Home | Quotations | Newspaper Articles | Special Features | Links | Search

Special Feature

KATE CAREW
"The Only Woman Caricaturist"

The names of those who were defined with Kate Carew's keen eye and pen read like a who's who of yesteryear. They include entertainers John Drew, Ethel Barrymore, Sarah Bernhardt, Lillian and Dorothy Gish, Annette Kellerman, Theda Bara, Adelina Patti; writers Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Emil Zola, Jack London, W. B. Yeats; artist Pablo Picasso; politicians Richard Croker, Winston Churchill, Theodore Roosevelt, Chinese Ambassador Wu Ting Fang; tycoons and moguls such as Henry W. Lucy, D. W. Griffith, J. P. Morgan, Charles Schwab, Sir Thomas Lipton, Wilbur and Orvill Wright and countless others.

The following interview appeared in Pearson's Magazine, December 1904.

But lo! I did, and the sequel throws a light on the hunger for novelty which is the ruling passion of the bright young editors trained up by Mr. Joseph Pulitzer, proprietor of the New York World. It was to the World that I had sent my sketches. They fell into the hands of an editor whose hunger for novelty was especially poignant, and within two days I was engaged at what to a lowly painter of portraits seemed a ridiculously handsome figure, to supply the paper twice a week with two columns of theatrical caricature seasoned with frivolous comment. I awoke to find myself pseudonymously famous. The alias with which I had signed the sketches--I had selected it a random--shouted at me from advertisements and posters, and "The Only Woman Caricaturist" was flaunted before the public with a persistence which made me thank my stars I had not signed my real name.

All of which was more than I had bargained for, but to my editor it was only a beginning. He had a new idea--twenty new ideas, for that matter, but one in particular: illustrated interviews by "The Only," etc. And my resolve to be drawn no more than from the narrow path of art with a capital "A" was smashed to smithereens beneath the dynamic force of his authority.

"Lying--is not an art--not that I have ever been able to--discover--and I have tried--hard--all my life. It--is a device of--primitive--intelligences. The best--liars--are savages and--children. The most cultured people speak the--truth--as often as--they--think of it, and enjoy hearing--it--spoken by others. In--Heaven--I shouldn't wonder but they use--the truth--'most all the--time.

That interview, to my unbounded astonishment--and Mark Twain's, too, I dare say--occupied a whole page in the Sunday World, seven of my sketches taking up a great part of the space. The editor chuckled quietly, but I never heard what Mark Twain's publishers thought; and although American journalism resembles love and war in its standards of fairness, I have never since interviewed a man without his knowledge.

Meanwhile the genus celebrity had been losing its terrors for me. One broiled lived celebrity per week was the diet prescribed and rigorously inforced by my uncompromising editor, and he organized a staff of one, whose duty it was to hunt down the designated victims. The staff would make an appointment, and I would follow with the instruments of torture, consisting of an inquiring eye and a stub of pencil.

Joseph Pulitzer is pre-eminently a publicist in journalism, whence it happened that most of the victims were politicians and statesmen--unless it be true, as I am prepared to believe, that a statesman is only a politician who happens to be dead.

Knowing nothing of politics and caring less, I had the proverbial luck of the beginner at cards.

The Governor of the State of New York waxed confidential with me at a time of great political excitement arising from his having apparently overthrown and usurped the power of the "Boss" of his party, and I treasure a souvenir of the occasion in the shape of a handsome ring sent to me with a letter of commendation by Mr. Pulitzer, the unseen but very-much-felt power behind his great newspaper.

Only in the rarest cases--as with artists like Bernhardt and Coquelin, or a woman of the world like Mrs. Arthur Paget--have I felt really interested in my subject or his pursuits, and the history of most of my interviews has been a frantic effort to penetrate beneath the crust of the politician in search of the man. In this process I have discovered many public men to have something almost human about them, and only when they are lawyers do they object to having it known.

More than once I have spent weeks at a stretch in Washington, gathering in the high panjandrums of American statesmanship. In the light of recent history in the Far East it is an interesting coincidence that of all my Washington subjects the two that left the most sympathetic impression were the Countess Marguerite Cassini, niece of the Russian Ambassador and hostess at the Embassy, and Mme. Takahira, wife of the Japanese Ambassador.

Mme. Takahira wears creations from the Rue de la Paix, and has been called the best dressed woman in Washington. She poured tea for me ever so daintily, but when it came to interviewing, deferred meekly to His Excellency her husband, who cheerfully did all the talking for her, even when the latest thing in corsets cropped up. Whenever he paused in his harangue, Madame would lisp "Y-a-a-s!" and give me a ravishing smile and a fresh cup of tea.

The Countess Marguerite Cassini, on the other hand, talked about everything under the sun with the freedom of a bouncing and beautiful young Muscovite who had seen a good deal of the world and loved it well, and yet was puzzled enough about some things to have developed a streak of philosophy. I asked her what had been her girlhood's ambition.

"I don't know that I had any," she said amusingly, "unless--unless it was to be as beautiful as possible. Yes; I think if my early ambition were translated into prayer it would be 'Please God, make me as beautiful as you can.'"

I suppose it would be lese majeste to omit to mention that I interviewed President Roosevelt during that Washington trip. All he said was "De--lighted!"--a phrase that has since become a popular symbol of the presidential cordiality--but he was worth a page to me, just the same.

Then there was Wu Ting Fang. I think you have had him in London, haven't you--the wise and witty "Mr. Wu"? He was the Chinese Ambassador tot he United States at that time, and wonderfully popular; but oh! Such a slippery customer in the hands of the luckless interviewer. All the craft and evasion of Oriental diplomacy came to the surface; every term had to be defined and disputed over; and, instead of answering my questions, he countered, as the pugilists say, with a raking fire of his own. "Do you live in Washington?" "When did you arrive?" "Are you married?" "Do you get a salary or are you paid by results?" "Do you make much money?" "Where were you born?" "How old are you?" And so on.

"Mr. Wu, will you tell me about your career?" "What do you mean by 'career'?" Or, "Is the average Chinaman happier than the average American?" "What do you mean by 'happy'?" Or, "Does love play as important a part in Chinese literature as in ours?" "What do you mean by 'love'--have you ever been in love?" Oh, it was an exasperating Mr. Wu that confronted me in dark blue petticoats relieved with a pale lavender that would drive the dyers of Christendom to despair. But in the end he talked entertainingly on love, politics, business, the comparative civilisations of the Orient and the Occident, and the superiority of Confucianism over Christianity as a practical religion.

It was at quite an early stage of my newspaper experience that I interviewed Richard Croker--that singular compound of iron will and childlike simplicity who ruled Tammany Hall and New York as despotically as any Tsar. He confessed that he loved his famous racehorse, Dobbins, better than any man, and the conversation went on thus:

"Are you fond of other animals?"

"Oh, yes--horses and cows, and dogs and cats. I like cats. Don't you like cats?"

"Then you must like the country, where you can have all sorts of animals about you."

"Yes, I'd rather live in the country than in town."

"On a farm?"

"Well, perhaps. Some place where I could have lots of animals and things around--nice and homelike."

"Don't you love to lie down and smell the fresh earth, and make out faces in the clouds?"

"N-no, I like to be doing something all the time."

"Would you like beautiful pictures and books in your home?"

"Oh, I'm not particular. I don't know anything about pictures. Oh, I like 'em, but I don't look at them much."

"But you'd buy some?" "Oh, yes--just enough to make the place look nice."

"And books?"

"Oh, yes." (Indifferently.)

"Aren't you fond of reading?" "

No; not very much. Oh, I like, maybe, to read a story if it's true, but I don't like anything unreal. I couldn't read a book--haven't the time, anyway; besides, 'most everything is not so in books, and if I see a story hasn't everyday true facts in it, I drop it--won't be bothered with it."

"Did you ever read any of Mark Twain's books?"

"No; had no time."

"Nor Dickens, nor Thackeray?"

"No; no books."

"Nor poetry?"

"No!"

Mr. Croker looked amused. Then, evidently judging that I was a frivolous person who cared for useless things, he added:

"Would you like to see some of the pictures in the Democratic Club? I don't know, but I guess they are all good--they tell me they are, anyway. Now, there's one of those French pictures--Napoleon taking a ship in the morning. See all the ice? Pretty good, isn't it? That's a real French painting."

All of which, and much more of the same kind, I reported simply and faithfully, and learned afterwards that Mr. Croker was greatly pleased with the interview.

As for my editor, he seldom or never allowed me to think he was pleased with anything--thought it wold be bad discipline, I suppose. His manner was generally gruff and disparaging; but I had learned to watch for the twitching of a muscle I his cheek which meant satisfaction, and at rare intervals of great excitement he was betrayed into sending me a laconic telegram of approval--almost always followed shortly by a growling criticism well calculated to prevent me from growing conceited.

Strange, shy, saturnine man, with his pugnacious zeal for the newspaper he served, his masculine scorn of small rivalries, and his big impetuous nature struggling beneath the carefully cultivated demeanour of a grizzly bear--it was a tragedy to lose so loyal, though irascible, a friend. He was killed in the night, alone--thrown while riding a nervous brute of a thoroughbred home along a country road, and dragged to his death with the reins wound, as his reckless habit was, about his wrists.

It was in the early part of last winter that I had the privilege of interviewing the adorable Patti, on a new "farewell tour," and with a new husband. First she swept a sentimental audience off its feet by warbling, as only she can warble. "Home, Sw-e-e-e-t Home." Then she talked with me for half-an-hour in her own hotel apartments, with the lucky Baron von Cederstrom hovering sentimentally by, and I marvelled greatly that this bonny, bird-like, matter-of-fact little body, who reminded me of nothing so much as a Java sparrow in a ray of sunshine, could excite any emotion deeper than a desire for another lump of sugar in one's tea.

For, with all her charm--her preeny, sparkly, soft, round-eyed, restless, bright, bird-like charm--Mme. Patti is quite devoid of that element of magnetism which for want of a better word I will call mystery. She is all there--all open and above-board--a sweet little, neat little, tidy little tea-party lady, who can twitter well-bred trifles in eight languages--but of the subtlety that one looks for in an emotional artist she is as bare as the palm of one's hand, so far as can be discovered in private conversation. In fact, no human being ever baffled me as completely as Patti, and yet none was ever more charming.

Much more recent and not a bit less fascinating was the experience of interviewing Mrs. Arthur Paget. More mature than the Countess Marguerite Cassini, and with far more experience of the great world, she was equally frank, equally philosophical, and even more sympathetic; and if ever I were threatened with the fate of becoming a woman of society, I think I should translate the Russian girl's prayer into: "Please God, make me as like Mrs. Arthur Paget as you can!" She compared society in a monarchy with society in a republic, English with American husbands, and American with English women. She discussed the importance of not being sentimental in society, the philosophy of international marriages, the sort of cleverness necessary to a woman who would please the King, and other absorbing topics. Would you know Mrs. Paget's recipe for the making of a successful hostess?

"Oh, it is the simplest, easiest thing in the world," she said. "all you have to do is to throw open your doors and simply stand there. When the people come in you hold out your hand, that's all. You don't have to introduce people; you don't have to do anything to entertain them; it is all most beautifully simple."

"But there must be something else," I protested, "because some hostesses are failures."

"Oh, well, a little tact," confessed Mrs. Paget. "Just use a little tact--that's the whole secret."

W. B. Yeats, Irishman and poet

Within the last few months I have had the privilege of interviewing two distinguished Britons--but hold! One of them was William Butler Yeats, the Irish poet, so I hasten to take back the "Britons." Heavens, how indiscreet! But the other was a Briton, and a delightful one--Henry W. Lucy, alias "Toby, M.P." Mr. Lucy proved to my satisfaction that Punch was a humorous paper--a contention disputed by many Americans. Mr. Yeats discoursed vivaciously and brilliantly on souls, apparitions, symbols, the Irish drama, magic, the devil, religion, Mr. George Moore, and other fascinating topics. Mr. Lucy, in discussing English and American humour, said: "Our humor is certainly kinder. We are not as savage as you; your humour always has a butt." It was not many weeks later that I asked Mr. Yeats what he thought of American humour.

Henry W. Lucy--Toby, M.P., of Punch--He convinced the Americans that Punch was a humorous paper.

"It's very unlike English humour," he said quickly, "in being good-humoured. English humour always has a butt."

"Dear me! That's a precise contradiction of what Mr. Lucy said," I gasped.

"Oh, but Mr. Lucy's an Englishman and I'm not!" Retorted the poet with a shrug of his high shoulders and a laugh of sardonic enjoyment.

And oh, I was nearly forgetting Sir Thomas Lipton--Sir Thomas, with his rawboned frame, and his north-country laugh, and his canny eyes beneath the bushy eyebrows, and his air of shrewd satisfaction rivalling that of the cat in the picture "I've eaten the canary!" He is such a very-much-interviewed Sir Thomas that I have nothing new to tell about him. And although I could compile a long list of other victims, many of them illustrious in American public life, none that I can recall would aid materially in rounding these random confessions.