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.