No face was capable of showing greater tenderness;
none could assume a more forbidding expression of anger and contempt.
The Sargent portrait, a masterpiece of vivid character-painting, is a
remarkable revelation of the complex nature of its subject. It discloses
the deep affection, the keen intelligence, the wide sympathy, the
tireless energy, the delicate sensitiveness, the tearing impatience, the
cold tyranny, and the flaming scorn by which his character was so
erratically dominated. It is a noble and pathetic monument to the
suffering which had been imposed for a quarter of a century upon the
intense and arbitrary spirit of this extraordinary man.
The account which I am to give of Mr. Pulitzer's daily life during the
months immediately preceding his death would be unintelligible to all
but the very few who knew him in recent years if it were not prefaced by
a brief biographical note.
Joseph Pulitzer was born in the village of Mako, near Buda Pesth in
Hungary, on April 10, 1847. His father was a Jew, his mother a
Christian. At the age of sixteen he emigrated to the United States. He
landed without friends, without money, unable to speak a word of
English. He enlisted immediately in the First New York (Lincoln) Cavalry
Regiment, a regiment chiefly composed of Germans and in which German was
the prevailing tongue.
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