YACHTING IN THE MEDITERRANEAN
Taken at its face value a month in the Mediterranean, on board one of
the finest yachts afloat, with visits to Corsica, Elba, Nice, Cannes,
Naples, Genoa, Syracuse, and the Pirams, should give promise of a
picturesque and entertaining record of sight-seeing, the kind of journal
in which the views of Baedeker and of your local cab driver are blended,
in order that the aroma of foreign travel may be wafted to the nostrils
of your fresh-water cousins.
What my narrative lacks of this flavor of luxurious vagrancy must be
supplied by the peculiar interest of a cruise which violated every
tradition of the annals of yachting, and created precedents which in all
human probability will never be followed so long as iron floats on
water.
It was part of Mr. Pulitzer's scheme of nautical life to shroud all his
movements in mystery. One result of this was that when we were on the
yacht we never knew where we were going until we got there. The compass-
course at any moment betrayed nothing of Mr. Pulitzer's intentions, for
we might turn in at night with the ship heading straight for Naples and
wake up in the morning to find ourselves three miles south of the Genoa
lighthouse.
Apart from Mr. Pulitzer's fancy, our erratic maneuvers were affected by
our need to make good weather out of whatever wind we encountered, on
the one hand because J. P., though an excellent sailor, disliked the
rolling produced by a beam sea, since it interfered with his walking on
deck, and on the other hand, because several of the secretaries suffered
from sea-sickness the moment we were off an even keel.
Mr. Pulitzer was not a man prone to be placated by excuses; but he had
come to realize that neither a sense of duty nor the hope of reward,
neither fear nor courage, can make an agreeable companion out of a man
who is seasick. So, unless there was an important reason why we should
reach port, we always made a head-wind of anything stronger than a light
breeze, and followed the weather round the compass until it was fair for
our destination.
As soon as we left Mentone Mr. Pulitzer began the process of education
which was designed to fit me for his service.
"When you were in New York," he asked, "what papers did you read?"
"The Sun and The Times in the morning and The Evening Sun and The
Evening Post at night," I replied.
"My God! Didn't you read The World?"
"Nothing but the editorial page."
"Why not? What's the matter with it?"
I explained that I was not interested in crime and disaster, to which
The World devoted so much space, that I wanted more foreign news than
The World found room for, and that I was offended by the big headlines,
which compelled me to know things I didn't want to know.
"Go on," he said; "your views are not of any importance, but they're
entertaining."
"Well," I continued, "I think The World was excellently described a few
years ago in Life. There was a poem entitled, 'New York Newspaper
Directory, Revised,' in which a verse was devoted to each of the big New
York papers. I believe I can remember the one about The World, if you
care to hear it, for I cut the poem out and have kept it among my
clippings."
"Certainly, go ahead."
I recited:
"A dual personality is this,
Part yellow dog, part patriot and sage;
When't comes to facts the rule is hit or miss,
While none can beat its editorial page.
Wise counsel here, wild yarns the other side,
Page six its Jekyll and page one its Hyde;
At the same time conservative and rash,
The World supplies us good advice and trash."
"That's clever," said Mr. Pulitzer, "but it's absolute nonsense, except
about the editorial page. Have you got the clipping with you? I would
like to hear what that smart young man has got to say about the other
papers."
I went to my cabin, got the poem, and read the whole of it to him--witty
characterizations of The Evening Post, The Sun, The Journal, The
Tribune, The Times and The Herald. As soon as I had finished reading,
Mr. Pulitzer said:
"The man who wrote those verses had his prejudices, but he was clever.
I'm glad you read them to me; always read me anything of that kind,
anything that is bright and satirical. Now, I'm going to give you a
lecture about newspapers, because I want you to understand my point of
view. It does not matter whether you agree with it or not, but you have
got to understand it if you are going to be of any use to me. But before
I begin, you tell me what YOUR ideas are about running a newspaper for
American readers."
I pleaded that I had never given the matter much thought, and that I had
little to guide me, except my own preferences and the memory of an
occasional discussion here and there at a club or in the smoking room of
a Pullman. He insisted, however, and so I launched forth upon a
discourse in regard to the functions, duties and responsibilities of an
American newspaper, as I imagined they would appear to the average
American reader.
The chief duty of a managing editor, I said, was to give his readers an
interesting paper, and as an angler baits his hook, not with what HE
likes, but with what the fish like, so the style of the newspaper should
be adjusted to what the managing editor judged to be the public
appetite.
A sub-stratum of truth should run through the news columns; but since a
million-dollar fire is more exciting than a half-million-dollar fire,
since a thousand deaths in an earthquake are more exciting than a
hundred, no nice scrupulosity need be observed in checking the insurance
inspector's figures or in counting the dead. What the public wanted was
a good "story," and provided it got that there would be little
disposition in any quarter to censure an arithmetical generosity which
had been invoked in the service of the public's well-known demands.
So far as politics were concerned, it seemed to me that any newspaper
could afford the strongest support to its views while printing the truth
and nothing but the truth, if it exercised some discretion as to
printing the WHOLE truth. The editorial, I added, might be regarded as a
habit rather than as a guiding force. People no longer looked to the
editorial columns for the formation of their opinions. They formed their
judgment from a large stock of facts, near-facts and nowhere near-facts,
and then bought a paper for the purpose of comfortable reassurance. I
had no doubt that a newspaper run to suit my own taste--a combination of
The World's editorial page with The Evening Post's news and make-up--
would lack the influence with which circulation alone can endow a paper,
and would end in a bankruptcy highly creditable to its stockholders.
This somewhat cynical outburst brought down upon me an overwhelming
torrent of protest from Mr. Pulitzer.
"My God!" he cried, "I would not have believed it possible that any one
could show such a complete ignorance of American character, of the high
sense of duty which in the main animates American journalism, of the
foundations of integrity on which almost every successful paper in the
United States has been founded. You do not know what it costs me to try
and keep The World up to a high standard of accuracy--the money, the
time, the thought, the praise, the blame, the constant watchfulness.
"I do not say that The World never makes a mistake in its news column; I
wish I could say it. What I say is that there are not half a dozen
papers in the United States which tamper with the news, which publish
what they know to be false. But if I thought that I had done no better
than that I would be ashamed to own a paper. It is not enough to refrain
from publishing fake news, it is not enough to take ordinary care to
avoid the mistakes which arise from the ignorance, the carelessness, the
stupidity of one or more of the many men who handle the news before it
gets into print; you have got to do much more than that; you have got to
make every one connected with the paper--your editors, your reporters,
your correspondents, your rewrite men, your proof-readers--believe that
accuracy is to a newspaper what virtue is to a woman.
"When you go to New York ask any of the men in the dome to show you my
instructions to them, my letters written from day to day, my cables; and
you will see that accuracy, accuracy, accuracy, is the first, the most
urgent, the most constant demand I have made on them.
"I do not say that The World is the only paper which takes extraordinary
pains to be accurate; on the contrary, I think that almost every paper
in America tries to be accurate. I will go further than that. There is
not a paper of any importance published in French, German or English,
whether it is printed in Europe or in America, which I have not studied
for weeks or months, and some of them I have read steadily for a quarter
of a century; and I tell you this, Mr. Ireland, after years of
experience, after having comparisons made by the hundred, from time to
time, of different versions of the same event, that the press of America
as a whole has a higher standard of accuracy than the European press as
a whole. I will go further than that. I will say that line for line the
American newspapers actually ATTAIN a higher standard of news accuracy
than the European newspapers; and I will go further than that and say
that although there are in Europe a few newspapers, and they are chiefly
English, which are as accurate as the best newspapers in America, there
are no newspapers in America which are so habitually, so criminally
stuffed with fake news as the worst of the European papers."
Mr. Pulitzer paused and asked me if there was a glass of water on the
table--we were seated in his library--and after I had handed it to him
and he had drained it nearly to the bottom at one gulp, he resumed his
lecture. I give it in considerable detail, because it was the longest
speech he ever addressed to me, because he subsequently made me write it
out from memory and then read it to him, and because it was one of the
few occasions during my intercourse with him on which I was persuaded
beyond a doubt that he spoke with perfect frankness, without allowing
his words to be influenced by any outside considerations.
"As a matter of fact," he continued, "the criticisms you hear about the
American press are founded on a dislike for our headlines and for the
prominence we give to crime, to corruption in office, and to sensational
topics generally; the charge of inaccuracy is just thrown in to make it
look worse. I do not believe that one person in a thousand who attacks
the American press for being inaccurate has ever taken the trouble to
investigate the facts.
"Now about this matter of sensationalism: a newspaper should be
scrupulously accurate, it should be clean, it should avoid everything
salacious or suggestive, everything that could offend good taste or
lower the moral tone of its readers; but within these limits it is the
duty of a newspaper to print the news. When I speak of good taste and of
good moral tone I do not mean the kind of good taste which is offended
by every reference to the unpleasant things of life, I do not mean the
kind of morality which refuses to recognize the existence of immorality-
-that type of moral hypocrite has done more to check the moral progress
of humanity than all the immoral people put together--what I mean is the
kind of good taste which demands that frankness should be linked with
decency, the kind of moral tone which is braced and not relaxed when it
is brought face to face with vice.
"Some people try and make you believe that a newspaper should not devote
its space to long and dramatic accounts of murders, railroad wrecks,
fires, lynchings, political corruption, embezzlements, frauds, graft,
divorces, what you will. I tell you they are wrong, and I believe that
if they thought the thing out they would see that they are wrong.
"We are a democracy, and there is only one way to get a democracy on its
feet in the matter of its individual, its social, its municipal, its
State, its National conduct, and that is by keeping the public informed
about what is going on. There is not a crime, there is not a dodge,
there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which
does not live by secrecy. Get these things out in the open, describe
them, attack them, ridicule them in the press, and sooner or later
public opinion will sweep them away.
"Publicity may not be the only thing that is needed, but it is the one
thing without which all other agencies will fail. If a newspaper is to
be of real service to the public it must have a big circulation, first
because its news and its comment must reach the largest possible number
of people, second, because circulation means advertising, and
advertising means money, and money means independence. If I caught any
man on The World suppressing news because one of our advertisers
objected to having it printed I would dismiss him immediately; I
wouldn't care who he was.
"What a newspaper needs in its news, in its headlines, and on its
editorial page is terseness, humor, descriptive power, satire,
originality, good literary style, clever condensation, and accuracy,
accuracy, accuracy!"
Mr. Pulitzer made this confession of faith with the warmth generated by
an unshakable faith. He spoke, as he always spoke when he was excited,
with vigor, emphasis and ample gesture. When he came to an end and asked
for another glass of water I found nothing to say. It would have been as
impertinent of me to agree with him as to differ from him.
After all, I had to remember that he had taken over The World when its
circulation was less than 15,000 copies a day; that he had been for
thirty years and still was its dominating spirit and the final authority
on every matter concerning its policy, its style, and its contents; that
he had seen its morning circulation go up to well over 350,000 copies a
day; that at times he had taken his stand boldly against popular clamor,
as when he kept up for months a bitter attack against the American
action in the Venezuelan boundary dispute, and at times had incurred the
hostility of powerful moneyed interests, as when he forced the Cleveland
administration to sell to the public on competitive bids a fifty-
million-dollar bond issue which it had arranged to sell privately to a
great banking house at much less than its market value.
Before leaving the subject of newspapers I may describe the method by
which Mr. Pulitzer kept in touch with the news and put himself in the
position to maintain a critical supervision over The World.
An elaborate organization was employed for this purpose. I will explain
it as it worked when we were on the yacht, but the system was maintained
at all times, whether we were cruising, or were at Cap Martin, at Bar
Harbor, at Wiesbaden, or elsewhere, merely a few minor details being
changed to meet local conditions.
In the Pulitzer Building, Park Row, New York, there were collected each
day several copies of each of the morning papers, including The World,
and some of the evening papers. These were mailed daily to Mr. Pulitzer
according to cabled instructions as to our whereabouts. In addition to
this a gentleman connected with The World, who had long experience of
Mr. Pulitzer's requirements, cut from all the New York papers and from a
number of other papers from every part of the United States every
article that he considered Mr. Pulitzer ought to see, whether because of
its subject, its tenor, or its style. These clippings were mailed by the
hundred on almost every fast steamer sailing for Europe. In order that
there might be the greatest economy of time in reading them, the
essential matter in each clipping was marked.
So far as The World was concerned a copy of each issue was sent, with
the names of the writers written across each editorial, big news story,
or special article.
As we went from port to port we got the principal French, German,
Austrian and Italian papers, and The World bureau in London kept us
supplied with the English dailies and weeklies.
Whenever we picked up a batch of American papers, each of the
secretaries got a set and immediately began to read it. My own method of
reading was adopted after much advice from Mr. Pulitzer and after
consultation with the more experienced members of the staff, and I do
not suppose it differed materially from that followed by the others.
I read The World first, going over the "big" stories carefully and with
enough concentration to give me a very fair idea of the facts. Then I
read the articles in the other papers covering the same ground, noting
any important differences in the various accounts. This task resolved
itself in practice into mastering in considerable detail about half a
dozen articles--a political situation, a murder, a railroad wreck, a
fire, a strike, an important address by a college president, for
example--and getting a clear impression of the treatment of each item in
each paper.
With this done, and with a few notes scribbled on a card to help my
memory, I turned to the editorial pages, reading each editorial with the
closest attention, and making more notes.
The final reading of the news served to give me from ten to twenty small
topics of what Mr. Pulitzer called "human interest," to be used as
subjects of conversation as occasion demanded. As a rule, I cut these
items out of the paper and put them in the left-hand pocket of my coat,
for when we walked together J. P. always took my right arm, and my left
hand was therefore free to dip into my reservoir of cuttings whenever
conversation flagged and I needed a new subject.
The cuttings covered every imaginable topic--small cases in the
magistrates' courts, eccentric entertainments at Newport, the deaths of
centenarians, dinners to visiting authors in New York, accounts of
performing animals, infant prodigies, new inventions, additions to the
Metropolitan Museum, announcements of new plays, anecdotes about
prominent men and women, instances of foolish extravagance among the
rich, and so on.
Something of the kind was done by each of us, so that when Mr. Pulitzer
appeared on deck after breakfast we all had something ready for him. The
first man called usually had the easiest time, for Mr. Pulitzer's mind
was fresh and keen for news after a night's rest. The men who went to
him later in the morning suffered from two disadvantages, one that they
did not know what news or how much of it J. P. had already received, the
other that as the day advanced Mr. Pulitzer often grew tired, and his
attention then became difficult to hold.
I remember that on one occasion when he had complained of feeling
utterly tired out mentally I asked him if he would like me to stop
talking. "No, no," he replied at once; "never stop talking or reading, I
must have something to occupy my mind all the time, however exhausted I
am."
This peculiarity of being unable to get any repose by the road of silent
abstraction must have been a source of acute suffering to him. It is
difficult to imagine a more terrible condition of mind than that in
which the constant flogging of a tired brain is the only anodyne for its
morbid irritability.
My own experience of a morning on the yacht, when Mr. Pulitzer's nerves
had been soothed by a good night's sleep, was that he walked up and down
the long promenade deck and got from me a brief summary of the news.
From time to time he pulled out his watch and, holding it toward me,
asked what o'clock it was. He was always most particular to know exactly
how long he had walked. We had arguments on many occasions as to the
exact moment at which we had commenced our promenade, and we would go
carefully over the facts--Mr. Craven had been walking with him from 9.30
to 10.05, then Dunningham had been in the library with him for fifteen
minutes, then Mr. Thwaites had walked with him for ten minutes, taking
notes for a letter to be written to the managing editor of The World;
well, that made it 10.30 when I joined him; but fifteen minutes had to
be taken out of the hour for the time he'd spent in the library, that
made three-quarters of an hour he'd been actually walking, well, we'd
walk for another fifteen minutes and round out the hour.
Often when the appointed moment came to stop walking Mr. Pulitzer felt
able to go on, and he would then either say frankly, "Let's have fifteen
minutes more," or he would achieve the same end by reopening the
discussion as to just how long he had walked, and keep on walking until
he began to feel tired, when he would say: "I dare say you are quite
right, well, now we will sit down and go over the papers."
The question of where Mr. Pulitzer was to sit on deck was not a simple
one to decide. He always wanted as much air as he could get; but as he
suffered a good deal of pain in his right eye, the one which had been
operated on, and as this was either started or made worse by exposure to
wind, a spot had to be found which had just the right amount of air
current. Five minutes might show, however, that there was a little too
much wind, when we would move to a more sheltered spot, or he might
think we'd been too cautious and that he could sit in a breezier spot,
or, after we had found the ideal place, the wind might change, and then
we had to move again.
Settled in a large cane armchair with a leather seat, a heavy rug over
his knees if the weather was at all chilly, Mr. Pulitzer took up the
serious consideration of the news which had been lightly skimmed over
during his walk.
An item was selected, and the account in The World was read aloud. Then
followed the discussion of it from the standpoint of its presentation in
the various papers. On what page was it printed in The World, in what
column, how much space did it fill, how much was devoted to headlines,
what was the size of the type, was the type varied in parts to give
emphasis to the more striking features of the story, what were the
cross-heads in the body of the article, were any boxes used, if so, what
was put in them, what about the illustrations? And so on for each
important item in each paper.
One of the by-products of this reading of the papers was a stream of
cables, letters and memoranda to various members of The World staff in
New York. None of these were ever sent through me, but it was a common
thing for J. P. to say: "Have you got your writing pad with you? Just
make a note: Indianapolis story excellent, insufficient details
lynching, who wrote City Hall story? and give it to Thwaites and tell
him to remind me of it this afternoon."
Mr. Pulitzer would take the matter up with Thwaites, and would send such
praise, blame, reward, criticism, or suggestion as the occasion
demanded.
From time to time I was called upon to make a report on the day's
papers, a task which usually fell to some more experienced member of the
staff. My reports always covered the Sunday issues. They included an
analysis of The Sun, The Herald, The American, The Times, The Tribune
and The World, showing the number of columns of advertising, of news,
and of special articles, a classification of the telegrams according to
geographical distribution--how much from France, from Germany, from
England, from the Western States, from the Southern States, and so on; a
classification of the special articles on the basis of their topics--
medicine, sport, fashions, humor, adventure, children's interests,
women's interests.
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 principal
competitors, the monthly and yearly figures for circulation and
advertising; and the advertising return showed not only the amount of
space occupied by advertising in each paper, but also the number of
advertisements each month under various heads, such as display
advertising, want ads., real estate, dry goods, amusements, hotels,
transportation, to let ads., summer resorts, and whatever other classes
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 glass and wine glass. 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 circumstances.
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
appetite. 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 glass 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 assumed 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 assumed 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 assured 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 documents 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 assumed 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 God! 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 passed 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 pass 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 principal 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 circumstances 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 passage 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 shore 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 passages 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 analysis 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 God'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 assumed 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 constitution, 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.