An Adventure with a Genius: Recollections of Joseph Pulitzer Part 7

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 princ.i.p.al compet.i.tors, the monthly and yearly figures for circulation and advertising; and the advertising return showed not only the amount of s.p.a.ce occupied by advertising in each paper, but also the number of advertis.e.m.e.nts each month under various heads, such as display advertising, want ads., real estate, dry goods, amus.e.m.e.nts, hotels, transportation, to let ads., summer resorts, and whatever other cla.s.ses 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 gla.s.s and wine gla.s.s. 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 circ.u.mstances.

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 appet.i.te. 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 gla.s.s 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 a.s.sumed 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 a.s.sumed 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 a.s.sured 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 doc.u.ments 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 a.s.sumed 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 G.o.d! 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s 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 princ.i.p.al 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 circ.u.mstances 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 pa.s.sage 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 sh.o.r.e 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 pa.s.sages 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 G.o.d'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 a.s.sumed 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 const.i.tution, 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 pa.s.sed, 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 gla.s.s, 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 bra.s.s 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 gla.s.s. 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.