“How can you understand it?” he shouted at me.
However, I insisted on my rights, and nobody could have been more helpful when he considered a thing an obligation of his official position. To the end Mr. Perry’s chief satisfaction came when he caught me slipping. “That’s what comes from allowing a woman to write history,” he would say jubilantly.
Between us we brought together a grist of Dana’s dispatches and reports. I crammed on the campaigns, and by appointment appeared at the end of Mr. Dana’s day, about four o’clock in the afternoon, for my first interview.
His desk was stripped of everything that pertained to the newspaper, but held a row of the latest books, not only in English but in three or four other languages, as well as a copy of the _Cosmopolis_, an ambitious and rather pretentious review in three or four languages issued for a short time in the late nineties.
Mr. Dana had already repented of his promise to Mr. McClure. “I am not interested in what I did in the past,” he said irritably. “I am interested only in the present; I am trying to keep up with the world of today. I am studying Russian now—a very fascinating language. I don’t want to bother with what I did in the Civil War. What do you propose?”
What I proposed was that he let me come to him with a stenographer and a set of prepared questions, say three times a week. He agreed, and for a good many weeks of the winter of ’96 and ’97 I went regularly to the _Sun_ office after the paper was put to press. By the summer of 1897 I had my manuscript well in shape. Mr. Dana had never seen any of it. “Send me the proofs, I’ll read them.”
Publication was to begin in November of 1897. Mr. Dana went to London for the summer. I sent the proof of the first chapter over with a good many qualms, for it was all in the first person—“I” and “We.” It came back with only a few verbal corrections—no comments. He was never to read more of his Recollections. The number of the magazine which carried the first chapter carried the notice of his death.
We published the entire story, and later the articles were put into a book, but with no credit to the ghost!
Taking it all in all it was the most impersonal job I ever had. I do not remember that Mr. Dana ever volunteered a word in all the many interviews I had with him except on the subject in hand, and that in answer to my questions. We never talked of the things which I knew he loved—pictures, orchids, poetry. It was a businesslike operation from start to finish. Probably it was his way of punishing me for being afraid of him.