Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [274]
Bewildered, alone, and: WaPo, 9/28/1890, 9.
One day, as: James Barnes, “Joseph Pulitzer, a Dominant Personality: Some Personal Reminiscences,” Colliers, 11/18/1911. Pulitzer shared similar details with New York Graphic, reprinted in Evening Gazette (Cedar Falls, IA), 1/20/1887, 3.
At last, the: Various biographers have offered differing reasons for Pulitzer’s move to St. Louis but none have been backed by any evidence. One version often repeated, but certainly not true, appeared in American Heritage. “Mustered out, Pulitzer asked around about where he might settle in the United States: he wanted a place where German was not spoken, so that he could improve his English. A practical joker, it is said, sent him to St. Louis, which had a colony large enough to make a sizable town in Germany.” (David Davidson “What Made the ‘World’ Great?” American Heritage, Vol. 33, No. 6 [Oct/Nov 1982]); Henry Charles Hummel, who joined the Lincoln Cavalry on the same day as Pulitzer and served on the same detachment, may have moved to St. Louis with him. A river man named Charles Hummel begins appearing in the St. Louis city directory the same year as Pulitzer does: Pulszky and Pulszky, White, Red, Black, 167–174. During the fall, when Pulitzer was vainly seeking work in New York, a newspaper reporter watched Germans debark from ships including, in particular, a “phlegmatic Teuton who paid for ‘ten through tickets to St. Louis by the 5 o’clock train.” As a rule, concluded the reporter, German immigrants arrived with a plan of operation. “They strike at once for the West…. their first query is for the ticket office, where they purchase the necessary documents, and then wait anxiously for the departure of the train.” (NYT, 9/12/1865, 1.) Certainly Pulitzer would have learned about the large German communities in St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Milwaukee from other German-speaking soldiers in his regiment, especially during the two-week encampment outside Washington, when they discussed plans for civilian life.
CHAPTER 3: THE PROMISED LAND
When Pulitzer got: The exact date of his arrival is unknown. Previous biographers accepted October 10, 1865, a date Pulitzer himself probably used. At the same time Seitz claimed Pulitzer was superstitious when it came to numbers and attributed special significance to the number 10, the date of his birth. “He made the superstition something of a fad and used the numerals always when he could,” said Seitz, (DCS, 11). Pulitzer’s superstition about the number also makes the dating of his arrival suspicious. In fact, his description of the cold weather did not match weather records for the day. Nor do the facts in another recollection related to his arrival bear up under scrutiny. So while it is unlikely that an exact date can be determined, it seems certain that Pulitzer arrived sometime in the fall of 1865. The data on ferry traffic are drawn from Scharf, History of Saint Louis City and County, Vol. 2; DCSJP, 50.
Through the darkness: DCS-JP, 51.
It was like coming home: The similarities between the Pest riverbank and that of St. Louis struck me while I was examining nineteenth-century prints in the Hungarian National Museum. Except for minor differences I thought I was looking at the photo St. Louis Levee by Thomas Easterly in the collection of the Missouri Historical Society. Ernst D. Kargau’s 1893 work St. Louis in früheren jahren. Ein gedenkbuch für das deutschthum was translated and published as The German Element in St. Louis, 9. The names of the establishments, however, are taken from the original German edition (St. Louis, MO: A. Wiebusch, 1893), 12.
St. Louis was: Twain, Life on the Mississippi, 525; Thérèse Yelverston, Teresina in America, 115.
Despite its foul: “In no American city, not even in Cincinnati, although more Germans, in proportion, live there than in St. Louis, have I found the German element so preponderant,” noted Friedrich Gerstäker, a German traveler: