Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [148]
“We have withdrawn from our support of Mr. Nicoll because we distrust the World and its motives,” wrote Dana, “and because more than suspicions exist to indicate what these motives are.” The Sun then rehashed the tale of Cockerill’s shooting of Slayback and claimed that Cockerill had avoided a murder charge because the district attorney in St. Louis had been in Pulitzer’s pocket.
By bringing up this embarrassment, Dana initiated a verbal brawl between the two publishers that rapidly descended into the gutter. Pulitzer called the Sun’s editor “Charles Ananias Dana” and Dana retorted with “Boss Judas Pulitzer” and “Dunghill Cock.” As Nicoll campaigned, probably bewildered by the conduct of the two publishers, the editorial volleys worsened. Pulitzer called Dana a “mendacious blackguard” and Dana said Pulitzer was a “renegade Jew who has denied his breed” and “exudes the venom of a snake and wields the bludgeon of a bully.
“The Jews of New York have no reason to be ashamed of Judas Pulitzer if he has denied his race and religion,” said Dana. “The insuperable obstacle in the way of his social progress is not the fact that he is a Jew, but in certain offensive personal qualities.” So that no reader was left uncertain, Dana listed them. “His face is repulsive, not because the physiography is Hebraic, but because it is Pulitzeresque…. Cunning, malice, falsehood, treachery, dishonesty, greed, and venal self-abasement have stamped their unmistakable traits.”
Dana’s words hit their mark, tormenting Pulitzer. “The stings of that human wasp, Dana of the Sun, drove him frantic,” the cartoonist McDougall recalled. Depressed and feeling harassed, Pulitzer would sometimes come to McDougall’s office and lie on an old sofa. In the room was a desk that had been used by Manton Marable when he was editor of the World; it contained bundles of old letters hidden in a cavity. “I used to amuse J.P. by reading some of them to him, and he would in return tell me his troubles and narrate his adventures. I early gathered that he hadn’t the courage of Cockerill, but as a writer he was as rashly bold as a rhinoceros. He once told me that the fact that Cockerill had killed Slayback had the effect of kindling his sincere admiration and respect at one time and filling him with a chilled repulsion at another.”
The voters soon had their say. Dana and Pulitzer acted as if their names had been on the ballot. Both of them had also spoken at rallies on behalf of their candidates. Nicoll lost, by a large margin. “And now, Pulitzer, a word with you!” wrote a triumphant Dana. Like a judge reading from a defendant’s criminal record before imposing a sentence, Dana listed scandal, blackmail, and murder among Pulitzer deeds prior to coming to New York. “We wish, Pulitzer, that you had never come.”
An unpleasant future awaited, Dana promised. “Perhaps your lot will be like that of the mythical unfortunate of the same race you belong to and deny, that weird creation of medieval legend, a creation, by the way, far more prepossessing than you are—we mean, The Wandering Jew!
“Move on, Pulitzer,” said Dana, “move on!”
A few days after this bitter defeat at the polls, Pulitzer went to the office to look over the next morning’s editorials. Unlike Dana, he had little to gloat about. In addition to the painful brawl with Dana, the election results had subjected him to personal ridicule. After taking credit for electing a president, a governor, and a mayor, he had failed to get his man elected to the minor post of district attorney.
Pulitzer had reached the limits of his physical and psychological endurance. “It was a period of terrible strain for me,” he said years later. His friend Childs in Philadelphia was worried. “I told a leading newspaper man today,” Childs wrote to Pulitzer, “that if your health holds out, you were bound to make the best success of the age, and you can