Pulitzer took time: NYT, 4/27/1889, 4.
An editor from: WaPo, 5/13/1889, 4.
On May 15: Turner to Post, 5/15/1889, WP-CU.
Pulitzer did his resolute best: JP to KP, 6/11/1889, JP-CU.
“Well,” he added: Ponsonby also wrote to Kate. He reported, “I am sure you will be glad to hear that he scarcely ever alludes to his health”: Ponsonby to KP, 6/21/1889, JP-CU.
In a decade: AtCo, 4/21/1889, 18; NYT, 7/3/1889, 4; WaPo, 6/4/1890, 4.
Pulitzer also increased: NYT, 9/20/1889; Wilson, ed., The Memorial History of the City of New York, Vol. 5, 594–595. By 1940, 551 boys, mostly immigrant children, had gone on to become engineers, lawyers, doctors, journalists, and authors. See Time, 1/1/1940.
In the fall: NYT, 10/27/1889, 13; WaPo, 9/14/1889, 5. Pulitzer also donated $50,000 to try to attract the 1892 World Fair to New York City.
Nothing about the project: JP to Davis, 11/23/1889, JP-LC.
On October 10: BoGl, 10/11/1889, 2; WaPo, 10/11/1889, 4; ChTr, 10/20/1889, 26. Taylor used to tell Pulitzer that “he would have no appetite for breakfast if he did not see blood running down the column rules on the editorial paper of the morning World.” (Morgan, Charles H. Taylor, 140.)
Inside the cornerstone: The recording, one of the earliest of a human voice, remained hidden in the box until 1955, when the building was torn down. The box fell out of a clamshell bucket and was recovered. The recording, which was transferred to a reel-to-reel format, is among the World’s papers at Columbia. The men were right about the New York Giants, who went on to defeat the Dodgers in the championships. They wrongly predicted, however, that New York would get the World Fair in 1892. It went to Chicago.
Many of the nation’s: NYT, 10/11/1889, 2.
Back again in Paris: NYT, 10/20/1889, 12; Cashin, First Lady of the Confederacy, 270–271.
Every day the sad group: Winnie Davis to Jefferson Davis, Jefferson Davis: Private Letters, 582–583.
He sent detailed: JP to Davis, 11/23/1899, JP-LC.
Just before Christmas: JP to KP, 12/23/1889, JP-MHS.
“He is certainly”: Ponsonby to KP, 12/23/1889, JP-MHS.
Crossing the Arabian: JP to KP, 1/14/1890, JP-MHS.
Shortly after mailing: Thwaites, Velvet and Vinegar, 53–54.
CHAPTER 21: DARKNESS
That spring, the stacks: JP to WHM, 7/23/1890, WP-CU.
Earlier in the year: Pulitzer’s return to France may be dated by a canceled check signed by Pulitzer in Paris, 3/26/1889, PLFC.
But over the succeeding: JWB, 137.
On October 2: Pulitzer’s ship and the City of New York, which left half an hour earlier, raced each other across the ocean in an intercompany competition. Passengers on each ship joined betting pools, and the two oceanliners remained within sight of each other for most of the crossing. The Teutonic, carrying the Pulitzer party, lost the race by an hour. The Teutonic completed its voyage in five days, twenty-two hours, and nineteen minutes. (NYT, 10/9/1890, 5.)
Joseph settled into: Stanford White to KP, 8/29/1891, JP-CU; bills, JP-CU, Box 1889–1898; NYT, 11/17/1890, 5; WaPo, 12/7/1890, 9, and 11/30/1890, 14.
In such circumstances: JP to WHM, 7/23/1890, WP-CU.
The gigantic high-speed: “The World, Its History, Its New Home,” Scientific American (12/20/1890), 384.
Kate and Hosmer: Garrison, An Introduction to the History of Medicine, 578.
As he struggled: Koestler, The Unseen Minority, 4; Selin, Medicine Across Cultures, 320.
News of Pulitzer’s abdication: NYH, 10/17/1890, 4.
The final price: NYW, 12/11/1890; Fort Wayne Sentinel, 1/17/1891, 9.
For almost four months: JWB, 143. The yacht cruised along the Spanish coast, crossed over to Africa, and then took them east to Greece and Turkey.
Pulitzer defied Mitchell: Middletown Daily Press, 6/27/1891, 2; Newark Daily Advocate, 5/21/1891; Galveston Daily News, 6/21/1891, 8; AtCo, 5/1/1890, 1. Bennett had once told Cockerill that “the life of a managing editor is only five years.”
Leaving Kate in Paris: NYT, 6/11/1891, 8.
Ballard Smith, the: BoGl, 6/11/1891, 10.
Pulitzer’s solution to: WaPo, 6/19/1891, 4; Johnson, George Harvey, 36.
A heat wave: WaPo, 6/19/1891.
A few weeks: Nasaw, The Chief, 88, 90–91.
Pulitzer’s emergency trip: JWB, 144; NYT, 6/16/1891, 5; WaPo, 8/16/1891, 13.
Pulitzer shared most: NYT, 12/27/1909, 1.
Unlike many of the elite: JP memo (probably to FC), 9/19/1907, WP-CU.
As 1891 closed: JWB, 144.
Again, Dr. S. Weir Mitchell: S. Weir Mitchell to JP, 12/15/1891, JP-MHS.
One of the men: John Cockerill, Pulitzer’s former editor, disclosed the proposed deal in the Democratic Standard (Coshocton, OH), 5/2/1892.
In February, the Pulitzers: JP to Smith, 2/28/1892, WP-CU; McCash, The Jekyll Island Club; AtCo, 3/9/1892, 4.
It was Pulitzers first visit: McCash, The Jekyll Island Club, 18; WaPo, 4/14/1892, 5, and 4/15/1892, 4; NYT, 4/28/1883, 1. In April Pulitzer returned to New York to catch the Teutonic, bound for Liverpool. In addition to the servants and secretaries, the Pulitzers’ traveling party grew even larger with the addition of a companion for Kate, Mattie Thompson, traveling with her own personal French maid. Her father was the former representative Phillip “Little Phil” Thompson, of Kentucky, best-known for having shot to death a man he accused, quite probably wrongly, of having slept with his wife. “That man took my wife to Cincinnati and debauched her,” he said while still holding his smoking gun. “I swore to kill him on sight.” The jury acquitted him, agreeing with Pulitzer’s friend Henry Watterson’s estimation, “The forfeit of the life of the wife-seducer to the vengeance of the husband is accepted as unwritten, but inexorable, law.” See Kotter, Southern Honor and American Manhood, 45. Mattie Thompson later married Kate’s brother William Davis, whom she may have met while in Kate’s company.
Their assumption made: NYW, 2/2/1884, 4, quoted in GJ, 294.
In St. Louis: NYW, 3/14/1885, 4, quoted in GJ, 309.
Pulitzer—who now: NYW, 7/12/1892, 4.
Angry about his paper’s: J. Errol, “A Visit to Professor Dr. Hermann Pagenstecher,” London Society, Vol. 63 (January–June, 1893). Pagenstecher and Pulitzer had actually first met in their youth. Udo Brachvogel had introduced them over beers at the Schalks Salon on Broadway in New York when Pulitzer was working for the Westliche Post. “We sat together sipping beers and talking,” said Pagenstecher, recalling the moment to his patient. “I was greatly fascinated by your original ideas and carried away an impression of my new acquaintance that I shall never forget.” (Pagenstecher to JP, 12/12/1900, JP-CU.)
Pagenstecher was more: Pagenstecher to KP, 10/30/1892, JP-CU.
Pulitzer rejoined his family: Hirsch, William C. Whitney, 376.
With the coming: DCS-JP, 190.
CHAPTER 22: CAGED EAGLE
It took the: NYW, 1/13/1884, quoted in WRR, 145–146.
The Majestic, one: NYT, 5/11/1893, 12; DCS-JP, 188.
Bennett admired Pulitzer: Kluger, The Paper, 162–163; DCS, 182.
The publishers disembarked: DCS-JP, 192. Harvey drank and toasted a bit too much. His twenty-fifth toast was to the King irritating Pulitzer. “Oh, damn it. No Kings! No Kings!” Pulitzer said.
Despite the good cheer: JP to Harvey in Johnson, George Harvey, 45.
Pulitzer, for his part: Filler, Voice of the Democracy, 32; DCS to JP, 1/17/1901, WP-CU.
Phillips received an invitation: Marcosson, David Graham Phillips, 141–142.
Pulitzer was so completely: DGP to JP, reprinted ibid., 165–166.
No one on the staff: DCS-JP, 193. Seitz, who wrote the first biography of Pulitzer, began working that year at the highest levels of the paper. Much of what he describes in his book, from this point on, consists of events he witnessed himself.
“It was soon”: DCS, 194; Johnson, George Harvey, 58.
Amid the manageri
al confusion: “The position of a London correspondent is extremely desirable under some circumstances but under other circumstances extremely undesirable,” a frustrated Phillips wrote to Pulitzer. “It means that a man may make a reputation for himself if he can supplement energy with ability, and has the privilege of signing his name to his letters. If he has not that privilege, he is simply wasting energy, ability, and time.” (DGP to JP and DGP to Jones, reprinted in Marcosson, Phillips, 168–169.)
Pulitzer was unconvinced: Pulitzer was stingy with bylines, which were not then a common practice. He once told another correspondent that a byline “is a privilege, but not a right.” (Memorandum for James Creelman, 1896, JC.)
Phillips consented to remain: Marcosson, Phillips, 169.
Leaving the paper: LAT, 12/24/1893, 25; ChTr, 11/26/1893, 25. DCS-JP, 13–14.
Pulitzer suffered from: It is risky to try to identify psychological problems in historical figures. Still, “Blindness and deafness have both been recognized as causal agents in mental illness,” according to Anthony Storr, Solitude, 51. Hyperesthesia is a real effect, not hypochondriacal, according to Edwin N. Carter, a clinical psychologist in private practice. “The peripheral nervous system,” Carter says, “has an exaggerated response eliciting sympathetic nervous activity at the expense of parasympathetic activity.” A common hyperesthesia can be found in children who feel that clothing is scratching no matter how soft it is, or too tight no matter how loose it is. (Carter to author, 10/24/2008.)
His condition, in any case: JP to Adam Politzer, quoted in WRR, 255–256.
As if his own health: Doctor’s report of RP, 3/10/1893, JP-CU, Box 8.
The older Pulitzer children: RP to LP, 2/1/1894, JP-CU.
All winter Joseph: JP to KP, 4/27/1893, JP-CU; GWH to JP, 4/28/1894. In reporting his findings on Colorado Springs, Hosmer added, “I have not yet said any mention of this to Mrs. Pulitzer.” Also JP to KP, 4/28/1894, JP-CU.
In New York: JP to Depew, 5/17/1894, CDP.
Jones’s ineptitude at: AtCo, 12/10/1893, 18.
With the problem of Jones: ChTr, 6/7/1894, 2.
Unlike the coterie: ABF–2001, Box 3.
Upon arriving in New York: BoGl, 6/24/1894, 23.
Senator David Hill: McClellan, The Gentleman and the Tiger, 99–100. When he arrived for their appointment at the Normandy Hotel, McCellan found Hill talking with George Harvey, whom he met during a short stint working at the World, and who was now doing political work for Pulitzer’s friend Whitney.
On his return: AtCo, 12/29/1894, 3.
Jones’s contract: DCS-JP, 199. The terms of the contract described by Seitz are confirmed by a document in the Fogarty Collection.
For Pulitzer, Jekyll Island’s: AtCo, 1/11/1895, 3.
One of the few witnesses: Correspondence of Felix Webber, 9/27/1894; 12/9/1894; 1/2/1895, JP-MHS.
Kate had certainly: JP to KP, JP-CU, Box 8. This letter was partially burned, probably in a house fire.
Her separation from Joseph: “H.” to KP, Saturday, 10/10/1895 and 10/18/1895. AB-LC.
In May, Pulitzer: Moray Lodge, on Campden Hill, next to Holland Park; JP to TD, 6/30/1895, TD.
That summer the remodeled: BoGl, 1/10/1895, 8.
The “tower of silence”: Cobb, Exit Laughing, 131.
Roosevelt’s claim that: JLH, 108.
Reading the editorial: Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 504–505; Roosevelt, Letters, Vol. 1, 497.
Indeed, Roosevelt’s ambitions: ChTr, 2/23/1896, 11.
The rebuff drew: NYT, 12/18, 1895, 1; ChTr, 12/18/1895, 1; AtCo, 12/18/1895, 1.
Pulitzer refused to: Quoted in DCS-JP, 203.
Pulitzer had long feared: NYS, 10/6/1878, 3.
Pulitzer now expanded: JLH, 119.
In England, the telegrams: NYW, 12/26 and 12/27, 1895, Roosevelt, Letters, Vol. 1, 503–505.
Under such headlines: Eggleston, Recollections, 328–330. Eggleston based his account on notes he wrote that evening before returning to New York.
Pulitzer dismissed his men: JLH, 137.
Pulitzer won: NYT, 1/8/1896, 2. A senator asked Chandler if he would read one of the telegrams from the World. He said he couldn’t, because the paper was now in the hands of Senator Hill of New York, arousing laughter in the chamber. The men looked over at Hill, who only months before had been currying favor with Pulitzer. “Whatever else the Senator from New York may be,” Hill told his colleagues, “he is not, at this time, the defender of Mr. Pulitzer. I leave that to other gentlemen.”
Pulitzer mounted his: JLH, 122.
A few days later: DCS-JP, 209.
Roosevelt, in this: NYT, 3/19/1896, 8.
CHAPTER 23: TROUBLE FROM THE WEST
In February 1895: APM, 322.
At the beginning: APM, 285.
From its origin: APM, 272.
The Journal’s circulation: Henry Kellett Chambers, “A Park Row Interlude: Memoir of Albert Pulitzer,” Journalism Quarterly (Autumn 1963), 542. Also NYT, 11/24/1909, 3.
But his years: Morning Journal, 4/15/1895 quoted in APM, 323–324.
At long last: AtCo, 7/26/1896, 23.
Pulitzer’s men at: DCS-JP, 211. The Examiner’s office was located in suite 186 in the Pulitzer Building in 1894–1895, according to Trow’s City Directory.
Pulitzer found out: AtCo, 1/22/1896, 3; JP to James Creelman, 1/18/1896, JC.
After two years: JP to James Creelman, 2/18/1896, JC.
While the party: DCS-JP, 212–213.
“The news of”: ChTr, 2/9/1898, 3.
“The immediate effect”: DCS-JP, 213–214; Nasaw, The Chief, 104; Ochs to JP, quoted in Brown, The Correspondents’ War, 28.
Hearst’s entry into: DCS-JP, 217; Nasaw, The Chief, 105.
With his newspaper’s supremacy: AtCo, 1/17/1897, 7.
On Jekyll Island: King, Pulitzer’s Prize Editor, 295–304.
Pulitzer found tranquillity: ChTr, 7/12/1896, 14.
Its pleasures were: WaPo, 6/6/1896, 9; ChTr, 6/6/1896, 2. The entire speech is reprinted in DCS-JP, 218–224.
Before returning to: JP to Norris, 6/15/1896, JP-LC; various telegrams, JP-LC, Box 1.
The strength of the silver movement: ChTr, 7/12/1896, 14; Kazin, A Godly Hero, 61.
Pulitzer summoned the World’s: Eggleston, Recollections, 325–326.
When Eggleston delivered: “He had a wonderful judgement at prophesying and forecasting the elections,” recalled Joseph Pulitzer Jr. “I can remember being impressed by that. It was uncanny the way he could do that”: The Reminiscences of Joseph Pulitzer Jr., October 7, 1954, transcript, p. 67, the Oral History Collection of Columbia University.
Eggleston and Pulitzer: NYW, 8/11/1896.
“You can, if”: JP to James Creelman, 11/4/1896, JC; Milton, The Yellow Kids, 107.
The beauty of the setting: AB to KP, 1/11/1897, JP-CU (misdated as 1896).
Efforts to relieve: JP to KP, 1/14/1897, JP-CU; AB to KP, 1/11/1897, JP-CU (misdated as 1896).
Compounding the council’s woes: JP to DCS, 9/2/1897, JP-CU. The door consumed several letters between Bar Harbor and New York.
As the day neared: AB to DCS, 1/15/1897, JP-LC; BM to JP, 2/16/1903, WP-CU.
What had been called: See Campbell, Yellow Journalism, 25–49.
Clubs and libraries: NYT, 3/4/1897, 3.
Pulitzer knew nothing: McDougall, This Is the Life! 242.
Pulitzer now realized: JP to JN, 8/21/1897, JP-LC; JP to DCS, 8/28/1897, JP-LC.
In a state of: AtCo, 3/18/1897, 1. The paper claimed that the previous year, Morgan had bypassed Jekyll and gone to Florida when he learned that Pulitzer was on the island (AtCo 1/17/1897, 7).
After a month’s rest: Pulitzer added a glass conservatory to the back of the house that he could use as a study and where he could tend to what he called “matters of state”: DCS-JP, 232; WP, 3/31/1897, 7; Eau Claire Leader, 5/20/1897, 11.
Among those who came: JP to James Creelman, 11/4/1896, JC; JP to DCS, 4/28/1897, JP-LC; DCS
-JP, 232–233.
Almost as soon: Jones to JP, March 5, 1896, PLFC.
Jones grew tired: JP to JN, 6/26/1897, JP-LC; JP to BM, 6/30/1897, JP-LC. A copy of the signed agreement is in the Fogarty Papers.
With the Jones episode: Letters and telegrams, August 1897, JP-LC.
No one was exempt: KP to AB, date unknown, 1897, JP-CU.
In August 1897: AB to KP, 3/3/1896, AB-LC.
In the fall of 1897: For a discussion of the various versions of Brisbane’s departure, see Carlson, Brisbane, 110–111. Elizabeth Jordan, a journalist who worked with Brisbane at the World, told one person that she heard many rumors as to the reasons but she concluded he was asked to leave because Pulitzer was not getting his money’s worth from him. Reid to Sparkes, 2/28/1938, London 1886–1897 Folder, Box 2, AB.
The social season: ChTr, 8/1/97, 33; Lowell Sun, 12/18/1897, 2.
Lucille made a: Bangor Daily Whig and Courier, 1/3/1898, 4; BoGl, 1/1/1898, 12; NYT, 1/2/1898, 7; and 1/5/1898, 4.
In October there was: JP to TD, 10/13/1897, 12/8/1897, and 12/14/1897.
It was left to Butes: AB to JN, 12/31/1897, JP-LC.
CHAPTER 24: YELLOW
In the early morning: NYT, 1/22/1899, 3. Rainsford had been picked by J. P. Morgan for the post.
The moment didn’t: WaPo, 2/18/1898, 7; NYT, 10/28/1898, 1.
Meanwhile, Joseph remained: KP to JP, undated but dated by other elements to the spring of 1898, JP-CU, Box 8.
The warmth between: GWH to KP, 3/29/1898, JP-CU.
Five hundred miles: Milton, The Yellow Kids, 218–220.
His boss already knew: Nasaw, The Chief, 130–131.
Within twenty-four hours: NYW, 2/17/1898, 1; and 2/20/1898, 1.
The staff struggled: Ledlie to JP, 2/15/1898, JP-CU; DC to JP, 4/15/1898, JP-CU.
The epic battle: Chapin, Charles Chapin’s Story, 179.
No more stinging: The complete story may be found in Procter, William Randolph Hearst: The Early Years, 124.
In April, when: TT, 4/7/1898, 12, quoted in Nasaw, The Chief, 132.
From the command post: GHL to KP, 4/8/1898, JP-CU.
Trying once more: JP to DCS, 5/23/1897, JP-LC; JP memo, April 1898, JP-LC.
Pulitzer joined the chorus: JP to DCS, 2/15/1897, and 3/27/1897, JP-LC.
“If we are”: NYW, 4/10/1898.
Upon completing his: GHL to KP, 4/8/1898, JP-CU; WaPo, 4/20/1898, 8; CP to JP, 5/21/1898, JP-CU.
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