Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [154]
Ralph(above 1st), the oldest, poses with a rifle at age ten. Joe and his sister Edith(above 2nd) wear clothes often favored by wealthy parents. Constance(above 3rd) was the only child of the Pulitzers born outside the country; she was born in Paris. Lucille(above), Joseph Pulitzer’s favorite, died of typhoid in 1897, eight years after this photograph was taken. Kate Pulitzer had two other children. Katherine, born in 1882, who died at age two, and Herbert, who would be born in 1895, six years after these photographs were taken.
Pulitzer children. (Courtesy of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Butler Library, Columbia University.)
(Above 1st)After becoming almost completely blind, Joseph Pulitzer avoided public appearances and became a recluse. It often fell to his oldest son Ralph to fill in for his ailing father or to accompany him on the rare times he was in New York. Usually Pulitzer(above 2nd) wore goggles to protect his eyes from light and to hide the deterioration visible to others. He increasingly became obsessed with his health and traveled to visit Europe’s best doctors and spas accompanied by a large retinue of personal aides.
Joseph Pulitzer walking with son Ralph, Pulitzer wearing goggles, and Pulitzer seated outside with blanket. (Courtesy of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Joseph Pulitzer Family.)
Joseph Pulitzer’s brother Albert sold his New York Journal in 1895 for nearly $1 million and spent the remainder of his life mostly in Europe. He committed suicide in 1909, only a few years after this photograph was taken. Although Joseph was only a short train ride away, he chose not to come to the funeral. Albert is buried in the Jewish section of Vienna’s Zentralfriedhof cemetery.
In 1911, Pulitzer spent part of his last spring alive in Southern France. This photograph of Pulitzer walking in Monte Carlo with his daughter Edith and his aide Harold Pollard was taken less than seven months from his death. He complained extensively about his health and began that June to take Veronal, a new sedative with dangerous side effects that were not yet known; its use may have lead to Pulitzer’s death in October.
Albert Pulitzer walking by canal. (Courtesy of the Muriel Pulitzer Estate.) Joseph Pulitzer walking in Monte Carlo. (Courtesy of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Joseph Pulitzer Family.)
Pulitzer used his wealth to build expensive houses in hopes of finding within their walls an escape from business pressures and a shelter from noise. With the decline of his vision, Pulitzer became tormented by sounds of all sorts. For his New York mansion on East Seventy-third Street(above 1st), he hired a Harvard acoustical expert to help create a bedroom insulated from all outside sound. At his palatial estate, Chatwold, on Mt. Desert Island, Maine(above), Pulitzer constructed a special wing of stone that aides nicknamed the “Tower of Silence.” Pulitzer was never satisfied by the measures taken to guard him from noise.
Pulitzer’s East Seventy-Third Street house and Chatwold. (Courtesy of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Joseph Pulitzer Family.)
(Above 1st)Ultimately, Pulitzer came closest to finding a refuge on his yacht, The Liberty. The length of a football field, it contained a gymnasium, a library, drawing and smoking rooms, an oak-paneled dining room quarters for its forty-five-man crew, and twelve elegant staterooms. The ship carried sufficient coal to cross and recross the Atlantic Ocean without refueling. Pulitzer also favored wintering in his house on Jekyll Island(above), a private island off the coast of Georgia where the Gilded Age’s wealthiest industrialists and financiers vacationed.
Liberty. (Courtesy of the St. Louis-Post Dispatch and the Joseph Pulitzer Family.) The Jekyll Island House. (Courtesy of the Jekyll Island Museum Archives.)
When he died, Pulitzer used his wealth to create two institutions that have ensured his name would live on. A century later, his Pulitzer Prizes