Pulitzer

by James McGrath Morris

  One day, as: James Barnes, “Joseph Pulitzer, a Dominant Personality: Some Personal Reminiscences,” Colliers, 11/18/1911. Pulitzer shared similar details with New York Graphic, reprinted in Evening Gazette (Cedar Falls, IA), 1/20/1887, 3.

  At last, the: Various biographers have offered differing reasons for Pulitzer’s move to St. Louis but none have been backed by any evidence. One version often repeated, but certainly not true, appeared in American Heritage. “Mustered out, Pulitzer asked around about where he might settle in the United States: he wanted a place where German was not spoken, so that he could improve his English. A practical joker, it is said, sent him to St. Louis, which had a colony large enough to make a sizable town in Germany.” (David Davidson “What Made the ‘World’ Great?” American Heritage, Vol. 33, No. 6 [Oct/Nov 1982]); Henry Charles Hummel, who joined the Lincoln Cavalry on the same day as Pulitzer and served on the same detachment, may have moved to St. Louis with him. A river man named Charles Hummel begins appearing in the St. Louis city directory the same year as Pulitzer does: Pulszky and Pulszky, White, Red, Black, 167–174. During the fall, when Pulitzer was vainly seeking work in New York, a newspaper reporter watched Germans debark from ships including, in particular, a “phlegmatic Teuton who paid for ‘ten through tickets to St. Louis by the 5 o’clock train.” As a rule, concluded the reporter, German immigrants arrived with a plan of operation. “They strike at once for the West…. their first query is for the ticket office, where they purchase the necessary documents, and then wait anxiously for the departure of the train.” (NYT, 9/12/1865, 1.) Certainly Pulitzer would have learned about the large German communities in St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Milwaukee from other German-speaking soldiers in his regiment, especially during the two-week encampment outside Washington, when they discussed plans for civilian life.

  CHAPTER 3: THE PROMISED LAND

  When Pulitzer got: The exact date of his arrival is unknown. Previous biographers accepted October 10, 1865, a date Pulitzer himself probably used. At the same time Seitz claimed Pulitzer was superstitious when it came to numbers and attributed special significance to the number 10, the date of his birth. “He made the superstition something of a fad and used the numerals always when he could,” said Seitz, (DCS, 11). Pulitzer’s superstition about the number also makes the dating of his arrival suspicious. In fact, his description of the cold weather did not match weather records for the day. Nor do the facts in another recollection related to his arrival bear up under scrutiny. So while it is unlikely that an exact date can be determined, it seems certain that Pulitzer arrived sometime in the fall of 1865. The data on ferry traffic are drawn from Scharf, History of Saint Louis City and County, Vol. 2; DCSJP, 50.

  Through the darkness: DCS-JP, 51.

  It was like coming home: The similarities between the Pest riverbank and that of St. Louis struck me while I was examining nineteenth-century prints in the Hungarian National Museum. Except for minor differences I thought I was looking at the photo St. Louis Levee by Thomas Easterly in the collection of the Missouri Historical Society. Ernst D. Kargau’s 1893 work St. Louis in früheren jahren. Ein gedenkbuch für das deutschthum was translated and published as The German Element in St. Louis, 9. The names of the establishments, however, are taken from the original German edition (St. Louis, MO: A. Wiebusch, 1893), 12.

  St. Louis was: Twain, Life on the Mississippi, 525; Thérèse Yelverston, Teresina in America, 115.

  Despite its foul: “In no American city, not even in Cincinnati, although more Germans, in proportion, live there than in St. Louis, have I found the German element so preponderant,” noted Friedrich Gerstäker, a German traveler: Friedrich Gerstäcker, Gerstäcker’s Travels. Olson, “St. Louis Germans, 1850–1920.”

  He found work: Kargau, German Element, 124–125; Snider, St. Louis Movement, 145.

  For the first: MoRe, 9/5/1865, 3; DCS-JP, 52; ChTr, 5/24/1883, 10; MoRe, 1/1/1877, 6. A “Joseph P. Pullitzer” was listed in the 1866 city directory as a coachman; the family that employed Pulitzer as a coachman may have been the Weinhagens.

  In 1866 Pulitzer: WRR, 6.

  Despite Pulitzer’s inability: Udo Brachvogel, “Episoden aus Joseph Pulitzers St. Louis Jahren,” Rundschau zweier welten, January 1912. As with his experiences in the Civil War, Pulitzer almost never talked about his first years in St. Louis. When he did tell tales, he would invariably cut them short and complain that the listener had unfairly countenanced the reminiscence. “As soon as a man gets in the habit of talking about his past adventures,” Pulitzer said on one such occasion, “he might as well make up his mind that he is growing old and that his intellect is giving way.” But in a rare moment late in life, Pulitzer did recount several stories from this time. While cruising the Mediterranean in 1911, Pulitzer shared some with Alleyne Ireland, who was one of the last in a long string of personal secretaries and who would later serve as his companion. “He was generally more willing to talk when we took our meals at the large round table on deck, for he loved the sea breeze and was soothed by it,” Ireland recalled (AI, 168, 174–175).

  One time Pulitzer: AI, 171–172.

  The various jobs: DCS-JP, 53. The services provided by the organization were sorely needed. Six thousand German immigrants arrived in St. Louis in 1866 (Kargau, German Element, 206–208).

  In Pulitzer’s case: Adalbert Strauss to Joseph Pulitzer Jr., 6/11/1913, JPII-LC. Strauss was not alone in being “introduced” to Elize. Charles P. Johnson, who met Pulitzer around this time, had a similar experience. “One of the most attractive traits of his character to me was his admiration and abiding love for his mother,” said Johnson. “She was his guiding star” (“Remarks of Gov. Chas. P. Johnson, Birthday Anniversary Dinner,” April 10, 1907, PDA).

  Pulitzer paid the $2: Pulitzer’s entry is written in his own hand in the July 18, 1866, membership ledger. He listed his occupation as clerk at “Theo Strauss & Co, 19th & Franklin.” The occupations of other members were determined by examining the pages adjoining Pulitzer’s entry. Record Group 12—membership, Mercantile Library Archives, St. Louis, MO; Annual Report of the St. Louis Mercantile Library Association, 1866, 12–13; Taylor and Crooks, Sketch Book of Saint Louis, 66–67.

  He approached the: JP to RP, 3/23/1903 JP-CU; Annual Report of the St. Louis Mercantile Library Association, 1866, 14; Clarence Miller, “Exit Smiling, Part II,” Missouri Historical Society Bulletin, Vol. 6, No. 2 (January 1950), 188.

  His hours in: Leidecker, Yankee Teacher, 317–320; Snider, The St. Louis Movement in Philosophy, 7, 139. The men who formed the society also ended up as characters in a novel, The Rebel’s Daughter, by John Gabriel Woerner. Professor Altrue is a representation of Harris, Dr. Taylor is Dr. Schneider (a play on the German word Schneider, “tailor”), and Brockmeyer appears as Rauhenfels. See Woerner, Woerner, 103.

  When he wasn’t studying: Clarence Miller, “Exit Smiling, Part II,” Missouri Historical Society Bulletin, Vol. VI, 2, Jan. 1950, 188; E. F. Osborn to JPII, 6/15/1913, PD. Chess was a popular game in Hungary. In fact, victories by a Hungarian in a correspondence match between Pest and Paris in the 1840s had created a popular opening strategy called the “Hungarian defense.”

  Pulitzer quit his post: William Kelsoe to Carlos Seitz, undated but part of series of correspondence in 1921–1922, PDA; A. S. Walsh to JPII, June 1913, PDA. According to A. S. Walsh, the teenager who worked in the drugstore, “Joe used to often come into the store to have a chat and compare notes and during the epidemic his visits seems to be more frequent than usual” (A. S. Walsh to JP II, June 1913. PD). In late summer cholera returned to St. Louis. Twice before, the disease had ravaged the city; this time its destruction was far less, though still considerable. In its fourth week as many as 140 people were dying each day. The drugstore remained open twenty-four hours a day. Joseph Nash McDowell, an eminent doctor and founder of a medical school, had an office above the drugstore. When the city turned to him for help in managing the epidemic, he reportedly hired Pulitzer to work
at Arsenal Island, where the sick were quarantined and the dead were buried. The epidemic subsided after September. By November the number of reported deaths was down to four, and Pulitzer returned to work in Patrick’s office. I made an extensive search in St. Louis records for any information about Pulitzer’s service on Arsenal Island, but I failed to uncover anything.

  By the spring of 1867: Pulitzer’s notary public certificate, JPII-LC; W. A. Kelsoe to Seitz, undated (written between 1913 and 1920), PDA.

  Pulitzer continued working: DCS-JP, 55; AI, 221; JP to William James, 6/21/1867, 7/13/1867, Wortham James Collection, 1820–1891, folder 2211, WHMC. Surviving correspondence—which are his earliest existing letters—while routine and historically insignificant reveals that Pulitzer had begun to acquire some command of English. He may have used form letters, but the transactions could not have been completed by someone lacking understanding of the language.

  After a few months: See White, The German-Language Press in America; Trefousse, Carl Schurz, 162. Schurz to Margarethe Schurz, 7/16/1867, Intimate Letters of Carl Schurz; DCS-JP, 61. Circulation figures are notoriously inaccurate in this period. But to bid for the city’s legal advertising and printing, the owners of the newspapers had to submit circulation statements signed under oath. These “official” circulation figures for 1867 were published in ChTr, 6/5/1867, 2.

  Prosperous and growing: Trefousse, Schurz, 162. Seitz suggests that Pulitzer was hired through his acquaintance with Preetorius and Willich. One Associated Press dispatch from St. Louis, published at the time of Pulitzer’s death, makes mention of the connection between the paper and the immigration society: “Willich found Mr. Pulitzer’s methods of obtaining information unique, likewise his treatment of individual cases, and a word from his obtained for Pulitzer a place as a reporter on the Westliche Post, a German daily.” AP dispatch, 10/29/1911, JP-LC, Box 12.

  Just how Pulitzer, with no training or experience in journalism, obtained a job as a reporter on the Westliche Post is shrouded in mystery and legend. Pulitzer knew Preetorius through the Mercantile Library. Perhaps he had also met another owner, but he probably had not met Schurz. Pulitzer is said to have credited his experience when he and forty other men were bamboozled by the dishonest employment agent promising work downriver. A reporter got wind of the tale and persuaded Pulitzer to write it up for the Westliche Post, according to Ireland. The resulting work attracted Preetorius’s eye and earned his admiration, and Pulitzer was offered a position on the paper. However, the article itself has never surfaced.

  Numerous remembrances of Pulitzer at this time offer an alternative scenario, crediting chess with introducing him to men who would provide him with his first newspaper job. Unfortunately, the accounts vary considerably in consistency and reliability, often reducing the tale to one epic match. As with reports of Pulitzer’s swim in Boston harbor, it is hard to discern the actual contours of what happened. Typical of the accounts told when Pulitzer was still alive was one that appeared in the magazine Current Literature in 1909: “After performing various sorts of work he found himself one day in a restaurant looking on at a game of chess, a game in which he was said to have genius. A suggestion that he made to one of the players proved to be the little pivot on which his whole subsequent career turned. The player was Dr. Emil Preetorius, who with Carl Schurz was directing the Westliche Post. The acquaintance thus begun led to Pulitzer’s entry upon the stage which he has never left.”

  A decade after Pulitzer’s death, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s editor William A. Kelsoe sought out a few St. Louisans who were still alive and who might have remembered such a game. “I have found no one who can locate positively the saloon or restaurant in which that historic game was played,” Kelsoe said. Two or three old-timers told Kelsoe they thought it might have been played in the Rheinische Weinhalle. Others mentioned Wagner’s Restaurant, a meeting place popular with both German and non-German politicians, businessmen, and lawyers. Even if there was no single match, it could well have been that Pulitzer’s chess skills, which had served him in Civil War camps, helped him gain attention at the Mercantile Library and other gathering places (AI, 171–172). The inclusion of Schurz’s name in the anecdote suggests that if the chess game was actually played, it occurred in 1867, when Schurz had joined the Westliche Post. It is the same year Pulitzer began working for the newspaper: Kelsoe to Seitz, undated, PDA.

  “I could not”: DCS-JP, 58.

  Preetorius and Willich: Saalberg, “The Westliche Post of St. Louis,” 195.

  It wasn’t long: DCS-JP, 58–60. In fact, reporters for English-language newspapers referred to German reporters derogatorily as “Schnorrers,” a humorous Yiddish term for a type of beggar who, in contrast to an ordinary beggar, disguises his purpose, has pretensions at being a gentleman, and acts indignant when offered the assistance he seeks.

  If Pulitzer believed: MoRe, 10/30/1911.

  While Pulitzer honed: APM, 26.

  Reaching the United States: Built in 1865, the 2,695-ton Allemannia was capable of a speed of twelve knots: APM, 27–31.

  Although the reunion: The Chicago Tribune reported that “the city is full of men out of employ, most of them young men from the East, who have white hands and want some clerical work to do” (ChTr, 4/23/1867, 2); APM, 36.

  Settled at last: APM, 33, 39.

  For Joseph the: According to his friend Anthony Ittner, Pulitzer regarded Anna Preetorius as “one of the most kind-hearted, agreeable accompanied ladies that it was his good fortune to have ever met” (Anthony Ittner to JPII, June 11, 1913, PD). Edward Preetorius recalled that when he was a baby, Pulitzer “was a frequent and welcomed visitor at my parents’ house and they have told me of the numerous kindnesses [Pulitzer] visited upon me” (Edward Preetorius to JP, March 4, 1903, JP-CU).

  Pulitzer was comfortable: Snider, St. Louis Movement, 167.

  Pulitzer attended a few: Ibid., 118; The significance of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy in the history of American philosophy has been widely described. Perry, The St. Louis Movement in Philosophy, 10; James A. Good, “‘A World-Historical Idea’: The St. Louis Hegelians and the Civil War,” Journal of American Studies, Vol. 34, No. 1 (December 2000), 447–464; Snider, St. Louis Movement, 32.

  A nomadic philosopher: Record Book of the St. Louis Philosophical Society, MHS.

  In contrast to: Knight, Memorials of Thomas Davidson, 107–108. See also Fagan, “Thomas Davidson: Dramatist of the Life of Learning.” It’s not clear when and how Pulitzer met Davidson. Considering Pulitzer’s avowed pursuit of education, he may well have attended one of Davidson’s popular meetings.

  The Scot’s charms: Thomas Davidson to Kate Bindernagel, 8/10/1870, TD. The eight-year engagement came to an end when Davidson was in St. Louis. Davidson never did marry. After his death, his friend William James offered an explanation. He said Davidson told him that he had been tempted twice to marry but he demurred because of his first relationship. “‘When two persons have known each other as we did,’ he said, ‘neither can ever fully belong to a stranger, so it wouldn’t do! It wouldn’t do! It wouldn’t do!’ He repeated as we lay on the hillside in a tone so musically tender that it chimes in my ears still, as I write down his confession” (Knight, Memorials of Thomas Davidson, 118). See also The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 312. The same kind of allusion was made at a commemorative service for the St. Louis Movement: “Davidson had an exceptional sympathy with young fellows who seemed to be moving along a path that beckoned toward social renovation,” said one of the speakers. A Brief Report of the Meeting Commemorative of the Early Saint Louis Movement, January 14, 15, 1921, Vanderweart’s Music Hall, St. Louis, Missouri, 60, MHS.

  If Davidson was: Homosexuality was not kept hidden from shame or fear, though each played a role. Rather, in a world devoid of discussions of sex, one’s sexuality preference would have not been considered an element of identity that one could or should divulge. “Sexuality was not considered a determining feature of s
ocial identity,” explained the historian Graham Robb. Further, the intimate relationships that men and women often had with their friends of the same gender could mask something that in retrospect seemed evident. “Many people,” said Robb, “discovered their homosexuality only when the person they had loved had gone away or died” (Robb, Strangers, 127–139). Also Isaac Rossetti to Thomas Davidson, June 12, 1867, TD.

  Five years earlier: Samuel Rowell to Thomas Davidson, January 1862, TD.

  Davidson himself confessed: Thomas Davidson to Kate Bindernagel, 8/14/1870, TD. It’s obviously hard to determine what emotional state Davidson may have been in during those years. But one man who was a student recalled that his fellow students used to recount finding Davidson walking the halls, glassy-eyed, in an apparent “drugged condition, spouting Greek.” The student’s conclusion was “that he was a secret or perhaps periodic drinker” (William Clark Breckenridge to Robert L. Calhoun, 8/25/1871, MHS).

  Pulitzer fell under: DCS, 56, 38. James Barrett, who wrote an unreliable biography in 1941—with which the family did not cooperate—expanded Seitz’s description of Pulitzer and Davidson sharing quarters. “The fact that JP dressed and undressed complacently in the presence of his learned friend was proof enough of the serenity of his life with Davidson…. No other man ever won from him so warm a token of regard. The mere thought of being even without a collar in the presence of other men was enough to throw JP into paroxysm of annoyance” (JWB, 32).

  As when Davidson: JP to Davidson, undated but certainly from June 1874, TD.

  Davidson ignored this: JP to Davidson, 7/11/1874, TD.

  Ten days later: JP to Davidson, 7/21/1874, TD. Fascinatingly, Pulitzer embellishes his letters with an increasing number of exclamation marks that match their chronological progression. Specifically the first letter in the series opens with “Tom!” the next with “Tom!!” and the last with “Tom!!!”

  In the end: Without doubt, men of the era expressed friendship through words and gestures that a century later would be interpreted as homosexual. Men were permitted a kind of romantic friendship that is no longer possible. The only surviving letters from Davidson to Pulitzer offer little help in gauging the scope of their friendship. They date from years after Pulitzer was married. The letters say nothing about the pair’s time together in St. Louis, though they do offer a small hint of past intimacy. In New York society, laced with formality, Pulitzer was addressed even by his closest friends as “My dear Pulitzer.” Davidson was among only one or two correspondents who wrote to him as “Dear Joe.” On his part, Pulitzer closed his letters “Your affectionate friend,” “As ever your friend,” and “Your old friend.” But, as he was blind by then and dictated his letters, Pulitzer might have felt restrained in what he could say, though the closings he did use were very untypical. “The friendship with Davidson,” said Seitz, “remained Mr. Pulitzer’s closest relationship until the wise and kindly Professor left life at Cambridge, Mass., September 14, 1900” (DCS-JP, 56).