The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst (85 page)
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Authors: Kenneth Whyte
BOOK: The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst
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IN 1903, Hearst married the twenty-one-year-old Millicent Willson in a small ceremony at Grace Church in New York City. Phoebe, strenuously opposed to the match, refused to attend the wedding of her only child, pleading an illness. Will wrote her a play-by-play:
The day of the wedding was very fine. . . . I got out with Orrin and went to the Holland House and we sat around in our frock coats and white ties waiting for the time. We went to the church a little before eleven. Millie was there. She had been crying a little with excitement, and happiness, too, I think. Orrin and I went back to the chantry and waited for the sound of a little bell which gave us our cue.The chantry was very beautifully decorated with colored roses and apple blossoms. Our wedding was cheerful and not to be mistaken for a funeral. Some thirty of our friends were present. Orrin and I stepped out to the altar. The bishop looked very grand and solemn. Anita came up with Millie and her pa. They didn’t have any bouquet. I had forgotten to bring it. Millie didn’t mind. She stepped up alongside me trembling and frightened. The bishop married us. Then he kissed Millie quite a smack and patted her on the head and told her he wanted her to come and see him when she returned and that she and he would “keep tabs” on me. Then I kissed Millie and the audience
applauded.
The bishop hushed them and appeared to be rather shocked but wasn’t. He went away after shaking hands with everybody. All seemed pleased. . . . The bishop said “Hearst you are the right sort” so I guess he was pleased too.
48
Phoebe’s contribution to her son’s nuptials was limited to a wedding telegram and an emerald brooch for the bride. Millicent wrote a gracious reply and invited her new mother-in-law to join them on their extended honeymoon overseas. On arriving in London, Millicent tried again, promising “we will try hard to make you as happy as you have made us.”
49
Phoebe kept her distance for several months but eventually relented, throwing Millicent a grand birthday party, and by the time the first of five grandchildren arrived, relations were much improved, although never warm.
49
Phoebe kept her distance for several months but eventually relented, throwing Millicent a grand birthday party, and by the time the first of five grandchildren arrived, relations were much improved, although never warm.
Finally surrendering to her son’s ways, Phoebe concentrated on her own responsibilities as the first female regent of the University of California and one of the nation’s most pre-eminent philanthropists. Energetic and curious as ever, she maintained an active social life on both sides of the Atlantic, read incessantly, traveled to Japan and India, and dabbled in the Baha’i faith. She gave up her home in Washington and took a twenty-room apartment in Paris with a prized view of the Eiffel Tower. When home in California, she divided her time between San Francisco, the Hacienda del Pozo de Verona—a fifty-three-room faux-Spanish estate amid the orchards of Pleasanton—and Wyntoon, her five-story Germanic castle in the forests near Mount Shasta.
No sooner was Will Hearst married than he traded in his circus ties and bright hatbands for sober black suits and made an unsuccessful bid for the 1904 Democratic presidential nomination. He would continue to expand his publishing concerns and to fail to win high office deep into the twentieth century. The quality of his newspapers diluted as their number increased and their profits soared, and they were further undermined by their owner’s electioneering. Interestingly, Phoebe Hearst saw this clearly, writing shortly before her death of her hope that her son would abandon his political ambitions because “the moment his name is mentioned as a candidate for office, his papers lose their influence for good and are accused of being used solely to further his own personal desires.”
50
50
With all his wealth, influence, and ambition, and with his remote, somewhat impenetrable personality, Hearst cut an ever more disquieting figure in American life. He lived by his own lights, in his own world, without apology or explanation. He created a distance around himself that his enemies filled with suspicion and loathing, and even those who should have been his allies were often against him. In the early innings of his political career, Hearst sat for an interview with Lincoln Steffens, one of the finest reporters of his own or any other generation. Steffens was writing a profile for the new
American Magazine
, which he had founded along with several other refugees from the magnificent muckraking monthly,
McClure’s
. Steffens put a great deal of work into the piece, and Hearst, probably at the urging of Brisbane, and out of regard for Steffens’ reputation, gave him closer access than he would allow any other journalist at any point in his long life. During their interactions, Steffens found his subject not simply at ease but “utterly indifferent” to his purpose. Hearst answered questions in a matter-of-fact way but volunteered nothing, not information or elaborations or ideas. He was all business. Steffens was impressed by his “absolute self-sufficiency,” a level of independence that was easily misread as indifference. “Mr. Hearst doesn’t count on anything that may be said about him, one way or the other,” he wrote, “he counts on himself and his own. . . . That’s the way to get done the thing you want to have done. Do it yourself.”
51
American Magazine
, which he had founded along with several other refugees from the magnificent muckraking monthly,
McClure’s
. Steffens put a great deal of work into the piece, and Hearst, probably at the urging of Brisbane, and out of regard for Steffens’ reputation, gave him closer access than he would allow any other journalist at any point in his long life. During their interactions, Steffens found his subject not simply at ease but “utterly indifferent” to his purpose. Hearst answered questions in a matter-of-fact way but volunteered nothing, not information or elaborations or ideas. He was all business. Steffens was impressed by his “absolute self-sufficiency,” a level of independence that was easily misread as indifference. “Mr. Hearst doesn’t count on anything that may be said about him, one way or the other,” he wrote, “he counts on himself and his own. . . . That’s the way to get done the thing you want to have done. Do it yourself.”
51
It was a mistake for Hearst to sit for the profile, entitled “Hearst, the Man of Mystery.” Steffens gave him marks for intelligence and fortitude and the odd good intention, however, he depicted Hearst, at core, as a ruthless and dangerous bully, a man with power and money but without friends or a home or scruples, a man manipulated by his employees, living in shadows, psychologically damaged, obsessed with stories of murder and vice. Swanberg called the Steffens piece a “miracle” of reportage and “by far the most searching effort” by a Hearst contemporary to understand the man.
52
“Hearst, the Man of Mystery” became a foundation stone of a Hearst legend that would continue to grow in scale and perversity and culminate in the fine but scurrilous motion picture,
Citizen Kane
.
52
“Hearst, the Man of Mystery” became a foundation stone of a Hearst legend that would continue to grow in scale and perversity and culminate in the fine but scurrilous motion picture,
Citizen Kane
.
It is never noted in Hearst lore that years after “Hearst, the Man of Mystery” was published Steffens returned to his subject. In his autobiography, a classic of American literature and the book for which he is best remembered, Steffens recounted the pressure he came under from his editors at the
American Magazine
to take a hatchet to a man they hated. They broadly shared Hearst’s politics but his style offended their taste. He was “an innovator who was crashing into the business,” Steffens wrote, “upsetting the settled order of things, and he was not doing it as we would have had it done. He was doing it his way.” Steffens’ editors thought Hearst’s way was simple, crude, and demagogic, and they wanted to believe that he was stupid and that his hirelings were responsible for what passed for his successes. “I compromised . . . with my colleagues,” Steffens wrote, “to keep my job.”
53
American Magazine
to take a hatchet to a man they hated. They broadly shared Hearst’s politics but his style offended their taste. He was “an innovator who was crashing into the business,” Steffens wrote, “upsetting the settled order of things, and he was not doing it as we would have had it done. He was doing it his way.” Steffens’ editors thought Hearst’s way was simple, crude, and demagogic, and they wanted to believe that he was stupid and that his hirelings were responsible for what passed for his successes. “I compromised . . . with my colleagues,” Steffens wrote, “to keep my job.”
53
What Steffens really thought of Hearst at the time, and still believed many years later, was that Hearst “was a great man, able, self-dependent, self-educated (though he had been to Harvard) and clear-headed; he had no moral illusions; he saw straight as far as he saw, and he saw pretty far, further than I did then; and studious of the methods which he adopted after experimentation, he was driving towards his unannounced purpose: to establish some measure of democracy. . . . [He] proposed to give the people democracy, as others of this sort give charity or an art museum. . . .” At the end of the day, the only criticism Steffens thought worth writing of Hearst was that his patience, “his superb tolerance,” prevented him from imposing himself sufficiently on his publishing managers and as a result his many newspapers—he had dozens by then—did not meet the measure of the man.
THE LAST GASP of the Hearst-Pulitzer newspaper war occurred in 1906 in the offices of the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
where Joseph Pulitzer Jr. was beginning his career as a newspaperman in his father’s service. Hearst, passing through town in his private railway car, stopped by the
Post-Dispatch
offices to visit a representative of the Associated Press who shared the premises. He found the AP man at the back of the building and on his way out again he encountered young Pulitzer, who nodded amiably and started a conversation, the results of which were reported by the St. Louis
Republic
:
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
where Joseph Pulitzer Jr. was beginning his career as a newspaperman in his father’s service. Hearst, passing through town in his private railway car, stopped by the
Post-Dispatch
offices to visit a representative of the Associated Press who shared the premises. He found the AP man at the back of the building and on his way out again he encountered young Pulitzer, who nodded amiably and started a conversation, the results of which were reported by the St. Louis
Republic
:
For a moment the two seemed to be conversing in a friendly way . . . when suddenly Mr. Hearst seemed to become somewhat excited. His head bobbed up and down emphatically as he spoke to Mr. Pulitzer, and all who were watching were wondering what was going on.Then Mr. Hearst walked away a few feet, took off his overcoat, laid it on the railing, and returned to where Mr. Pulitzer was standing. Mr. Hearst folded his arms and again began speaking to Mr. Pulitzer in emphatic fashion.Suddenly, without either man having raised his voice loud enough to be overheard, Mr. Pulitzer struck at Mr. Hearst two blows, which the latter warded off with his two hands, which had been crossed over his chest as if he had been expecting an attack.
54
The combatants were separated by
Post-Dispatch
staffers before any damage was done. Hearst retrieved his overcoat, smiled at the men who had come between him and Pulitzer Jr., and walked out of the building. A newsroom full of reporters had witnessed the scuffle but none could shed any light on its cause. Joseph Pulitzer Sr. died on his yacht in 1911 and was eulogized by Hearst as “the founder and foremost exemplar of modern journalism—the great originator and exponent of the journalism of action and achievement.” He wrote that Pulitzer was an able businessman who had accumulated a vast fortune but it was as an editor and a democrat that he was to be remembered, a man who “understood the aims and aspirations of the people, sympathized with the sentiments of the people and labored to express in his newspapers the popular need and the popular will.” The nation, wrote Hearst, had lost a great leader: “May his sons continue his far reaching work . . . for the public good.”
55
Post-Dispatch
staffers before any damage was done. Hearst retrieved his overcoat, smiled at the men who had come between him and Pulitzer Jr., and walked out of the building. A newsroom full of reporters had witnessed the scuffle but none could shed any light on its cause. Joseph Pulitzer Sr. died on his yacht in 1911 and was eulogized by Hearst as “the founder and foremost exemplar of modern journalism—the great originator and exponent of the journalism of action and achievement.” He wrote that Pulitzer was an able businessman who had accumulated a vast fortune but it was as an editor and a democrat that he was to be remembered, a man who “understood the aims and aspirations of the people, sympathized with the sentiments of the people and labored to express in his newspapers the popular need and the popular will.” The nation, wrote Hearst, had lost a great leader: “May his sons continue his far reaching work . . . for the public good.”
55
HEARST’S GROWING NEWSPAPER chain produced enormous returns but bank borrowing and prodigious spending would keep his finances in a perpetually precarious condition throughout his career. When the Great War brought sharp decreases in newspaper advertising, Hearst was in worse straits than usual. Phoebe, who had always kept careful track of her son’s withdrawals from the family accounts (often putting them on the books as loans requiring payments of interest and principal), recognized his distress and in February 1919 released him from all obligations to her in order to improve his standing with his bankers. In so doing, she considered herself to have fulfilled George’s instruction to make “suitable provisions” for their son. In typical Phoebe fashion, she demanded in return for her magnanimity a commitment from Will in writing that he would build a $300,000 building for one of her pet projects at the University of California.
56
She died of pneumonia two months later at age seventy-six, with her son at her bedside. She was given the high honor of a state funeral and laid to rest in the Hearst Mausoleum at Cypress Lawn Cemetery just outside San Francisco.
56
She died of pneumonia two months later at age seventy-six, with her son at her bedside. She was given the high honor of a state funeral and laid to rest in the Hearst Mausoleum at Cypress Lawn Cemetery just outside San Francisco.
Phoebe’s estate, worth approximately $7.5 million and consisting largely of mining stock and real estate (including the Babicora ranch), fell primarily to her son, with certain properties and legacies assigned to his children and other relatives. Will was dismayed to learn he owed $949,101 in inheritance taxes, particularly when his mother had left only $90,000 in cash.
57
It is interesting to note that while Hearst’s biographies, relying on Phoebe’s correspondence, present him as a reckless marauder of the family purse, he appears to have taken only $10 million from his mother over the three decades in which she controlled the senator’s estate. During that time she consumed not only many of the millions in income produced by George’s fortune but much of the capital besides, with $20 million going to her charities and uncounted sums to her building projects and extravagant lifestyle.
58
If, as she appeared to acknowledge in private correspondence, her son was morally due half of the estate, he was shortchanged.
57
It is interesting to note that while Hearst’s biographies, relying on Phoebe’s correspondence, present him as a reckless marauder of the family purse, he appears to have taken only $10 million from his mother over the three decades in which she controlled the senator’s estate. During that time she consumed not only many of the millions in income produced by George’s fortune but much of the capital besides, with $20 million going to her charities and uncounted sums to her building projects and extravagant lifestyle.
58
If, as she appeared to acknowledge in private correspondence, her son was morally due half of the estate, he was shortchanged.
Fortunately for Hearst, the end of the Great War brought financial relief for newspapers and within a couple of years his chain was producing annual revenues of $100 million and profits of $12 million a year.
59
He was still often pressed for cash, though, for the simple reason that he never stopped spending on his businesses, his collections, and his estates. He was the only man alive, said Brisbane, who simply couldn’t get by on less than $10 million a year. His unconventional attitudes toward money and his several brushes with insolvency (including one major bust) tend to obscure Hearst’s most impressive accomplishment as a publisher and a businessman. The vision he had first articulated as a twenty-six-year-old ferrying across San Francisco Bay was perfectly realized: with $10 million in family funds, he had built a newspaper empire that now returned more than the initial investment on an annual basis. The relatively paltry sums he threw at the likes of Richard Harding Davis and Morrill Goddard on his arrival in New York, the outlays for extra editions and special promotions, seem less outrageous in light of his long-term ambitions and accomplishments. No doubt he could have spent less but Hearst always knew that his dream of a nation-spanning, multi-paper news operation was impossible without a triumph in New York, without a firm foothold in what was, and would remain the news hub and the commercial capital of the world. Had he been beaten down by Pulitzer and the rest of Park Row, his career would have been markedly different and almost certainly smaller.
59
He was still often pressed for cash, though, for the simple reason that he never stopped spending on his businesses, his collections, and his estates. He was the only man alive, said Brisbane, who simply couldn’t get by on less than $10 million a year. His unconventional attitudes toward money and his several brushes with insolvency (including one major bust) tend to obscure Hearst’s most impressive accomplishment as a publisher and a businessman. The vision he had first articulated as a twenty-six-year-old ferrying across San Francisco Bay was perfectly realized: with $10 million in family funds, he had built a newspaper empire that now returned more than the initial investment on an annual basis. The relatively paltry sums he threw at the likes of Richard Harding Davis and Morrill Goddard on his arrival in New York, the outlays for extra editions and special promotions, seem less outrageous in light of his long-term ambitions and accomplishments. No doubt he could have spent less but Hearst always knew that his dream of a nation-spanning, multi-paper news operation was impossible without a triumph in New York, without a firm foothold in what was, and would remain the news hub and the commercial capital of the world. Had he been beaten down by Pulitzer and the rest of Park Row, his career would have been markedly different and almost certainly smaller.
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