Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [157]
After Post’s visit, Pulitzer headed south to the Riviera and, feeling stronger, embarked on a planned trip to New York in late April with Ponsonby, leaving Kate and the children in Paris. Arriving in New York, he reviewed Post’s plans, and the two were soon at loggerheads again. Although it was true that cheaper materials might not meet the requirements for a “first class” building, Post complained that Pulitzer’s refusal to approve less expensive choices made it impossible to cut costs. When Post, in frustration, began to demand arbitration, Pulitzer backed down. The World’s need for more space was desperate, and Pulitzer was finally willing to compromise.
Pulitzer took time to see his politically-minded friends. Cleveland had lost the election, though he had won the popular vote. President Benjamin Harrison had been in office for a couple of months, and Pulitzer, whose lukewarm support for Cleveland was partially responsible for this state of affairs, suffered graciously by accepting a dinner invitation from his good Republican friend the railroad lawyer Chauncey Depew. At Depew’s mansion on Fifty-Fourth Street, Pulitzer sat for a meal with a group of enemies and friends including Theodore Roosevelt, angling for a post in the new administration; the Tribune’s editor Whitelaw Reid, who had just been appointed ambassador to France; Pulitzer’s own rival Charles Dana; the U.S. senator William Evarts, who had led the fund-raising efforts for the Statue of Liberty; and Ward McAllister.
An editor from a rival newspaper ran into Pulitzer during his stay in New York and was surprised at how well he looked. “Physically, he seems to be in perfect health, and the only thing that mars his condition at all is the loss of one eye. I never saw him in better spirits, and his remaining eye seems to be strong, clear and exceedingly alert,” he said.
On May 15, 1889, Pulitzer and Ponsonby departed from New York on the Eider for Bremen, Germany. Rather than rejoin Kate in Paris, Pulitzer went to Wiesbaden, also in Germany. This city had been attracting the sick and infirm since its thermal baths were first mentioned by Pliny the Elder. In the late nineteenth century it had become one of the leading destinations for those with ample means, including the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Pulitzer’s favorite composer, Richard Wagner.
Pulitzer did his resolute best to ignore work. In a complete break with his usual practice, he instructed that no newspapers be sent to him. “I want to experiment being without them for a fortnight,” he wrote. He diligently undertook a regimen of drinking and bathing in the famous mineral and thermal waters in the mornings and taking long carriage rides in the afternoons. He stayed in the elegant Hotel DuRose and dined there in the open air near the city’s main imperial building, listening to snatches of music drifting into the night air from the concerts indoors.
After several days Pulitzer asked Ponsonby to send word to Kate in Paris that he was feeling better. His spirits were on the rise and he was hopeful that Wiesbaden’s curative powers were having an effect. “But remember again,” Pulitzer dictated to his assistant, “all my statements of improvement are comparative.”
Pulitzer’s better mood restrained his trigger-finger temper when he submitted to a well-known doctor’s care. “I have to wait sometimes in the hot anteroom with ten other people before I am received for my massage, which never takes more than one or two minutes and never gives me an opportunity to have a real talk, to which he seems opposed,” Pulitzer told Kate.
“Well,” he added, “he is the first majesty who has made me bow down and dance attendance in the anteroom.” The dictation concluded, Pulitzer took the letter from Ponsonby. Then in his own hand, he addressed it “My Dearest” and signed it “sincere love, ever your devoted husband, JP in haste.” There would be only a few remaining letters