Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [173]
Because blind people depend more on their other senses, they tend to listen with greater discrimination. But, contrary to common belief, they do not necessarily develop more acute hearing to compensate for their infirmity, with the possible exception of those who go blind at a very young age. The source of Pulitzer’s acousticophobia, and his later sensitivity to odors, was a symptom of a much larger problem. He was so beset with anxiety that it was taking a physical toll.
Pulitzer suffered from what later experts would call hyperesthesia, which in his case, was brought on by generalized anxiety disorder, a psychological condition in which a person is haunted by long-lasting anxieties that are not focused on any particular thing. This was a genuine distress for Pulitzer, not hypochondriacal. No one knows the cause. Some people believe it relates to naturally occurring chemicals in the brain; others think it may stem from life situations; and yet others subscribe to a theory that an event in combination with certain natural and environmental conditions may trigger the disorder. In Pulitzer’s case it was likely that the trauma of becoming blind brought on the extreme anxieties and accompanying phobias. In fact, his symptoms manifested themselves only after he began to lose his vision. His condition, in any case, complicated the search for suitable accommodations when he was traveling. “Three or four rooms will never do,” Pulitzer said. “I must have all the rooms above me or below me vacant, and as I usually have three to four gentlemen with me, a house with a dozen rooms would be more desirable.” He needed a full-time advance man.
“It is all very well to think about paying a salary to a man who will find a quiet hotel or rooms,” one Pulitzer man wrote to another, “but no-one who is not intimately acquainted personally with Mr. Pulitzer’s wants could not possibly set out on such an expedition with the slightest hope of success.” In the end, the man best suited for the job was close by. John Dillon’s personal assistant turned out to be perfect. About thirty, and educated at Phillips Exeter and Harvard, George H. Ledlie possessed all the skills, social training, and taste to be the scent hound for the wandering Pulitzer party. He began what would be a decades-long search for the Holy Grail—a place where his boss could find rest and repose.
As if his own health weren’t enough of a distraction, Pulitzer also fretted about that of his children. In particular, Ralph remained a constant worry. Ever since he was a baby, his asthma had been a source of concern. Like father, like son—Ralph also developed other woes. Pulitzer sent the boy off to Birmingham General Hospital in England for a complete examination. The British doctors reported that Ralph, who was then fourteen, had a weak lung and was prone to tuberculosis. They prescribed rest at high altitude, and Ralph was promptly sent off to St. Moritz.
The older Pulitzer children, accustomed to long stretches of separation, began corresponding with each other, creating a family among themselves in the absence of their parents. Ralph, alone in St. Moritz, wrote to Lucille, who was a year younger. He described one of the rare joys in his solitary life in the Swiss Alps. He had been allowed to begin studying Greek and abandon his pursuit of Latin, which he hated. “I never imagined a language capable of such filthy, beastly rules and contradictions,” he told Lucille. “If it is really a dead language, it must be baking freely in purgatory for its sins in the way of murder of youths.”
All winter Joseph drifted around Europe. He visited Ralph in St. Moritz and told Kate that he had found the boy much improved. “The outdoor and sporting life of St. Moritz had done that.” But he kept from Kate that he was sending Hosmer all the way to Colorado to look for another place for Ralph. Joseph’s mood was turning sour again. It corresponded “with the dark cloudy raining dismal weather outside,” he wrote to Kate from Pf