Pulitzer

by James McGrath Morris

  The house’s proximity to the World also permitted Pulitzer’s managers and editors to pester him with their business and editorial plans. It was a curse he had brought on himself by refusing to renounce power and turn decision making over to Ralph. Foremost on Seitz’s mind was moving ahead with a plan to purchase a paper mill so as to wean the World from the paper trusts, which were increasing their prices by a rate 30 to 40 percent a year. Pulitzer said he almost fainted when he heard that Ralph was going to leave on vacation without concluding the deal. The time spent with Joe, who came to visit, was no better. Joseph now wanted his son to be in New York and said he had consented to let him remain in St. Louis up till now only because of his wife’s family. The conversation ended when Joseph said that returning to New York was against his wishes.

  If his employees and his children were not making demands on him, the politicians were. The reform-minded mayor William J. Gaynor, who had just survived an assassination attempt captured in an iconic photograph in the World, told Pulitzer he was frustrated with the paper. After supporting his election, Gaynor claimed, it was now siding with Hearst in attacking him on a proposal for building a subway. “You can hear it everywhere that the World that used to be a great power is now merely an echo of Hearst. Whatever Hearst wants or stands for, the World trails along afterwards as meekly as if it had no principles,” Gaynor said. “The World has done more to promote the political schemes of Hearst than all his own newspapers. Without the World, Hearst would not amount to anything.”

  In his twenty-eight years at the helm of the nation’s most important newspaper, Pulitzer had built up immunity to the complaints of his allies and to vilification by enemies. His attitude toward his greatest public opponents, William Randolph Hearst, William Jennings Bryan, and Theodore Roosevelt—unlike his attitude toward his family—was open-minded and uncommonly charitable.

  Roosevelt never let up on his attacks on Pulitzer after losing his court battles. In fact, in a letter to a British friend that summer, Roosevelt compared Pulitzer to Charles Dickens’s Jefferson Brick. Pulitzer, on the other hand, told Cobb that it was time to give Roosevelt his due. “Personally,” Pulitzer said, “I believe that the Panama work is a monumental achievement and that the paper must give Roosevelt the credit for the work and we must draw the biggest kind of line between that phase and the mere incident of his personal attack upon the paper on account of charges it made of corruption specifically and personally which it certainly could not substantiate—never did and never will.”

  Of the three men, only Hearst noticed this generous trait in Pulitzer. Though the two had spent years in a competitive struggle that could have ended with one destroying the other, Pulitzer had always restrained his staff’s spitefulness and had urged his editorial writers to recognize Hearst’s strength. In October, when the World published a complimentary article about Hearst, its longtime competitor assumed that the idea had been Pulitzer’s and sent his thanks.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  SOFTLY, VERY SOFTLY

  On October 18, 1911, the Liberty pulled up anchor and sailed from New York. On board were Pulitzer; Herbert and his tutor and nanny; five secretaries; and Pulitzer’s English valet Jabez Dunningham, who had been with him since 1896. They were bound for Jekyll Island but got only as far as Charleston, where the captain anchored the yacht to wait until the course of a West Indian hurricane became clearer. Aside from a bad cold, which had confined him to his home while he was in New York, Pulitzer’s health was as it always had been—a source of endless complaints but not so many as to cause alarm among his companions, or in his new traveling physician.

  On the second day in the harbor, Pulitzer complained of severe stomach pains. Since his physician was untested, the staff called Dr. Robert Wilson Jr., a prominent doctor in Charleston. After diagnosing the problem as severe indigestion, he gave Pulitzer a dose of Veronal. Pulitzer rallied and was well enough several days later to lunch on board with Robert Lathan, the editor of the Charleston News & Courier. The two men buoyantly shared their predictions for a Democratic victory in 1912. “I had never seen J.P. in a more genial mood or in higher spirits,” Alleyne Ireland noted.

  The following day, however, Pulitzer felt ill again and remained below deck all day and night. In the morning, Thwaites sent a telegram to Kate in New York. Over the years, she had received dozens of similarly alarming messages, many of which she had wisely chosen to ignore. In this case, however, she ordered a private railcar. By four o’clock that afternoon, she was on her way south.

  At about three in the morning, as Kate’s train entered the Carolinas, Joseph woke up. He asked Dunningham to send for Ireland. Rapidly putting on a dressing gown, Ireland grabbed a dozen books and headed to Pulitzer’s cabin. “He was evidently suffering a good deal of pain,” Ireland noted, “for he turned from side to side, and once or twice got out of bed and sat in an easy chair.”

  Ireland tried reading from several of the books he brought. He had little success engaging Pulitzer until he happened upon the historian Macaulay’s essay on Hallam’s Constitutional History, written when Macaulay was very young. “I read steadily until about five o’clock,” Ireland said, “and J.P. listened attentively, interrupting me from time to time with a direction to go back and read over a passage.” Around five-thirty Pulitzer began to suffer again. The ship’s doctor as well as Dr. Wilson was summoned. Wilson gave Pulitzer Veronal, the sedative he had been taking for six months. Resting more comfortably, Pulitzer dismissed Ireland as the sun began to rise. “You’d better go and get some sleep,” Pulitzer said, “we will finish that this afternoon.”

  Pulitzer’s German reader and pianist Friedrich Mann took over for Ireland. He read from Christopher Hare’s The Life of Louis XI. By midmorning, Mann reached the chapter portraying the death of the French king. Louis XI was sixty-three and had ruled for twenty-three years. Pulitzer was sixty-four and had ruled the World for twenty-eight years. As had been his habit, Pulitzer quietly murmured, when the reading began to help him doze off. “Leise, ganz leise,” he said. “Softly, very softly.”

  At one o’clock, Pulitzer awoke with a sharp pain in his chest and then fainted. Several minutes later, Kate arrived. She entered the cabin with Herbert. For about twenty minutes, they remained at the bedside as her husband of thirty-three years drew his last breaths.

  The following day, a coffin of silver-mounted Spanish cedar containing Joseph’s body was brought to the Charleston train station and placed in a railcar lined with mourning cloth. Kate, Herbert, and four of Joseph’s men boarded a second private car, the one Kate had ridden from New York. The train pulled out at four-thirty in the afternoon for the overnight ride to New York. Joe and Ralph came from St. Louis and New York, respectively, to meet the train on its route north. Constance, who was living in Colorado Springs, and Edith, who was in France, both made hurried plans to go to New York.

  When the train reached the city at five past two on the afternoon of October 31, 1911, flags at the World, as well as at the Tribune and other newspapers, were flying at half-mast. Pulitzer’s death was on the front page of almost every newspaper in the land. The obituaries uniformly focused on Pulitzer’s achievement in making the World a dominant newspaper, on his innovations in journalism, and on his financial success. It would have disappointed the subject of the stories. “I hate the idea of passing away known only as the proprietor of the paper,” Pulitzer wrote a few months before his death. “Not property but politics was my passion, and not politics even in a general, selfish sense, but politics in the sense of liberty and freedom and ideals of justice.” His rival Hearst understood. “In his conception, the newspaper was not merely a money-making machine,” Hearst told his readers. “It was the instrument of the will and power of its hundreds of thousands of readers, the fulcrum upon which that power could be exerted in the accomplishment of broad and beneficial results.”

  Pulitzer’s death was publicly attributed to heart troubles: Dr. Wilson, who completed the death
certificate, listed angina as the cause and gallstones as a contributing factor. No mention was made of Veronal or any of the other medications. The press charitably avoided comment on Pulitzer’s well-known two-decade struggle with depression and other maladies.

  The body was brought to the family home on East Seventy-Third Street and placed in the library, which was filled with flowers and wreaths. The next morning, hundreds of the World’s staffers came uptown to pay their final respects. At noon, representatives of the Grand Army of the Republic held a service for their former member and placed a flag on the coffin. Pallbearers, including President Butler of Columbia University, the former managing editor George Harvey, the former mayor Seth Low, Pulitzer’s doctor James W. McLane, and the business manager Angus Shaw escorted Pulitzer’s coffin to a waiting cortege of carriages. The procession made its way twenty blocks south down Fifth Avenue to St. Thomas Episcopal Church, where more than two dozen policemen did their best to keep order as a crowd of thousands gathered on the street in front.

  So many former editors and reporters of the World had been summoned that they were instructed to gather in the Gotham Hotel two blocks away. At the appointed time, the alumni were to emerge and join the funeral procession. However, the plan went awry. “Happy pairs, reunited after decades, danced together on the pavement,” said Elizabeth Jordan, a former writer for the editorial page. “The orderly line, held for a moment, broke up in confusion. Reminiscences were yelped from one editor to another. Men ran up and down the line, seeking someone they hadn’t found.”

  The boisterous merriment continued until the group saw the casket being carried into the church and heard the ponderous notes of the organ. “Something like an electric shock swept the ranks of the former employees,” said Jordan. “Every pair of shoulders straightened, every smile disappeared. The line formed as if by magic. Reverently, two by two, with bent heads and lowered eyes, and hearts full of memories, the editors who had helped Joseph Pulitzer to build his World followed their dead chief into the crowded church.”

  A choir of forty-five men sang “Abide with Me” as Pulitzer’s coffin made its way past pews filled with politicians, judges, newspapermen, and his old guard. Among them were John Norris, his longtime business manager, now with the Times; former reporters and editors such as James Creelman, Caleb Van Hamm, and Bradford Merrill; and members of Pulitzer’s personal staff such as George Ledlie, Arthur Billings, Norman Thwaites, and Friedrich Mann.

  The flag-draped coffin was covered with a blanket of lilies of the valley and orchids. It was brought to a rest in front of the altar amid more than 100 floral pieces including a wreath of roses from the republic of Colombia bearing a card engraved “To Her Friend.” Reverend Ernest Stires read from chapter 15 of the First Epistle to the Corinthians. As he began, elevator motors, ventilators, and presses were shut down, and telegraph machines and telephones were disconnected at the World and Post-Dispatch buildings. For five minutes, with all the lights extinguished, Pulitzer’s staff on duty that day stood at silent attention.

  “For man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain: he heapeth up riches, and cannot tell who shall gather them,” Stires read on, following the traditional Episcopal burial service and eschewing a eulogy. As a second hymn was sung, Stires brought two wreaths down from the altar and placed them on the flower-draped coffin. After a moment of silent prayer, the chorus burst into song again. “Hark! hark, my soul! Angelic songs are swelling,” the men sang as the coffin was brought out from the church.

  A special train took Pulitzer’s body and his family—except for Constance and Edith, who had not yet arrived—as well as a select group of editors, members of his personal staff, and a few friends to Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. At the grave, Stires gave the final invocation before an improvised pulpit of canvas. As they all stood before the grave, the booming of guns from a naval fleet coincidentally visiting New York could be heard in the distance.

  With the approach of dusk, Joseph’s body was lowered into a grave next to that of his beloved daughter Lucille Irma. Inside the casket, Pulitzer’s right arm lay across his chest and in his hand he clasped a copy of the World.

  In the days following his burial, his astonished family read Joseph’s will. He left the World and the Post-Dispatch in the hands of four trustees who, in time, would turn control over to his sons. Twenty-seven-year-old Joe would have to wait until he was thirty and fifteen-year-old Herbert would have to wait until he was twenty-one to assume a seat on the board. In an unintended error, Joseph failed to give thirty-two-year-old Ralph a seat in his last revision of the will. Acting on the advice of Joseph’s lawyer, one of the trustees resigned and gave his place to Ralph.

  But what dumbfounded the brothers was their father’s division of the stock. Herbert, the youngest, who had done hardly more than visit one of the newspapers, was given 60 percent of the stock. Ralph, who had practically been running the World, was given 20 percent; and Joseph, the most talented of the three, received only 10 percent. The remaining 10 percent of the shares were to be used to produce an income to be divided among editors and managers.

  When it came to power, Joseph provided for a more equal distribution. Each member of the board, on which each son would eventually have a seat, had only one vote. The board members in turn would select the directors for the two newspapers. In crafting the convoluted distribution of his newspaper assets and in devising his board, Joseph had had one goal in mind, and he made it clear in his final instructions.

  “I particularly enjoin upon my sons and my descendants,” Pulitzer wrote, “the duty of preserving, perfecting, and perpetuating the World newspaper, to the maintenance and publishing of which I have sacrificed my health and strength, in the same spirit in which I have striven to create and conduct it as a public institution, from motives higher than mere gain, and it having been my desire that it should be at all times conducted in a spirit of independence and with a view of inculcating high standards and public spirit among the people and their official representatives, and it is my earnest wish that said newspapers shall hereafter be conducted upon the same principles.”

  In addition to specifying his plans for his newspapers, Pulitzer disposed of his personal assets. For Kate, he set up a $2.5 million trust and the use of the houses in New York and Maine. His daughters, Constance and Edith, would share the income from a $1.5 million trust. Columbia University at long last received its promised gift to create the journalism school. Irascible until the end, Pulitzer also included a provision that would give the money to Harvard if Columbia failed to live up to its promises. He also left $250,000 for the Pulitzer prize and scholarships.

  The remainder of his money was assigned for donations to the Metropolitan Museum of Art; to the Philharmonic Society; and to the city, for a fountain—which was eventually built on the Grand Army Plaza there—and for a statue of Thomas Jefferson. Also, gifts of $100,000 were to be shared among certain of the World’s writers and personal secretaries. There was an equally large sum for his valet Dunningham, and a smaller sum for George Hosmer.

  Kate outlived her husband by almost sixteen years. Residing mostly in Europe, she spent her time helping young artists and musicians and supporting charities such as the Red Cross. She died in Deauville, France, in 1927. For years after her death, the family brought John Singer Sargent’s portrait of her to Chatwold to be with them during the summer. The portrait of Joseph remained in St. Louis.

  Ralph divorced Frederica and later married Margaret Leech, a talented writer who won two Pulitzer prizes for history. For a number of years Ralph took the helm of the World, although his youngest brother, Herbert, earned the largest share of its income while doing little or nothing in the way of work. Ralph died in 1939. Herbert had his opportunity to manage the World for a brief time in 1930, but it held little interest for him. Rather than journalism, his main passions were hunting big game in Africa and fishing near his home in Palm Beach. He died in 1957.

  Joseph,
the one brother to inherit his father’s journalistic talent, remained in St. Louis, where he guided the Post-Dispatch. Under his rule, his father’s original paper flourished as one of the nation’s most important and profitable newspapers. His wife, Elinor, died in 1925 in an automobile accident. He later was remarried to Elizabeth Edgar. He died in 1955. In 2005, the descendants sold the Post-Dispatch. It continues today as a shell of its once distinguished self.

  Edith married William Scoville Moore, grandson of the author of “Twas the Night before Christmas.” Constance married William Gray Elmslie, who had once been Herbert’s tutor. She died in 1938 after spending most of her life in Colorado Springs. Edith was the last living child of Kate and Joseph when she died in 1975.

  In the early morning of February 27, 1931, a group of the World’s editors and writers gathered around the city desk. The news was glum. Nineteen years after Pulitzer’s death, the paper was facing its own mortality. With its circulation getting hammered by new morning tabloids on the one hand, and losing the battle as a news leader to Ochs’s invigorated New York Times and the newly merged Herald-Tribune on the other, the World seemed at a loss as to where to find a place for itself on the newsstands. Briefly in the 1920s, it had flared like a comet when the editor Herbert Bayard Swope filled its pages with the writing of men like Walter Lippmann, Heywood Broun, and Franklin P. Adams.

  But without Joseph and his brilliant editor Frank Cobb, who died in 1923, Ralph and Herbert were ill-equipped to run the newspaper. The blame rested as much on their father as on the two sons. As an absentee owner, Joseph had refused to cede sufficient control so that a corporate management structure could be built. The internal disunion at the paper was aggravated by his system of keeping his managers competing and spying on each other. Until the end, Joseph had remained the keystone in the arch of management. After 1911, “the Pulitzer building was a haunted house,” said one of the World’s writers. When the Depression came in 1929, the World’s losses mounted. Ralph, Herbert, and Joe agreed that maintaining the paper was a lost cause.