Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [227]
Unaware of her husband’s intercepted missive, Kate completed a long-planned, loving gesture for Joseph. Since before their marriage, he had carried a watch in which was encased a photograph of his late mother. It survived the house fire but was damaged. Kate had brought the watch to London to be repaired. Her consideration extended farther. She had hired an artist to reproduce the miniature portrait of her husband’s mother on a large scale. The finished reproduction disappointed her but she sent it on anyway. “I fear it is too small for you to see but at least you can feel that you have a picture of your mother,” she wrote, adding that she would have an even larger one made.
Pulitzer took his turn before Sargent in June 1905. Tuohy, the London bureau chief, put aside his regular duties to prepare for Pulitzer’s arrival. By now he was used to doing the personal jobs that came with the post. In this case, he made sure that the bedroom windows in the London house Pulitzer rented were refitted with thick plate glass and that Pulitzer’s horse, which had been sent ahead of time, was getting acclimatized.
Accompanying Pulitzer to London was Norman G. Thwaites, the thirty-two-year-old son of a British parson. A veteran of the Boer War, Thwaites had joined the cadre of secretaries in 1902. He had been recruited by Tuohy, who referred to the hunt for secretaries as the “pursuit of white mice.” Pleasing Pulitzer was nearly impossible. He insisted on hiring unmarried men who could freely travel anywhere in the world. He even dictated that he would hire no short men. “As I have to walk with my companion,” the six-foot two-inch Pulitzer explained, “I don’t like to stoop too low.” To find a suitable candidate Tuohy and Butes had to parse as many as 100 applicants responding to discreet advertisements placed in British newspapers.
When Thwaites first called on Pulitzer, he was brought into a room where Butes was furiously sorting out stacks of applications. Overwhelmed by their number, Butes was preparing to send Thwaites away when Pulitzer suddenly walked in. After introductions were made, Pulitzer brought Thwaites over to the window. He ran his long tapered fingers over the man’s head and face and then asked Thwaites to take him by his arm for a walk in the garden. In stronger light, Pulitzer could still distinguish contours of people and objects, but not much more.
The two strolled about for an hour discussing books and plays; this gave Thwaites, a consummate London theatergoer, a chance to impress Pulitzer. It also bode well that he spoke German, could write shorthand, and knew how to ride horses. His soothing reading voice tipped the balance in his favor, and Pulitzer offered him a trial. In the three years since, Thwaites had become one of Pulitzer’s most trusted men.
On this trip, Thwaites had the task of taking Pulitzer for a ride in the park each day before the sittings at Sargent’s legendary studio on Tite Street. The painter was a stickler for punctuality, and Kate had warned Joseph, “You will have to be on time as he gets very nervous and out of sorts if one is at all late.” Pulitzer assumed that at their first meeting Sargent would want to talk and maybe, at best, execute a few sketches. The painter, however, was in no mood to chat. He immediately placed a canvas on his easel and went to work. “Sometimes I get a good likeness, so much the better for both of us,” he said. “Sometimes I don’t—so much the worse for my subject but I make no attempt to represent anything but what the outward appearance of a man or woman indicates.”
As he said this, Sargent rapidly sketched a perfect charcoal likeness of Pulitzer on the canvas before