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SEPTEMBER, 1924

THE PORTRAIT OF AN EDITOR

BY DON C. SEITZ

JOSEPH PULITZER was tall, six feet two and a half inches in height, but of a presence so commanding as to make his stature seem even greater. His hair was black and his beard a reddish brown. A forehead that well bespoke the intellect behind it shaded a nose of the sort Napoleon admired; his chin was small but powerful and of the nutcracker variety, such as the portrait of Mr. Punch affects. To conceal this he always went bearded after he was thirty. His complexion was as delicate and beautiful as that of a tender child. His hands were those of genius, with long, slender fingers, full of warmth and magnetism. The eyes before they became clouded were of a grayish blue. Always weak, they never lent much expression to the face, yet his visage was animated and attractive. Temperamentally, his was the type of the poet and musician; yet, while adoring music, he professed to care little for verse and rarely read it. However, he appreciated the singers in his native tongue and, I have often thought, really repressed his poetic instinct for fear it might be considered a weakness.

The nose vexed him. If there had been any way of modifying its prominence, he would have greatly rejoiced. But it was the delight of cartoonists,

VOL. 134— NO. 3

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His days after his withdrawal from active work were monotonously regular: morning hours spent with his secretaries over the papers and mail, a drive before luncheon, then an hour of reading and repose, after which he rode in a carriage or on horseback, saw visitors from five o'clock to six, went to bed for a brief rest, dressed for a seven-thirty dinner, left the table about nine, listened to a little music, and was read to sleep by one of his secretaries.

Just as old King Frederick William of Prussia, father of Frederick the Great, was always hunting Europe over for tall men to recruit his Potsdam Grenadiers, Mr. Pulitzer, who resembled his Majesty in many ways, was forever hunting readers and secretaries. Ballard Smith, while London correspondent, and after him Frederick A. Duneka, David Graham Phillips, and James M. Tuohy, all English represent

atives in the order named, were on perpetual assignment. The secretaries in office were frequently set to finding other secretaries, and George Ledlie, his general and personal representative, had a permanent commission to find 'the right man.' Alfred Butes, a clever young Englishman, came closest to filling all the requirements. He had been in Africa with General Francis de Winton, was an accomplished stenographer, wrote an excellent hand and, above all, was most discreet. He penetrated more deeply in his employer's confidence than any of the other young gentlemen; indeed, he was destined to become a trustee of the vast estate and to receive a handsome legacy, although he forfeited these honors in 1907 to join Lord Northcliffe in a secretarial capacity.

The duties of the secretaries were very exacting, and the position was irksome except to men of sympathetic temperament and to lovers of good living. Most of the secretaries were English, although occasional Americans served with individual success. But the life palled on these lighter temperaments and they required frequent furloughs.

Mealtimes were play hours. At the table, liberty of speech was the rule and the guests and secretaries had full freedom to express themselves without regard to the feelings of the host. Sometimes the fire became pretty hot and Mr. Pulitzer would retreat to have his dessert and coffee alone. Violent disputes about music, literature, politics, history, and art were the rule, with not infrequent assaults upon his own opinion and the ways of the World, tempered by anecdotes and good stories. He loved table-talk of this sort. 'Tell me a good story' was his most frequent greeting to a guest. It was hard to set him to 'reminiscing'; but when he did venture back over the

traveled road, the tale was worth hearing.

He was always interesting, seldom companionable, taking all he could from the minds of others, but rarely giving much back, his method being to dispute and to reap the benefits of an aroused defense. Thus he became a great hunter for facts. Often at luncheon or dinner, when a free-for-all conversation took place, some remark would arouse a dispute over accuracy of statement. If the question could not be settled by someone at the board, he would command a charge on all the reference books at hand and there was no rest until the doubt was cleared up. The waiters were often prohibited from serving more food until this happened. The facts found, he would listen intently to their reading and they remained in his mind forever. The best of dinners would be much improved for him if there had been added a satisfying fact-hunt. He would puff his cigar, pat the pile of reference books lovingly with his graceful hands, and smile in deep content.

Mr. Pulitzer read omnivorously. He was always buying books. One of his great griefs over the fire that destroyed his Fifty-fifth Street mansion was the total loss of his library. He was not a 'collector' in any sense, but loved his volumes for what they contained. Like most of us who were fed educationally on Homer in our youth, Mr. Pulitzer reserved the Odyssey as a treasure to be enjoyed in riper years. He had long looked forward to the celebrated episode of the wooden horse. Coming to the event, he found it described in seven rather dull lines. 'I was SO d-d mad,' he remarked, 'that I could have kicked Homer!'

His speeches during the Greeley campaign were all made in German, his familiar tongue. When he came to

stump for Tilden, he employed English. This was not an easy task, for he thought in German and had to translate as he talked. To facilitate clearness of expression he laboriously wrote out his addresses in English and committed them to memory. When he spoke in later years, after coming to New York, he had acquired the habit of thinking in English, and when asked to make an address in German during the Nicoll campaign, found it very difficult. In his after years of retirement he took up German again and used it faultlessly, cultivating the language, through skilled readers, from the best books in German literature.

He loved art and music, a taste reflected in the great benefactions made in his will to the Philharmonic Society and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. When sight grew dim, as with most blind people, music became a solace. The piano appealed to him especially and he heard great players whenever possible. Now and then Paderewski would pay him a visit and there would be a carnival of piano playing. The strings were next. His winters on the Riviera were made happy by the splendid orchestra maintained at Monte Carlo by the Prince of Monaco. He frequented the opera, but the social noises usually drove him home early. The group of secretaries always included one excellent pianist whose duties were by no means light and whose slightest error in technique met with instant and fierce rebuke.

Like Napoleon his omnivorousness and great curiosity gave him a tremendous appetite. He was most insistent about his meals; ate often and heavily, frequently awakening in the night to satisfy his hunger with an extra meal. He was fond of luxury- always craved and secured the best. This was from no vainglory of extravagance, but was an inborn instinct, which he

almost always managed to gratify even when poor. The best vintages came to his table, the finest moselles, champagnes, and burgundies; yet he drank little, rarely more than a single glass. He loved to be warm, to sleep well, to be comfortably housed, and to have at his command good books. In his later years he spent at least twelve hours of the day in bed. His afternoon nap was the trial of his valet and the terror of fellow travelers. Rooms had to be kept vacant above, below, and on either side of him at hotels; and the White Star Line, upon whose steamers he usually made his European voyages, kept his good will for many years by maintaining a huge drugget, made of manila rope, which was spread upon the deck so that the footsteps of the idlers on the promenade deck could not jar his slumbers in the stateroom below.

This desire for silence became almost a mania. The great house, Chatwold, at Bar Harbor, had added to it in 1895 a huge granite pile, called by some of the humorous inmates the "Tower of Silence.' It was provided with specially constructed walls and partitions designed, unsuccessfully, to shut out all noise. The new city mansion, on East Seventy-third Street, New York, built in 1902, failed to provide soundproof quarters in spite of much planning by the architects, McKim, Mead & White. Indeed, his own rooms seemed to be haunted by noises, among them a strange knocking that nearly drove him frantic. After experts had failed, I discovered the trouble. In building the house, a living spring which could not be suppressed Iwas found in the cellar. It was fed into a sump-pit; this in turn was emptied by an automatic pump, operated by electricity, which started when the water reached a certain level. By a rare fatality the pump had been

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