Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [8]
Four years older than Albert, Joseph understood more fully the extent of the calamity. He had been nine when his older brother died, ten when his younger brothers and sister died, eleven when his father died, and thirteen at the death of his last sister. Albert, in contrast, was not yet nine when the last sibling died. Under the best of circumstances, Joseph would have felt guilty for having survived. But in his case, he responded in other ways as well. The deaths led to an obsession with his health that would remain with him until the end of his life. Every ailment, no matter how small, was accompanied by an underlying fear that he was dying. Further, he developed a phobia of funerals. Even when his closest friends died, Joseph would refuse to attend their burials, and, pointedly, he would not attend the funeral of either his mother or his only surviving brother.
As an additional cruelty, his father’s death created a financial nightmare. In his will, Fülöp instructed that his estate be divided among his surviving children, with his wife as ward of the shares. But Fülöp’s prolonged illness had depleted his savings. By the time the executor sent ten florins to the Jewish hospital and to a poorhouse, about the price of an eimer (pail) of wine, there was almost nothing left.
“Thus was my mother,” said Albert, “left to provide for her boys and one daughter, alone and unfriended.” Since she had no business experience, it was only a matter of time before the enterprise went bankrupt. Within six months their property was seized by authorities for failure to pay taxes. The family limped along. Elize did her best to earn an income and to keep paying for the education of her children. “What efforts she put forth to give us a thorough education,” said Albert. “How she deprived herself of all that she held most dear to her comfort and well being!”
Financial relief appeared in the form of a marriage proposal. Max Frey, a merchant from the southeastern Hungarian town of Detta, won Elize’s consent but not that of Joseph or Albert. It’s common that a child’s longing for a dead father triggers a rejection of a substitute, even a well-intentioned one. In Joseph’s case Frey’s entrance into the family, or what little was left of the family, increased his sense of loss and solitariness. Years later, writing an intimate, confessional letter, he conveyed the toll from the deaths and the remarriage. He described himself as “a poor orphan who never even enjoyed as much of a luxury as a father.”
Frey’s romantic interest in Elize may have also threatened Joseph’s intense devotion to his mother, the one remaining vestige of childhood. Pulitzer transformed his love for his mother into a more abstract reverence, so that photographs of her took on an iconic quality. Those who became Pulitzer’s friends during his young adulthood were continually shown a locket-sized illustration of his mother that he kept with him at all times. The illustration remained so important to Joseph that late in his life, when his eyes were failing, his wife commissioned an enlargement of the portrait so he could see it.
The deaths and the remarriage of their mother severed the ties that bound Joseph and Albert to home and family. Early in 1864, Albert, not yet fourteen, became the first to leave. He moved into his grandfather’s house and obtained work as a clerk at a life insurance company. Joseph, on the other hand, had grander plans. He was anxious to leave Hungary entirely.
Walking across the square near his house one day, Joseph encountered a childhood playmate