The Kingdom and the Power (68 page)

At first he planned to begin the book in the form of an open letter to his younger daughter, Janet, not yet one year old. Many years from now she might like to know about the ridiculous fuss made over this episode—but on second thought, Corry did not really want to get his daughter involved, did not want to begin the book “Dear Janet.” It was an invasion of her privacy, he thought, and as he thought this he was amused. Yes, here I am, part of possibly the biggest invasion of privacy of all time; I am taking advantage of it, making money off Jacqueline Kennedy, parlaying Manchester’s misery into a book of my own; but when
my
privacy is concerned, or that of my daughter, I behave as badly as the others. I am no better, Corry conceded: but who said I was better? he asked. So he tore up his first page, put another piece of paper into his typewriter, and began his book again.

John Corry’s book,
The Manchester Affair
, would not become the big best seller that Manchester’s own book was destined to be, but Corry would receive respectful reviews, would make some money, and would derive professional satisfaction from seeing his work between hard covers. After finishing the manuscript, Corry thought that he had gotten the whole journalistic nightmare out of his system, and he returned to
The Times
. But the thought of resuming his career in the Philadelphia bureau filled him with gloom. He also discovered that he was no longer enthusiastic about newspaper reporting. He seemed stricken with inertia, confusion, conflicting values. He did not know precisely what was wrong; he merely felt that he was changed from what he had been.

He confessed this sense of confusion to Sitton, and Sitton was very concerned. Soon Corry was in Clifton Daniel’s office, seated across the desk from the managing editor, and Daniel also seemed troubled and sympathetic.

“What would you like to do on
The New York Times
?” Daniel asked, as if Corry had his pick of any job.

“Well,” Corry said, thinking about it, “nothing, really.”

“What does that mean?” Daniel asked.

“Well,” Corry said, “I … I can go back to the copydesk.”

Daniel looked at him, curiously. Then Daniel, trying to relate to Corry, recalled his own despondency during his assignment in Russia in 1954, his last tour as a foreign correspondent before returning home and meeting Margaret Truman; Daniel remembered his loneliness as a forty-year-old bachelor in Moscow, how fatigued he had become from overwork, how ill he had been from an ulcer … and Daniel wondered if Corry might also be physically ill. Before Corry could reply, Daniel was saying that he wanted Corry to go up to the thirteenth floor and visit
The Times’
Dr. Goldstein—Daniel himself picked up the phone, making the appointment. Corry, thanking Daniel, left the office and took the elevator to the medical department. Dr. Goldstein was waiting for him, smiling, reassuring, saying to Corry, “I’d like you to meet our Dr. Hess.”

“Who?” Corry asked.

“He’ll talk to you,” Dr. Goldstein said, guiding Corry softly
toward another office, and it suddenly occurred to Corry that Dr. Hess must be
The Times’
psychiatrist.

“Is Dr. Hess a
psychiatrist?
” Corry asked, in a voice rising with suspicion, but Dr. Goldstein seemed not to hear the question—he merely said, comfortingly, “Dr. Hess is a wonderful man … some of our top executives see Dr. Hess.…”

After seeing Dr. Hess, John Corry was apparently discovered to be in working order. He returned to the newsroom, but he felt no better than before. He continued to resist the Philadelphia bureau, and it was eventually agreed that he could remain in New York, working once again as a deskman. For the next several months Corry worked quietly in the newsroom, writing on rare occasions—one notable exception being a long profile on Cardinal Spellman for
Harper’s
magazine. Then one day, John Corry’s feeling of indecisiveness left him as inexplicably as it had come—suddenly he wanted to write long pieces of more depth and emotion than he thought was permissible on a newspaper. When he received a contract to write for
Harper’s
, Corry thought that this might be the challenge and the change that he had been seeking; and so deciding to find out, he summoned the courage and he resigned from
The Times
.

A
s the
Times’
managing editor, Clifton Daniel is often invited to deliver speeches around the nation, and whenever his schedule permits, he accepts with pleasure—he enjoys appearing at banquets as a featured guest, likes traveling first-class by jet, is soothed by the tidiness of terminals, the well-dressed people, the muted sounds of women’s heels and soft music; he relishes the two drinks before dinner served by winsome stewardesses who appeal to him not only because of their good grooming and precise tailoring, their pleasant smiles and desire to please, but also because of their almost ritualistic movements as they bend to serve, so graceful and controlled. They are America’s geisha girls, he once thought, flying back to New York after a speech in the Midwest, and then he remembered, almost wistfully, that he had never known an airline stewardess. A few of them had once lived above his apartment in London years ago, and he used to hear them at night, but he had never gotten to know them.

The speeches that Daniel makes around the country, usually concerning the role of a free press, are intoned in his style of cool elegance, and are followed by questions from the audience. People are very curious about
The Times
, and many of them get from hearing and seeing Daniel a confirmation of their own ideas about the paper, its calm posture and pride in appearance, the respect for its tradition and the certainty of its virtue. They get from Daniel
the image the institution has of itself, which is not necessarily all the reality beneath the surface. For there are other sides to
The Times
, other speeches made by
Times
men gathered at a Forty-third Street bar, or
Times
men talking to themselves in bed at night that reveal the frustration in working for a place so large, so solvent and sure—a fact factory where the workers realize the too-apparent truth: they are replaceable. The paper can get along without any of them. The executives like to deny it, and nobody likes to talk about it, but it is true. And this truth evokes both sadness and bitterness in many who deeply love the paper, who have romanticized and personalized it, thought of it as some great gray goddess with whom they were having an affair—forgetting that no matter who they are, nor how well they have performed, they will soon be too old for her. She is ageless and they must yield to newer, younger men.

Sometimes they are replaced as casually as light bulbs in a great movie marquee—changed automatically, though luminous as ever, once they reach a certain age; and this act was not going unnoticed by
Times
men still on the scene. During the mid-Sixties they lamented the automatic retirement, while still in fine health, of Brooks Atkinson, the theater critic, and William L. (“Atomic Bill”) Laurence, the science writer; and the baseball writer, John Drebinger, who at his farewell party announced, trying to seem cheerful after a few drinks, “Well, if I’d known retirement was so great, I’d have done it long ago,” to which an executive responded, coolly, “Well, then, why did you give us so much trouble, John?”

Automation, together with the process of depersonalization, was a complex problem shared by big businesses around the nation, and yet at
The Times
there was a lingering notion that
The Times
was not a business, but a calling, and expressions of mockery greeted the half-dozen machines that were rolled into the newsroom before election night to do what the late Leo Egan and Jim Hagerty, Sr., used to do so well, predict the outcome; and there was contempt among the workers in the composing room for the technological gadgets that did everything better than men—except strike. There was irreverence in the newsroom for those items promoting communication without contact—the memos, the silver microphone; and there was perhaps also a realization among the top executives that
The New York Times
, which had long taken pride in being “in touch,” had now become so large that it did not really know what was going on under its own roof. Thus it was that Punch
Sulzberger, reaffirming his faith in new techniques while striving to preserve something of the old
Times
spirit, announced that a team of trained psychologists would be engaged by
The Times
to interview a “scientifically selected random sample” of
Times
employees in an effort “to determine how, in this large and varied organization, it can establish greater rapport with the men and women who work for it.”

This move was considered absurd by some editors, while others, including Clifton Daniel, wondered what impact the employees’ complaints against such men as himself might have with the publisher. Daniel did not know exactly where he stood with Punch Sulzberger, or, for that matter, with the Sulzberger family. Daniel had been
Catledge’s
choice as the managing editor during the great shuffle in 1964, following Dryfoos’ untimely death. Sulzberger had endorsed Catledge’s nomination of Daniel as the managing editor, but Sulzberger’s concurrence did not necessarily signify personal approval of Daniel—nor was Daniel’s formal British manner likely to charm the informal young publisher, it being in fact reminiscent of the stiff Tory tutors who had once horrified Sulzberger as a schoolboy at St. Bernard’s. Further, there was the personality of Daniel’s wife. Ten years of marriage, the birth of four children, and her husband’s position on
The Times
had in no way diminished Margaret Truman Daniel’s singular concept of herself as an American princess, and she was not the sort who would ever indulge in small corporate games as a
Times
man’s wife—paying court to the Sulzbergers, ingratiating herself with Ochsian heiresses, or tempering her strong opinions when in the company of those gently spoken women. Daniel, to be sure, was a model of correctness with everyone—with his employers as with his wife. He had sought to impress Iphigene Sulzberger with his attentiveness and courtesy, and hoped that he had. Recently he had begun a speech with her favorite anecdote about
The Times
being the product of “cathedral builders, not stonecutters.” But Daniel could not really know what the family thought of him privately, having never gotten close enough socially to perceive his status, and he had so far been unable to establish a direct working relationship with the publisher because Catledge was in the way. This was no doubt the most unfortunate aspect of Daniel’s managing-editorship—his benefactor, Catledge, after vacating the managing editor’s office, had not retired or severed his connections with the News department. Instead, while occupying a new third-floor office unseen from the newsroom,
and acquiring the vague new title of “executive editor,” Catledge had proceeded to pull the strings from behind Clifton Daniel. Catledge could do this because he—and he alone—had the friendship, the confidence, and the ear of the young publisher. In addition, Catledge’s and Sulzberger’s wives had become fast friends, and the couples had solidified their relationship by spending weekends together out of the city, and by taking trips together to Europe.

There were times when Daniel felt that Catledge was sufficiently satisfied with the way things were going, or was sufficiently uninterested, to allow Daniel free rein. During such periods Daniel felt a pleasant identity with the photographs of the men on the wall—Van Anda and Birchall, James and Catledge. He felt confidence in himself as an executive, satisfaction in the reporters or critics whom he had hired, reassurance in the style in which
The Times
was covering the world. While Daniel often gave the impression of vaingloriousness and was unquestionably proud of his title, he also saw himself as an instrument of the institution, a good soldier, a loyal subject, and there was not a man in the building who was less likely to betray a corporate secret than Clifton Daniel. Catledge had recognized this quality of organizational loyalty in Daniel many years ago. He had seen it in Daniel’s performance as the number two man in the London bureau, had observed it at closer range during the years that Daniel had been a subordinate editor in the newsroom, after his return from Moscow, and in 1964 it had influenced Catledge’s nomination of Daniel as his successor—although the promotion was of questionable significance as long as Catledge continued to hover in the background. Ostensibly, Catledge’s presence was essential to
The Times
during this transitional period caused by Dryfoos’ death—the inexperienced Sulzberger preferred an old trusted adviser like Catledge to be close at hand—but Daniel did not know how long the sixty-five-year-old Catledge would remain, nor what would happen after Catledge had retired. Perhaps the title of “excutive editor” would be retired with him and “managing editor” would again be preeminent on the third floor. Or perhaps Daniel would become the executive editor. Or there was always the grim possibility that another individual closer to Sulzberger would be moved in over Daniel. Daniel could only hope that this would not happen. During his twenty-two years on
The Times
, Daniel had played by the rules, had never stepped out of line or gone over Catledge’s head. He had sulked on occasion, as in 1953 when hearing that Drew
Middleton had been appointed the London bureau chief instead of himself, but Daniel had submitted finally to the wishes of
The Times
. He had conceded that
The Times’
purpose was more important than an individual’s preference—he liked to think of
The Times
as functioning somewhat along the lines of the English monarchy: despite its variety of weak or great rulers, the monarchy had perpetuated itself from century to century, maintaining its formality and tradition and its predictable line of succession.