Whatever M. de Blowitz's loyalty to the "Times," he has been loyal
above all to his own ideal. This ideal has always been to get at the
most political truth possible as a condition of exerting an individual
influence on European states in the interest of European peace. To me,
individually, this ideal seems rather too generous. Everybody
now-a-days wants to take a part in affairs, when only to look on is
surely the one wise part to take. But generous M. de Blowitz is, and
he is demonstrating now, in a series of "recollections," that his
ideal can be carried out in a striking way. I do not deny for a moment
that the point is proven. I doubt very much, however, if any other
similar series of facts will ever be marshalled to the same end. But
all the more reason for being belongs, just for this cause, to the
"Blowitziana."
[Illustration: THE _Lampottes_; THE COUNTRY HOUSE OF M. DE BLOWITZ.]
The "Blowitziana"! This, however, is just what some of us feel more
inspired, than at liberty, to give. I recall here, over this paper,
too many things at once; and all the impressions, seeing M. de Blowitz
as I do continually, fortunately lack perspective. But to note this
and that about him seems in a way as much a duty as a pleasure, for I
remember well that my original notion of this remarkable man was
widely different from that which began to form in my mind once I knew
him. I don't think that people who hear about him, people who read his
name in the newspapers, the average citizen of the world who doesn't
know him personally, have quite the right idea about him. During the
last twenty years he has obtained a reputation for being the most
persistent ferreter of news in existence; but in many minds there is
distrust whenever, over his signature, some unexpected revelation
comes to change the key in the European concert. Perhaps an
unlooked-for document is published, interrupting the plans of
European statesmen, bringing to nothing all their most elaborate
scheming; and on the morrow, by some official source, comes a denial
that any such document was ever dreamed of. It is obviously
impracticable for M. de Blowitz to give his proofs, and this or that
unthinking reader, used to a thousand irresponsible writers who care
only for what is sensational, and who never verify their information,
hurriedly relegates the disclosure of the "Times" correspondent to the
same category. This is natural enough, of course. But let there be no
mistake. The revelation was worthy of the name; of this you may be
sure. M. de Blowitz has done all that he intended to do. He has nipped
in the bud this or that diplomatic scheme; he has anticipated some
subsequent further revelation; or it may be he has laid the net for
some other and less wary diplomatist. The diplomatists themselves are
not so incredulous. They listen to what M. de Blowitz is saying with a
more respectful attention, and, thinking discretion the better part of
valor, they usually end in bringing their mite to his universal
diplomatic bureau. Upon his discretion they know they can count.
Here is a fact in point. Breakfasting once in Paris with an amiable
lady and a very distinguished diplomatist who was also a poet, the
conversation fell on the subject of M. de Blowitz and Count Munster
who had recently been the object of a long-resounding letter in the
"Times." The diplomatist who sat opposite me spoke freely of the
Munster episode, which was then entertaining the whole of Europe, save
the person most concerned.
"M. de Blowitz," said he, "is our only peer. But there should be honor
even among thieves. He has 'cooked Count Munster's goose.'"
"Yes," I replied, "but with fuel of Count Munster's own providing."
"Quite so," he continued; "but of course we are paid to deny just such
things as this. And I have heard of licensed jesters, but the world
has come to a pretty pass if we are to be at the mercy of licensed
truth-tellers. What will become, this side of the Orient, of our
profession?"
"I agree with you," interrupted our host; "but what does it matter so
only diplomacy may be the bay-leaves of poets, and you may have time
to take the world into your confidence in verse?"
This estimate, implied in the ambassador's somewhat cynical words,
has always been shared by all M. de Blowitz's _confreres_. It would
be more than amusing, it would be curiously instructive, to
corroborate this anecdote by comparison with the hundred others that
tremble in the ink of my pen. But fortunately it is many years before
"Blowitziana" will be written, while now there are Hawaii and
Panama and the Papal ambassador to the United States to occupy our
attention. Yet because of the existence of just this assurance in
the foreign offices of all the European powers, it seems necessary to
set the average reader on his guard against a natural error. What
it all comes to is this--M. Jules Simon has said it--"Newspapers are
better served than kings and peoples."
Everybody has been recently talking of an extraordinary scheme of M.
de Blowitz for the reformation of journalism. That article, crackling
with anathema against the ignorance and irresponsibility of most
modern journalism, and warm with generous and high notions of what
constitutes the duty and privilege of the journalist, had about it a
surprising flavor of detachment and idealism which recalled the famous
Utopian schemes familiar in the pedantic idiom of scholars. It was a
dream, a warning--a vision of a kind of journalistic "City of God."
But the air of that city is, after all, the air of the world in which
M. de Blowitz, the most surprisingly unprofessional of men, seems
eternally to live.
Not that he is always an idealist. He was not, for instance, when,
jumping the wall at Versailles after a dinner to the Shah of Persia,
he outwitted every journalist in the palace garden, and, as he says,
"made five enemies in a single well-employed evening." No, even the
most ubiquitous of American reporters would admit that he may be
practical enough when need be. But after all, and above all, he is an
idealist, marked by a distinguished imagination and an amiable and
generous sympathy. No journalistic tag is on him. He is simply a
gentleman with the widest interests and uncommon capacities who
succeeded in convincing the "Times" (this, of itself, is surely by way
of being a _vrai coup de maitre_), and then every other intelligent
observer, of his power and usefulness. He has his own philanthropic
ends, for the propagation of which it pleases him to have so esteemed
a medium as the "Times."