Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [143]
After a stopover in Scotland, the Pulitzers reached London, where Joseph was immediately confined to his hotel room by doctors worried that his cold was creating congestion in his lungs. Finally, in early May, the Pulitzers began their European trip in earnest—in Paris, a favorite of Kate’s. There they dined with J. P. Morgan’s partner Joseph Drexel, were feted by the American ambassador Robert McLane, attended balls, and purchased art and jewels.
The Pulitzers took up quarters at the Hotel Bristol. Joseph’s brother Albert was only a few blocks away in Le Grand Hotel, but they remained estranged. The success of Albert’s Morning Journal, though now eclipsed by the World, provided him with financial freedom. His fortune made, he spent less and less time in New York and instead resided regally for long stretches in Paris and London. His marriage to Fanny was at an end. In fact, he had been romantically linked with the four-times-married Miriam Leslie, a publishing widow who was a descendant of Huguenots and sometimes went by the title Baroness de Bazus.
An enterprising American reporter could not resist playing the two brothers against each other by seeking their opinions of French newspapers. “I think it is simply disgraceful the kind of thing which they produce here,” said Joseph. “They are newspapers in name, but newspapers with the news left out. They print neither home news nor foreign news, in fact they print nothing but stories and essays.” Au contraire, said Albert. “People in France have not got that terrible thirst for ‘news’ which consumes us at home; they are not at all in a hurry to know about accidents and crimes before it is necessary, and even then they don’t want a great mass of sickening details. In many ways their tastes are more elevated than ours.”
Joseph and Kate went south for a rest in Aix-les-Bains and then recrossed the Channel to be among the dignitaries and royalty from around the globe who gathered in Westminster Abbey for Queen Victoria’s celebration of her silver jubilee. Afterward they watched the royal procession from the World’s London offices. While they were in London, Pulitzer flirted with the idea of buying a newspaper. Before his arrival, the World’s correspondent there had inquired which newspaper could be had and made into a British version of the New York sensation. It was a tempting proposition. Pulitzer loved London and its museums, theaters, and politics. Kate and his friends who fretted about his health were in a panic.
Nothing came of the idea and Pulitzer resumed his statesmanlike role. The financier Junius Morgan invited the Pulitzers to his country house; “I am but a plain farmer living on my farm,” he wrote. Liberal members of Parliament feted Pulitzer in London, and he made a pilgrimage to visit their party leader, William Gladstone, at Dollis Hill Estate. Thrown out of office after his third term, as a consequence of advocating home rule for Ireland, Gladstone was living in political exile about a forty-five-minute carriage ride from Charing Cross. Pulitzer arrived with a delegation of American politicians to present him with an ornamental silver urn, a tribute paid for by contributions from thousands of readers of the World for Gladstone’s failed efforts on behalf of Ireland.
Gladstone, dressed in a light gray frock coat with a loosely tied blue-and-white polka-dot scarf, greeted the Americans and led them to the wooden box in which the gift had been shipped. Keys were procured and Gladstone lifted the three-foot silver urn from its container. On its top was mounted a small bust of him, and the trophy-like object was engraved with a bas-relief of Homer and Demosthenes and embossed with a rose, thistle, and shamrock.
“Well, let us get the business formality of this out of the way so that everyone can come and look at it,” Gladstone said. Then he leaned against the box and turned to Pulitzer, who addressed the crowd. “Mr. Gladstone,” he began, “10,689 people of the first city of America ask the first citizen of England to accept this gift.” As if he were giving an