Page:The New Yorker 0003, 1925-03-07.pdf/10

copyreaders who had not yet succeeded in sneaking out not close an eye but just stayed on at the office to to dinner, there was no visible intention to roll up organize the day staff for the covering of the story. sleeves and pitch in. But they had no choice when Even within the walls of that office, however, he they saw the frail but tireless V.A. undertaking, un- has never been especially well known. Reporters have aided and contentedly, the job of carrying the huge worked on the paper for years and left it under the desks into position. It was an exhausted and perspir- impression that V.A. was a glacial autecrat. ing staff that got out the Times that night. "He never speaks to me on the street," is the most Many a time have fires broken out and men slain familiar complaint. "He never seems to notice any- their sweethearts and ships gone to the bottom at the one. unseemly hour of two or three in the morning in the Yet one would expect their intuition to tell them vain delusion that, with the managing editors safe in the difference between haughtiness and abstraction. hed, they might hope for a little fleeting privacy. But One would expect their own easy glimpses of his hob- Van Anda has had a genius for not being in bed on bies to tell them that when he is wasting time by walk- such occasions. They have always found him in his ing to the office, his mind is probably busy with what- office, wide awake-sometimes the only person in that ever entertainment his passion of the moment may office who was wide awake. have invented for such intervals. Thus when the burning of the State Capitol in Al- The memory of how nobly V.A. bore up when one bany came at three in the morning to disturb the calm of the reporters kept going to sleep on his shoulder at of a bridge game in the Times office, it was V.A. who the farewell breakfast to w. Orton Tewson long goaded the yawning reporters into an adequate interest ago; and his decent good humor on the night when in the event, herding some into the "morgue” to ex- Harry Horgan was so eloquent on the subject of being hume fascinating facts about the threatened building sent around the world that he pulled a bookcase down and standing back of Endicott Rich while Rich's on V.A.'s head and then himself fell on top of him; lightning fingers tapped out an invented dispatch from and the obvious fact that it takes V.A. months to make Albany, based on two facts whispered over the tele- up his mind to fire even the most flagrant offender-- phone and a hundred guesses out these things, one might think, of his own ancient experience with would long since have dissipated fires. the legend of his Arctic nature. And V.A., standing behind him Yet it has taken root all the more as Rich graphically described the firmly even within the Times of - filling of the rotunda with smoke fice because he is the kind of and the mushrooming of the executive who leaves his men fames at the third story, may have alone unless he does not like their ventured to ask guilelessly: "How work. did you know that?” But he Thus correspondents have would not waste time on discipline worked for years in distant cities or his own precious dignity when without ever a word from him Rich, without his incredibly swift and one department head on his fingers halting for an instant, own floor, chafing because V.A. threw over his shoulder some such had never betrayed the slightest reply as "Any God damned fool interest in that department, re- would know that!” sorted to the ignoble device of Then when the Titanic went keeping a fresh box of chocolates down, it was Van Anda who on his desk, feeling sure that be- picked the rumor out of the mid- fore lung V.A. would drift in night air and emptied the reluc- asking plaintively: "Got any tant city desk of its morning chocolates?” For he has a "nose" bridge game as the temple was for chocolates as well as news. emptied of the money-changers, And now, of course, because so driving the suiky staff into ac- the doctors have ordered this long tion that the Times's third edi- vacation, there is a hardy rumor tion had an illustrated account of that it is a bored and weary man the disaster commensurate with its who is letting the reins slip from gravity and its eventfulness. Yet his hands, whereas, it may be the morning Sun that day ran the doubted whether in all the Times story only as a comically implausi- Annex to-day there is quite so ble little rumor which might fur- much lively curiosity and appetite nish the sophisticated with an amused smile for break- for life as there is in the one man who has gone West fast. to take a look at California. The late William C. Reick, who owned the Sun in Why, that perennial cub postponed his trip for two those days, took a long, long walk in Central Park weeks because he wanted to see the eclipse. that morning to induce enough calm within his bosom If he has gone now, it is because he does not feel to permit his discussing the episode with his staff with- any too well. And if he has seldom gone before it is out apoplexy. But Van Anda, who had prevented his because he thinks the world affords no form of diver- own staff from doing the selfsame thing, was entitled sion half so entertaining as getting out a newspaper, to sleep the sleep of the just. Instead, he probably did And he's just about right at that.