An Adventure with a Genius: Recollections of Joseph Pulitzer Part 5

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 das.h.i.+ng 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 circ.u.mstances; 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 G.o.d! 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 pa.s.s 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 bra.s.s had drowned a delightful pa.s.sage for the violas, which he had heard and admired the year before in Vienna; in another the bra.s.ses 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 a.s.sistants, the butler and his a.s.sistants, 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 ash.o.r.e 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 ash.o.r.e 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 was.h.i.+ng down and painting as are needed, the chief engineer seizes the chance of making some small engine-room repairs--no ordinary s.h.i.+p'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 a.n.a.lysis, 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 Inst.i.tute of Marine Biology at Monaco.

Engaged on such missions, the pa.s.sers-by, the houses, the shops, the fishes and marine vegetables in their tanks, the blue sky overhead, the blue sea at my feet a.s.sumed 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 furnis.h.i.+ng 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 amus.e.m.e.nt. 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.

CHAPTER IV

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 compa.s.s- course at any moment betrayed nothing of Mr. Pulitzer's intentions, for we might turn in at night with the s.h.i.+p 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 p.r.o.ne 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 compa.s.s 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 G.o.d! Didn't you read The World?"

"Nothing but the editorial page."

"Why not? What's the matter with it?"