It was not simply from the standpoint of my own ignorance that Paterson's store of knowledge assumed such vast proportions, for it was seldom opened except in the presence of Mr. Pulitzer, in whom were combined a tenacious memory, a profound acquaintance with the subjects which Paterson had taken for his province, an analytic mind, and a zest for contradiction. Everything Paterson said was immediately pounced upon by a vigorous, astute, and well-informed critic who derived peculiar satisfaction from the rare instances in which he could detect him in an inaccuracy.
The conversation between Mr. Pulitzer and Paterson, or, rather, Paterson's frequently interrupted monologue, lasted until we had all finished dinner, and the butler had lighted Mr. Pulitzer's cigar. In the middle of an eloquent passage from Paterson, Mr. Pulitzer rose, turned abruptly toward me, held out his hand, and said, "I'm very glad to have met you, Mr. Ireland; you have entertained me very much. Please come here to-morrow at eleven o'clock, and I'll take you out for a drive. Good-night." He took Paterson's arm and left the room.
The door, like all the doors in Mr. Pulitzer's various residences, shut automatically and silently; and after one of the secretaries had drawn a heavy velvet curtain across the doorway, so that not the faintest sound could escape from the room, I was chaffed good-naturedly about my debut as a candidate. To my great surprise I was congratulated on having done very well.
"You made a great hit," said one, "with your account of Shaw's play."
"I nearly burst out laughing," said another, "when you gave your views about memory. I think you're dead right about it; but J. P.—Mr. Pulitzer was always referred to as J. P.—is crazy about people having good memories, so if you've really got a good memory you'd better let him find it out."
I was told that, so far as we were concerned, the day's work, or at least that portion of it which involved being with J. P., was to be considered over as soon as he retired to the library after dinner. His object then was to be left alone with one secretary, who read to him until about ten o'clock, when the major-domo came and took him to his rooms for the night. As a rule, J. P. made no further demand on the bodily presence of his secretaries after he had gone to bed, but occasionally, when he could not sleep, one of them would be called, perhaps at three in the morning, to read to him.
This meant in practice that, when we were ashore, one, or more usually two of us, would remain in the house in case of emergency. This did not by any means imply that we were always free from work after ten o'clock at night, in fact the very opposite was true, for it was J. P.'s custom to say, during dinner, that on the following day he would ride, drive, or walk with such a one or such a one, naming him; and the victim—a term frequently used with a good deal of surprisingly frank enjoyment by J. P. himself—had often to work well into the night preparing material for conversation.
I saw something of what this preparation meant before I left the villa after my first meeting with J. P. Two of the secretaries said they would go over to Monte Carlo, and they asked me to go with them; but I declined, preferring to remain behind for a chat with one of the secretaries, Mr. Norman G. Thwaites, an Englishman, who was secretary in a more technical sense than any of the rest of us, for he was a shorthand writer and did most of J. P.'s correspondence.
After the others had gone he showed me a table in the entrance hall of the villa, on which was a big pile of mail just arrived from London. It included a great number of newspapers and weeklies, several copies of each. There were The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail, The Morning Post, The Daily News, The Westminster Gazette, Truth, The Spectator, The Saturday Review, The Nation, The Outlook, and some other London publications, as well as the Paris editions of the New York Herald and The Daily Mail.
Thwaites selected a copy of each and then led the way to his bedroom, a large room on the top floor, from which we could see across the bay the brilliant lights of Monte Carlo.