The Chief

by David Nasaw

  Though the tour was laid out in advance, Hearst was always changing the plans. In 1928, he extended their stay in Florence from three days to three weeks. Then, to reinvigorate Marion and others who had become exhausted by his art tours, he arranged for the party to drive directly from Florence to Venice for a fortnight at the Hotel Excelsior on the Lido. “After nearly four weeks’ continuous travel and sight-seeing,” Alice Head recalled, “the days on the beach at the Lido were a real refreshment. We had several cabanas and I greatly enjoyed the early morning bathing.... In Venice, all the shopkeepers and glass-blowing institutions seemed to be on the look-out for Mr. Hearst. He was the grandest shopper the world has ever known and on these holiday trips he turns himself into a kind of perpetual Santa Claus.”12

  Even Marion never got used to the Chief’s extravagances. “Once we were driving in France,” she recalled. “There were about twelve cars. W. R. had a chauffeur named Hall who got a little drunk that day over the wine at lunch. We were passing through a small out-of-the-way village near the coastline when he hit a goose. Mr. Hearst said [to the chauffeur], ‘You’re fired. But first take the goose and go back to the house and say that it was killed. Then I’ll drive.’” Though W. R., according to Marion, was a “wild driver,” he got them all safely to their next stop, Bordeaux, where, Marion later learned, he “arranged for that woman [whose goose had been killed] to have a new car, a Renault. He had it delivered to her with a goose inside.”13

  Wherever he traveled, Hearst was afforded the privileged treatment reserved for heads of state and given private audiences with national leaders. On this trip, he was invited to luncheon with the French foreign minister, Aristide Briand, at the Quai d’Orsay and he took Marion Davies with him. The French were, at the time, negotiating a bilateral treaty with the English under which England would be permitted to expand its navy and France its land forces. As the Americans were opposed to the expansion of the British navy and the Germans to the expansion of the French land forces, the exact nature of the treaty was kept secret.14

  Hearst was in contact with French politicians who were opposed to the pact because they feared it would exacerbate tensions with the Germans. They offered to secure a purloined copy for him, hoping that premature publication would scuttle the treaty. We don’t know how the document finally got to Hearst, but delivery may have taken place at the luncheon Briand gave. In her memoirs, Marion claimed that she stole the document—which she said was wrapped in a ribbon—from an open safe and gave it to Hearst. The story is hard to believe, although it is possible that Marion was somehow involved in the cloak-and-dagger handover of the stolen pact, and had tried to protect Hearst. In any event, two days after the luncheon with Briand, the secret Anglo-French pact was published, in full, in Hearst’s American papers.

  That same day, the Chief departed for England to avoid contact with the French police, who were investigating the theft of the document. Though his major correspondent in France was later arrested—as were the Frenchmen who had been instrumental in getting the document to him—the Chief was entirely at ease, delighted that he had not only broken a major story, but, in so doing, blocked the treaty from being signed. He had embarrassed the French and English officials who were engaging in precisely the sort of secret diplomacy that had played so large a part in precipitating the Great War.

  On his arrival in England, he contacted Miss Head as if nothing of importance had occurred in Paris. With her and Sir Charles Allom, his architect for St. Donat’s, he set off to Wales to visit his latest acquisition. It was, in many ways, the most spectacular of all his properties. St. Donat’s was a medieval fortress, built originally in the eleventh century, and then rebuilt, reinforced, and extended in succeeding centuries. The structure had an irregularly shaped interior courtyard which Alice Head thought “rather like an Oxford College.” Surrounding it were three-storied stone buildings, battlements, ramparts, parapets, guard towers, and an English gatehouse which served as the entrance to the entire complex. On the west, the castle overlooked a deep ravine; on the south a succession of enclosed terraced gardens led down to the shore of the Bristol Channel.15

  Hearst, who had bought St. Donat’s two years before and not yet seen it, was delighted with the exterior, but recognized at once that the interior would have to be entirely redone. The 135 rooms were small, dark, and airless; the bedrooms opened onto one another; and there were very few bathrooms. Sir Charles Allom, who been knighted for his redecoration of Buckingham Palace, took Hearst on a tour of the buildings. Hearst was able to stay only a night before departing again for London, but left, nonetheless, “with a complete mental picture. He was able,” Alice Head recalled, on the basis of this short visit, to “instruct Sir Charles from California, to make comments and suggestions on the blue-prints that we submitted, and apparently he carried in his memory a perfect picture of the lay-out of the interior which I was not able to do until after a good many visits.” On his return to the States, he dictated a twenty-five-page letter to Allom detailing precisely what he wanted done.

  The tiny castle rooms in the North Court were, as he instructed, combined into “eight good bedrooms, each with a magnificent marble bathroom.” A “princely banqueting hall” was constructed “with an armoury over it and a very beautiful bedroom suite with private sitting-room, over the armoury.” When the interior had reached a state of reasonable repair, work began on the exterior. He built two tennis courts, a croquet court, and a 150-by-50-foot pool, fed by filtered sea water and adjoined by a “picturesque old cottage [with] dressing-rooms and ... bathrooms with cold showers.”

  To furnish and decorate St. Donat’s, Hearst dispatched scouts across the British Isles to find stone fireplaces, screens, and carved ceilings. According to Clive Aslet, author of The Last Country Houses, “Hearst’s greatest quarry was Bradenstoke Priory, in Wiltshire. In 1929, the medieval tithe barn was taken down stone by stone amid great secrecy; the workmen did not even know who was employing them.” When it was discovered that it was Hearst who had bought, dismantled, and removed the structure, “questions were asked in Parliament as to whether an American millionaire could be allowed to jumble the national heritage in this way. The SPAB [Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings] was outraged. It went to the unprecedented lengths of putting up posters in underground stations showing before and after photographs.”

  Alice Head and Sir Charles found themselves in the position of having to defend the Chief. Sir Charles argued that Hearst was not destroying but rescuing structures that would otherwise have been allowed to rot, unaware perhaps of the European treasures that were already rotting away in Hearst’s warehouses. This may, unhappily, have been the fate of the Bradenstoke Priory. Though it was removed from its original setting and transported to St. Donat’s, it was never incorporated into the building. It was eventually dismantled and shipped, stone by stone, to San Simeon where it remained in unpacked crates until in 1960, it was sold to Alex Madonna, the owner of the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo.16

  On his return to the United States in October of 1928, Hearst admitted to the reporters who greeted him that he was “inclined to favor Mr. Hoover” in the upcoming presidential election. Adopting, for the moment, a statesmanlike, nonpartisan pose, he added that he held nothing against Mr. Smith, but simply believed that Hoover would be “better for the country.”17

  Herbert Hoover was elected in November and took office in March of 1929. As president, he continued to court Hearst’s support as assiduously as he had as a candidate. In September, Hoover invited Arthur Brisbane for “a long talk” and informed him that he had given “the Income Tax department” instructions that “will be extremely useful to [the Hearst] organization.” Brisbane reported to Hearst that the president was also “very much interested in the matter about which you sent me word, adding the California Peninsula to the United States, the part now belonging to Mexico. He told me confidentially, of course, that the pride of the Mexicans would prevent them selling the
land, but they might exchange it for territory. His idea was that we might be able to buy British Honduras from the British, give that to the Mexicans, plus a little money and get back in return that strip 1,000 miles long on the Pacific, enabling us to control the bay inside.” Although Hoover had no intention of following through on Hearst’s preposterous suggestion that the United States annex Mexican territory, he was not prepared to dismiss it out of hand, for fear of angering the publisher.18

  It was too late. In his inaugural address, Hoover had urged American participation in the World Court, which Hearst was prepared to oppose with every weapon in his arsenal. In December of 1929, the Chief wrote a “letter of instructions” to all his publishers, directing them to “support the various movements against the League Court, and the various organizations back of the movements throughout the country [and] to make the League Court an issue in the coming senatorial primaries and elections, and to support candidates, Republicans or Democrats, who are opposed to our entrance into the League Court....In every case do whatever is most effective from the viewpoint of the cause; and let us try earnestly to accomplish results.... We do not want to make this merely a newspaper promotion campaign. It is a sincerely patriotic endeavor to prevent our country from making a mistake which may be disastrous.”19

  Hearst led the crusade against the World Court from San Simeon, marshaling all the forces he controlled, including radio. “Most important medium in your campaign against World Court is the radio,” he wrote John A. Kennedy, the publishing executive in New York he had placed in charge of the project. “We should take every opportunity to use radio and we should take advantage of interest in senatorial campaign throughout country to have important national figures like Senator Johnson and Senator Borah speak on radio against World Court. Furthermore when Mrs. McCormick [Congresswoman Ruth McCormick, the sister-in-law of the Chicago Tribune publisher] speaks on World Court her speech should be broadcasted all over the nation.”20

  Hearst’s political weapons were too many and too widely deployed for Hoover. By 1930, he owned twenty-six daily newspapers in eighteen American cities. His Sunday papers accounted for more than 20 percent of the total national circulation. There is no way of even estimating how many Americans saw his newsreels or listened to the radio programs or radio stations sponsored by his newspapers. With Hylan no longer the mayor, Hearst had lost control of local politics in New York City, but he was every bit as powerful as he had ever been in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, and congressional districts where his daily newspapers were read.

  Recognizing that Hearst was going to fight the World Court to the end, Hoover surrendered. As Secretary of State Henry Stimson wrote in his private diary, the president explained to him that “the protocol had no hope whatever. Every congressman living in a district where there was a Hearst paper was sure to be against it.”21

  In June of 1930, Hearst and Marion docked at Southampton on the first leg of their annual summer tour of England. After a few days at the Savoy in London and a weekend of shopping, the Hearst party motored to St. Donat’s, where they spent almost a month and celebrated the Fourth of July with an elaborate fireworks display. They then crossed the Channel, stayed a few days at the Hotel Crillon in Paris, motored to Bad Nauheim so that Hearst could take the cure, and from there to Munich where Hearst gave an interview to the Frankfurter Zeitung and attacked the Treaty of Ver-sailles for subjecting the Teutonic peoples to the domination of non-German European powers, including France. After attending a performance of the Passion Play at Oberammergau, Hearst and his party motored to Lucerne and Interlaken, and then returned to the Hotel Crillon in Paris.22

  No sooner had they checked into the hotel then two officials of the French Sûreté Générale approached Hearst in the lobby and served him with an order of expulsion for his role the year before in obtaining and publishing a secret government treaty. Edmond Coblentz, who was with him in Paris, later recalled Hearst’s response:

  Immediately after receiving it Mr. Hearst asked me to ride with him in his automobile. There was silence for a moment while he sat strumming his fingers on his knees, a characteristic gesture when he was deep in thought. Then he said to me quietly: “The French government has ordered me to leave France.”

  “What a foolish thing for them to do,” I commented.

  “It was silly,” he replied. “I am not remaining here. I am leaving this afternoon.”

  I accompanied him to the Gare du Nord, where, seemingly unperturbed, he walked up and down the platform munching peaches. I waited, and when the train pulled out, I glimpsed him seated in his compartment writing in longhand.23

  Hearst left Marion behind in Paris with her sisters and Maury Paul so that she could complete her fittings for the twelve thousand dollars worth of clothes she had ordered. From London, he triumphantly cabled a frontpage editorial to New York, reporting firsthand on his expulsion from France:

  I have no complaint to make. The officials were extremely polite. They said I was an enemy of France and a danger in their midst. They made me feel quite important. They said I could stay in France a little while longer, if I desired, that they would take a chance on nothing disastrous happening to the Republic. But I told them that I did not want to take the responsibility of endangering the great French nation; that America had saved it once during the war, and I would save it again by leaving.24

  Before sailing for New York with Hearst and the rest of the party, Joe Willicombe cabled Victor Watson, managing editor of the New York American, that the Chief was “dead set against any public demonstration in connection with his home-coming. He has sent radio messages to various organizations, the American Legion, the Disabled Veterans, earnestly urging that there be no public incident attendant upon his home-coming.” The message, of course, was interpreted as meaning the exact opposite, and with Hearst’s New York newspapers coordinating the event, a huge demonstration of support was organized for their conquering hero. Hearst’s liner, the Europa, was met at the quarantine station by the steamboat Hook Mountain with a reception committee and band under the auspices of the Disabled American War Veterans, the New York Times reported on September 16,1930: “The disabled veterans, many on crutches, wearing their old khaki uniforms and waving flags ... cheered the publisher when he came on board.” In addition to the veterans, Mr. Hearst was welcomed by a delegation headed by Senator Robert F. Wagner and several congressmen.25

  Hearst was in his element now. After several press releases and a nationwide radio broadcast carried by short wave to Europe, he embarked on a cross-country lecture tour to give his personal account of his expulsion—and the dangers of American involvement in European affairs. It was like old times again, except that he was no longer a candidate. In Boston, he was greeted by Mayor Curley; in Chicago, he spoke before a crowd of 100,000 at Soldier’s Field; in San Francisco, he was met by the mayor and honored at the St. Francis Hotel, where he gave a radio address over the NBC network. Everywhere he went, he gathered headlines. His own newspapers treated him like royalty, with entire pages devoted to his comings and goings and verbatim accounts of his speeches. In St. Louis, it was reported that “Hearst for President—100% American—No Foreign Entanglements—Independent in Everything—Temperance, not Prohibition” buttons had begun to appear everywhere.26

  During his tour, bathed in glory and publicity, the Chief sounded only one sour note, complaining loudly in print and on the radio that he had not been suitably protected from the French by “our paid servants at Washington....I still think if Theodore Roosevelt had been alive, or if Grover Cleveland had been alive, you would have heard ... much about the value and validity and inviolability of the American passport, and of due and necessary respect for the rights and liberties of the American citizen.”27

  The facts were, as Secretary of State Stimson reported to Hoover, that the U.S. had not done anything to protect Hearst because the publisher had never asked for assistance. Furthermore, in expelling Hearst, France h
ad been “entirely within her rights, and was following out well-understood international customs and that we, ourselves, had been perhaps the most extreme of all nations in excluding people for no other reason than we did not like them.”

  The entire incident and the way Hearst had capitalized on it to criticize the president, Stimson recalled in his diary, had made Hoover sore and doubtful:

  He despised Hearst but he did not want to evidently have any trouble with him. I told him that in my opinion, so long as we did not take any official action, he could do what he pleased in regard to inviting Hearst to lunch, which was his suggestion. He said that he was not going to give anything formal, but that he had already had Hearst here at the beginning of his administration and that he might have him again here privately. I said that, in my opinion, he, the President, was entitled to make things as easy for himself as possible, and that if this would make things any easier with Hearst, as long as it was not official action ... he could do what he pleased.28

  The invitation was issued and accepted, but it did little to remove the distrust between the president and the publisher. On the contrary, Hoover’s reluctance to publicly protest Hearst’s expulsion confirmed the publisher’s fears that the president remained an unreconstructed Wilsonian internationalist.

  The Hearst victory tour ended in mid-October in Oakland, California. “Now,” he told his audience at the conclusion of his speech, “I am going to board a train and go down to my ranch and find my little hide-away on my little hilltop at San Simeon, and look down on the blue sea, and up at the blue sky, and bask in the glorious sunshine of the greatest State of the greatest nation in the whole world.” There followed a month of silence, at the end of which Hearst, on December 1, 1930, ended all speculation about his future by publishing an open letter to F. Champion, Jr., the man who claimed to have started the “Hearst for President” boom, graciously asking him to stop circulating the Hearst campaign buttons: “I have had my day in politics. It was not a very long day, nor a very brilliant one, but it was sufficient to convince me that my best opportunity for achievement was in supporting principles and policies and not in holding public office.”29