Ah, New Year’s Day! That can only mean one thing. YES, THAT’S RIGHT! The 147th anniversary of New York Herald proprietor James Gordon Bennett Jr being banished from polite society for pissing in his fiancée’s fireplace.
Nepo Baby JGB Jr had inherited the Herald from its founder, his father, in 1872, by which time the younger man already had a reputation for being ‘flamboyant’, ‘erratic’, and enjoyed ‘the good life’ — roughly translated, he was a roaring pisshead.
Still, it was Bennett Jr who financed Henry Morton Stanley’s 1869 expedition to Africa to find David Livingstone — and either Stanley or the Herald entirely fabricated the “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” line, so he knew the newspaper business.
He was also obsessed with owls. Apparently, this was because one woke him up when he was commanding a ship in the Civil War just in time for him to stop the vessel running aground. He does appear to have taken his gratitude to the creatures a little too far, however.
He even wanted to be buried in a 125-foot granite owl (on a 75ft plinth) which, he told the sculptor, had to glower “quite ferociously”, but when the artist was murdered Bennett decided it was an ill omen and cancelled the project.
Anyway, at the age of 35, he became engaged to Caroline May, and then, on New Year’s Day 1877, spent less than an hour at her parents’ party. By the sound of it, though, he had already been celebrating the season for quite some time.
…and, as you don’t need me to tell you, the thing about long hours of drinking is that they have consequences.
These extracts are all from 1962 biography, The Scandalous Mr Bennett, by Richard O’Connor — a man who says in his introduction that “he deserves a more serious biography … this isn’t it”. So, let’s be scholarly about this and turn to another source, David Rains Wallace’s The Bonehunters’ Revenge, to make sure this story’s true…
Well.
As O’Connor points out, you’d have to be at least eight feet tall to piss in a piano, so the fireplace seems more likely. Even a powerful newspaperman might have been tackled if he’d undone his trousers and started scaling a large piece of musical furniture.
The aftermath saw Bennett scarpering to Europe to live in his 300ft yacht, and it’s his proximity to these shores that apparently led to the words ‘Gordon Bennett’ becoming a popular thing to bellow when shocked or appalled.
Perhaps the best bit of the story is another observation from Rains Wallace: Bennett, he reckons, wasn’t just
a fabulously rich alcoholic sociopath who could enact his desires on a grand scale…
…which is enough to make one say ‘Gordon Bennett’ out loud in appalled admiration. Happy New Year, everyone.
