An Adventure with a Genius: Recollections of Joseph Pulitzer Part 4

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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 princ.i.p.al 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt. 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 a.s.s, 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 G.o.d! 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.

Rea.s.sured 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 amus.e.m.e.nts 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 pa.s.sed. 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 a.s.sociate 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 Ma.r.s.eilles 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.