Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [254]
Several days later, Joseph’s cousin Adam Politzer, who lived in Vienna, met with Neuda. As executor of the estate, Neuda had carefully examined all the items in Albert’s possession. “Alongside numerous love letters of extremely diverse provenance, which Neuda destroyed immediately, only credit letters and other insignificant papers were found,” Politzer told Joseph. “A letter for you was not present. Nor was any other note that referenced you.”
Of the nine children born to Fülöp and Elize Pulitzer, only Joseph remained alive.
As winter set in, Pulitzer abandoned Berlin for the warmth of Cap Martin. He was slowing down. Even those around him who discounted his continual health crises detected a change. One evening, while Pulitzer was cruising in Mediterranean waters on the Liberty, Harold Pollard brought him out on deck to see a full moon. After looking up into the night sky for a while, Pulitzer gave up. “It’s no use, my dear boy,” he said, “I cannot even get a glimmer of its light.”
Seitz, who came from New York for his usual business consultations with Pulitzer, encountered a calmer, reflective, more philosophical boss. On a car ride through the countryside, Seitz and Pulitzer were left alone for a while when the engine stalled and Pollard went for help. “You see how quiet I am,” Pulitzer said. “Real troubles never bother me. It’s only the small annoyances that upset me.” In the silence of the parked automobile, Seitz described the view of Cap Martin below them. “You know I was here thirty-five years ago for the first time and the sight is always with me,” Pulitzer remarked.
Suddenly, Pulitzer changed the subject. “We will not have many rows,” he told a disbelieving Seitz, who had been buffeted by Pulitzer’s infamous temper for eighteen years. “No, I am serious,” he continued. “I am not going to live long. I have had warnings. Besides I am no longer equal to thinking or deciding. You will have to get along without me more and more from now on and see less and less of me.”
Contributing to Pulitzer’s melancholy was his increasing loneliness. He had entered into a time of life marked by frequent deaths. Two days after Christmas 1909, Angus Shaw “sorrowfully and faithfully” telegraphed the news that Dumont Clarke, Pulitzer’s sixty-nine-year-old banker and trusted adviser, had died of pneumonia. The flags on the Pulitzer Building were lowered to half-mast. “Coin,” as he was known in the codebook, had been at Pulitzer’s side since the World began making him rich. The two had, in Pulitzer’s words, “implicitly trustful, irregular relations in money matters.” Every dollar of Pulitzer’s income was funneled to Clarke’s bank. Without any paperwork or signatures, Clarke had invested, transferred, or wired money as Pulitzer saw fit. He had also provided wise counsel on everything from personnel issues at the World to coping with children at home. Although Clarke’s son promised to provide Pulitzer with the same service, he could not replace his father.
Pulitzer’s loneliness was also an unescapable consequence of the years when he had spurned Kate’s tenderness and alienated his children. The unreliability of Pulitzer’s affection and his unpredictable cruelty left them little choice. Though they held him in great affection, they had defensively created lives apart, accentuating his isolation. “I want some love and affection from my children in the closing short span of life that still remains,” he wrote to Joe after receiving a complaining note from his son, still chafing under Pulitzer’s strictures. “If I cannot have that love and affection, I may at least expect to be spared willful, deliberate disrespect disobedience, and insult.”
Kate did her best to try to end her husband’s self-imposed exile from the family. “Pray realize that you would be so much happier yourself if you have light hearts and happy faces around you,” she had written several years earlier. “Love served is always so much better than that which is bought.