The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism

by Doris Kearns Goodwin

  Although McClure’s team had long been accustomed to the rapid mood swings that drove Sam McClure into alternating periods of manic energy and pathological torpor, his creative wizardry had always compensated for his mercurial behavior. “Never forget,” Ida Tarbell had counseled every time McClure riled the office with one of his outbursts, “that it was he & nobody else” who built the magazine, that all “the great schemes, the daring moves,” the ideas that had propelled his writers’ series and, finally, the writers themselves to national acclaim originated with him.

  But in recent months the frenetic shifts from one grandiose plan to another had become more frequent, the melancholy periods infinitely darker. These radical vacillations in temperament compelled months of bed rest and even destroyed McClure’s interest in the work he had always adored. While still capable of brilliance, McClure exhibited increasingly erratic behavior that took a cumulative toll on his colleagues. One of Sam McClure’s escapades in the summer of 1903 had marked the first in a series of troubling events that became distressingly emblematic of the way his compulsions began to compromise the accomplishments and aspirations of his friends and colleagues at the magazine.

  McClure had invited Ida to join him and his wife, Hattie, at Divonneles-Bains, the popular spa town in eastern France on the border of Switzerland. Worried that her grinding work on the Standard Oil project was impacting her health, McClure hoped she would join them for the entire summer season. “You are infinitely precious to me,” he told Ida. “I dreamed about you last night,” he revealed, and “awoke this morning very anxious about you.” If she found the pace of the series pressing her, he would gladly rein it in. “The truth is you have taken the forward place in my heart of all my friends,” he wrote. “I want to live near you & be much with you during the coming years.”

  The prospect of a European vacation with Sam delighted Ida, but her work kept her in New York until July. In her absence, McClure invited a young poet, Florence Wilkinson, and a newly wed couple, Alice and Cale Rice, to accompany him to London and France. Wilkinson, a tall, dark-haired beauty, conducted poetry classes at her Greenwich Village studio. Four of her poems, at Sam’s direction, had recently appeared in McClure’s. The inclusion of Wilkinson’s slight romantic verse in a magazine that had published the poetry of William Butler Yeats and A. E. Housman puzzled the staff, who suspected that their editor’s fascination with the girl betrayed his usually impeccable judgment. The Rices would become well-known writers, but at the time Alice Hegan Rice had published her first novel and her husband had produced two slim volumes of poetry.

  In London, McClure had arranged luxurious accommodations and memorable entertainment for his young friends, including a dinner at the Vagabondia with a circle of illustrious writers and an evening of theatre in the box of Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula. After arranging British publishers for the three aspiring writers, McClure brought them to Divonne. A week later, while Hattie stayed behind seeking relief for her rheumatism, the ever restless McClure set out with Wilkinson and the Rices for Chamonix and Mont Blanc. At the Hôtel du Paris, he selected a suite for the Rices on the second floor, while he and Florence Wilkinson stayed on the third. By the time Florence left the group for Bellagio, the intimacy that had developed between McClure and the young poet was apparent to the Rices.

  When Ida Tarbell joined McClure and the Rices in the Swiss village of Gletsch, the newly organized traveling party set forth on a walking tour of the Alps. In the course of three weeks, they trekked from the valley of the Rhône to Lucerne and Zurich, and then on to the Engadine Valley in Italy, stopping at small inns along the way. Their “rollicking adventure,” Alice Rice recalled, was directed by McClure, their “buccaneer leader,” who “went through life like a tornado carrying everything in its wake.” Reaching San Moritz in the late afternoon as fashionable carriages paraded along the thoroughfare, McClure was so exhilarated by the beauty of the mountain scene that he “lost his head completely,” challenging Cale to scale a hill and then somersault down its slope. “So,” Alice remembered, “to the utter amazement of the summer residents, taking their afternoon drive, two wild Americans came catapulting down the hillside, landing in the promenade almost under their horses’ feet.”

  During that “never-to-be forgotten” European tour, Alice Rice and her husband forged a lifelong friendship with Ida Tarbell. Toward the end of their journey, the young couple, in all likelihood, confided the intimacy they had witnessed between Florence and Sam. Tensions grew until Ida could barely contain her tears when they parted, and McClure rightly feared that he had diminished himself in her eyes. “I have felt terribly sad since you left,” he lamented in a subsequent letter. “I have no friend like you & I cannot endure to have hurt you & forfeited any of your confidence,” he added, begging her forgiveness and promising never to “take another party to the Alps of any kind, just my family & you and other of my associates.”

  Ida’s real distress was not driven by prudish disdain for his amorous entanglements; instead, she feared that Sam McClure’s recklessness could tarnish the magazine with hypocrisy. In article after article, McClure’s had exposed immoral businessmen and politicians. The authority of its painstaking investigations rested on the integrity of the writers and editors. Clearly, public scandal involving the magazine’s charismatic founder would be a valuable weapon for those seeking to demean all their efforts.

  After returning to New York that fall of 1903, Ida had shared her apprehensions with John Phillips. When Sam departed alone for a two-month European stay in November, they feared he planned to meet with Florence. His letters home revealed a mood of exultation: “I feel sure of myself as I haven’t for many years. I am stronger on this trip than I was any time in ten years,” he wrote from Berlin. Sam’s buoyant tone persisted as he traveled through Germany and back to London. “I am so much keener & sharper than ever,” he boasted. “I feel my vision broadened and feel strong physically and mentally.” When McClure suddenly embarked on a solo holiday in the Appalachian Mountains in the spring, Tarbell and Phillips were convinced the sojourn was engineered to meet his lover.

  In May 1904, the office erupted into turmoil when McClure directed the poetry editor, Witter Bynner, to purchase yet another of Florence’s verses, this time a lover’s poem that seemed directed to McClure himself. McClure composed a letter announcing its imminent publication by the magazine. He then asked Bynner to present the announcement to Miss Wilkinson personally, accompanied by a lavish arrangement of fresh flowers. When Tarbell and Phillips learned of these instructions, they upbraided Sam “like a naughty child.” By this time, Hattie had learned about the affair, and turbulent days followed. A chastened McClure swore he would finally end the relationship and apparently informed Florence that they must sever all communication.

  A week later, Sam left for Europe with his wife. Upon reaching Divonne, Hattie wrote Ida that something “very terrible” had come up during the ocean voyage: Sam had confessed to the existence of numerous letters written to Florence over the previous year. Immediately realizing “all the possibilities implied in that circumstance,” Hattie urged her husband to have John Phillips retrieve his correspondence, but Sam “was wild at that idea.” Instead, he sent off another letter to Florence, requesting the return of all his correspondence. “As the time approached when an answer could be expected,” Hattie confided to Ida, Sam “fell into a terrible condition. He lost flesh, nearly a pound a day for nearly a week.” Every day, he fretfully awaited the postman.

  “I have so much to do right for,” the overwrought McClure confessed to Ida during this interval. “I couldn’t bear to lose you, not to speak of John or the others. . . . I am now at the bottom. I can go no further nor feel any sadder . . . I am about to take the desperate, but sure cure. Three weeks, in bed & milk.” Realizing that their friend was ill equipped to resolve the situation, Tarbell and Phillips decided they must intervene. The awareness of extant letters exchanged between the illicit lovers conf
irmed their worst fears. “The Lord help us!” Ida exclaimed. Concluding that they must approach Florence Wilkinson directly, Ida considered visiting the Finger Lakes, where Florence was spending the summer. There, Ida would “make an appeal for courage,” hopeful that the young woman would return the letters and refuse further contact with Sam. “I fear I would be hard on her,” she admitted to John, as they considered their options, “but I will honestly try to put that out of my mind and help the girl if she will let me.” In the end, Ida decided it might be wiser for Phillips to make the appeal, since it was “quite natural” that Florence should “feel resentment” toward her. The shy Phillips agreed to undertake the unpleasant task, meeting with Florence in upstate New York, where he secured her promise to return the letters and refrain from further communication with McClure.

  Although Florence initially kept her part of the bargain, Sam could not keep his. “I have received six or seven letters and two cable messages,” Florence informed Phillips. The letters, she told him, “I have returned mostly sealed as they came. It hurts me more than words can say.” She had indeed sent a packet containing all McClure’s correspondence, but Florence could not bear to reject unopened all his new letters. “I think his health is suffering unnecessarily under the strain of absolute silence,” she wrote. “I think, too, he is in an agony of doubt as to my feelings toward him. I wish he could know that I love him as well as ever—though I am never to see him.” Despite Phillips’s concerns, she desperately wished to post one letter assuring Sam that “the love by itself is not wrong.” Phillips should understand that “it was not humanly possible for his side to snap off so suddenly,” though she would do her utmost to ease the situation.

  McClure’s longtime friend and London office manager Mary Bisland reported to Ida that Sam could not stop talking about Florence, protesting that he had been “wretched & restless” since the separation and insisting that he had “not the very vaguest idea of giving her up,” though he feared she was now determined to end the affair. At times, McClure seemed to listen to reason, making “very solemn promises” to Hattie that he would devote himself to her and that she would once again work in the office by his side. But such pledges alternated with dark declarations that he would leave New York for a year or more, perhaps never to return. “He said he was a hurt animal who wanted to crawl into a hole and hide forever,” Hattie sadly told Ida. “My heart is broken to see how weak he is. . . . He must learn over again to live with me and do right.”

  Yet even during his most depressed days in Europe, McClure never failed to follow every detail of the magazine’s progress, continuing to provide valuable input. Writing to Tarbell in June 1904, he captured the vision articulated in recent articles: “The struggle for possession of absolute power which you find in your work among capitalists & Steffens finds among politicians & Baker finds among labor unions, is the age-long struggle & human freedom has been won only by continual & tremendous effort.” Much as he admired Steffens’s articles on corruption, he warned Phillips that they were “full of dynamite, far & away the most terrible stuff we can handle.” Steffens “must never be rushed,” he further cautioned, and his use of invective must be carefully curtailed. In the article on Wisconsin, for example, Steffens had accused Senator John Spooner of bribing state legislators to obtain his Senate seat. “Unless Spooner was elected by bribery, we must clear him,” McClure instructed. “Either he or the magazine must be cleared.” The article on Nelson Aldrich would be equally “sensational” and “must be very understated and very accurate.” Compounding his unease, McClure intuited that the atmosphere at the magazine had become less collegial. He feared that with each writer “working in his own little cubicle, in his own little field,” each would fail “to get the inspiration or the information that would vitalize his work, from other departments.”

  His perceptions were by and large astute, but Sam McClure also fired off a series of ill-tempered critiques that upset staffers in New York. They bristled at his particularly high-handed indictment of an internal advertisement extolling the magazine’s growing reputation. “The man who is responsible for this advt is relieved from further ad writing absolutely,” McClure haughtily ordered, complaining, “Why in the name of ordinary decency and modesty do we have to vaunt ourselves like this, saying we are the best. . . . We act like a spoiled, over-petted and over-praised, but ill-bred small boy.” He implored Hattie to write a separate letter conveying to everyone in the office the depth of his displeasure. Henceforth, he demanded, not a single ad should be run without his express approval. Put to bed under doctor’s orders to begin the dreaded milk cure yet again, Hattie reported, he had asked her to read some of the magazine’s recent short stories, which she had concluded were “very poor, trashy, empty things . . . far below the old McClure standard.” Future stories, he then insisted, should be sent to Divonne so Hattie could determine if they seemed “unworthy.” Phillips patiently answered Sam’s diatribes, but he began to wonder if his oldest friend would ever be healthy enough to return to full-time work.

  Hattie’s determination to forgive her husband’s past indiscretions was severely tested in July 1904 when she received a shattering letter from Miss Wilkinson. Florence had learned that she was not the only “other” woman in Sam’s life. Her “dearest” friend, Edith Wherry, had revealed her own romantic relationship with McClure, which had apparently developed after the fateful European vacation. Florence had written Hattie in a fit of jealous anger, intending to injure Sam in his wife’s eyes. The distressing missive spurred Sam into belated recognition that he would have to take control of a quickly deteriorating situation. “Yesterday,” he wrote to Phillips, “Mrs. McClure received a letter from Florence that brought about a condition that resulted in my making a complete finis to the terrible affair & I have so written Miss W. You have done nobly & Miss Tarbell but now the matter is finished absolutely. . . . There is no possible chance for further troubles.”

  McClure managed to convince his wife that Miss Wherry’s confession was a mere figment of the young girl’s imagination, and the troubled couple headed home with a commitment to resume their marriage. While Hattie admitted that her heart was still “wrung with the anguish of it all,” she told Sam that she was willing to leave everything in the past now that he had ended his “strange wanderings.”

  Back home, Sam professed his resolve to abandon all distraction and philandering, insisting to Ida Tarbell that her devoted efforts had “saved” him. He was so “horrified at the awful course of the past year or two” that he dared not dwell on it, fearing he would “never again be first” in her esteem and affections. If he were unable to regain her confidence, he told her, that alone would serve as lasting “punishment” for all he had done. Despite his contrition, there remained a disagreeable postscript to the Wherry episode. When Sam was in Chicago months later, Edith Wherry sent a manuscript to Hattie with the alarming title “The Shame of S. S. McClure, Illustrated by Letters and Original Documents.” Miss Wherry claimed that she was determined “to live henceforth in truth & honor.” Accordingly, “the wall of lies” which had sheltered her liaison with Sam must be razed. Hattie brought the explosive manuscript to the office, seeking the counsel of Tarbell and Phillips. An urgent telegram was dispatched, urging McClure’s immediate return to New York. When he arrived the next day, the staff drew up a plan of financial compensation to suppress the manuscript.

  MCCLURE’S RETURN TO THE MAGAZINE seemed to revive him. Bursting with new concepts, he proposed that Steffens embark on an investigation of life insurance companies and that Tarbell take on the U.S. Senate, predicting that “the whole future” of the country would be determined by “that most powerful ruling body.” During a trip through the Midwest in the summer of 1905, he stopped in Emporia to visit William Allen White and reported that he himself was “getting along splendidly” in both “his work and learning” and that he was poised “to do greater editing than ever before.”

  Relieved to wit
ness the lift in McClure’s spirits, Phillips and Tarbell nevertheless mistrusted his leadership after the enervating months of crises. Not only did Tarbell ignore his suggestion to study the Senate; she had also, McClure sorrowfully noted, neglected to write to him during his travels. “I thought when I came back,” he told her, “I could stand the years of waiting until I earned your confidence and regained my place with you & Mr. Phillips.” Now, McClure feared that things “would never be the same,” and that realization placed “a heavy, heavy load” on his heart. “My mind constantly dwells in the past & more especially the first four years of the magazine,” he plaintively confided to Ida. “They were the golden years of my life . . . I often dream of being back with you all. I feel also how much I have done to destroy the most precious possession of my life.”

  Impelled by a feverish desire to reclaim the affection and respect of his colleagues, McClure spent days and nights developing an elaborate plan for a new monthly companion magazine to McClure’s. Transported by manic excitement, the publisher convinced himself that it would be “the greatest periodical ever published in America.” Once his staff understood the brilliance of the scheme, he exulted, they would acknowledge that he was “a stronger and more productive man than ever.” In late November 1905, he sent the finished prospectus to Tarbell. He was sharing “a tremendous secret,” he wrote, which he hoped would mollify any anxieties she might continue to harbor.

  McClure’s Universal Journal, the second monthly he envisioned, would be larger than the current magazine, attracting the most famous novelists and short story writers in the world and featuring serious articles about current issues. Single copies would cost but five cents, one third the price of McClure’s magazine. The lower price would be accomplished by utilizing less expensive paper and relying on pen-and-ink illustrations instead of costly copperplate engravings. McClure predicted a net yearly income of $2 million and proposed to found the company by issuing nearly $13 million in stock. The staff of McClure’s would manage both the current magazine and the new journal.