An Adventure with a Genius: Recollections of Joseph PulitzerIreland, Alleyne
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An Adventure with a Genius: Recollections of Joseph Pulitzer
Ireland, Alleyne
Pulitzer, Joseph, 1847-1911
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."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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