Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [278]
If Davidson was: Homosexuality was not kept hidden from shame or fear, though each played a role. Rather, in a world devoid of discussions of sex, one’s sexuality preference would have not been considered an element of identity that one could or should divulge. “Sexuality was not considered a determining feature of social identity,” explained the historian Graham Robb. Further, the intimate relationships that men and women often had with their friends of the same gender could mask something that in retrospect seemed evident. “Many people,” said Robb, “discovered their homosexuality only when the person they had loved had gone away or died” (Robb, Strangers, 127–139). Also Isaac Rossetti to Thomas Davidson, June 12, 1867, TD.
Five years earlier: Samuel Rowell to Thomas Davidson, January 1862, TD.
Davidson himself confessed: Thomas Davidson to Kate Bindernagel, 8/14/1870, TD. It’s obviously hard to determine what emotional state Davidson may have been in during those years. But one man who was a student recalled that his fellow students used to recount finding Davidson walking the halls, glassy-eyed, in an apparent “drugged condition, spouting Greek.” The student’s conclusion was “that he was a secret or perhaps periodic drinker” (William Clark Breckenridge to Robert L. Calhoun, 8/25/1871, MHS).
Pulitzer fell under: DCS, 56, 38. James Barrett, who wrote an unreliable biography in 1941—with which the family did not cooperate—expanded Seitz’s description of Pulitzer and Davidson sharing quarters. “The fact that JP dressed and undressed complacently in the presence of his learned friend was proof enough of the serenity of his life with Davidson…. No other man ever won from him so warm a token of regard. The mere thought of being even without a collar in the presence of other men was enough to throw JP into paroxysm of annoyance” (JWB, 32).
As when Davidson: JP to Davidson, undated but certainly from June 1874, TD.
Davidson ignored this: JP to Davidson, 7/11/1874, TD.
Ten days later: JP to Davidson, 7/21/1874, TD. Fascinatingly, Pulitzer embellishes his letters with an increasing number of exclamation marks that match their chronological progression. Specifically the first letter in the series opens with “Tom!” the next with “Tom!!” and the last with “Tom!!!”
In the end: Without doubt, men of the era expressed friendship through words and gestures that a century later would be interpreted as homosexual. Men were permitted a kind of romantic friendship that is no longer possible. The only surviving letters from Davidson to Pulitzer offer little help in gauging the scope of their friendship. They date from years after Pulitzer was married. The letters say nothing about the pair’s time together in St. Louis, though they do offer a small hint of past intimacy. In New York society, laced with formality, Pulitzer was addressed even by his closest friends as “My dear Pulitzer.” Davidson was among only one or two correspondents who wrote to him as “Dear Joe.” On his part, Pulitzer closed his letters “Your affectionate friend,” “As ever your friend,” and “Your old friend.” But, as he was blind by then and dictated his letters, Pulitzer might have felt restrained in what he could say, though the closings he did use were very untypical. “The friendship with Davidson,” said Seitz, “remained Mr. Pulitzer’s closest relationship until the wise and kindly Professor left life at Cambridge, Mass., September 14, 1900” (DCS-JP, 56).
CHAPTER 4: POLITICS AND JOURNALISM
Politics and journalism: Johnson, “Birthday Anniversary Dinner,” 4/10/1907, PDA.
The keystone of: Foner, Reconstruction, 41–42; Peterson, Freedom and Franchise, 191;