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“False to his principles, false to his own people, he fawns and truckles to a class that uses him while it despises him.

In the end, Hearst lost the election to the Republican, Charles Evans Hughes, though by only a slim margin. Exhausted, Hearst and his family left New York for a vacation in Mexico. Stopping in St. Louis, the defeated candidate went to the Post-Dispatch building in order to use the Associated Press facilities to send some business messages. As he entered the building, Joe Pulitzer, who was in exile at the Post-Dispatch, saw Hearst and followed him up to the AP office.

“I want to know if you realize what you said in your speeches about my father and I want to know if you believe it,” Joe said in a low tone when he caught up with Hearst.

“Many things are said in a political campaign that are regrettable,” replied Hearst.

“That won’t do,” said Joe, interrupting Hearst. “I intend that you shall say whether you believe it or not.”

“I usually mean what I say,” Hearst said. Then, noticing the young man’s rising temper, he crossed his arms in front of his chest, a defensive boxing stance that Joe would have recognized as the “Harvard guard.” It was done just in time. Joe struck at Hearst, who warded off the blow. The young Pulitzer tried again, but others in the office held him back while Hearst’s wife, who had been seated nearby, grabbed her husband by the arm. Hearst escaped unscathed.

Three decades after his father had shot at a lobbyist and brawled with an editor, St. Louis had another fighting Pulitzer on its hands. “Alas, the punch didn’t land,” Joe admitted nearly fifty years later, adding, “that’s always been one of my regrets.”

Kate was proud of Joe and told her husband, “You should feel happy at Joe’s feelings for you.” Joseph, however, was in no mood to hear about his pugilistic son standing up for him. He had just disembarked from a grim Mediterranean cruise. Hosmer had been ill the entire voyage and had thus deprived Joseph of conversation; and the backup, a loyal secretary, was seasick. Kate tried to comfort Joseph and offered to come to Cap Martin, where he was settling in for the winter. “Whenever I hear that you are lonely and miserable and forlorn, I always want to help and shelter you.” But he refused her entreaties, telling her to stay away. “If it is any comfort to you,” she wrote back, “I should like you to know I think of you constantly and feel most sorry for you.”

Reaching age seventy-five, Hosmer decided that his health would no longer permit him to be in Pulitzer’s company. After sixteen years of providing companionship to the publisher, Hosmer told Butes, “I am going home for a rest as I am too much used up by recent illness to be of any good here.” He reached New York a few days before Christmas. After completing some errands for Pulitzer, he went uptown to see Kate. When he reached the house, he found Edith and Constance at the lunch table with Kate’s personal companion Macarow and another guest. Kate was eating alone in her room.

At length, Hosmer explained that Joseph was depressed, filled with melancholy, lonely, and without any companionship “or any sense just at the present of intimate or pleasant association with any human creature.” Kate wanted to leave immediately for France. In 1890, she and Hosmer had rushed across the ocean to rescue Joseph from a similar descent into darkness. This time, though, the two decided that it might make matters worse if Kate went without her husband’s consent.

She stayed in New York. “I wish I could give you happiness or least contentment,” she wrote to Joseph on Christmas Eve. “As one grows older, peace almost seems happiness. I wonder if that restless spirit of yours will ever accept peace as a substitute for active happiness?” On board the Honor, a yacht he had leased to take him to Greece, Pulitzer asked Thwaites to send a note to Butes in New York. “I shall eat my Christmas dinner in solitary grandeur, I suppose.”

Shortly after New Year’s Day,