But the trouble with this business of publicity is that, however carefully you control your interviewer, you cannot control the others who use his material. The “afternoon men” came round for more details, and they made it clear that it was personal details they wanted. And when I side-stepped their questions, they went off and made up answers to suit themselves, and printed Sylvia’s pictures, together with photographs of child-workers taken from our pamphlets.
I called Sylvia up while she was dressing for dinner, to explain that I was not responsible for any of this picturesqueness. “Oh, perhaps I am to blame myself!” she exclaimed. “I think I interviewed a reporter.”
“How do you mean?”
“A woman sent up her card—she told the footman she was a friend of mine. And I thought—I couldn’t be sure if I’d met her—so I went and saw her. She said she’d met me at Mrs. Harold Cliveden’s, and she began to talk to me about child-labour, and this and that plan she had, and what did I think of them, and suddenly it flashed over me: ‘Maybe this is a reporter playing a trick on me!’”
I hurried out before breakfast next morning and got all the papers, to see what this enterprising lady had done. There was nothing, so I reflected that probably she had been a “Sunday” lady.
But then, when I reached my office, the ‘phone rang, and I heard the voice of Sylvia: “Mary, something perfectly dreadful has happened!”
“What?” I cried.
“I can’t tell you over the ‘phone, but a certain person is furiously angry. Can I see you if I come down right away?”
26. Such terrors as these were unguessed by me in the days of my obscurity. Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown, uneasy also, lies the wife of that head, and the best friend of the wife. I dismissed my stenographer, and spent ten or fifteen restless minutes until Sylvia appeared.
Her story was quickly told. A couple of hours ago the acting-manager of Mr. van Tuiver’s office had telephoned to ask if he might call upon a matter of importance. He had come. Naturally, he had the most extreme reluctance to say anything which might seem to criticise the activities of Mr. van Tuiver’s wife, but there was something in the account in the newspapers which should be brought to her husband’s attention. The articles gave the names and locations of a number of firms in whose factories it was alleged that Mrs. van Tuiver had found unsatisfactory conditions, and it happened that two of these firms were located in premises which belonged to the van Tuiver estates!