Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [221]
Realizing that the story would soon break, Butler had his staff cobble together an announcement. In late August 1903 Pulitzer’s plan finally became public. Every major newspaper in the nation gave it great prominence. Even his rivals in the press praised the idea. “By this benefaction,” noted Ochs at the New York Times, “Mr. Pulitzer wins a new distinction in the history of the art he has himself so successfully practiced.” Pulitzer’s political opponent Theodore Roosevelt was not among the cheering crowd, telling a friend, “I share your indignation at Columbia College having accepted such money for such a purpose from such a knave.”
None of the public praise assuaged Pulitzer. The day after the announcement, he forbade Seitz to send him any more telegrams concerning Butler. He didn’t want to hear anything more about the project until he returned to the United States in the fall. Pulitzer further ordered Seitz to inform Columbia’s president that unless Butler complied with all his wishes, he would expect Columbia’s trustees to have a sense of honor and return the donation. “Again: All disagreeable cables forbidden.” Like Merrill, Seitz disobeyed Pulitzer, but unlike Merrill, he got away with it. “He later took me to task for not delivering his ultimatum,” said Seitz. “My reply was that I did not want to spoil all the applause.”
In Aix-les-Bains, having just concluded his last tantrum about the journalism school, Joseph spiraled down into one of his periodic episodes of depression. The weather was insufferably hot and humid after a week of rain, and he had not slept well in ten days. Kate let Joseph know that two of the girls were back at their boarding school in Connecticut, and this news gave him a chance to pick up his favorite theme of abandonment. “I am sorry the children are at Ridgefield again in the hands of—well, whatever these women are,” he said. “You know my views about the way children should be brought up, and they certainly have not had a mother in any sense in which I have been used to understand and value that idea,” he continued. “I wish you could have made it possible to go with them or be with them, and almost deplore my so-called success or prosperity, which alone enable you not to do so.”
Joseph didn’t rest after launching this volley. He continued his assault on Kate by taking up the issue of her mothering with their seven-year-old, Herbert. “Now be a good boy,” Pulitzer wrote, “love your father and tell your Mother and Edith that I think it is a perfect shame having turned you away from them, that one of them ought to be with you all the time, that you ought to have a Mother or a sister to take care of you constantly as your father would so much like to do himself.”
When Pulitzer’s mood was this somber, none of the family escaped his vengeful wrath. His son Joe, who had stoically endured a drought of letters from his father, found himself summarily judged guilty of filial disrespect. “Thirty-five days since I sailed and not one word from you,” Joseph wrote to him. “Thirty-five times I have told you with pain how much pain you give me when you don’t write simply as evidence of neglect—and that you do not think of.”
None of Pulitzer’s secretaries, with the possible exception of Butes, could temper these outbursts. They recorded, typed, and mailed the venom he spewed. The most common refrain in his complaints was that his family had abandoned him and that he never received any words of appreciation. “Instead of getting them I have received only blows, and hurts and injuries,” he wrote to Kate on one occasion when he threatened to withhold payment for an expense they had agreed on. “Promises of affection and kindness not appreciated are not obligatory, the consideration failing,” he said.
His cruelty stung a bewildered Kate, exacerbating her precarious struggle with her own mysterious ailments. When she reached Paris, her doctor convinced her that she had arrived in the nick of time. If she had a breakdown now, it would be harder