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.