The New Colossus

by Marshall Goldberg

  “That is true, Cockerill,” said Pulitzer, “but Miss Bly showed us more than promise; she showed courage and intelligence. There is no reason to wait.”

  “That’s generous of you, Mr. Pulitzer,” said Cockerill, making sure Nellie got the message.

  “Very generous,” said Nellie.

  “You will be paid twenty dollars a week. I trust that will suffice?” he asked.

  Nellie’s heart sank. Twenty dollars a week was not even what she’d made writing gardening stories in Pittsburg. And rent in New York was much higher.

  “I was hoping for more, sir.” In fact, she had been hoping for forty but could feel her nerve leaving her.

  “We are offering you a permanent position!” said Pulitzer with irritation. “Your own byline! At the largest newspaper in New York!” Cockerill didn’t bother to translate. The gist was clear.

  Nellie went flush with anger. She started to deliver a sharp retort when suddenly she wondered if Pulitzer, like Cockerill before him, wasn’t testing her.

  “Is that what most of the permanent staff make, sir? Twenty dollars a week?”

  “What other reporters make is a private matter,” said Cockerill.

  “You’re right. There’s no need to tell me. Any reporter fit to work at the World should be able to find out employee wages easily enough.”

  A dark look came over Pulitzer’s face again. He was a man of many moods—she could see that—and he wasn’t good at hiding any of them.

  “I have rent to pay,” Nellie said, “just like your other reporters. And family members to support. You wouldn’t be offering me less money because I’m a woman, would you, Mr. Pulitzer?”

  “Of course not. I am offering less money because I hope you will take it.” He smiled. And, with great relief, so did she.

  “I will pay you what everyone else in your position is making: thirty dollars a week. Begrudgingly.”

  “In that case I will accept thirty dollars a week. Begrudgingly.”

  “Good.”

  “You won’t be disappointed, Mr. Pulitzer. I promise.” She could barely contain herself.

  “No need to promise, my dear. Pulitzer does not make mistakes. Now, for your next story—”

  “Actually, I have an idea in mind.” She had been waiting for this moment and had rehearsed it to herself dozens of times. “Are you familiar with Jules Verne?”

  Pulitzer glanced at Cockerill. “What about him?”

  “Do you know his book, Around the World in 80 Days?”

  “Yes, yes,” said Pulitzer impatiently. “What about it?”

  “I want to track the journey of Phileas Fogg and write about it as a journalist. What it would really be like to go around the world in eighty days. I could telegraph dispatches from Italy, Ceylon, India, China.”

  Verne’s book had ignited her imagination. She was sure that newspaper readers would be equally captivated by a running account and had planned out the entire itinerary. It was a story she had wanted to write all her life.

  “It won’t do,” snapped Pulitzer.

  “Why not?” She was disappointed. She had her heart set on this story.

  “Because I have something else in mind for you.”

  He slowed down his speech, to make sure he would be understood. “Have you seen Liberty Enlightening the World, Miss Bly?”

  “Of course. Almost every weekend.”

  Anyone wanting to work at the World was expected to know the story of Pulitzer’s obsession with what had become the most famous sculpture in America. A gift from the people of France to the people of the United States to celebrate the centennial of American independence, it had arrived only a year before, ten years late, on June 18, 1886, in 214 wooden packing crates. Once assembled, it was 310 feet high, taller than any building in New York. Its copper patina could be seen from each of the five boroughs, and Nellie was not exaggerating when she said she visited it almost every weekend.

  The idea for the statue was conceived by the French sculptor Frederic Bartholdi as a way of expressing disapproval for the rule of Emperor Napoleon III, and the French Parliament had commissioned it. Congress authorized the land for the site (Bedloe’s Island in New York harbor), but determined that payment for the $150,000 pedestal should rest entirely with the people of New York since the statue would be exhibited there. The politicians of New York City, however, refused to allocate the necessary funds, deeming it a waste of money. The situation became a national embarrassment—the massive statue, a gift from the people of France, broken up into crates, awaiting shipment in the French ports because the United States would not supply an appropriate pedestal—until Joseph Pulitzer took it upon himself to spearhead the fundraising drive. First he contacted people of wealth all over New York City, but funds only trickled in.

  Undaunted, he took his case to the public and promised to publish the name of every contributor, no matter how large or small the donation, on the front page of the World. In a remarkably short time, the drive raised the $150,000, nearly all of it coming from 120,000 working class men, women, and children—including Nellie and her mother—while the wealthy, wrote Pulitzer, “looked on with an apathy that amounted to contempt.” The 27,000-ton base, its construction overseen by Pulitzer himself, was the largest concrete structure ever built. The statue was dedicated on October 28, 1886, in a ceremony that made the entire country proud.

  Pulitzer was pleased that Nellie had visited the statue repeatedly, but she was not simply humoring him. Her admiration was genuine. Without Pulitzer, there would have been no statue. In fact, at the opening ceremony two spikes had been driven into the statue’s toes, one with the name of the sculptor, Bartholdi, the other with “Pulitzer” etched on it.

  “Now,” he went on, “do you know the name Emma Lazarus?”

  Nellie had to think a moment. “The poet?”

  “Yes.”

  Nellie was not one for poetry. She preferred newspapers and serials in magazines. But part of her job at the Dispatch had been to proofread copy, and occasionally the paper would print poetry, as did most newspapers of the day. A few of Emma Lazarus’s poems appeared in the Dispatch, though at the moment Nellie couldn’t remember them.

  “What does Miss Lazarus have to do with the statue?” asked Nellie.

  “Emma Lazarus is the only reason the statue is standing today,” said Pulitzer. “Without her, I would not have been involved, and no one else would have raised the money.”

  He went to his desk and picked up a sheet of paper. “When I first heard this poem, I was moved to tears. It captures America for all who come here. My ambition is to have a plaque of it affixed to the base so that every visitor to the statue will read it. Sadly, that requires approval from several people, and we have been unable to obtain it.”

  He handed Nellie the poem.

  “I don’t know how long it will take or how much it will cost, Miss Bly,” he said emphatically, “but before I die, I will see this poem on the base of Lady Liberty.”

  He had circled a stanza of the poem:

  Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

  With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

  Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

  A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

  Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

  Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

  Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

  The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

  “Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

  With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

  Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

  The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

  Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

  I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

  Nellie read it quietly to herself. It was indee
d stirring, expressing remarkably the dreams of those who came to this country in search of a better life. But Nellie was thinking about a job, not words for the heart, and she had no idea what Pulitzer wanted. She handed him the poem.

  “I’m sure Miss Lazarus will be pleased when that happens, sir.”

  Pulitzer frowned. “Miss Lazarus is dead, Miss Bly.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

  “She died six months ago. At the age of 38.”

  “How?”

  He looked at her with those steely eyes. “That’s what I want you to find out.”

  “Me? Mr. Pulitzer, I know nothing about medicine.”

  “I’m not sure that matters in this case.”

  She caught the darkness in his voice. “What do the doctors say?” she asked.

  “The doctors,” he said with unconcealed contempt, “believe it was a cancer.”

  “But you suspect malice?”

  “I suspect murder. She was much too young, much too vibrant, to die.”

  “Many people die too young, sir. My own father was one of them.”

  “I understand that. But my wife and I had seen Miss Lazarus often over the past several years. She was in excellent health. Then she made a trip abroad and came back in terrible health. We did not recognize her. She was bedridden, had stopped writing, could hardly speak. Within two months she was dead.”

  “Have you spoken to the police?”

  “The police barely investigated,” he said dismissively. “They simply went along with the doctors and ruled out foul play.”

  “What makes you think they are mistaken?”

  “Too many people have reason to be pleased with her death. For at least one of them, I am convinced it was more than a happy coincidence.”

  “ ‘Pleased?’ How? Who?”

  “That you will come to learn.” He stared at her with those intense eyes. “Mrs. Pulitzer and I feel it is our duty to learn what happened to Miss Lazarus. I admired the way you went about the asylum story. I need that same determination here.”

  She saw how much this meant to him and was flattered he trusted her with such a personal assignment. But she knew that disappointing him would have unfortunate consequences, and that sobered her quickly.

  “I am not a police detective, Mr. Pulitzer. I’m a journalist.”

  “I told you, the police have been useless.”

  “But they have certain powers a journalist does not.”

  Again that dismissive wave. “They said that everything is fine, just as the warden at Bellevue said everything was fine.”

  Nellie’s stomach tightened. She wouldn’t know where to begin on such a story. And yet if she said no to Pulitzer, her time at the World would be finished.

  He stood up. The meeting was over.

  “Mr. Pulitzer, I’m still not sure I’m the right person for this story.”

  “I told you: Pulitzer does not make mistakes. Cockerill will give you more details of Miss Lazarus.”

  He walked over to his desk.

  “After you finish, you can pursue Mr. Verne and Mr. Phileas Fogg.” He began poring over some papers.

  “Uh, Mr. Pulitzer,” she said.

  “Yes? What is it?”

  “You mentioned something in the papers about a check, for doing such a good job.”

  He looked at her, flabbergasted. “Miss Bly. You should know better than to believe what you read in the papers.”

  Chapter Three

  New York Cancer Hospital

  Nellie lifted her skirt hem several inches as she followed Cockerill through the newspaper room, past the reporters and spittoons. The floor of the World, like the floor of her old paper, the Dispatch, was half an inch deep with expectorated tobacco juice. The male reporters, not the least bit embarrassed at the slovenly state of their workplace, eyed Nellie with defiance and hostility. If she was put off by the spit on the floor or anything else, it was her problem, not theirs.

  She and Cockerill reached his desk in the far corner of the room, where he could gain some privacy but still keep an eye on his reporters. Nellie had done her research on Cockerill when he assigned her the Bellevue story. Just over 40 years old, with leathery skin and a disposition to match, he was a lifelong newspaperman and had the complete trust of Pulitzer, along with the respect and fear of his staff. He once shot and killed an irate reader who pulled a gun on him in a newsroom, which left no doubt to his reporters who was in charge.

  Cockerill motioned for Nellie to sit. “Congratulations.”

  “Thank you, Colonel.” It was finally hitting her that she had a permanent position, at an acceptable salary, at the biggest and most forward-thinking paper in New York.

  “I’ll be frank, Miss Bly. You proved me wrong on the asylum story. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

  “I don’t know whether to say thank you or apologize.”

  “Do neither. Simply continue to prove me wrong.”

  “I shall look forward to that,” she said sweetly. Cockerill had taken a chance in hiring her for the Bellevue story, but he had also been the editor in New York most resistant to women working in journalism.

  He picked up the top sheet from a stack of documents in front of him.

  “Miss Lazarus’s family is one of the oldest in New York, in fact in America. Her ancestors came over from Portugal in the 1600s and settled in Newport, Rhode Island, where they built the first synagogue in the United States.”

  “Miss Lazarus was a Jew?” asked Nellie, surprised.

  “Yes,” Cockerill responded with mild distaste. Nellie’s enthusiasm for the story, already low, sank even further. Only an hour before, she had imagined herself traveling around the world to fulfill a dream. Now she was investigating the death of a Jewish poet.

  “Why did they settle in Newport and not New York?” she asked, trying to muster some interest.

  “New York was not always so friendly to Israelites. Massachusetts was even less welcoming. Only Rhode Island, among the northern colonies, let them be. Eventually, as the religious and commercial climate changed, the family did move to New York, though they maintained a presence in Newport. Emma’s father became a sugar merchant and managed to ship to customers in the Rebel states during the war. It almost cost him his membership in the Union Club.”

  “What’s the Union Club?”

  He looked at her. “You are new to New York, aren’t you?”

  “My family has been barred from clubs for centuries, Mr. Cockerill. I was simply wondering if the Union Club was any different from the rest of them.”

  “The Union Club is the oldest private club in New York. Membership is based entirely on social standing. Mr. Vanderbilt, Mr. Gould, even Mr. Morgan have yet to be admitted.”

  “And yet a Jew was a member?”

  “A charter member. The Lazaruses are on Mrs. Astor’s list as well.”

  Even Nellie knew that “Mrs. Astor’s list” designated the 400 most exclusive families in New York City.

  “And all these connections … is that what opened doors for her poetry?”

  “No, Miss Lazarus was a prodigy. Emerson himself read her when she was a teenager and insisted on mentoring her. By the age of 20, she had been published in the leading literary magazines in America and had a following in Europe as well. Browning, James, all the literary types showered praise upon her.”

  Nellie was impressed but not about to say so to Cockerill. She didn’t like this assignment and was going along with it only because Pulitzer had insisted on it.

  “She was a first-rate talent with great promise,” he continued, “and then something happened. We aren’t sure what exactly, but Miss Lazarus suddenly became a champion of social causes, first in her writings, then in her activities. It was during that time that she wrote ‘The New Colossus,’ the poem Mr. Pulitzer showed you.”

  “What sorts of causes?”

  “The plight of immigrants
, especially from Russia. She went to the docks and greeted them as they came off the boats, and started organizations to house and clothe them and find them work. She became quite the hero to them, though apparently her family wasn’t keen on it. They threatened to disown her. But she had an independent streak and told them she wasn’t going to stop, no matter what they did.”

  For the first time since Pulitzer had assigned her the story, Emma perked up. “I thought you would like that,” remarked Cockerill.

  Nellie let it pass. For all she knew, Emma may have been a spoiled girl rebelling against her family rather than an independent woman. “She was unmarried?”

  “Yes.”

  “Any engagements?”

  “None that we know of. But she was often seen with the brother-in-law of her editor at Harper’s. A Charles DeKay.”

  “And what do you know about Mr. DeKay?”

  “Attended Yale. A fencer with social connections but not much money. Something of a failed poet. Writes art and drama critiques for the Times.”

  “Not a Jew, I take it?”

  “No. Most definitely not a Jew.”

  A rich Jewess who dabbled in poetry and social causes and fencers from Yale wasn’t Nellie’s favorite subject for a story, but more than that, she still wondered if a story was even there.

  “May I ask you a question, Mr. Cockerill?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Do you think foul play was involved? A thirty-eight-year-old woman dying of a cancer is hardly unheard of.”

  “I don’t know what to think, Miss Bly. The doctor and the police were firm in their opinions. But when Mr. Pulitzer has a strong feeling, I have learned to respect it.”

  “What if your doubts are correct and Miss Lazarus did indeed die of natural causes?”

  “Let’s just see what you learn.”

  He pushed the pile of documents toward her. “He is testing me, isn’t he?” she said.

  “No, I don’t think he is testing you. I think he is using every resource at his disposal to obtain justice for a friend. And he can hardly be blamed for that, can he?”