mr. Pulitzer might submit to a
cure before sailing for New York.

The first stage of our journey took us from Genoa to Milan. Here we
stayed for five hours so that J. P. could have his lunch and his siesta
comfortably at an hotel. Paterson had been sent ahead two or three days
in advance to look over the hotels and to select the one which promised
to be least noisy. On our arrival in Milan J. P. was taken to an
automobile, and in ten minutes he was in his rooms.

Simple as these arrangements appear from the bald statement of what
actually happened they really involved a great deal of care and
forethought. It was not enough that Paterson should visit half-a-dozen
hotels and make his choice from a cursory inspection. After his choice
had been narrowed down by a process of elimination he had to spend
several hours in each of two or three hotels, in the room intended for
J. P., so that he could detect any of the hundred noises which might
make the room uninhabitable to its prospective tenant.

The room might be too near the elevator, it might be too near a
servants' staircase, it might overlook a courtyard where carpets were
beaten, or a street with heavy traffic, it might be within earshot of a
dining-room where an orchestra played or a smoking-room with the
possibility of loud talking, it might open off a passage which gave
access to some much frequented reception-room.

Most of these points could be determined by merely observing the
location of the room. But other things were to be considered. Did the
windows rattle, did the floor creak, did the doors open and shut
quietly, was the ventilation good, were there noisy guests in the
adjoining rooms?

This last difficulty was, I understand, usually overcome by Mr. Pulitzer
engaging, in addition to his own room, a room on either side of it,
three rooms facing it, the room above it and the room beneath it.

Even the question of the drive from the station to the hotel had to be
thought out. A trial trip was made in an automobile. If the route
followed a car line or passed any spot likely to be noisy, such as a
market place or a school playground, or if it led over a roughly paved
road on which the car would jolt, another route had to be selected,
which, as far as possible, dodged the unfavorable conditions.

Our carefully arranged journey passed without incident. We had a private
car from Milan to Frankfort and another for the short run to Wiesbaden,
where we arrived in time for lunch on the day after our departure from
Genoa. Everything had been prepared for our reception by some one who
had made similar arrangements on former occasions. We occupied the whole
of a villa belonging to one of the large hotels, and situated less than
a hundred yards from it.

In the main our life was modeled upon that at the Cap Martin villa; but
part of Mr. Pulitzer's morning was devoted to baths, massage, and the
drinking of waters. Our meals were taken, as a rule, either in a private
dining-room at the hotel or in the big restaurant of the Kurhaus; but
when Mr. Pulitzer was feeling more than usually tired the table was laid
in the dining-room of the villa.

Our dinners at the Kurhaus were a welcome change from our ordinary meals
with their set routine of literary discussions. Mr. Pulitzer was
immensely interested in people; but it was impossible for him to meet
them, except on rare occasions, because the excitement was bad for his
health. Whenever he dined in a crowded restaurant, however, our time was
fully occupied in describing with the utmost minuteness the men, women,
and children around us.

The Kurhaus was an excellent place for the exercise of our descriptive
powers. In addition to the ordinary crowd of pleasure-seekers and
health-hunters there were, during a great part of our visit, a large
number of military men, for the Kaiser spent a week at Wiesbaden that
year and reviewed some troops, and this involved careful preparation in
advance by a host of court officials and high army officers.

Under these circumstances the dining-room of the Kurhaus presented a
scene full of color and animation. Sometimes J. P. said to one of us:
"Look around for a few minutes and pick out the most interesting-
looking man and woman in the room, examine them carefully, try and catch
the tone of their voices, and when you are ready describe them to me."
Or he might say: "I hear a curious, sharp, incisive voice somewhere over
there on my right. There it is now--don't you hear it?--s s s s s, every
s like a hiss. Describe that man to me; tell me what kind of people he's
talking to; tell me what you think his profession is." Or it might be:
"There are some gabbling women over there. Describe them to me. How are
they dressed, are they painted, are they wearing jewels, how old are
they?"

In whatever form the request was made its fulfilment meant a description
covering everything which could be detected by the eye or surmised from
any available clew.

Describing people to J. P. was by no means an easy task. It was no use
saying that a man had a medium-sized nose, that he was of average
height, and that his hair was rather dark. Everything had to be given in
feet and inches and in definite colors. You had to exercise your utmost
powers to describe the exact cast of the features, the peculiar texture
and growth of the hair, the expression of the eyes, and every little
trick of gait or gesture.

Mr. Pulitzer was very sceptical of everybody's faculty of description.
He made us describe people, and specially his own children and others
whom he knew well, again and again, and his unwillingness to accept any
description as being good rested no doubt upon the wide divergence
between the different descriptions he received of the same person.

There were few things which Mr. Pulitzer enjoyed more than having a face
described to him, whether of a living person or of a portrait, and as
our table-talk was often about men and women of distinction or
notoriety, dead or living, any one of us might be called upon at any
time to portray feature by feature some person whose name had been
mentioned.

By providing ourselves with illustrated catalogues of the Royal Academy
exhibitions and of the National Portrait Gallery, and by cutting out the
portraits with which the modern publisher so lavishly decorates his
announcements, we generally managed, by pulling together, to cover the
ground pretty well. I have sat through a meal during which one or
another of us furnished a microscopic description of the faces of Warren
Hastings, Lord Clive, President Wilson, the present King and Queen of
England, the late John W. Gates, Ignace Paderewski, and an odd dozen
current murderers, embezzlers, divorce habitues, and candidates for
political office.

The delicate enjoyment of this game was not reached, however, until, at
the following meal, one of us, who had been absent at the original
delineation, was asked to cover some of the ground that had been gone
over a few hours earlier. Mr. Pulitzer would say: "Is Mr. So-and-So
here? Well, now, just for fun, let us see what he has to say about the
appearance of some of the people we spoke about at lunch."

The result was almost always an astonishing disclosure of the inability
of intelligent people to observe closely, to describe accurately, and to
reach any agreement as to the significance of what they have seen. It
was bad enough when the latest witness had before him the actual
pictures on which the first description had been based; even then
crooked noses became straight, large mouths small, disdain was turned to
affability and ingenuousness to guile; but where this guide was lacking
the descriptions were often ludicrously discrepant.

While we were at Wiesbaden we seldom spent much time at the dinner
table, as J. P. usually took his choice between walking in the garden of
the Kurhaus and listening to the orchestra and going to the opera. One
night we motored over to Frankfort to hear Der Rosenkavalier, but the
excursion was a dismal failure. We had to go over a stretch of very bad
road, and with J. P. shaken into a state of extreme nervousness the very
modern strains of the opera failed to please.

At the end of the second act J. P., who had been growing more and more
dismal as the music bumped along its disjointed course, either in vain
search or in careful avoidance of anything resembling a pleasant sound,
turned to me and said: "My God! I can't stand any more of this. Will you
please go and find the automobile and bring it round to the main
entrance. I want to go home."

I saw a great deal of Mr. Pulitzer while we were at Wiesbaden, owing to
the circumstance that Paterson was called to England on urgent private
affairs and Pollard was away on leave. The absence of these two men was
as much regretted by the staff as it was by J. P. himself. Paterson was,
from his extraordinary erudition, seldom at a loss for a topic of
conversation which would rivet J. P.'s attention, and Pollard, who had
been a number of years with J. P., was not only, on his own subjects,
the conversational peer of Paterson, but was in addition, from his
soothing voice and manner and from his long and careful study of J. P.,
invaluable as a mental and nervous sedative.

It was at Wiesbaden that I first began to read books regularly to J. P.
I read him portions of the biographies of Parnell, of Sir William Howard
Russell, of President Polk (very little of this), of Napoleon, of Martin
Luther, and at least a third of Macaulay's Essays.

He was a great admirer of Lord Macaulay's writings and read them
constantly, as he found in them most of the qualities which he admired--
great descriptive power, political acumen, satire, neatness of phrase,
apt comparisons and analogies, and shrewd analysis of character. Many
passages he made me read over and over again at different times. I
reproduce a few of his favorite paragraphs for the purpose of showing
what appealed to his taste.

From the Essay on Sir William Temple, the following lines referring to
the Right Hon. Thomas Peregrine Courtenay, who, after his retirement
from public life, wrote the Memoirs of Temple and stated in his preface
that experience had taught him the superiority of literature to politics
for developing the kindlier feelings and conducing to an agreeable life:

He has little reason, in our opinion, to envy any of those who are still
engaged in a pursuit from which, at most, they can only expect that, by
relinquishing liberal studies and social pleasures, by passing nights
without sleep and summers without one glimpse of the beauty of nature,
they may attain that laborious, that invidious, that closely watched
slavery which is mocked with the name of power.

More often than any others I read him the following passages from the
Essay on Milton:

The final and permanent fruits of liberty are wisdom, moderation, and
mercy. Its immediate effects are often atrocious crimes, conflicting
errors, scepticism on points the most clear, dogmatism on points the
most mysterious. It is just at this crisis that its enemies love to
exhibit it. They pull down the scaffolding from the half-finished
edifice: they point to the flying dust, the falling bricks, the
comfortless rooms, the frightful irregularity of the whole appearance;
and then ask in scorn where the promised splendor and comfort is to be
found. If such miserable sophisms were to prevail there would never be a
good house or a good government in the world.

There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom
produces; and that cure is freedom.

The blaze of truth and liberty may at first dazzle and bewilder nations
which have become half blind in the house of bondage. But let them gaze
on, and they will soon be able to bear it. In a few years men learn to
reason. The extreme violence of opinion subsides. Hostile theories
correct each other. The scattered elements of truth cease to contend,
and begin to coalesce. And at length a system of justice and order is
educed out of the chaos.

If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in
slavery, they may indeed wait forever.

I was surprised one day on returning to the villa after a walk in the
Kurhaus gardens with J. P. to find an addition to our company in the
person of the second gentleman who had examined me in London at the time
I had applied for the post of secretary to Mr. Pulitzer.

This gentleman occupied what I imagine must have been the only post of
its kind in the world. He was, in addition to whatever other duties he
performed, Mr. Pulitzer's villa-seeker.

It was Mr. Pulitzer's custom to talk a good deal about his future plans,
not those for the immediate future, in regard to which he was usually
very reticent, but those for the following year, or for a vague
"someday" when many things were to be done which as yet were nothing
more than the toys with which his imagination delighted to play.

As he always spent a great part of the year in Europe, a residence had
to be found for him, it might be in Vienna, or London, or Berlin, or
Mentone, or in any other place which emerged as a possibility out of the
long discussions of the next year's itinerary.

Whenever the arguments in favor of any place had so far prevailed that a
visit there had been accepted in principle as one of our future
movements it became the duty of the villa-seeker to go to the locality,
to gather a mass of information about its climate, its amenities, its
resident and floating population, its accessibility by sea and land, the
opportunities for hearing good music, and to report in the minutest
detail upon all available houses which appeared likely to suit Mr.
Pulitzer's needs.

These reports were accompanied by maps, plans, and photographs, and they
were considered by J. P. with the utmost care. Particular attention was
paid to the streets and to the country roads in the neighborhood, as it
was necessary to have facilities for motoring, for riding, and for
walking.

The next step was to secure a villa, and after that had been done the
alterations had to be undertaken which would make it habitable for J. P.
These might be of a comparatively simple nature, a matter of fitting
silencers to the doors and putting up double windows to keep out the
noise; but they might extend much further and involve more or less
elaborate changes in the interior arrangements. Even after all this had
been done a sudden shift of plans might send the villa-seeker scurrying
across Europe to begin the whole process over again in order to be
prepared for new developments.

At the time I left London to join J. P. at Mentone I had stipulated
that, if I should chance to be selected to fill the vacant post, I
should not be called upon to take up my duties until I had returned to
London and spent a fortnight there in clearing up my private affairs.

After we had been a few weeks at Wiesbaden it became absolutely
necessary for me to go to London for that purpose; and this led to a
struggle with J. P. which nearly brought our relations to an end.

As soon as I broached the subject of a fortnight's leave of absence J.
P. set his face firmly against the proposal. This was due not so much to
any feeling on his part that my absence would be an inconvenience to
him, for both Paterson and Pollard had returned to duty, but to an
almost unconquerable repugnance he had to any one except himself
initiating any plan which would in the slightest degree affect his
arrangements. His sensitiveness on this point was so delicate that it
was impossible, for instance, for any of us to accept an invitation to
lunch or dine with friends who might happen to be in our neighborhood,
or to ask for half a day off for any purpose whatever.

I do not mean to say that we never got away for a meal or that we were
never free for a few hours; as a matter of fact, J. P. was by no means
ungenerous in such things once a man had passed the trial stage; but,
although J. P. might say to you, "Take two days off and amuse yourself,"
or "Take the evening off, and don't trouble to get back to work until
lunch-time to-morrow," it was out of the question for you to say to J.
P.: "An old friend of mine is here for the day, would you mind my taking
lunch with him?"

No one, I am sure, ever made a suggestion of that kind to J. P. more
than once--the effect upon him was too startling.

J. P.'s favors in the way of giving time off were always granted subject
to a change of mind on his part; and these changes were often so sudden
that it was our custom as soon as leave was given to disappear from the
yacht or the villa at the earliest possible moment. But at times even an
instant departure was too slow, for it might happen that before you were
out of the room J. P. would say: "Just a moment, Mr. So-and-So, you
wouldn't mind if I asked you to put off your holiday till to-morrow,
would you? I think I would like you to finish that novel this evening; I
am really interested to see how it comes out."

This, of course, was rather disappointing; but the great disadvantage of
not getting away was that Mr. Pulitzer's memory generally clung very
tenaciously to the fact that he had given you leave, and lost the
subsequent act of rescinding it. The effect of this was that for the
practical purpose of getting a day off your turn was used up as soon as
J. P. granted it, without any reference to whether you actually got it
or not; and the phrase, "until to-morrow," was not to be interpreted
literally or to be acted upon without a further distinct permission.

The only "right" any of us had to time off was to our annual vacation of
two weeks, which we had to take whenever J. P. wished. If, for any
reason, one of us wanted leave of absence for a week or so, the matter
had to be put into the hands of the discreet and diplomatic Dunningham;
and so when the time came when I simply had to go to London it was to
Dunningham I went for counsel.

Judging by the results, his intercession on my behalf was not very
successful, for, on the occasion of our next meeting, J. P. made it
clear to me that if I insisted on going to London it would be on pain of
his displeasure and at the peril of my post. As I look back upon the
incident, however, it is quite clear to me that the whole of his
arguments and his dark hints were launched merely to test my sense of
duty to those persons in London whom I had promised to see.

A day or two later J. P. told me that as I was going to London I might
as well stay there for a month or two before joining him in New York. He
outlined a course of study for me, which included lessons in speaking
(my voice being harsh and unpleasant) and visits to all the principal
art galleries, theaters and other places of interest, with a view to
describing everything when I rejoined him.

On the eve of my departure Dunningham handed me, with Mr. Pulitzer's
compliments, an envelope containing a handsome present, in the most
acceptable form a present can take.

It was not until I was in the train, and the train had started, that I
was able to realize that I was free. During the journey to London my
extraordinary experiences of the past three months detached themselves
from the sum of my existence and became cloaked with that haze of
unreality which belongs to desperate illness or to a tragedy looked back
upon from days of health and peace. Walking down St. James's Street
twenty-four hours after leaving Wiesbaden, J. P. and the yacht and the
secretaries invaded my memory not as things experienced but as things
seen in a play or read in a story long ago.

I lost no time in making myself comfortable in London. Inquiries
directed to the proper quarter soon brought me into touch with a
gentleman to whose skill, I was assured, no voice, however disagreeable,
could fail to respond. I saw my friends, my business associates, my
tailor. I went to see Fanny's First Play three times, the National
Portrait Gallery twice, the National Gallery once, and laid out my plans
to see all the places in London (shame forbidding me to enumerate them)
which every Englishman ought to have seen and which I had not seen.

This lasted for about two weeks, during which I saw something of Craven,
who had left us in Naples to study something or other in London, and who
was under orders to hold himself in readiness to go to New York with J.
P. We dined at my club one night, and when I returned to my flat I found
a telegram from Mr. Tuohy, instructing me to join J. P. in Liverpool the
next day in time to sail early in the afternoon on the Cedric, as it had
been decided to leave Craven in London for the present.

The voyage differed but little from our cruises in the yacht. J. P. took
his meals in his own suite, and as Mrs. Pulitzer and Miss Pulitzer were
on board they usually dined with him, one of the secretaries making a
fourth at table.

In the matter of guarding J. P. from noise, extraordinary precautions
were taken. Heavy mats were laid outside his cabin, specially made a
dozen years before and stored by the White Star people waiting his call;
that portion of the deck which surrounded his suite was roped off so
that the passengers could not promenade there; and a close-fitting green
baize door shut off the corridor leading to his quarters. His meals were
served by his own butler and by one of the yacht stewards; and his daily
routine went on as usual.

During the voyage I was broken in to the task of reading the magazines
to J. P. So far as current issues were concerned I had to take the ones
he liked best--The Atlantic Monthly, The American Magazine, The
Quarterly Review, The Edinburgh Review, The World's Work, and The North
American Review--and thoroughly master their contents.

While I was engaged on this sufficiently arduous labor I made, on cards,
lists of the titles of all the articles and abstracts of all the more
important ones. I have by me as I write a number of these lists, and I
reproduce one of them.

The following list of articles represents what Mr. Pulitzer got from me
in a highly condensed form during ONE HOUR: "The Alleged Passing of
Wagner," "The Decline and Fall of Wagner," "The Mission of Richard
Wagner," "The Swiftness of Justice in England and in the United States,"
"The Public Lands of the United States," "New Zealand and the Woman's
Vote," "The Lawyer and the Community," "The Tariff Make-believe," "The
Smithsonian Institute," "The Spirit and Letter of Exclusion," "The
Panama Canal and American Shipping," "The Authors and Signers of the
Declaration of Independence," "The German Social Democracy," "The
Changing Position of American Trade," "The Passing of Polygamy."

I remember very well the occasion on which I gave him these articles. We
were walking on one of the lower promenade decks of the Cedric, and J.
P. asked me if I had any magazine articles ready for him. I told him,
having the list of articles in my left hand, that I had fifteen ready.
He pulled out his watch, and holding it toward me said:

"What time is it?"

"Twelve o'clock," I replied.

"Very good; that gives us an hour before lunch. Now go on with your
articles; I'll allow you four minutes for each of them."

He did not actually take four minutes for each, for some of them did not
interest him after my summary had run for a minute or so, but we just
got the fifteen in during the hour.

After all that was possible had been done in the way of reducing the
number of magazine articles, by rejecting the unsuitable ones, and their
length by careful condensation, we were unable to keep pace with the
supply. When a hundred or so magazines had accumulated Mr. Pulitzer had
the lists of contents read to him, and from these he selected the
articles which he wished to have read; and these arrears were disposed
of when an opportunity presented itself.

At times Mr. Pulitzer did not feel well enough to take this concentrated
mental food, and turned for relief to novels, plays and light
literature; at times, when he was feeling unusually well, he occupied
himself for several days in succession with matters concerning The
World--in dictating editorials, letters of criticism, instruction and
inquiry, or in considering the endless problems relating to policy,
business management, personnel, and the soaring price of white paper.

An interesting feature of his activity on behalf of The World was his
selection of new writers. Although his supervision of the paper extended
to every branch, from advertising to news, from circulation to color-
printing, it was upon the editorial page that he concentrated his best
energies and his keenest observation.

It is no exaggeration to say that the editorial page of The World was to
J. P. what a child is to a parent. He had watched it daily for a quarter
of a century. During that time, I am told, he had read to him seventy-
five per cent. of all the editorials which were printed on it, and had
every cartoon described. Those who are interested in the editorial page
of The World should read Mr. John L. Heaton's admirable History of a
Page, published last year.

J. P.'s theory of editorial writing, which I heard him propound a dozen
times, called for three cardinal qualities--brevity, directness and
style--and, as these could not be expected to adorn hasty writing, he
employed a large staff of editorial writers and tried to limit each man
to an average of half a column a day, unless exceptional circumstances
called for a lengthy treatment of some important question.

He watched the style of each man with the closest attention, examining
the length of the paragraphs, of the sentences, of the words, the
variety of the vocabulary, the choice of adjectives and adverbs, the
employment of superlatives, the selection of a heading, the nicety of
adjustment between the thought to be expressed and the language employed
for its expression.

If he chanced in the course of his reading to run across any apt phrase
in regard to literary style he would get one of us to type a number of
copies and send one to each of the editorial writers on The World. The
following were sent from Wiesbaden:

"Thiers compares a perfect style to glass through which we look without
being conscious of its presence between the object and the eye." (From
Abraham Hayward's "Essay on Thiers.")

"Lessing, Lichtenberger, and Schopenhauer agreed in saying that it is
difficult to write well, that no man naturally writes well, and that one
must, in order to acquire a style, work STRENUOUSLY ... I have tried to
write well."(Nietzsche.)

J. P. was never tired of discussing literary style, of making
comparisons between one language and another from the point of view of
an exact expression of an idea, or of the different SOUND of the same
idea expressed in different languages. For instance, he asked us once
during an argument about translations of Shakespeare to compare the
lines:

     "You are my true and honorable wife,
      As dear to me as are the ruddy drops
      That visit my sad heart."

with the German:

    "Ihr seid mein echtes, ehrenwertes Weib,
     So teuer mir, als wie die Purpurtropfen
     Die um mein trauernd Herz sich drangen."

and the opening words of Hamlet's soliloquy with the German:

   "Sein oder Nichtsein, das ist hier die Frage."

Of the former pair he greatly preferred the English, of the latter the
German.

Sometimes we discussed at great length the exact English equivalent of
some German or French word. I remember one which he came back to again
and again, the word leichtsinnig. We suggested as translations,
frivolous, irresponsible, hare-brained, thoughtless, chicken-witted,
foolish, crazy; but we never found an expression which suited him.

But I have wandered away from the subject of editorial writers. During
the time I was with J. P. he selected two, and his method of selection
is of interest in view of the great importance he attached to the
editorial page of The World.

As I have said elsewhere, J. P. got practically all the important
articles from every paper of consequence in the United States. If he
read an editorial which impressed him, possibly from a Chicago or a San
Francisco paper, he put it on one side and told Pollard, who read all
this kind of material to him, to watch the clippings from that paper and
to pick out any other editorials which he could identify as the work of
the same man. Five years with J. P. had made Pollard an expert in
penetrating the disguise of the editorial "We."

As soon as a representative collection of the unknown man's writings had
been made J. P. instructed some one on The World to find out who the
author was and to request that he would supply what he considered to be
a fair sample of his work, a dozen or more articles, and a brief
biography of himself.

If Mr. Pulitzer was satisfied with these an offer would be made to the
man to join the staff of The World. Sometimes even these gentlemen were
summoned to New York, to Bar Harbor, to Wiesbaden, or to Mentone,
according to circumstances. I have met several of them, and they all
agree in saying that the hardest work they ever did in their lives was
to keep pace with Mr. Pulitzer while they were running the gauntlet of
his judgment.

There are few men highly placed on The World to-day who have not been
through such an ordeal. I doubt if any man was ever served by a staff
whose individual ability, temper, resources and limitations were so
minutely known to their employer. He knew them to the last ounce of
their endurance, to the last word of their knowledge, beyond the last
veil which enables even the most intelligent man to harbor, mercifully,
a few delusions about himself.

To those who did not know Mr. Pulitzer it may appear that I exaggerate
his powers in this direction. As a matter of fact I believe that it
would be impossible to do so.

When he had his sight he judged men as others judge them, and, making
full allowance for his genius for observation and analysis, he was no
doubt influenced to some extent by appearance, manners and associations.
But after he became blind and retired from contact with all men, except
a circle which cannot have exceeded a score in number, his judgment took
on a new measure of clearness and perspective.

As a natural weapon of self-defense he developed a system of searching
examination before which no subterfuge could stand. It was minute,
persistent, comprehensive and ingenious in the last degree. It might
begin to-day, reach an apparent conclusion, and be renewed after a
month's silence. In the meantime, while the whole matter was becoming
dim in your mind, inquiries had been made in a dozen directions in
regard to the points at issue; and when the subject was reopened you
were confronted not only with J. P.'s perfect memory of what you had
said but with a detailed knowledge of matters which you had passed by as
unimportant, or deliberately avoided for any one of a dozen perfectly
honest reasons.

J. P.'s questions covered names, places, dates, motives, the chain of
causation, what you said, what you did, what you felt, what you thought,
the reasons why you felt, thought, acted as you did, the reasons why
your thought and action had not been such-and-such, your opinion of your
own conduct, in looking back upon the episode, your opinion of the
thoughts, actions and feelings of everybody else concerned, your
conjectures as to THEIR motives, what you would do if you were again
faced with the same problem, why you would do it, why you had not done
it on the previous occasion.

Starting at any point in your career Mr. Pulitzer worked backward and
forward until all that you had ever thought or done, from your earliest
recollection down to the present moment, had been disclosed to him so
far as he was interested to know it, and your memory served you.

This process varied in length according to the nature of the experiences
of the person subjected to it, and to the precise quality of Mr.
Pulitzer's interest in him. In my own case it lasted about three months
and was copiously interspersed with written statements by myself of
facts about myself, opinions by myself about myself, and endless
references to people I had known during the past twenty-five years.

Mr. Pulitzer's attitude toward references was the product of vast
experience. He complained that scores of men had come to him with
references from some of the most distinguished people living, references
so glowing that one man should have been ashamed to write them and the
other ashamed to receive them, references of such a character that their
happy possessors might, without being guilty of immodesty, have applied
for the Chief Justiceship of the United States, the Viceroyalty of
India, the Archbishopric of Canterbury, the Presidency of the Royal
College of Surgeons, or the Mastership of Baliol, but that the great
majority of these men had turned out to be ignorant, lazy and stupid to
an unbelievable degree.

When the question of my own references came up I begged in a humorous
way that, having heard J. P.'s views about the value of testimonials, my
friends should be spared the useless task of eulogizing me.

"No, my God!" exclaimed J. P. "None of them shall be spared. What I said
about testimonials is all perfectly true; but it only serves to show
what sort of person a man must be who can't even get testimonials. No,
no; if a man brings references it proves nothing; but if he can't, it
proves a great deal."

Our voyage to New York was marred by but one distressing feature, the
behavior of two infants, one of whom cried all day and the other all
night. J. P. stood it very well. I think he regarded it as one of the
few necessary noises. He suffered from it, of course, but the only
remark he ever made to me about it was:

"I really think that one of the most extraordinary things in the world
is the amount of noise a child can make. Here we are with a sixty-mile
gale blowing and some ten thousand horse-power engines working inside
the ship, and yet that child can make itself heard from one end of the
boat to the other. I think there must be two of them; the sound is not
quite the same at night. Now, Mr. Ireland, do, just for the fun of it,
find out about that. Don't let the mother know--I wouldn't like to hurt
her feelings; but ask one of the stewards about it."

In due course we reached New York. The Liberty, which had crossed
directly from Marseilles, met us at quarantine, and Mr. Pulitzer was
transferred to her without landing. The rest of us joined the yacht the
same evening. That night we sailed for Bar Harbor.



CHAPTER VII

BAR HARBOR AND THE LAST CRUISE


During the forenoon of the following day we dropped anchor opposite the
water-front of Mr. Pulitzer's Bar Harbor estate. The house was situated
right on the rocky foreshore, and was backed by extensive grounds which
completely cut it off from the noise of the traffic on the main road.

By means of a flight of granite steps, leading down from a lawn laid
along the whole of the house-front, within containing walls, access was
had to a pier to the end of which was attached a floating pontoon
affording an easy means of boarding the yacht's boats or the launches
which were kept at Chatwold for use when the house was occupied.

Chatwold was a big, rambling place, which had been added to from time to
time until it was capable of accommodating about twenty people in
addition to J. P., whose quarters were in a large granite structure,
specially designed with a view to securing complete quietness. This
building was in the form of a tower about forty feet square and four
stories high. On the ground floor was a magnificent room, occupying the
whole length of the tower and two-thirds of its breadth, which served as
a library and dining-room for J. P. On the side facing the sea there was
a large verandah where Mr. Pulitzer took his breakfast and where he sat
a great deal during the day when he was transacting business or being
read to.

The whole of the basement of the tower was taken up by a swimming pool
and dressing rooms. The water was pumped in from the sea and could be
heated by a system of steam pipes. The upper floors of the tower were
given over to bedrooms, for J. P., for the major-domo and for several of
the secretaries.

Most of the servants were housed in a large building some distance from
the main residence, and there were separate quarters for the grooms and
stablemen, and for the heard gardener and his assistants.

While we were at Chatwold there was a gathering of the Pulitzer family--
Mrs. Joseph Pulitzer, a cousin of Jefferson Davis and a belle of
Washington in her day, who married Mr. Pulitzer years before his success
in life had been made and when the fight for his place in journalism was
still in its early stages; Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Pulitzer and their young
son, Ralph; Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Pulitzer, Jr., Miss Edith Pulitzer, Miss
Constance Pulitzer and Mr. Pulitzer's youngest child, Herbert, a boy of
fifteen.

The presence of the family had little effect upon the routine of Mr.
Pulitzer's daily life. He saw as much of his wife and children as he
could; but the intensity of his family emotions was such that they could
only be given rein at the price of sleepless nights, savage pain, and
desperate weariness. His interest in everything concerning the family
was overwhelming, his curiosity inexhaustible. Everybody had to be
described over and over again, but especially young Master Ralph, a
bright and handsome child, born long after his grandfather had become
totally blind, and Master Herbert, of whose appearance he retained only
a memory of the dim impressions he had been able to gather years before
when a little sight yet remained to him.

It was at lunch and at dinner that Mr. Pulitzer saw most of the family.
He almost always took his meals in the library at a table seating four;
and the party usually included Mrs. Pulitzer, one of the other ladies or
Master Herbert, and a secretary. I was present at a great many of these
gatherings, partly because J. P. had gradually acquired a taste for such
humor as I was able to contribute to the conversation, and partly
because he relished a salad-dressing which represented my only
accomplishment in the gastronomic field.

A feature of the Bar Harbor life which Mr. Pulitzer enjoyed greatly and
which he could not indulge in elsewhere were the long trips he made in a
big electric launch on the sheltered waters of Frenchman's Bay. When the
weather was fine these trips occupied two or three hours each day. J. P.
sat in an armchair amidships, with two companions, very often his two
older sons, to read to him or to discuss business affairs.

On the occasions when I formed one of the party I had the opportunity of
observing that so far as the quantity and the quality of work were
concerned it was an easier task to be one of Mr. Pulitzer's secretaries
than to be one of his sons. I have never seen men put to a more severe
test of industry, concentration, and memory than were Mr. Ralph and Mr.
Joseph, Jr., while they were at Bar Harbor or on the yacht.

It is a pleasure to bear witness to the affectionate solicitude, the
patience, and the good will with which they met the exacting demands of
their father. They realized, of course, as every one who worked for J.
P. realized it, that the weight of the burden he placed upon you and the
strictness of the account to which you were called were the truest
measure of his regard.

Next to politics there was nothing which interested J. P. more than
molding and developing the people around him; and what was no more than
a strong interest when it concerned his employees became a passion when
it concerned his sons. His activities in this direction ministered alike
to his love of power and to his horror of wasted talents; they gratified
his ever-present desire to discover the boundaries of human character
and intellect, to explore the mazes of human temperament and emotion.

What you knew and what you were able to do, once you had reached a
certain standard, became secondary in his interest to what you could be
made to know and what you could be taught to do. He was never content
that a man should stand upon his record; growth and development were the
chief aims of his discipline.

His method was well illustrated in my own case. One of his earliest
injunctions to me was that I should never introduce any subject of
conversation connected, in however remote a degree, with my travels or
with my studies in relation to the government of tropical dependencies.
When, for instance, he happened to need some information about India or
the West Indies, he always directed one of the other men to find it for
him. This arrangement had, from his standpoint, the double advantage of
making the other man learn something of which he was ignorant, and of
leaving me free to work at something of which I was ignorant. Thus J. P.
killed two intellectual birds with one stone.

It was not only in regard to mental accomplishments, however, that J. P.
pursued his plan of educating everybody around him. He insisted, among
other things, that I should learn to ride, not because there was any
lack of people who could ride with him, but because by means of
application I could add a new item to the list of things I could do.
After a dozen lessons from a groom I progressed so far that, having
acquired the ability to stay more or less in the saddle while the horse
trotted, Mr. Pulitzer frequently took me riding with him.

We always rode three abreast--a groom on J. P.'s right and myself on his
left; and conversation had to be kept up the whole time. This presented
no peculiar difficulties when the horses were walking, but when they
trotted I found it no easy task to keep my seat, to preserve the precise
distance from J. P. which saved me from touching his stirrup and yet
allowed me to speak without raising my voice, and to leave enough of my
mind unoccupied to remember my material and to present it without
betraying the discomfort of my position.

During these rides, and especially when we were walking our horses along
a quiet, shady stretch of road, J. P. sometimes became reminiscent. On
one of these occasions he told me the story of how he lost his sight. As
I wrote it down as soon as we got back to the house, I can tell it
almost in his own words.

We had been discussing the possibility of his writing an autobiography,
and he said, throwing his head back and smiling reflectively:

"Well, I sometimes wish it could be done. It would make an interesting
book; but I do not think I shall ever do it. My God! I work from morning
to night as it is. When would I get the time?" Then suddenly changing
his mood: "It won't do any harm for you to make a few notes now and
then, and some day, perhaps, we might go through them and see if there
is anything worth preserving. Has any one ever told you how I lost my
sight? No? Well, it was in November, 1887. The World had been conducting
a vigorous campaign against municipal corruption in New York--a campaign
which ended in the arrest of a financier who had bought the votes of
aldermen in order to get a street railroad franchise."

At this point he paused. His jaws set, and his expression became stern,
almost fierce, as he added: "The man died in jail of a broken heart, and
I .. and I ..." He took a deep breath and continued as though he were
reciting an experience which he had heard related of some stranger.

"I was, of course, violently attacked; and it was a period of terrible
strain for me. What with anxiety and overwork I began to suffer from
insomnia, and that soon produced a bad condition of my nerves. One
morning I went down to The World and called for the editorials which
were ready for me to go over. I always read every line of editorial
copy. When I picked up the sheets I was astonished to find that I could
hardly see the writing, let alone read it. I thought it was probably due
to indigestion or to some other temporary cause, and said nothing about
it. The next morning on my way downtown I called in at an oculist's. He
examined my eyes and then told me to go home and remain in bed in a
darkened room for six weeks. At the end of that time he examined me
again, said that I had ruptured a blood vessel in one of my eyes, and
ordered me to stop work entirely and to take six months' rest in
California.

"That was the beginning of the end. Whatever my trouble had been at
first, it developed into separation of the retina in both eyes. From the
day on which I first consulted the oculist up to the present time, about
twenty-four years, I have only been three times in The World building.
Most people think I'm dead, or living in Europe in complete retirement.
Now go on and give me the morning's news. I've had practically nothing,
so you can just run over it briefly, item by item."

On another occasion he told me an amusing story of an experience he had
had out in Missouri just after the end of the Civil War. He had spent
some weeks riding from county-seat to county-seat securing registration
for a deed making title for a railroad. One evening he was nearly
drowned through his horse stumbling in the middle of a ford. When he
dragged himself up the bank on the other side, drenched to the skin and
worried by the prospect of having to catch his mount, which had started
off on a cross-country gallop, he saw an elderly farmer sitting on a
tree stump, and watching him with intense interest and perfect
seriousness.

This man put J. P. up for the night. They got along famously for a
while, but presently all was changed.

"The first thing he did," said J. P., "was to take me to the farmhouse
and hand me a tumbler three parts full of whisky. When I refused this he
looked at me as though he thought I was mad. 'Yer mean ter tell me yer
don't drink?' he said. (It was one of the rare occasions when I heard
Mr. Pulitzer try to imitate any one's peculiarities of speech.) When I
told him no, I didn't, he said nothing, but brought me food.

"After I had eaten he pulled out a plug of tobacco, bit off a large
piece, and offered the plug to me. I thanked him, but declined. It took
him some time to get over that, but at last he said: 'Yer mean ter tell
me yer don't chew?' I said no, I didn't. He dropped the subject, and for
an hour or so we talked about the war and the crops and the proposed
railroad.

"That man was a gentleman. He didn't take another drink or another chew
of tobacco all that time. The only sign he gave of his embarrassment was
that every now and then during a pause in the conversation he fell to
shaking his head in a puzzled sort of way. Finally, before he went to
bed, he produced a pipe, filled it, and handed the tobacco to me; but I
failed him again, and he put his own pipe back in his pocket, firmly but
sorrowfully.

"Well, my God! it was nearly half an hour before he spoke again, and I
was beginning to think that I had really wounded his feelings by
declining his hospitable offers, when he came over and stood in front of
me and looked down on me with an expression of profound pity. I shall
never forget his words. 'Young feller,' he said, 'you seem to be right
smart and able for a furriner, but let me tell YOU, you'll never make a
successful American until yer learn to drink, and chew, and smoke.'"

Chatwold being within telephone distance of New York, J. P. was
constantly subjected to the temptation of ringing up The World in order
to discuss editorial or business matters. He yielded too often, and the
additional excitement and work incident to these conversations (which
were always carried on through a third person) were a severe strain on
his vitality. When he was absolutely worn out he would take refuge on
the yacht and steam out to sea for the purpose of enjoying a few days of
comparative rest.

There is a matter which I may mention in connection with J. P.'s life on
the yacht which, trivial as it seems when told at this distance of time,
never failed to make a profound impression upon me. Of all the trying
moments which were inseparable from attendance upon a blind man with a
will of iron and a nervous system of gossamer, no moment was quite so
full of uneasiness as that in which J. P. used the gangway in boarding
or in leaving the yacht.

Take the case of his going ashore. The yacht lies at anchor in a gentle
swell; the launch comes up to the gangway; two or three men with boat-
hooks occupy themselves in trying to keep it steady. First over the side
goes Dunningham, backward, then Mr. Pulitzer facing forward, one hand on
the gang-rail, the other on Dunningham's shoulder; then an officer and
one of the secretaries, close behind J. P. and ready to clutch him if he
slipped.

Dunningham reaches the grating at the foot of the gangway, then J. P.,
then there is a pause while the latter is placed in the exact position
where one step forward will carry him into the launch, where the officer
in charge is ready to receive him.

In the meantime the launch is bobbing up and down, its gunwale at one
instant level with the gangway-grating, at another, two or three feet
below it. At the precise moment when the launch is almost at the top of
its rise Dunningham says: "Now, step, please, Mr. Pulitzer." But J. P.
waits just long enough to allow the launch to drop a couple of feet, and
then suddenly makes up his mind and tries to step off onto nothing.
Dunningham, the officer and the secretary seize him as he cries: "My
God! What's the matter? You told me to step."

Then follows a long argument as to what Dunningham had meant precisely
when he said "Step!" This whole process might be repeated several times
before he actually found himself in the launch.

The whole thing inspired me with a morbid curiosity; and whenever J. P.
was going up or down the gangway I always found myself, in common, I may
add, with a considerable proportion of the ship's company, leaning over
the side watching this nerve-racking exhibition.

I have said that it was J. P.'s custom to seek repose on the yacht when
he was worn out with overwork; but it would be more accurate to say that
rest was the seldom realized object of these short cruises, for nothing
was more difficult for J. P. than to drop his work so long as he had a
vestige of strength left with which he could flog his mind into action.

Starting out with the best intentions, J. P.'s cruises of recuperation
were usually cut short by putting in to Portland, or New London, or
Marblehead to get newspapers and to send telegrams summoning to the
yacht one or another of the higher staff of The World.

It was, however, when we anchored, as we often did, off Greenwich,
Conn., that J. P. indulged himself to his utmost capacity in conferences
with editors and business managers of The World and with one or two
outsiders. We would drop anchor in the afternoon, pick up a visitor,
cruise in the Sound for a night and a morning, drop anchor again, send
the visitor ashore, and pick up another.

Toward the latter part of September, 1911, J. P. left the yacht and
moved into his town house in East 73d Street. It was a large and
beautifully designed mansion, differing in three particulars from the
ordinary run of residences which have been built, furnished, and
decorated with the utmost good taste and without regard to expense.

The room in which J. P. usually took his meals was a small but
beautifully proportioned retreat so placed that it was completely
surrounded by other rooms and had no direct contact with the outside
world. It was in its ground plan an irregular octagon, and it drew its
light and air from a glass dome. The most striking element in the
decorations was a number of slender columns of pale-green Irish marble,
which rose from the floor to the dome.

Another unusual feature of the house was a superb church organ, which
was built into a large recess halfway up the main staircase. J. P. was
an enthusiastic lover of organ music, and heard as much of it as he
could during his brief visits to New York.

There are no doubt other houses which have an octagonal dining-room and
a church organ; but no other house, I am sure, has a bedroom like that
which Mr. Pulitzer occupied. Although it appeared to form part of the
house, it did not, in fact, do so. It stood upon its own foundations and
was connected with the main structure by some ingenious device which
isolated it from all vibrations originating there. It was of the most
solid construction, and had but one window, a very large affair,
consisting of three casements set one inside the other and provided with
heavy plate glass panels. This triple window was never opened when Mr.
Pulitzer was in the room, the ventilation being secured by means of fans
situated in a long masonry shaft whose interior opening was in the
chimney and whose exterior opening was far enough away to forbid the
passage of any sound from the street. At intervals inside this shaft
were placed frames with silk threads drawn across them, for the purpose
of absorbing any faint vibrations which might find their way in. In this
bedroom, with its triple window and its heavy double-door closed, J. P.
enjoyed as near an approach to perfect quietness as it was possible to
attain in New York.

I saw very little of J. P. when he was in New York. He was much occupied
with family affairs; he was in constant touch with the staff of The
World; and the deep interest he took in the prospects of the
presidential election of 1912, which was already being eagerly
discussed, brought an unusual number of visitors to the house.

The extent of my intercourse with J. P. at this time was an occasional
drive in Central Park, during which we talked of little else but
politics, and on that topic of little else but Mr. Woodrow Wilson's
speeches and plans.

It did not take very long before the hard work and the excitement of the
New York life reduced Mr. Pulitzer to a condition in which it was
imperative that he should go to sea again and abandon completely his
contact with the daily events which stimulated rather than nourished his
mental powers.

On October 20, 1911, the Liberty left New York with J. P., his youngest
son, Herbert, and the usual staff. We headed south, with nothing settled
as to our plans except that we might spend some time at Mr. Pulitzer's
house on Jekyll Island, Ga., and might pass part of the winter cruising
in the West Indies.

As soon as we got settled down on board I was delighted to find that J.
P. had apparently satisfied himself in regard to my qualifications and
limitations. He abandoned the searching examinations which had kept me
on the rack for nearly eight months, and our relations became much more
agreeable.

Apart from bearing my share in the routine work of dealing with the news
of the day and with the current magazine literature my principal duty
gradually assumed the form of furnishing humor on demand.

The easiest part of this task was that of reading humorous books to J.
P. When he was in the right mood and would submit to the process, I read
to him the greater part of "Dooley," of Artemus Ward, of Max Adler, and
portions of W. W. Jacobs, of Lorimer's Letters of a Self-made Merchant
to His Son, of Mrs. Anne Warner's Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs.
Lathrop, and of some of Stockton's delightful stories. My greatest
triumph was in inducing him to forget for a while his intense aversion
to slang and to listen to the shrewd and genial philosophy of George
Ade.

The work of the official humorist to J. P. was rendered particularly
arduous because he carried into the field of humor, absolutely unabated,
his passion for facts. To most people a large part of humor consists in
the manner of presentation, in the trick of phrase, in the texture of
the narrative. To J. P. those things meant little or nothing; what
amused him was the situation disclosed, the inherent humor of the action
or thought.

As I have said, it was not difficult to read humorous material to J. P.
when he deliberately resigned himself to it. What was exceedingly
difficult was to rise to those frequent occasions when, tired, vexed and
out of sorts, he suddenly interrupted your summary of a magazine article
by saying: "Stop! Stop! For God's sake! I've got a frightful headache.
Now tell me some humorous stories--make me laugh."

In order to meet these urgent and embarrassing demands I ransacked the
periodical press of England and America. I procured a year's file of
Pearson's Weekly, of Tit Bits and of Life, and scores of stray copies of
Puck, Judge and Answers.

From these I cut hundreds of short humorous paragraphs, which I kept in
a box in my cabin. Whenever I was summoned to attend upon J. P. I put a
handful of these clippings in my pocket. I am afraid I should make
enemies if I were to tell of the thousands of stories I had to read in
order to get the hundreds which came within range even of my modest
hopes; but I may say that line for line I got more available stories
from the "Newspaper Waifs" on the editorial page of the New York Evening
Post than from any other source.

Even after I had labored long and heroically in the vineyard of
professional humor, grape juice, and not wine, was the commoner product
of my efforts.

It was no unusual experience that after I had told J. P. one of the best
tales in my collection he would say: "Well, go on, go on, come to the
point. For God's sake, isn't there any end to this story?"

On October 25, 1911, we put into the harbor of Charlestown, S. C. There
was the usual business of collecting mail, newspapers, and so on, for J.
P., after five days at sea, was eager to pick up the thread of current
happenings.

On the following day Mr. Lathan, editor of the Charleston Courier,
lunched on the yacht. He and Mr. Pulitzer had an animated discussion
about the possibilities of a Democratic victory in 1912. I had never
seen J. P. in a more genial mood or in higher spirits.

Whether it was due to the excitement of receiving a visitor whose
conversation was so stimulating I do not know; but on Friday, October
27, J. P. was feeling so much out of sorts that he did not appear on
deck. On Saturday he remained below only because Dunningham, who always
kept the closest watch over his health, persuaded him to have a good
rest before resuming the ordinary routine. J. P. was anxious to take up
some business matters with Thwaites, but Dunningham induced him to give
up the idea.

At three o'clock in the morning of Sunday, October 29, Dunningham came
to my cabin and, without making any explanation, said:

"Mr, Pulitzer wishes you to come and read to him."

I put on a dressing gown, gathered up half a dozen books, and in five
minutes I was sitting by Mr. Pulitzer's bedside. He was evidently
suffering a good deal of pain, for he turned from side to side, and once
or twice got out of bed and sat in an easy chair.

I tried several books, but finally settled down to read Macaulay's Essay
on Hallam. I read steadily until about five o'clock, and J. P. listened
attentively, interrupting me from time to time with a direction to go
back and read over a passage.

About half-past five he began to suffer severely, and he sent for the
yacht's doctor, who did what was possible for him. At a few minutes
after six J. P. said: "Now, Mr. Ireland, you'd better go and get some
sleep; we will finish that this afternoon. Good-bye, I'm much obliged to
you. Ask Mr. Mann to come to me. Go, now, and have a good rest, and
forget all about me."

I slept till noon. When I came on deck I found that everything was going
on much as usual. One of the secretaries was with J. P.; the others were
at work over the day's papers.

At lunch we spoke of J. P. One man said that he seemed a little worse
than usual, another that he had seen him much worse a score of times.

Suddenly the massive door at the forward end of the saloon opened. I
turned in my seat and saw framed in the doorway the towering figure of
the head butler. I faced his impassive glance, and received the full
shock of his calm but incredible announcement: "Mr. Pulitzer is dead."

THE END





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "An Adventure with a Genius: Recollections of Joseph Pulitzer" ***

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