Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [210]
As her time in Aix-les-Bains drew to a close in June 1900, Kate assumed that she would rejoin her husband in London where he had rented a house, a coachhouse, and stables for the horses he brought from the United States. But without a word, Joseph boarded the Oceanic and sailed home, leaving young Herbert behind in London with a nanny. His rapid exit was not the first. Pulitzer increasingly refused to remain in one place. As soon as he reached a destination, he was ready to leave. He might sail across the ocean only to return by the next ship. “You always remind me of the gentleman in one of Horace’s fables who ran and rode and sailed, thinking to flee from his cave and finally discovered that he was fleeing from his own shadow,” Phillips told him. Phillips was one of the few in his employ who had the courage to be frank with Pulitzer.
When one of the governesses informed her of Joseph’s sudden departure, Kate was furious. “You have surprised even me accustomed as I am to vertiginous movements,” she wrote. “It looks queer to strangers that I should be ignorant of the sailing of my family.” For several weeks there ensued a transatlantic battle between the two. Kate had run through her monthly $6,000 allowance and had no means of getting home. If Joseph did not wire her the money, she threatened to borrow it from the U.S. ambassador Joseph Choate in London. Pulitzer remained obstinate and refused. “Pray reconsider decision concerning passage else compelled to appeal to Ambassador,” Kate wired from Paris, where she was staying in the luxurious Hotel Vendôme. After two days of back-and-forth telegrams, Joseph relented.
“Steamer tickets and $250,” he said.
“Steamer tickets and $350 absolutely necessary to leave,” she replied.
He caved in. “Very much obliged,” she wired back.
On August 1, Kate and Herbert reached New York. Shaw paid her customs duties of $152.29 and anxiously wired Joseph in Maine to see if he should charge the amount to her personal account. Once again Shaw found himself in the midst of a spat between the two.
It was not a good time to arouse Joseph’s ire. On September 14, 1900, his old friend and mentor Thomas Davidson died. Aside from Udo Brachvogel, who occasionally wrote (usually in hopes of getting money for his son’s education), Davidson had been the one friend who had known Pulitzer since he was a teenager. About a year before his death, Davidson had come to Maine to visit Pulitzer. It had not been a good reunion. “He is extremely morbid about himself,” Joseph complained to Kate, “talks about nothing except his unspeakable troubles, sighs and moans and probably undergoes some physical suffering with vastly more of a mental nervous kind.” For Pulitzer, any competition with regard to woes was hard to bear.
After Davidson’s death, the cause of his pain became known. When doctors operated on him, during the last months of his life, they discovered a huge bladder stone and a cancerous growth. It “must have been the main cause,” wrote a friend, “of the frightful anguish our friend had been suffering for a long time.” Despite his lifelong closeness to Davidson, Pulitzer could not overcome his aversion to funerals. Instead, he sent a $30 wreath of galax and orchids to Glenmore in the Adirondacks, where Davidson had chosen to be buried near a small house he owned.
In the fall of 1900, another presidential election loomed. Since the last one, the United States had become a colonial power. Although he had supported the Spanish-American War, Pulitzer remained opposed to imperialism. The fact that the imperialist power was the United States made no difference. After a brief flirtation with the potential candidacy of Admiral George Dewey, Pulitzer threw his lot in with William Jennings Bryan. Pulitzer’s strong opposition to imperialism put him at odds with many of his old political allies. “Mr. Pulitzer is the keenest political observer I ever knew,” said his friend William Whitney. “For once