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From under my Hat
from the live oaks on a moonlight night, you see what looks like a celestial ballet in dress rehearsal.
The soil is so rich Bernie boasts that you could throw a seed on the ground and next day have a plant a foot tall. All kinds of wild animals roam the estate at will. Even crocodiles inhabit the swamps.
The nearest telephone is twenty-five miles away. Even when Franklin Roosevelt spent a month at Hobcaw, no telephone was allowed in the house.
Bernie takes his sunning on a folding chair in the garden. His wisdom is born of the good earth. At Hobcaw he gets relaxation and a renewal of the spirit.
It's no wonder that he was overcome by San Simeon. When I showed him around the Hearst place, he kept saying in an awed voice, "Why, Hedda, he's a blooming nabob. Nobody but a nabob ever lived like this. What would any man want with all these possessions?"
One day I asked Mr. Hearst that question. "I buy things so I can enjoy them. And my friends enjoy them too," he answered.
Many people have that sense of acquisitive possession. W. R. Hearst was the only man I ever knew who was able to indulge it to the hilt. He knew the worth of every treasure before it was put up at auction, and had buyers stationed all over Europe. Many mornings his secretary, Colonel Joe Willicomb, would bring down an order from the bedchamber and get his man on long-distance in England, Spain, or South America. "The governor's bid on such and such a priceless thingumbob is so much," he would say, naming an astronomical figure. And he always got it.
That included a priceless Vandyke painting. I'd heard a story about how Mr. Hearst got the canvas and asked him about it.
"That's a secret," he answered.
"Check me if I'm wrong," I said. "For ten years Lord Duveen longed for this particular Vandyke and finally bought it. Then he brought a famous architect— Sir Charles Allom, who had been knighted by King George V— from England to design a special room around it.
"They were building it when you called on Duveen in New York.
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