Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [264]
“I particularly enjoin upon my sons and my descendants,” Pulitzer wrote, “the duty of preserving, perfecting, and perpetuating the World newspaper, to the maintenance and publishing of which I have sacrificed my health and strength, in the same spirit in which I have striven to create and conduct it as a public institution, from motives higher than mere gain, and it having been my desire that it should be at all times conducted in a spirit of independence and with a view of inculcating high standards and public spirit among the people and their official representatives, and it is my earnest wish that said newspapers shall hereafter be conducted upon the same principles.”
In addition to specifying his plans for his newspapers, Pulitzer disposed of his personal assets. For Kate, he set up a $2.5 million trust and the use of the houses in New York and Maine. His daughters, Constance and Edith, would share the income from a $1.5 million trust. Columbia University at long last received its promised gift to create the journalism school. Irascible until the end, Pulitzer also included a provision that would give the money to Harvard if Columbia failed to live up to its promises. He also left $250,000 for the Pulitzer prize and scholarships.
The remainder of his money was assigned for donations to the Metropolitan Museum of Art; to the Philharmonic Society; and to the city, for a fountain—which was eventually built on the Grand Army Plaza there—and for a statue of Thomas Jefferson. Also, gifts of $100,000 were to be shared among certain of the World’s writers and personal secretaries. There was an equally large sum for his valet Dunningham, and a smaller sum for George Hosmer.
Kate outlived her husband by almost sixteen years. Residing mostly in Europe, she spent her time helping young artists and musicians and supporting charities such as the Red Cross. She died in Deauville, France, in 1927. For years after her death, the family brought John Singer Sargent’s portrait of her to Chatwold to be with them during the summer. The portrait of Joseph remained in St. Louis.
Ralph divorced Frederica and later married Margaret Leech, a talented writer who won two Pulitzer prizes for history. For a number of years Ralph took the helm of the World, although his youngest brother, Herbert, earned the largest share of its income while doing little or nothing in the way of work. Ralph died in 1939. Herbert had his opportunity to manage the World for a brief time in 1930, but it held little interest for him. Rather than journalism, his main passions were hunting big game in Africa and fishing near his home in Palm Beach. He died in 1957.
Joseph, the one brother to inherit his father’s journalistic talent, remained in St. Louis, where he guided the Post-Dispatch. Under his rule, his father’s original paper flourished as one of the nation’s most important and profitable newspapers. His wife, Elinor, died in 1925 in an automobile accident. He later was remarried to Elizabeth Edgar. He died in 1955. In 2005, the descendants sold the Post-Dispatch. It continues today as a shell of its once distinguished self.
Edith married William Scoville Moore, grandson of the author of “Twas the Night before Christmas.” Constance married William Gray Elmslie, who had once been Herbert’s tutor. She died in 1938 after spending most of her life in Colorado Springs. Edith was the last living child of Kate and Joseph when she died in 1975.
In the early morning of February 27, 1931, a group of the World’s editors and writers gathered around the city desk. The news was glum. Nineteen years after Pulitzer’s death, the paper was facing its own mortality. With its circulation getting