Joseph Pulitzer and I came together familiarly at the Liberal
Republican Convention, which met at Cincinnati in 1872—the convocation
of cranks, as it was called—and nominated Horace Greeley for President.
He was a delegate from Missouri. Subsequent events threw us much
together. He began his English newspaper experience after a kind of
apprenticeship on a German daily with Stilson Hutchins, another
interesting character of those days. It was from Stilson Hutchins that
I learned something of Pulitzer’s origin and beginnings, for he never
spoke much of himself.
According to this story he was the offspring of a runaway marriage
between a subaltern officer in the Austrian service and a Hungarian
lady of noble birth. In some way he had got across the Atlantic, and
being in Boston, a wizened youth not speaking a word of English, he was
spirited on board a warship. Watching his chance of escape he leaped
overboard in the darkness of night, though it was the dead of winter,
and swam ashore. He was found unconscious on the beach by some
charitable persons, who cared for him. Thence he tramped it to St.
Louis, where he heard there was a German colony, and found work on a
coal barge.
It was here that the journalistic instinct dawned upon him. He began to
carry river news items to the Westliche Post, which presently took him
on its staff of regular reporters.
The rest was easy. He learned to speak and write English, was
transferred to the paper of which Hutchins was the head, and before he
was five-and-twenty became a local figure.
When he turned up in New York with an offer to purchase the World we
met as old friends. During the interval between 1872 and 1883 we had
had a runabout in Europe and I was able to render him assistance in the
purchase proceeding he was having with Gould. When this was completed
he said to me: “You are at entire leisure; you are worse than that, you
are wasting your time about the clubs and watering places, doing no
good for yourself, or anybody else. I must first devote myself to the
reorganization of the business end of it. Here is a blank check. Fill
it for whatever amount you please and it will be honored. I want you to
go upstairs and organize my editorial force for me.”
Indignantly I replied: “Go to the devil—you have not money enough—there
is not money enough in the universe—to buy an hour of my season’s
loaf.”
A year later I found him occupying with his family a splendid mansion
up the Hudson, with a great stable of carriages and horses, living like
a country gentleman, going to the World office about time for luncheon
and coming away in the early afternoon. I passed a week-end with him.
To me it seemed the precursor of ruin. His second payment was yet to be
made. Had I been in his place I would have been taking my meals in an
adjacent hotel, sleeping on a cot in one of the editorial rooms and
working fifteen hours out of the twenty-four. To me it seemed dollars
to doughnuts that he would break down and go to smash. But he did
not—another case of destiny.
I was abiding with my family at Monte Carlo, when in his floating
palace, the Liberty, he came into the harbor of Mentone. Then he bought
a shore palace at Cap Martin. That season, and the next two or three
seasons, we made voyages together from one end to the other of the
Mediterranean, visiting the islands, especially Corsica and Elba,
shrines of Napoleon whom he greatly admired.
He was a model host. He had surrounded himself with every luxury,
including some agreeable retainers, and lived like a prince aboard. His
blindness had already overtaken him. Other physical ailments assailed
him. But no word of complaint escaped his lips and he rarely failed to
sit at the head of his table. It was both splendid and pitiful.
Absolute authority made Pulitzer a tyrant. He regarded his newspaper
ownership as an autocracy. There was nothing gentle in his domination,
nor, I might say, generous either. He seriously lacked the sense of
humor, and even among his familiars could never take a joke. His love
of money was by no means inordinate. He spent it freely though not
wastefully or joyously, for the possession of it rather flattered his
vanity than made occasion for pleasure. Ability of varying kinds and
degrees he had, a veritable genius for journalism and a real capacity
for affection. He held his friends at good account and liked to have
them about him. During the early days of his success he was disposed to
overindulgence, not to say conviviality. He was fond of Rhine wines and
an excellent judge of them, keeping a varied assortment always at hand.
Once, upon the Liberty, he observed that I preferred a certain vintage.
“You like this wine?” he said inquiringly. I assented, and he said, “I
have a lot of it at home, and when I get back I will send you some.” I
had quite forgotten when, many months after, there came to me a crate
containing enough to last me a life-time.
He had a retentive memory and rarely forgot anything. I could recall
many pleasurable incidents of our prolonged and varied intimacy. We
were one day wandering about the Montmartre region of Paris when we
came into a hole-in-the-wall where they were playing a piece called
“Les Brigands.” It was melodrama to the very marrow of the bones of the
Apaches that gathered and glared about. In those days, the “indemnity”
paid and the “military occupation” withdrawn, everything French
pre-figured hatred of the German, and be sure “Les Brigands” made the
most of this; each “brigand” a beer-guzzling Teuton; each hero a
dare-devil Gaul; and, when Joan the Maid, heroine, sent Goetz von
Berlichingen, the Vandal Chieftain, sprawling in the saw-dust, there
was no end to the enthusiasm.
“We are all ‘brigands’,” said Pulitzer as we came away, “differing
according to individual character, to race and pursuit. Now, if I were
writing that play, I should represent the villain as a tyrannous City
Editor, meanly executing the orders of a niggardly proprietor.”
“And the heroine?” I said.
“She should be a beautiful and rich young lady,” he replied, “who buys
the newspaper and marries the cub—rescuing genius from poverty and
persecution.”
He was not then the owner of the World. He had not created the
Post-Dispatch, or even met the beautiful woman who became his wife. He
was a youngster of five or six and twenty, revisiting the scenes of his
boyhood on the beautiful blue Danube, and taking in Paris for a lark.