Among the men who took an interest in the young, studious chess player were Emil Preetorius, one of the owners of the Westliche Post; and non-German professionals such as the lawyer William Patrick, who had an office in a building on Market Street, four blocks south of the library. Patrick soon gave Pulitzer some occasional work serving legal papers and running errands.
Pulitzer quit his post at the Strauss lumberyard when he was passed over for the job of head bookkeeper. “The only thing that stood in his way,” recalled Adalbert Strauss, “was his handwriting which was almost vertical, very large and heavy and at a distance looking a little like Chinese.” After giving up his desk at the lumberyard, Pulitzer became a regular fixture in the Market Street office building, picking up whatever work he could find. “We inferred that he was not making much of a go as his exchequer was concerned and it was a struggle with him,” said a teenager who worked in Jones & Sibley’s drugstore, on the first floor of the building.
By the spring of 1867, Pulitzer felt confident that his future lay in the United States. On March 6, he entered a St. Louis courtroom as a subject of the emperor of Austria and left as an American citizen. Once again, Pulitzer displayed no aversion to deceiving the government. As he had done when he inflated his age to join the Union military, Pulitzer lied about how long he had been in the United States now that he sought to become a citizen. Naturalization law required, among other things, that an applicant reside in the United States for a period of five years before being eligible for citizenship. Pulitzer had been in the country for less than three years. Eight days later, he returned to court and went before the clerk to complete the necessary paperwork, as well as take an oath, to become a notary public. This time, however, there was no need for any deception; the requirements were few.
Pulitzer continued working at his mix of jobs connected with the law offices on Market Street. At one point he accepted the task of recording land deeds for the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad in a dozen counties to the southwest of St. Louis where the railroad planned to build a line to Springfield, Missouri. Following his railroad work, Pulitzer accepted a position as secretary of the Deutsche Gesellschaft, which had provided him with his job at the lumberyard the previous year. Now it was his turn to locate work for new immigrants. His work at the library paid off. The new post required that he write letters in English.
After a few months at the immigrant society, Pulitzer learned about a job opening at the Westliche Post. Many of the highly educated and literate German refugees from the 1848 revolution found work in the bourgeoning German press that served the 5 million to 6 million German immigrants with a cultural fondness for reading newspapers. The Westliche Post was owned by two of the city’s most eminent Germans: Carl Schurz, the former Civil War general in whose cavalry Pulitzer had served, and Emil Preetorius, with whom Pulitzer had made friends in the Mercantile chess room. Under their management, the paper was one of the most widely circulated German-language publications in the United States.
Prosperous and growing, the Westliche Post was casting about for a new reporter. For Pulitzer the timing was fortunate. Not only did Pulitzer know Preetorius, but in recent months the elder man, as president of the German Immigration Aid Society, had observed his diligence. Louis Willich, the paper’s city editor, also knew Pulitzer. As secretary of the society, Pulitzer had frequently passed on information and stories from the most recent German immigrants arriving in St. Louis. Willich had been impressed with Pulitzer’s news sense. He was offered the job.
“I could not believe it,” Pulitzer recalled. “I, the unknown, the luckless, almost a boy of the streets, selected for such a responsibility. It all seemed like a dream.”
Preetorius and Willich were not disappointed. It took Pulitzer no time to confirm they had made the right decision in taking a chance on the twenty-year-old. What he lacked in experience he more than made up for with raw, resolute effort. “His time for work seemed to be all the time,” said Preetorius. “I never called on him at any hour that he did not immediately respond.”
It wasn’t long, either, before Pulitzer caught the attention of his new colleagues. On a muggy, hot summer day a pack of reporters gathered behind the city’s post office to badger an official for a story. “Suddenly,” said one of the men, “there appeared among us the new reporter, of whom we had heard but not yet seen.” He was hard to miss. Having rushed from the office, Pulitzer was without his collar and jacket but he did have his pad of paper in one hand and his pencil in the other. Within an instant, he informed the crowd of reporters that he was with the Westliche Post, as if this might impress them, and began to ask questions. “For a beginner he was exasperatingly inquisitive,” said the reporter who recorded the moment. “He was so industrious, indeed, that he became a positive annoyance to others who felt less inclined to work.”
If Pulitzer believed his new job would be glamorous, or at least easier than the numerous jobs he had held so far, the delusion was quickly shattered. The working day never ended. There was only one other reporter on the paper, so the duty of finding and reporting all the local news rested on the two men. Also, Pulitzer was unwilling to put forward anything but his best effort. “We would get one of his stories into type,” said the compositor who handset all the type, “and when Pulitzer got the proof read there would hardly be a word left as he wrote it in the first place.”
While Pulitzer honed his new craft that summer, his sixteen-year-old brother in Pest was preparing to join him in the United States. Albert’s motivation was political, not pecuniary. His family-bred republican ardor, combined with a fanciful imagination, had led him to believe he could divest Europe of its emperors, kings, and other potentates. “Obviously, I said to myself, if I could do so wonderful a thing I should attain the very summit of human glory. But how could I accomplish so difficult, so gigantic, apparently almost so impossible a task?” He devised a plan to cross the Atlantic, rouse the American people, and return with an army to dethrone the sovereigns of Europe.
Reaching the United States was an expensive undertaking. The Civil War was over, so there were no American benefactors willing to pay for the passage. Not surprisingly, Grandfather Mihály called Albert’s idea a “ridiculous project” and refused to provide any financial support. “My poor mother, seeing that a refusal would not stop me, as I was too unalterably bent upon the realization of my scheme, cried a good deal, but finally yielded a reluctant consent,” Albert said. Elize accompanied her son to Hamburg and purchased him a ticket on the Allemannia. Hanging a $20 gold piece around his neck, hidden in a tiny cotton bag under his shirt, she consigned the last of her two living children to America.
Albert was ill prepared for the journey. He failed to bring any necessary items such as toiletries, towels, or bedding, and without a bowl, plate, or pan he had no way to eat the ship’s meals. So he remained in his hammock deep in the ship, among the 600 others in steerage. “There I lay stupefied, benumbed, absolutely paralyzed from breathing this polluted, nauseating atmosphere,” Albert said. Fortunately, several Italian women took pity on him and made sure he got sustenance. On July 20, 1867, Albert reached New York, but he was soon stranded by youth and inexperience. To ward off the July heat, he impetuously consumed flavored ices. “My $20.00 capital was melting away nearly as fast as the ice-cream which I enjoyed so hugely,” he said. “Thus I was fain to obey the call of my elder and only surviving brother, Joseph.”
After a separation of three years, the two were reunited in St. Louis. Now, Albert stood as tall as Joseph, at more than six feet, and was very slender, but without his older brother’s awkward angularity. That they were brothers was undeniable. They had the same thick curly hair, high forehead, and blue eyes, but Albert’s face was more balanced, with a less pronounced nose. He was the handsomer of the pair.
Although the reunion was warm, the practicalities of life rapidly took center stage. Albert needed a job and his own place to live. Joseph’s small room was not intended for two. Each
day Albert went out and tried to find work, even going from house to house. “My inquiries always resulted either in a negative reply or, what was still more hopeless, in no reply whatsoever,” he said. Albert was not alone in his bad luck. The city was filled with job seekers. Joseph showed no sympathy. After all, he had found work when he came to St. Louis two years earlier. Each morning he asked if his brother had obtained a job yet. “This query being repeated daily, irritated, upset me,” said Albert. “I became restless, peevish, fretful.” One evening the pair got into a heated argument over Albert’s inability to secure work. Joseph, as was his habit, vented his anger with an outburst of sarcasm. He flippantly said that if things were to go on as they were, Albert might as well make an end of it by shooting himself.
“Excellent advice,” replied Albert grabbing the revolver his brother kept in the room and putting the barrel to his mouth.
“Not here!” yelled Joseph.
No, thought Albert. “It would not do to have a coroner’s inquest in this very room. I desisted.”
Albert redoubled his efforts but still had no luck. The two brothers continued to share Joseph’s cramped room, and life was glum. Again, the issue came to a head.
“If you do not desire me to stay here any longer, just say the word ‘go’ and I shall go,” said Albert.
“Go,” replied Joseph, in a tone that sounded to Albert as “though he really did not mean for me to go but was curious to know whether I was plucky enough to carry out my own menace.” So, in the dead of the night, Albert left. It was a gesture characteristic of the impulsive nature the two brothers shared, especially in decision making. Albert wandered aimlessly until he came to a park and a bench on which to sleep. “But my slumber did not last long.” A policeman woke him and told him he could be arrested for sleeping on a bench. Albert spent the rest of the night dozing on and off, keeping watch for any approaching police officers.
After spending yet another futile day searching for work, Albert returned for the night to his bench. At last, the next day he obtained a position as a door-to-door salesman for Die Gartenlaube, an immensely popular illustrated family newspaper featuring articles about culture, art, history, and science, as well as short stories, serialized novels, poetry, and puzzles. With his earnings, he secured a small room in a boardinghouse.
Settled at last, Albert made learning English a priority. Before leaving Hungary he had engaged an inexpensive English tutor, one so inept that Albert remained clueless as to how the language was pronounced. In St. Louis, Albert took his brother’s path and turned to the Mercantile Library. “My great delight used to be to haunt its precincts from morn till night,” said Albert. “I was able to see all the English and American reviews, and familiarize myself with current English and American literature, even though I could not make much progress learning the pronunciation and idiomatic use of the language.”
For Joseph the Westliche Post became a gateway to the German community’s leading politicians, lawyers, merchants, and writers. They came to the Chestnut Street newspaper building each day to discuss the news of the day or to plot election strategy with Preetorius and Schurz. The likelihood that Schurz would become a U.S. senator made the Westliche Post a mandatory stop for anyone of significance traveling through St. Louis. Often the daytime gatherings continued into the night at Preetorius’s house, which Pulitzer also frequented. Preetorius’s wife, Anna, took a liking to the young reporter and doted on him, especially as he often entertained her infant son. The world into which Pulitzer peeked seemed to be one with limitless possibilities. To be a newspaper editor was to do more than report on the world; it was to shape it.
Pulitzer was comfortable in the cultured and political atmosphere of the paper, and during the evenings at Preetorius’s house. He was unschooled, but not uneducated. Like his younger brother, he had been inculcated with a love of literature, music, and the arts; and his strong drive to learn made up for any lack of formal instruction. It was not long before the visitors took an interest in Pulitzer. “That young fellow clinches the future,” said Brockmeyer, the principal mover behind the Hegelian St. Louis Philosophical Society. “They think because he trundles about with himself a big cob-nose, a whopper jaw, and bull-frog eyes that he has no sense; but I tell you, he possesses greater dialectical ability than all of them put together—I know it for I have felt it.”
Pulitzer attended a few of the study groups spawned by Brockmeyer’s Philosophical Society. For many of the participants, it was as though they had found the key to the universe in Hegel. Their study created a kind of secret fraternity of understanding for every field of activity from music and art to history and politics. They saw the Civil War as an inevitable conflict of the Hegelian dialectic, playing out the inherent conflict of Southern rights and the Northern morality. Most significant of all, their belief that their city would emerge as the new center of postwar America helped spark a broader “St. Louis movement” that spread among citizens, giving rise to pamphlets, books, and even legislation calling for relocating the nation’s capital to St. Louis. The philosophical society “took the character of a subtle pervasive influence, rather than an organized propaganda,” said one member. “Its life pulsed in the small coteries which met usually in parlors or private rooms for the study of some special book or subject.”
But for Pulitzer, it was not the society’s philosophical insights that changed his life. Rather, the society brought him Thomas Davidson, into whose orbit he would be drawn, first as a pupil, then as something more.
A nomadic philosopher from Scotland, Davidson arrived in St. Louis in the fall of 1867, shortly after alighting in Boston where he had been welcomed by the transcendentalists. The superintendent of the St. Louis school system offered the twenty-seven-year-old Davidson a position teaching Latin and Greek, in hopes of making him part of the coterie of Hegelians. It worked. Shortly after arriving, Davidson was elected an associate of the St. Louis Philosophical Society.
In contrast to the serious Hegelians, the broad-framed itinerant philosopher stood out from the crowd. Davidson’s rural Scottish origins, red hair, bright blue eyes, and mellifluent voice with its almost musical cadence gave him a personal charm that caught the attention of many. He was ebullient, and his laugh was infectious. “Davidson’s native mood was happy,” said one close friend. “He took optimistic views of life and his own share in it. A sort of personal satisfaction radiated on his face.” Even when posing formally for a photograph, Davidson looked as though concealing a smile was nearly impossible.
The Scot’s charms engendered idolatrous feelings among young men. “His capacity for friendship was seemingly boundless, drawing to him extremes of the most startling sort among men,” according to one description published shortly after his death. Women were also attracted to Davidson because he was one of the few teachers who treated them as equal to males. But Davidson was unable to sustain a romantic relationship with a woman. He broke off an eight-year engagement to the only woman he found sexually appealing. “I am cursed with a nature that makes all real marriage impossible. When I am physically attracted to a woman I always despise her,” he wrote. “When I love a woman spiritually, I am always repelled from her with fearful force, that is, physically.”
If Davidson was attracted sexually to men, he was not about to proclaim it. With almost no exception, men in his time did not reveal their homosexuality. On the other hand, wherever he went, Davidson left a trail of young men with broken hearts. In 1867, for instance, one young Englishman wrote to Davidson, now in the United States, “I will never forget how queer I felt about my heart when once at ‘Jacques Lorgues’ both seated on the same sofa, you put your arms round my neck and gazing fondly in my face, you pressed me into your loving arms and said: ‘Oh! If I were a woman!!’…then you rested your head on my bosom. I felt as if you had been yourself my sweet-loving bride.”
Five years earlier, another young man had been even more direct about the loss of Davidson’s companionship. “Yo
u were pure, beautiful, intelligent and good and around you the tendrils of adoration and love—the holiest and tenderest feelings of my heart became hopefully entwined,” he wrote. “The thought that you might be my wife completely filled the measure of my hopes in this world.”
Davidson himself confessed considerable emotional turmoil over his attraction to men. “I am not loose or wicked in my behavior, but I am naturally endowed with fearfully strong passions so much so that I am often driven by them to the verge of committing suicide.”
Pulitzer fell under Davidson’s spell. Over time, the two came to spend nights together in each other’s quarters where, as Pulitzer lay on a bed, Davidson would expound upon the classics, literature, and philosophy. These nights filled an emotional void in Pulitzer, a youth stranded in a foreign land, his father dead and his mother married to another man. Sharing a bed was a rare gesture for Pulitzer. Intimacy—especially physical intimacy—was not easy for him. He was very ill at ease when he was around others and not fully clothed. “From his earliest days he slept alone,” a longtime associate would later say, “save when he shared a bed with Professor Davidson, remarking after that this unwonted intimacy showed how much he thought of his learned friend.”
As when Davidson abandoned other young men, Pulitzer’s deep passionate bond with him came to the surface in pained letters. “If Faust had been such a cold-blooded heartless chap as you are, Goethe and Mephisto would have had a much harder time indeed,” a crestfallen Pulitzer wrote when Davidson left for Boston. “But I’ll have my revenge even if I have to go all the way to Massachusetts to get it.” Pulitzer promised to pardon Davidson if he wrote at least once a week while they were apart.
Davidson ignored this request. Calling him a “villain,” Pulitzer again unburdened himself. “What a fool your friend must be to cling to you still,” he wrote. “But never fear, it is my mission as it is the mission of great men to reform and perseverance like your wisdom knows no limit. Whether you go to Massachusetts, or still further north as far even the north-pole I shall stick to you—stick to you until grim death.
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