WIESBADEN AND AN ATLANTIC VOYAGE
At last the time came when we had to leave the yacht and make a
pilgrimage to Wiesbaden, in order that Mr. Pulitzer might submit to a
cure before sailing for New York.
The first stage of our journey took us from Genoa to Milan. Here we
stayed for five hours so that J. P. could have his lunch and his siesta
comfortably at an hotel. Paterson had been sent ahead two or three days
in advance to look over the hotels and to select the one which promised
to be least noisy. On our arrival in Milan J. P. was taken to an
automobile, and in ten minutes he was in his rooms.
Simple as these arrangements appear from the bald statement of what
actually happened they really involved a great deal of care and
forethought. It was not enough that Paterson should visit half-a-dozen
hotels and make his choice from a cursory inspection. After his choice
had been narrowed down by a process of elimination he had to spend
several hours in each of two or three hotels, in the room intended for
J. P., so that he could detect any of the hundred noises which might
make the room uninhabitable to its prospective tenant.
The room might be too near the elevator, it might be too near a
servants' staircase, it might overlook a courtyard where carpets were
beaten, or a street with heavy traffic, it might be within earshot of a
dining-room where an orchestra played or a smoking-room with the
possibility of loud talking, it might open off a passage which gave
access to some much frequented reception-room.
Most of these points could be determined by merely observing the
location of the room. But other things were to be considered. Did the
windows rattle, did the floor creak, did the doors open and shut
quietly, was the ventilation good, were there noisy guests in the
adjoining rooms?
This last difficulty was, I understand, usually overcome by Mr. Pulitzer
engaging, in addition to his own room, a room on either side of it,
three rooms facing it, the room above it and the room beneath it.
Even the question of the drive from the station to the hotel had to be
thought out. A trial trip was made in an automobile. If the route
followed a car line or passed any spot likely to be noisy, such as a
market place or a school playground, or if it led over a roughly paved
road on which the car would jolt, another route had to be selected,
which, as far as possible, dodged the unfavorable conditions.
Our carefully arranged journey passed without incident. We had a private
car from Milan to Frankfort and another for the short run to Wiesbaden,
where we arrived in time for lunch on the day after our departure from
Genoa. Everything had been prepared for our reception by some one who
had made similar arrangements on former occasions. We occupied the whole
of a villa belonging to one of the large hotels, and situated less than
a hundred yards from it.
In the main our life was modeled upon that at the Cap Martin villa; but
part of Mr. Pulitzer's morning was devoted to baths, massage, and the
drinking of waters. Our meals were taken, as a rule, either in a private
dining-room at the hotel or in the big restaurant of the Kurhaus; but
when Mr. Pulitzer was feeling more than usually tired the table was laid
in the dining-room of the villa.
Our dinners at the Kurhaus were a welcome change from our ordinary meals
with their set routine of literary discussions. Mr. Pulitzer was
immensely interested in people; but it was impossible for him to meet
them, except on rare occasions, because the excitement was bad for his
health. Whenever he dined in a crowded restaurant, however, our time was
fully occupied in describing with the utmost minuteness the men, women,
and children around us.
The Kurhaus was an excellent place for the exercise of our descriptive
powers. In addition to the ordinary crowd of pleasure-seekers and
health-hunters there were, during a great part of our visit, a large
number of military men, for the Kaiser spent a week at Wiesbaden that
year and reviewed some troops, and this involved careful preparation in
advance by a host of court officials and high army officers.
Under these circumstances the dining-room of the Kurhaus presented a
scene full of color and animation. Sometimes J. P. said to one of us:
"Look around for a few minutes and pick out the most interesting-
looking man and woman in the room, examine them carefully, try and catch
the tone of their voices, and when you are ready describe them to me."
Or he might say: "I hear a curious, sharp, incisive voice somewhere over
there on my right. There it is now--don't you hear it?--s s s s s, every
s like a hiss. Describe that man to me; tell me what kind of people he's
talking to; tell me what you think his profession is." Or it might be:
"There are some gabbling women over there. Describe them to me. How are
they dressed, are they painted, are they wearing jewels, how old are
they?"
In whatever form the request was made its fulfilment meant a description
covering everything which could be detected by the eye or surmised from
any available clew.
Describing people to J. P. was by no means an easy task. It was no use
saying that a man had a medium-sized nose, that he was of average
height, and that his hair was rather dark. Everything had to be given in
feet and inches and in definite colors. You had to exercise your utmost
powers to describe the exact cast of the features, the peculiar texture
and growth of the hair, the expression of the eyes, and every little
trick of gait or gesture.
Mr. Pulitzer was very sceptical of everybody's faculty of description.
He made us describe people, and specially his own children and others
whom he knew well, again and again, and his unwillingness to accept any
description as being good rested no doubt upon the wide divergence
between the different descriptions he received of the same person.
There were few things which Mr. Pulitzer enjoyed more than having a face
described to him, whether of a living person or of a portrait, and as
our table-talk was often about men and women of distinction or
notoriety, dead or living, any one of us might be called upon at any
time to portray feature by feature some person whose name had been
mentioned.
By providing ourselves with illustrated catalogues of the Royal Academy
exhibitions and of the National Portrait Gallery, and by cutting out the
portraits with which the modern publisher so lavishly decorates his
announcements, we generally managed, by pulling together, to cover the
ground pretty well. I have sat through a meal during which one or
another of us furnished a microscopic description of the faces of Warren
Hastings, Lord Clive, President Wilson, the present King and Queen of
England, the late John W. Gates, Ignace Paderewski, and an odd dozen
current murderers, embezzlers, divorce habitues, and candidates for
political office.
The delicate enjoyment of this game was not reached, however, until, at
the following meal, one of us, who had been absent at the original
delineation, was asked to cover some of the ground that had been gone
over a few hours earlier. Mr. Pulitzer would say: "Is Mr. So-and-So
here? Well, now, just for fun, let us see what he has to say about the
appearance of some of the people we spoke about at lunch."
The result was almost always an astonishing disclosure of the inability
of intelligent people to observe closely, to describe accurately, and to
reach any agreement as to the significance of what they have seen. It
was bad enough when the latest witness had before him the actual
pictures on which the first description had been based; even then
crooked noses became straight, large mouths small, disdain was turned to
affability and ingenuousness to guile; but where this guide was lacking
the descriptions were often ludicrously discrepant.
While we were at Wiesbaden we seldom spent much time at the dinner
table, as J. P. usually took his choice between walking in the garden of
the Kurhaus and listening to the orchestra and going to the opera. One
night we motored over to Frankfort to hear Der Rosenkavalier, but the
excursion was a dismal failure. We had to go over a stretch of very bad
road, and with J. P. shaken into a state of extreme nervousness the very
modern strains of the opera failed to please.
At the end of the second act J. P., who had been growing more and more
dismal as the music bumped along its disjointed course, either in vain
search or in careful avoidance of anything resembling a pleasant sound,
turned to me and said: "My God! I can't stand any more of this. Will you
please go and find the automobile and bring it round to the main
entrance. I want to go home."
I saw a great deal of Mr. Pulitzer while we were at Wiesbaden, owing to
the circumstance that Paterson was called to England on urgent private
affairs and Pollard was away on leave. The absence of these two men was
as much regretted by the staff as it was by J. P. himself. Paterson was,
from his extraordinary erudition, seldom at a loss for a topic of
conversation which would rivet J. P.'s attention, and Pollard, who had
been a number of years with J. P., was not only, on his own subjects,
the conversational peer of Paterson, but was in addition, from his
soothing voice and manner and from his long and careful study of J. P.,
invaluable as a mental and nervous sedative.
It was at Wiesbaden that I first began to read books regularly to J. P.
I read him portions of the biographies of Parnell, of Sir William Howard
Russell, of President Polk (very little of this), of Napoleon, of Martin
Luther, and at least a third of Macaulay's Essays.
He was a great admirer of Lord Macaulay's writings and read them
constantly, as he found in them most of the qualities which he admired--
great descriptive power, political acumen, satire, neatness of phrase,
apt comparisons and analogies, and shrewd analysis of character. Many
passages he made me read over and over again at different times. I
reproduce a few of his favorite paragraphs for the purpose of showing
what appealed to his taste.
From the Essay on Sir William Temple, the following lines referring to
the Right Hon. Thomas Peregrine Courtenay, who, after his retirement
from public life, wrote the Memoirs of Temple and stated in his preface
that experience had taught him the superiority of literature to politics
for developing the kindlier feelings and conducing to an agreeable life:
He has little reason, in our opinion, to envy any of those who are still
engaged in a pursuit from which, at most, they can only expect that, by
relinquishing liberal studies and social pleasures, by passing nights
without sleep and summers without one glimpse of the beauty of nature,
they may attain that laborious, that invidious, that closely watched
slavery which is mocked with the name of power.
More often than any others I read him the following passages from the
Essay on Milton:
The final and permanent fruits of liberty are wisdom, moderation, and
mercy. Its immediate effects are often atrocious crimes, conflicting
errors, scepticism on points the most clear, dogmatism on points the
most mysterious. It is just at this crisis that its enemies love to
exhibit it. They pull down the scaffolding from the half-finished
edifice: they point to the flying dust, the falling bricks, the
comfortless rooms, the frightful irregularity of the whole appearance;
and then ask in scorn where the promised splendor and comfort is to be
found. If such miserable sophisms were to prevail there would never be a
good house or a good government in the world.
There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom
produces; and that cure is freedom.
The blaze of truth and liberty may at first dazzle and bewilder nations
which have become half blind in the house of bondage. But let them gaze
on, and they will soon be able to bear it. In a few years men learn to
reason. The extreme violence of opinion subsides. Hostile theories
correct each other. The scattered elements of truth cease to contend,
and begin to coalesce. And at length a system of justice and order is
educed out of the chaos.
If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in
slavery, they may indeed wait forever.
I was surprised one day on returning to the villa after a walk in the
Kurhaus gardens with J. P. to find an addition to our company in the
person of the second gentleman who had examined me in London at the time
I had applied for the post of secretary to Mr. Pulitzer.
This gentleman occupied what I imagine must have been the only post of
its kind in the world. He was, in addition to whatever other duties he
performed, Mr. Pulitzer's villa-seeker.
It was Mr. Pulitzer's custom to talk a good deal about his future plans,
not those for the immediate future, in regard to which he was usually
very reticent, but those for the following year, or for a vague
"someday" when many things were to be done which as yet were nothing
more than the toys with which his imagination delighted to play.
As he always spent a great part of the year in Europe, a residence had
to be found for him, it might be in Vienna, or London, or Berlin, or
Mentone, or in any other place which emerged as a possibility out of the
long discussions of the next year's itinerary.
Whenever the arguments in favor of any place had so far prevailed that a
visit there had been accepted in principle as one of our future
movements it became the duty of the villa-seeker to go to the locality,
to gather a mass of information about its climate, its amenities, its
resident and floating population, its accessibility by sea and land, the
opportunities for hearing good music, and to report in the minutest
detail upon all available houses which appeared likely to suit Mr.
Pulitzer's needs.
These reports were accompanied by maps, plans, and photographs, and they
were considered by J. P. with the utmost care. Particular attention was
paid to the streets and to the country roads in the neighborhood, as it
was necessary to have facilities for motoring, for riding, and for
walking.
The next step was to secure a villa, and after that had been done the
alterations had to be undertaken which would make it habitable for J. P.
These might be of a comparatively simple nature, a matter of fitting
silencers to the doors and putting up double windows to keep out the
noise; but they might extend much further and involve more or less
elaborate changes in the interior arrangements. Even after all this had
been done a sudden shift of plans might send the villa-seeker scurrying
across Europe to begin the whole process over again in order to be
prepared for new developments.
At the time I left London to join J. P. at Mentone I had stipulated
that, if I should chance to be selected to fill the vacant post, I
should not be called upon to take up my duties until I had returned to
London and spent a fortnight there in clearing up my private affairs.
After we had been a few weeks at Wiesbaden it became absolutely
necessary for me to go to London for that purpose; and this led to a
struggle with J. P. which nearly brought our relations to an end.
As soon as I broached the subject of a fortnight's leave of absence J.
P. set his face firmly against the proposal. This was due not so much to
any feeling on his part that my absence would be an inconvenience to
him, for both Paterson and Pollard had returned to duty, but to an
almost unconquerable repugnance he had to any one except himself
initiating any plan which would in the slightest degree affect his
arrangements. His sensitiveness on this point was so delicate that it
was impossible, for instance, for any of us to accept an invitation to
lunch or dine with friends who might happen to be in our neighborhood,
or to ask for half a day off for any purpose whatever.
I do not mean to say that we never got away for a meal or that we were
never free for a few hours; as a matter of fact, J. P. was by no means
ungenerous in such things once a man had passed the trial stage; but,
although J. P. might say to you, "Take two days off and amuse yourself,"
or "Take the evening off, and don't trouble to get back to work until
lunch-time to-morrow," it was out of the question for you to say to J.
P.: "An old friend of mine is here for the day, would you mind my taking
lunch with him?"
No one, I am sure, ever made a suggestion of that kind to J. P. more
than once--the effect upon him was too startling.
J. P.'s favors in the way of giving time off were always granted subject
to a change of mind on his part; and these changes were often so sudden
that it was our custom as soon as leave was given to disappear from the
yacht or the villa at the earliest possible moment. But at times even an
instant departure was too slow, for it might happen that before you were
out of the room J. P. would say: "Just a moment, Mr. So-and-So, you
wouldn't mind if I asked you to put off your holiday till to-morrow,
would you? I think I would like you to finish that novel this evening; I
am really interested to see how it comes out."
This, of course, was rather disappointing; but the great disadvantage of
not getting away was that Mr. Pulitzer's memory generally clung very
tenaciously to the fact that he had given you leave, and lost the
subsequent act of rescinding it. The effect of this was that for the
practical purpose of getting a day off your turn was used up as soon as
J. P. granted it, without any reference to whether you actually got it
or not; and the phrase, "until to-morrow," was not to be interpreted
literally or to be acted upon without a further distinct permission.
The only "right" any of us had to time off was to our annual vacation of
two weeks, which we had to take whenever J. P. wished. If, for any
reason, one of us wanted leave of absence for a week or so, the matter
had to be put into the hands of the discreet and diplomatic Dunningham;
and so when the time came when I simply had to go to London it was to
Dunningham I went for counsel.
Judging by the results, his intercession on my behalf was not very
successful, for, on the occasion of our next meeting, J. P. made it
clear to me that if I insisted on going to London it would be on pain of
his displeasure and at the peril of my post. As I look back upon the
incident, however, it is quite clear to me that the whole of his
arguments and his dark hints were launched merely to test my sense of
duty to those persons in London whom I had promised to see.
A day or two later J. P. told me that as I was going to London I might
as well stay there for a month or two before joining him in New York. He
outlined a course of study for me, which included lessons in speaking
(my voice being harsh and unpleasant) and visits to all the principal
art galleries, theaters and other places of interest, with a view to
describing everything when I rejoined him.
On the eve of my departure Dunningham handed me, with Mr. Pulitzer's
compliments, an envelope containing a handsome present, in the most
acceptable form a present can take.
It was not until I was in the train, and the train had started, that I
was able to realize that I was free. During the journey to London my
extraordinary experiences of the past three months detached themselves
from the sum of my existence and became cloaked with that haze of
unreality which belongs to desperate illness or to a tragedy looked back
upon from days of health and peace. Walking down St. James's Street
twenty-four hours after leaving Wiesbaden, J. P. and the yacht and the
secretaries invaded my memory not as things experienced but as things
seen in a play or read in a story long ago.
I lost no time in making myself comfortable in London. Inquiries
directed to the proper quarter soon brought me into touch with a
gentleman to whose skill, I was assured, no voice, however disagreeable,
could fail to respond. I saw my friends, my business associates, my
tailor. I went to see Fanny's First Play three times, the National
Portrait Gallery twice, the National Gallery once, and laid out my plans
to see all the places in London (shame forbidding me to enumerate them)
which every Englishman ought to have seen and which I had not seen.
This lasted for about two weeks, during which I saw something of Craven,
who had left us in Naples to study something or other in London, and who
was under orders to hold himself in readiness to go to New York with J.
P. We dined at my club one night, and when I returned to my flat I found
a telegram from Mr. Tuohy, instructing me to join J. P. in Liverpool the
next day in time to sail early in the afternoon on the Cedric, as it had
been decided to leave Craven in London for the present.
The voyage differed but little from our cruises in the yacht. J. P. took
his meals in his own suite, and as Mrs. Pulitzer and Miss Pulitzer were
on board they usually dined with him, one of the secretaries making a
fourth at table.
In the matter of guarding J. P. from noise, extraordinary precautions
were taken. Heavy mats were laid outside his cabin, specially made a
dozen years before and stored by the White Star people waiting his call;
that portion of the deck which surrounded his suite was roped off so
that the passengers could not promenade there; and a close-fitting green
baize door shut off the corridor leading to his quarters. His meals were
served by his own butler and by one of the yacht stewards; and his daily
routine went on as usual.
During the voyage I was broken in to the task of reading the magazines
to J. P. So far as current issues were concerned I had to take the ones
he liked best--The Atlantic Monthly, The American Magazine, The
Quarterly Review, The Edinburgh Review, The World's Work, and The North
American Review--and thoroughly master their contents.
While I was engaged on this sufficiently arduous labor I made, on cards,
lists of the titles of all the articles and abstracts of all the more
important ones. I have by me as I write a number of these lists, and I
reproduce one of them.
The following list of articles represents what Mr. Pulitzer got from me
in a highly condensed form during ONE HOUR: "The Alleged Passing of
Wagner," "The Decline and Fall of Wagner," "The Mission of Richard
Wagner," "The Swiftness of Justice in England and in the United States,"
"The Public Lands of the United States," "New Zealand and the Woman's
Vote," "The Lawyer and the Community," "The Tariff Make-believe," "The
Smithsonian Institute," "The Spirit and Letter of Exclusion," "The
Panama Canal and American Shipping," "The Authors and Signers of the
Declaration of Independence," "The German Social Democracy," "The
Changing Position of American Trade," "The Passing of Polygamy."
I remember very well the occasion on which I gave him these articles. We
were walking on one of the lower promenade decks of the Cedric, and J.
P. asked me if I had any magazine articles ready for him. I told him,
having the list of articles in my left hand, that I had fifteen ready.
He pulled out his watch, and holding it toward me said:
"What time is it?"
"Twelve o'clock," I replied.
"Very good; that gives us an hour before lunch. Now go on with your
articles; I'll allow you four minutes for each of them."
He did not actually take four minutes for each, for some of them did not
interest him after my summary had run for a minute or so, but we just
got the fifteen in during the hour.
After all that was possible had been done in the way of reducing the
number of magazine articles, by rejecting the unsuitable ones, and their
length by careful condensation, we were unable to keep pace with the
supply. When a hundred or so magazines had accumulated Mr. Pulitzer had
the lists of contents read to him, and from these he selected the
articles which he wished to have read; and these arrears were disposed
of when an opportunity presented itself.
At times Mr. Pulitzer did not feel well enough to take this concentrated
mental food, and turned for relief to novels, plays and light
literature; at times, when he was feeling unusually well, he occupied
himself for several days in succession with matters concerning The
World--in dictating editorials, letters of criticism, instruction and
inquiry, or in considering the endless problems relating to policy,
business management, personnel, and the soaring price of white paper.
An interesting feature of his activity on behalf of The World was his
selection of new writers. Although his supervision of the paper extended
to every branch, from advertising to news, from circulation to color-
printing, it was upon the editorial page that he concentrated his best
energies and his keenest observation.
It is no exaggeration to say that the editorial page of The World was to
J. P. what a child is to a parent. He had watched it daily for a quarter
of a century. During that time, I am told, he had read to him seventy-
five per cent. of all the editorials which were printed on it, and had
every cartoon described. Those who are interested in the editorial page
of The World should read Mr. John L. Heaton's admirable History of a
Page, published last year.
J. P.'s theory of editorial writing, which I heard him propound a dozen
times, called for three cardinal qualities--brevity, directness and
style--and, as these could not be expected to adorn hasty writing, he
employed a large staff of editorial writers and tried to limit each man
to an average of half a column a day, unless exceptional circumstances
called for a lengthy treatment of some important question.
He watched the style of each man with the closest attention, examining
the length of the paragraphs, of the sentences, of the words, the
variety of the vocabulary, the choice of adjectives and adverbs, the
employment of superlatives, the selection of a heading, the nicety of
adjustment between the thought to be expressed and the language employed
for its expression.
If he chanced in the course of his reading to run across any apt phrase
in regard to literary style he would get one of us to type a number of
copies and send one to each of the editorial writers on The World. The
following were sent from Wiesbaden:
"Thiers compares a perfect style to glass through which we look without
being conscious of its presence between the object and the eye." (From
Abraham Hayward's "Essay on Thiers.")
"Lessing, Lichtenberger, and Schopenhauer agreed in saying that it is
difficult to write well, that no man naturally writes well, and that one
must, in order to acquire a style, work STRENUOUSLY ... I have tried to
write well."(Nietzsche.)
J. P. was never tired of discussing literary style, of making
comparisons between one language and another from the point of view of
an exact expression of an idea, or of the different SOUND of the same
idea expressed in different languages. For instance, he asked us once
during an argument about translations of Shakespeare to compare the
lines:
"You are my true and honorable wife,
As dear to me as are the ruddy drops
That visit my sad heart."
with the German:
"Ihr seid mein echtes, ehrenwertes Weib,
So teuer mir, als wie die Purpurtropfen
Die um mein trauernd Herz sich drangen."
and the opening words of Hamlet's soliloquy with the German:
"Sein oder Nichtsein, das ist hier die Frage."
Of the former pair he greatly preferred the English, of the latter the
German.
Sometimes we discussed at great length the exact English equivalent of
some German or French word. I remember one which he came back to again
and again, the word leichtsinnig. We suggested as translations,
frivolous, irresponsible, hare-brained, thoughtless, chicken-witted,
foolish, crazy; but we never found an expression which suited him.
But I have wandered away from the subject of editorial writers. During
the time I was with J. P. he selected two, and his method of selection
is of interest in view of the great importance he attached to the
editorial page of The World.
As I have said elsewhere, J. P. got practically all the important
articles from every paper of consequence in the United States. If he
read an editorial which impressed him, possibly from a Chicago or a San
Francisco paper, he put it on one side and told Pollard, who read all
this kind of material to him, to watch the clippings from that paper and
to pick out any other editorials which he could identify as the work of
the same man. Five years with J. P. had made Pollard an expert in
penetrating the disguise of the editorial "We."
As soon as a representative collection of the unknown man's writings had
been made J. P. instructed some one on The World to find out who the
author was and to request that he would supply what he considered to be
a fair sample of his work, a dozen or more articles, and a brief
biography of himself.
If Mr. Pulitzer was satisfied with these an offer would be made to the
man to join the staff of The World. Sometimes even these gentlemen were
summoned to New York, to Bar Harbor, to Wiesbaden, or to Mentone,
according to circumstances. I have met several of them, and they all
agree in saying that the hardest work they ever did in their lives was
to keep pace with Mr. Pulitzer while they were running the gauntlet of
his judgment.
There are few men highly placed on The World to-day who have not been
through such an ordeal. I doubt if any man was ever served by a staff
whose individual ability, temper, resources and limitations were so
minutely known to their employer. He knew them to the last ounce of
their endurance, to the last word of their knowledge, beyond the last
veil which enables even the most intelligent man to harbor, mercifully,
a few delusions about himself.
To those who did not know Mr. Pulitzer it may appear that I exaggerate
his powers in this direction. As a matter of fact I believe that it
would be impossible to do so.
When he had his sight he judged men as others judge them, and, making
full allowance for his genius for observation and analysis, he was no
doubt influenced to some extent by appearance, manners and associations.
But after he became blind and retired from contact with all men, except
a circle which cannot have exceeded a score in number, his judgment took
on a new measure of clearness and perspective.
As a natural weapon of self-defense he developed a system of searching
examination before which no subterfuge could stand. It was minute,
persistent, comprehensive and ingenious in the last degree. It might
begin to-day, reach an apparent conclusion, and be renewed after a
month's silence. In the meantime, while the whole matter was becoming
dim in your mind, inquiries had been made in a dozen directions in
regard to the points at issue; and when the subject was reopened you
were confronted not only with J. P.'s perfect memory of what you had
said but with a detailed knowledge of matters which you had passed by as
unimportant, or deliberately avoided for any one of a dozen perfectly
honest reasons.
J. P.'s questions covered names, places, dates, motives, the chain of
causation, what you said, what you did, what you felt, what you thought,
the reasons why you felt, thought, acted as you did, the reasons why
your thought and action had not been such-and-such, your opinion of your
own conduct, in looking back upon the episode, your opinion of the
thoughts, actions and feelings of everybody else concerned, your
conjectures as to THEIR motives, what you would do if you were again
faced with the same problem, why you would do it, why you had not done
it on the previous occasion.
Starting at any point in your career Mr. Pulitzer worked backward and
forward until all that you had ever thought or done, from your earliest
recollection down to the present moment, had been disclosed to him so
far as he was interested to know it, and your memory served you.
This process varied in length according to the nature of the experiences
of the person subjected to it, and to the precise quality of Mr.
Pulitzer's interest in him. In my own case it lasted about three months
and was copiously interspersed with written statements by myself of
facts about myself, opinions by myself about myself, and endless
references to people I had known during the past twenty-five years.
Mr. Pulitzer's attitude toward references was the product of vast
experience. He complained that scores of men had come to him with
references from some of the most distinguished people living, references
so glowing that one man should have been ashamed to write them and the
other ashamed to receive them, references of such a character that their
happy possessors might, without being guilty of immodesty, have applied
for the Chief Justiceship of the United States, the Viceroyalty of
India, the Archbishopric of Canterbury, the Presidency of the Royal
College of Surgeons, or the Mastership of Baliol, but that the great
majority of these men had turned out to be ignorant, lazy and stupid to
an unbelievable degree.
When the question of my own references came up I begged in a humorous
way that, having heard J. P.'s views about the value of testimonials, my
friends should be spared the useless task of eulogizing me.
"No, my God!" exclaimed J. P. "None of them shall be spared. What I said
about testimonials is all perfectly true; but it only serves to show
what sort of person a man must be who can't even get testimonials. No,
no; if a man brings references it proves nothing; but if he can't, it
proves a great deal."
Our voyage to New York was marred by but one distressing feature, the
behavior of two infants, one of whom cried all day and the other all
night. J. P. stood it very well. I think he regarded it as one of the
few necessary noises. He suffered from it, of course, but the only
remark he ever made to me about it was:
"I really think that one of the most extraordinary things in the world
is the amount of noise a child can make. Here we are with a sixty-mile
gale blowing and some ten thousand horse-power engines working inside
the ship, and yet that child can make itself heard from one end of the
boat to the other. I think there must be two of them; the sound is not
quite the same at night. Now, Mr. Ireland, do, just for the fun of it,
find out about that. Don't let the mother know--I wouldn't like to hurt
her feelings; but ask one of the stewards about it."
In due course we reached New York. The Liberty, which had crossed
directly from Marseilles, met us at quarantine, and Mr. Pulitzer was
transferred to her without landing. The rest of us joined the yacht the
same evening. That night we sailed for Bar Harbor.