The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst (82 page)
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Authors: Kenneth Whyte
BOOK: The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst
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Hearst himself did not linger in Cuba. The day after his Cuban edition rolled off the press, Sam Chamberlain in New York relayed a message to Phoebe on her son’s behalf: “Don’t worry. Everything is over here now, and we are coming home.”
115
The
Sylvia
sailed for Baltimore with the convalescing correspondents, Marshall and Creelman, and the cameraman Billy Bitzer, who had developed a fever, probably typhoid, after drinking murky water. Bitzer lay in his bunk listening to the onboard revelry of the Willson sisters, getting up only to collect the food left at his door. Anxious to avoid quarantine, the party sailed into Baltimore late at night. Bitzer disembarked and took a train to New York, where he would require sixteen weeks to recuperate, his weight having fallen from 165 to 96 pounds.
115
The
Sylvia
sailed for Baltimore with the convalescing correspondents, Marshall and Creelman, and the cameraman Billy Bitzer, who had developed a fever, probably typhoid, after drinking murky water. Bitzer lay in his bunk listening to the onboard revelry of the Willson sisters, getting up only to collect the food left at his door. Anxious to avoid quarantine, the party sailed into Baltimore late at night. Bitzer disembarked and took a train to New York, where he would require sixteen weeks to recuperate, his weight having fallen from 165 to 96 pounds.
Marshall would also recover and return to a vigorous career in journalism despite his amputation. He is said to have later survived three train collisions, the wreck of a lake steamer, and two hotel fires. He was aboard the British channel steamer
Sussex
in 1916 when it was destroyed by a torpedo. Unable to swim, Marshall clung to wreckage for several hours before being rescued. He died in 1933. Creelman drifted in and out of journalism over the next decade and a half—writing editorials for the
World,
also working for the state of New York. He returned to Hearst to cover the Great War, and died suddenly of nephritis in Berlin.
Sussex
in 1916 when it was destroyed by a torpedo. Unable to swim, Marshall clung to wreckage for several hours before being rescued. He died in 1933. Creelman drifted in and out of journalism over the next decade and a half—writing editorials for the
World,
also working for the state of New York. He returned to Hearst to cover the Great War, and died suddenly of nephritis in Berlin.
Richard Harding Davis had avoided Spanish bullets but suffered from sciatica throughout the fighting; the best reporting appeared not in newspapers but months later in magazines. However, Davis had impressed his colleagues with his “white-faced persistence” despite racking pain, and had proved his manhood after his previous failures to reach war zones.
116
116
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Standing in the First Rank of American Journalism, Feeling Blue
P
erhaps the last moment of full-throated martial celebration in 1898 occurred on Saturday, August 20, with the return to New York of Sampson, Schley, and the fleet that had destroyed Cervera. Several days in advance of the homecoming, the
Journal
had begun talking up what it hoped would be “the grandest naval and military demonstrations ever known in the history of the United States” (a boast later amended to recognize the Civil War). Sampson’s fleet was expected to reach Sandy Hook by Friday night and the North River by Saturday morning. It would fire a salute opposite Grant’s Tomb at Riverside Park and then return to anchor. The
Journal
decided Saturday should be a holiday to “give everybody, rich and poor, high and low, laborer and idler, a chance to properly greet the great fighting machines of our navy as they steam up North River, showing their scars of battle to a proud people.”
1
The paper persuaded leading businesses, including Macy’s and Lord & Taylor, to close for the day so their employees could greet the ships. Thomas Edison agreed to shut his laboratory in Orange, New Jersey. A long roster of state and civic politicians hopped on the bandwagon. At the
Journal
’s request, Mayor Robert Van Wyck called upon the citizens of New York to give up business as fully as possible during the review and to decorate their streets and residences with flags and bunting.
erhaps the last moment of full-throated martial celebration in 1898 occurred on Saturday, August 20, with the return to New York of Sampson, Schley, and the fleet that had destroyed Cervera. Several days in advance of the homecoming, the
Journal
had begun talking up what it hoped would be “the grandest naval and military demonstrations ever known in the history of the United States” (a boast later amended to recognize the Civil War). Sampson’s fleet was expected to reach Sandy Hook by Friday night and the North River by Saturday morning. It would fire a salute opposite Grant’s Tomb at Riverside Park and then return to anchor. The
Journal
decided Saturday should be a holiday to “give everybody, rich and poor, high and low, laborer and idler, a chance to properly greet the great fighting machines of our navy as they steam up North River, showing their scars of battle to a proud people.”
1
The paper persuaded leading businesses, including Macy’s and Lord & Taylor, to close for the day so their employees could greet the ships. Thomas Edison agreed to shut his laboratory in Orange, New Jersey. A long roster of state and civic politicians hopped on the bandwagon. At the
Journal
’s request, Mayor Robert Van Wyck called upon the citizens of New York to give up business as fully as possible during the review and to decorate their streets and residences with flags and bunting.
The weather on the appointed day was perfect. Enormous crowds gathered to wave and cheer on the slopes of Staten Island, on roofs and balconies in Battery Park, and at Grant’s Tomb. Hundreds of pleasure crafts and ferryboats sailed out to meet the fleet and the
Journal
counted as many as a million people along the route (more conservative sources estimated 750,000.) The mayor himself was on hand. A
Journal
balloon floating a thousand feet over Grant’s Tomb alerted the throngs to the progress of the warships by spraying clouds of color-coded confetti: purple meant the ships had reached the Statue of Liberty, and so on. At the height of the festivities, Hearst literally upstaged the fleet. He had sent a team of men on the
Anita
to intercept Sampson as he steamed up the Jersey coast, and when they crossed paths at 3 a.m. Saturday morning, the
Journal
’s emissary advised the admiral’s officers of the reception awaiting them and the hour at which they were expected or, rather, the hour at which the
Journal
had told its readers to expect them. The
Anita
then chugged ahead and, assuming for itself the role of parade master, led Sampson’s flagship up the river with
Journal
banners waving.
Journal
counted as many as a million people along the route (more conservative sources estimated 750,000.) The mayor himself was on hand. A
Journal
balloon floating a thousand feet over Grant’s Tomb alerted the throngs to the progress of the warships by spraying clouds of color-coded confetti: purple meant the ships had reached the Statue of Liberty, and so on. At the height of the festivities, Hearst literally upstaged the fleet. He had sent a team of men on the
Anita
to intercept Sampson as he steamed up the Jersey coast, and when they crossed paths at 3 a.m. Saturday morning, the
Journal
’s emissary advised the admiral’s officers of the reception awaiting them and the hour at which they were expected or, rather, the hour at which the
Journal
had told its readers to expect them. The
Anita
then chugged ahead and, assuming for itself the role of parade master, led Sampson’s flagship up the river with
Journal
banners waving.
With that, the celebratory mood quickly passed. Days after the fleet review, the
Journal,
like every other paper on Park Row, was filled with horror stories on the condition of returning American troops. Tropical disease and the combined effects of inadequate food, clothing, and shelter wound up doing far more damage to the Fifth Army Corps than the Spanish had managed. The newspapers and their readers were outraged at the desperate state of the hale young men who had landed in Cuba less than two months earlier. By the time the Fifth Army Corps formally disbanded, it had lost 771 men to fever, more than three times the number who died in combat.
2
In addition to this toll came daily accounts of bungling and scandal at the War Department, including accusations that troops had been served “embalmed beef.” A commission of inquiry struck by President McKinley would later report that the War Department had indeed been guilty of administrative incompetence. A separate court of inquiry found the embalmed beef story to have been overblown, although other criticisms of the ar my ’s provisioning were upheld. Coverage of these controversies brought the summer’s giddiness to a sharp halt and marked the beginning of a Spanish-American hangover.
Journal,
like every other paper on Park Row, was filled with horror stories on the condition of returning American troops. Tropical disease and the combined effects of inadequate food, clothing, and shelter wound up doing far more damage to the Fifth Army Corps than the Spanish had managed. The newspapers and their readers were outraged at the desperate state of the hale young men who had landed in Cuba less than two months earlier. By the time the Fifth Army Corps formally disbanded, it had lost 771 men to fever, more than three times the number who died in combat.
2
In addition to this toll came daily accounts of bungling and scandal at the War Department, including accusations that troops had been served “embalmed beef.” A commission of inquiry struck by President McKinley would later report that the War Department had indeed been guilty of administrative incompetence. A separate court of inquiry found the embalmed beef story to have been overblown, although other criticisms of the ar my ’s provisioning were upheld. Coverage of these controversies brought the summer’s giddiness to a sharp halt and marked the beginning of a Spanish-American hangover.
Hearst was among those who returned from Cuba in rough shape. He had many reasons to celebrate—the Cuban people were rid of their oppressor, he had made a successful debut as a correspondent, he had dodged his share of Spanish bullets—but he was nonetheless a troubled man. He moved into a suite at the Waldorf, presumably to be alone. He uttered in two letters some of the gloomiest sentiments found in his lifetime of correspondence. One letter was to his reporter James Creelman, now nursing his wounded shoulder in Ohio: “I hope you are getting along well. I feel like hell myself. I sit all day in one place in a half trance and stare at a spot. I’m afraid my mighty intellect is giving way. Anybody can have Cuba that wants it.”
3
3
The second letter was to his mother:
I guess I’m a failure. I made the mistake of my life in not raising the cowboy regiment I had in mind before Roosevelt raised his. I really believe I brought on the war but I failed to score in the war. I had my chance and failed to grab it, and I suppose I must sit on the fence now and watch the procession go by. It’s my own fault. I was thirty-five years of age, and of sound mind—comparatively—and could do as I liked. I failed and I’m a failure and I deserve to be for being as slow and stupid as I was. Outside of the grief it would give you I had better be in a Santiago trench than where I am. . . . Goodnight, Mama dear. Take care of yourself. Don’t let me lose you. I wish you were here tonight. I feel about eight years old—and very blue.
4
Hearst was normally a resilient individual, loaded with energy, self-confidence, and optimism. He had suffered bouts of homesickness as a young man at school, he had fallen into funks at the end of romances, his letters to his parents occasionally betray moodiness and anxiety, but he had always managed to rebound quickly. Whatever was bothering him when he moved into the Waldorf that summer, however, was still dogging him in November after the midterm elections. Still more unusual was his choice of confidants. Hearst generally kept his private affairs private. His emotional life was open to Phoebe and, one presumes, his girlfriends, but it was entirely out of character for him to unburden himself to a colleague. There is no evidence that he was particularly close to Creelman, a relatively new employee and one of the few individuals ever to get under Hearst’s skin. “[I] am very sorry to have ‘shown temper,’” Hearst wrote him at one point, “but I felt deeply humilated at your rising contemptuously and leaving when we were in the middle of the discussion we had assembled to hear.”
5
Their shared Cuban adventure may have brought them closer but it was nonetheless rare for Hearst to share confidences in this manner. He was obviously deeply upset, quite possibly depressed.
5
Their shared Cuban adventure may have brought them closer but it was nonetheless rare for Hearst to share confidences in this manner. He was obviously deeply upset, quite possibly depressed.
Part of the problem might have been physical. Hearst appears to have been slightly ill with a tropical fever. One of the trade papers reported that he was suffering from fatigue “as a result of exposure to inclement weather and the hardships peculiar to the campaign. Shortly after his return the fever developed but was proved to be slight.”
6
He would later mention a relapse of his Cuban illness in a letter to his mother.
6
He would later mention a relapse of his Cuban illness in a letter to his mother.
It may also be that his mental health was affected by Cuba. While the Hearst record does not need another bout of amateur psychologizing, it is not far-fetched to suggest that he was troubled by his exposure to the traumas of war. His enthusiasm for the invasion may have been high, and his coverage may have lacked complete solemnity, but he did witness serious battles at El Caney and the San Juan Heights. He had seen young men wounded, maimed, killed, and destroyed by disease. It is not at all uncommon for witnesses to war to experience depression, cognitive problems, and feelings of estrangement. It may go against the grain of Hearst’s biographical literature to suggest that he was capable of normal human emotions; on the other hand, it is harsh to deny the possibility.
Still, whatever part ill health played in Hearst’s condition, it was probably an aggravating factor rather than the primary issue. His letters suggest he was preoccupied with the state of his career: he uses the word “fail” five times in one paragraph to his mother. He had not got what he wanted from the war, but it is not immediately clear why he saw himself as a failure.
Hearst’s claim to Phoebe that he had blown his opportunity to score in the war by not raising a cowboy regiment cannot be taken too seriously. He is often facetious with his mother and he appears to have been so here, notwithstanding the depth of his feelings. Even if he was only of sound mind “comparatively,” he could not have forgotten that his offer to equip a cavalry regiment and to enlist in its ranks had been rejected in Washington and that the navy had belatedly offered him only a useless minor commission. He had not failed to grab an opportunity for Rooseveltian military distinction; no such opportunity had ever existed.
It is sometimes suggested that Hearst hated Roosevelt and was unhinged at his sudden emergence as a war hero and as the Republican nominee for governor of New York.
7
The two men had crossed paths at Harvard, and they would later be political rivals. Roosevelt, however, was treated by the
Journal
better than most Republicans in the months leading up to the Spanish-American War, and during the fighting Hearst’s paper did as much as any other to raise Terrible Teddy to mythic stature, lauding him for his valor and leadership: “No finer picture of young American manhood in war has ever been presented than that of Teddy Roosevelt at the head of his Rough Riders.”
8
If Roosevelt was on Hearst’s mind, it was not because of schoolboy rivalries or cowboy regiments but simply as an example of a man who had made the most of the war. He was not the cause of Hearst’s distress but a measure of his disappointment. Like the vast majority of soldiers and correspondents who had crowded into Cuba, Hearst had smelled a chance for glory. Roosevelt had got his. Hearst felt empty.
7
The two men had crossed paths at Harvard, and they would later be political rivals. Roosevelt, however, was treated by the
Journal
better than most Republicans in the months leading up to the Spanish-American War, and during the fighting Hearst’s paper did as much as any other to raise Terrible Teddy to mythic stature, lauding him for his valor and leadership: “No finer picture of young American manhood in war has ever been presented than that of Teddy Roosevelt at the head of his Rough Riders.”
8
If Roosevelt was on Hearst’s mind, it was not because of schoolboy rivalries or cowboy regiments but simply as an example of a man who had made the most of the war. He was not the cause of Hearst’s distress but a measure of his disappointment. Like the vast majority of soldiers and correspondents who had crowded into Cuba, Hearst had smelled a chance for glory. Roosevelt had got his. Hearst felt empty.
Given that Hearst had gone to Cuba as a newspaperman and that his entire involvement in the conflict had been through the
Journal,
it makes sense that his self-assessed failure was rooted in journalism.
Journal,
it makes sense that his self-assessed failure was rooted in journalism.
By the late summer of 1898, when the carpenters arrived to dismantle the special war bulletin boards on Park Row, there were good reasons for all New York newspaper executives to be upset. The dailies themselves were among the casualties of war. Not only had the conflict been expensive to cover but advertisers, worried about the stability of the economy in wartime, reined in their spending, some by as much as 60 percent, doing further damage to the bottom lines of the big papers. Godkin might have thought his rivals were profiting from war, but all those dispatch boats were floating on seas of red ink. Worse, publishers had not much in the way of great journalism to show for their pains.
9
9
The war had been a disappointment as stories go, a lopsided contest with a minimum of real action. The decisive battle—Dewey’s victory—was played out on the other side of the globe. The Santiago actions were brief and witnessed by hordes of journalists, allowing for little in the way of sustained reportage or scoops.
The Fourth Estate
found it difficult to determine which of the papers published the best correspondence: “A singular thing about the war news service . . . was that none of the men engaged in news gathering at the front specially distinguished himself for brilliant newspaper writing.”
10
The Fourth Estate
found it difficult to determine which of the papers published the best correspondence: “A singular thing about the war news service . . . was that none of the men engaged in news gathering at the front specially distinguished himself for brilliant newspaper writing.”
10
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