Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [217]
Pulitzer let loose a barrage of invective that was immediately telegraphed to New York. “I own the paper and am responsible for its honor and consider lies, falsehoods, gross exaggeration, puffery, yellow plushism, flunkeyism as a crime inexcusable by any direction or any circulation,” he said. “Telegraph me who wrote it. See he quits office today.” The editors were flabbergasted. The photographs used had been supplied by Katherine Mackay herself and no one, including the Mackay family, had objected to the article. One editor said even his sixteen-year-old daughter liked it. Another said he had heard many expectant women discussing their condition in the presence of both sexes without any objection.
Pulitzer replied that it was entirely possible that the Mackays, who were his friends, were not shocked. Nonetheless, he would not tolerate this kind of story, because it represented a drift in an abhorrent direction pioneered by the Journal, which featured “well-known ladies in an interesting condition,” he said, still avoiding the word “pregnant.” “If that is not disgusting and sickening,” he continued, “I don’t know what is.”
Seitz identified the reporter who had written the piece. It was not a man but a woman, Zona Gale, and he promised Pulitzer she would be dropped. Gale was then a struggling freelance writer working mostly for the Evening World while creating novels in her spare time. Years later, she would win a Pulitzer prize as a playwright.
On May 10, 1903, the World celebrated its twentieth anniversary under Pulitzer’s ownership with a 136-page issue, the largest newspaper ever printed. A few days later, Pulitzer’s daughter Edith, who attended Miss Vinton’s School for Girls in Connecticut, was summoned to her headmistress’s study. Such invitations usually were reserved for reprimands, so Edith was panic-stricken.
When Edith arrived, Miss Vinton began reading aloud from the New York Times, the only newspaper permitted in the school. In it was an editorial written by Adolph Ochs on the anniversary of the World. In most flattering terms, it spoke about Edith’s father and the accomplishments of his paper. “Whatever may be said of the ways of the World,” Ochs had written, “it will be universally admitted that it has ‘done the State some service,’ and has fought with notable vigor and unflagging zeal for the triumph of many good causes.”
Pulitzer took great joy in hearing Edith’s story. He was in Bad Homburg, Germany, where he had gone to try its baths, having tested the curative powers of those in Carlsbad, Wiesbaden, and Baden-Baden. But his rest was disturbed when one of his male personal assistants was caught soliciting sex from a man. The ax fell quickly. “Mr. Pulitzer wishes me to tell you that this incident has given him great pain and that he is much distressed with the duty and sorrow at the necessity of terminating your recent personal relation with him,” one of the other secretaries wrote to the man. Perhaps because of his own intimate friendship as a teenager with Davidson, though, Pulitzer was unwilling to be as cruel as others might have been at the time toward a homosexual man. He arranged for him to have a job helping in the London office of the World.
The forty-three-year-old, Irish-born James Tuohy, who served as the London bureau chief, was well used to doing personal services for Pulitzer. In fact, for years he had orchestrated the search for British companions, which Pulitzer preferred over Americans. This new assignment, however, seemed unlikely to succeed because London was as intolerant toward homosexuals as most other places. He warned his boss: “I note your instructions…. The difficulty is how am