An Adventure with a Genius: Recollections of Joseph Pulitzer Part 11

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 pa.s.sed 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 princ.i.p.al 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 a.s.sured, no voice, however disagreeable, could fail to respond. I saw my friends, my business a.s.sociates, my tailor. I went to see f.a.n.n.y'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 pa.s.sengers 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 t.i.tles 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 Pa.s.sing 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 Inst.i.tute," "The Spirit and Letter of Exclusion," "The Panama Ca.n.a.l and American s.h.i.+pping," "The Authors and Signers of the Declaration of Independence," "The German Social Democracy," "The Changing Position of American Trade," "The Pa.s.sing 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 acc.u.mulated 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 circ.u.mstances 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 gla.s.s 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 circ.u.mstances. 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.