DICK.
Moscow — May 1896.
[DEAR CHAS:]
There was a great deal to tell when I shut down last
night, but I thought I would have had things settled by this
time and waited, but it looks now as though there was to be no
rest for the weary until the Czar has put his crown on his
head. The situation is this: there are ninety correspondents,
and twelve are to get into the coronation, two of these will
be Americans. There are five trying for it.
Count Daschoff, the Minister of the Court, has the say as
to who gets in of those five. T. and I called on him with my
credentials just as he was going out. Never have I seen such
a swell. He made us feel like dudes from Paterson, New
Jersey. He had three diamond eagles in an astrakan cap, a
white cloak, a gray uniform, top boots and three rows of
medals. He spoke English perfectly, with the most politely
insolent manner that I have ever had to listen to; and eight
servants, each of whom we had, in turn, mistaken for a prince
royal, bowed at him all the brief time he talked over our
heads. He sent us to the bureau for correspondents, where
they gave me a badge and a pocketbook, with my photo in it.
They are good for nothing, except to get through the police
lines. No one at the bureau gave us the least encouragement
as to my
getting in at the coronation. We were frantic, and I went
back to Breckenridge, our Minister, and wrote him a long
letter explaining what had happened, and that what I wrote
would "live," that I was advertised and had been advertised to
write this story for months. I dropped
The Journal
altogether, and begged him to represent me as a literary light
of the finest color. This he did in a very strong letter to
Daschoff, and I presented it this morning, but the Minister,
like Edison, said he would let me know when he could see me.
Then I wrote Breck a letter of thanks so elegant and
complimentary that he answered with another, saying if his
first failed he would try again. That means he is for me, and
at the bureau they say whichever one he insists on will get
in, but they also say he is so good-natured that he helps
every one who comes. I told him this, and he has promised to
continue in my behalf as soon as we hear from Daschoff.
The second thing of importance is the getting the story,
if we get it, on the wire. That, I am happy to say, we
are
as assured of as I could hope to be. I own the head of the
Telegraph Bureau soul, body and mind. He loves the ground T.
and I spurn, and he sent out my first cable today, one of
interrogation merely, ahead of twelve others; he has also
given us the entree to a private door to his office, all the
other correspondents having to go to the press-rooms and
undergo a sort of press censorship, which entails on each man
the cutting up of his story into three parts, so as to give
all a chance. I gave T. three dictums to guide him; the first
was that we did not want a fair chance — we wanted an unfair
advantage over every one else. Second, to never accept a "No"
or a "Yes" from a subordinate, but to take everything from
headquarters.
Third, to use every mouse, and not to trust to the
lions. He had practise on the train. When he told me we
would be in Moscow in ten hours, I would say, "Who told you
that," and back he would go to the Herr Station Director in a
red gown, and return to say that we would get there in twenty
hours. By this time I will match him against any newspaper
correspondent on earth. He flatters, lies, threatens and
bribes with a skill and assurance that is simply beautiful,
and his languages and his manners pull me out of holes from
which I could never have risen. With it all he is as modest
as can be, and says I am the greatest diplomat out of office,
which I really think he believes, but I am only using old
reporters' ways and applying the things other men did first.
My best stroke was to add to my cable to The
Journal,
"Recommend ample recognition of special facilities afforded by
telegraph official" — and then get him to read it himself under
the pretext of wishing to learn if my writing was legible. He
grinned all over himself, and said it was. After my first
story is gone I will give him 200 roubles for himself in an
envelope and say Journal wired me to do it. That will fix
him for the coronation story, as it amounts to six months'
wages about. But, my dear brother, in your sweet and lovely
home, where the sun shines on the Cascine and the workmen
sleep on the bridges, and dear old ladies knit in the streets,
that is only one of the thousand things we have had to do. It
would take years to give you an account of what we have done
and why we do it. It is like a game of whist and poker
combined and we bluff on two flimsy fours, and crawl the next
minute to a man that holds a measly two-spot. There is not a
wire we have not pulled, or a leg, either, and
we go dashing about all day in a bath-chair, with a driver in
a bell hat and a blue nightgown, leaving cards and writing
notes and giving drinks and having secretaries to lunch and
buying flowers for wives and cigar boxes for husbands, and
threatening the Minister with Cleveland's name.
John A. Logan, Jr., is coming dressed in a Russian
Uniform, and he wore it on the steamer, and says he is the
special guest of the Czar and the Secretary of the visiting
mission. Mrs. P. P. is paying $10,000 for a hotel for one
week. That is all the gossip there is. We lunched with the
McCooks today and enjoyed hearing American spoken, and they
were apparently very glad to have us, and made much of T. and
of me. We only hope they can help us; and I am telling the
General the only man to meet is Daschoff, and when he does I
will tell him to tell Daschoff I am the only man to be allowed
in the coronation. I wish I could tell you about the city,
but we see it only out of the corner of our eyes as we dash to
bureau after bureau and "excellency" and "royal highness"
people, and then dash off to strengthen other bridges and make
new friends. It is great fun, and I am very happy and T. is
having the time of his life. He told me he would rather be
with me on this trip than travel with the German Emperor, and
you will enjoy to hear that he wrote Sarah I was the most
"good-natured" man he ever met. God bless you all, and dear,
dear Florence. Lots of love.
