An Adventure with a Genius: Recollections of Joseph Pulitzer Part 12

When he had his sight he judged men as others judge them, and, making full allowance for his genius for observation and a.n.a.lysis, he was no doubt influenced to some extent by appearance, manners and a.s.sociations.

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 pa.s.sed 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 att.i.tude 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 G.o.d!" 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 Ma.r.s.eilles, 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 foresh.o.r.e, 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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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 a.s.sistants.

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 quant.i.ty 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 pa.s.sion 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 ill.u.s.trated 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 G.o.d! 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 munic.i.p.al 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 t.i.tle 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 embarra.s.sment 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 G.o.d! 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.