Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [160]
It looked increasingly likely that Paris might become a long-term home for the family. Already, the two other publishers of major American newspapers were living there. Whitelaw Reid had arrived to begin his service as ambassador, and James Bennett was established in his home on the Champs-Élysées. Kate began looking for a suitable house but had little luck. “She has climbed up stairs, gone poking around stables to no purpose, however, as just as she thinks she has a house tight and fast away, it goes again,” Winnie said.
Joseph decided to get as far away as possible from the bedlam by planning a trip around the globe. Before losing his vision, he had never remained still. The thought of traveling now, however, made him aware of his growing infirmity and his dependence on others. He needed help to travel by train, stay in hotels, and simply get about. A ship, however, offered him a completely self-contained world on the move.
He sent detailed and complicated instructions to Davis in New York about which steamers would most effectively carry mail to him on his journey through India, China, and Japan. He also made it clear what he wanted to receive. “You may judge from this simple rule. As many pleasant and agreeable reports as possible. No unnecessary questions for my decisions. Nothing disagreeable or annoying unless of REAL IMPORTANCE.”
He complained that the “regency” he left in charge of the paper had failed and explained that “you three gentlemen have ample power and discretion to settle any of the ordinary questions that may arise during my absence, and I do not want to have my trip spoilt by ordinary bothers, nor to pay a dollar or two per word for such things.”
In her role as Florence Nightingale, Kate took Joseph and Winnie to Naples. They were soon joined by Winnie’s American suitor, who arrived in the hope of convincing her that, with her father dead, the time had come to make their engagement public. Ponsonby and others busied themselves with the final arrangements for Joseph’s world tour.
The planned journey would be a slow-paced imitation of another global circumnavigation under way at the time. The World’s intrepid reporter Nellie Bly had left New York the month before, in an attempt to better the achievement of Jules Verne’s fictional Phileas Fogg of Around the World in Eighty Days. Her undertaking, which would soon succeed, was generating immense publicity for the paper.
In early December, Pulitzer and Ponsonby, along with servants, boarded the Peninsular. In a short time, it crossed the Mediterranean, called at Port Said, then descended the Suez Canal and entered the Red Sea. The protected waters were immensely peaceful. In the hot climate, the men ate their meals often in the company of the financier Charles Fearing under punkahs, swaying ceiling fans of palm fronds or cloth pulled back and forth by a servant.
Just before Christmas, the ship came into the Gulf of Aden. Under a bright electric light, Pulitzer undertook to write a letter to Kate in his own hand. “Fearing and Ponsonby have written to you all about me,” he said in the letter, which he wrote hurriedly so it could be posted from the port of Aden. “As it suits their fancy to think I am much better or at least to say so be it so. I am certainly no worse than when I came on ship.”
“He is certainly better,” said Ponsonby in an accompanying letter, “but he is inclined to take a despondent view of his health and pitches to Charles and myself when we try to cheer him up by making light of his complaints and that he has already improved.”
Crossing the Arabian Sea, the ship encountered even more intense heat. It was New Year’s Day, and Pulitzer was miserable. He couldn’t sleep or shake off the cough he had when he boarded the ship, and he was bothered by what he called his rheumatism.