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wrongly, of having slept with his wife. “That man took my wife to Cincinnati and debauched her,” he said while still holding his smoking gun. “I swore to kill him on sight.” The jury acquitted him, agreeing with Pulitzer’s friend Henry Watterson’s estimation, “The forfeit of the life of the wife-seducer to the vengeance of the husband is accepted as unwritten, but inexorable, law.” See Kotter, Southern Honor and American Manhood, 45. Mattie Thompson later married Kate’s brother William Davis, whom she may have met while in Kate’s company.

Their assumption made: NYW, 2/2/1884, 4, quoted in GJ, 294.

In St. Louis: NYW, 3/14/1885, 4, quoted in GJ, 309.

Pulitzer—who now: NYW, 7/12/1892, 4.

Angry about his paper’s: J. Errol, “A Visit to Professor Dr. Hermann Pagenstecher,” London Society, Vol. 63 (January–June, 1893). Pagenstecher and Pulitzer had actually first met in their youth. Udo Brachvogel had introduced them over beers at the Schalks Salon on Broadway in New York when Pulitzer was working for the Westliche Post. “We sat together sipping beers and talking,” said Pagenstecher, recalling the moment to his patient. “I was greatly fascinated by your original ideas and carried away an impression of my new acquaintance that I shall never forget.” (Pagenstecher to JP, 12/12/1900, JP-CU.)

Pagenstecher was more: Pagenstecher to KP, 10/30/1892, JP-CU.

Pulitzer rejoined his family: Hirsch, William C. Whitney, 376.

With the coming: DCS-JP, 190.

CHAPTER 22: CAGED EAGLE

It took the: NYW, 1/13/1884, quoted in WRR, 145–146.

The Majestic, one: NYT, 5/11/1893, 12; DCS-JP, 188.

Bennett admired Pulitzer: Kluger, The Paper, 162–163; DCS, 182.

The publishers disembarked: DCS-JP, 192. Harvey drank and toasted a bit too much. His twenty-fifth toast was to the King irritating Pulitzer. “Oh, damn it. No Kings! No Kings!” Pulitzer said.

Despite the good cheer: JP to Harvey in Johnson, George Harvey, 45.

Pulitzer, for his part: Filler, Voice of the Democracy, 32; DCS to JP, 1/17/1901, WP-CU.

Phillips received an invitation: Marcosson, David Graham Phillips, 141–142.

Pulitzer was so completely: DGP to JP, reprinted ibid., 165–166.

No one on the staff: DCS-JP, 193. Seitz, who wrote the first biography of Pulitzer, began working that year at the highest levels of the paper. Much of what he describes in his book, from this point on, consists of events he witnessed himself.

“It was soon”: DCS, 194; Johnson, George Harvey, 58.

Amid the managerial confusion: “The position of a London correspondent is extremely desirable under some circumstances but under other circumstances extremely undesirable,” a frustrated Phillips wrote to Pulitzer. “It means that a man may make a reputation for himself if he can supplement energy with ability, and has the privilege of signing his name to his letters. If he has not that privilege, he is simply wasting energy, ability, and time.” (DGP to JP and DGP to Jones, reprinted in Marcosson, Phillips, 168–169.)

Pulitzer was unconvinced: Pulitzer was stingy with bylines, which were not then a common practice. He once told another correspondent that a byline “is a privilege, but not a right.” (Memorandum for James Creelman, 1896, JC.)

Phillips consented to remain: Marcosson, Phillips, 169.

Leaving the paper: LAT, 12/24/1893, 25; ChTr, 11/26/1893, 25. DCS-JP, 13–14.

Pulitzer suffered from: It is risky to try to identify psychological problems in historical figures. Still, “Blindness and deafness have both been recognized as causal agents in mental illness,” according to Anthony Storr, Solitude, 51. Hyperesthesia is a real effect, not hypochondriacal, according to Edwin N. Carter, a clinical psychologist in private practice. “The peripheral nervous system,” Carter says, “has an exaggerated response eliciting sympathetic nervous activity at the expense of parasympathetic activity.” A common hyperesthesia can be found in children who feel that clothing is scratching no matter how soft it is, or too tight no matter how loose it is. (Carter to author, 10/24/2008.)

His condition, in any case: JP to Adam Politzer,