High atop San Francisco's Nob Hill, the mourners and the curious crowded into massive, neo-Gothic Grace Cathedral. The great copper casket was carried into the arched, flower-filled chancel and set between two crosses of white lilies. From the Book of Common Prayer, the Rt. Rev. Karl Morgan Block, Episcopal Bishop of California, intoned the funeral service, without sermon or eulogy. At that moment, in the grimy office of the Examiner, a few blocks away, and in Hearst-papers across the land, typewriters and linotypes stilled their clatter, and for a few minutes the plants lay in silence. William Randolph Hearst had stopped the presses for the last time.
Song of the River. His funeral took place almost within sight of the house where he was born and of the daily on which he pyramided an empire. He was buried last week as he liked to live, in a blaze of regal pomp. The governor was there, the mayor, notables of publishing, screen, stage and public affairs. A movie-studio publicist shepherded the press. Flashbulbs blinked, newsreel cameras whirred. Somewhere in the crowd of 1,500, a woman fainted.
An escort of motorcycle police guided the cortege of 22 black limousines to the cemetery. In the bright noon sunlight, dappling through Japanese plum trees, the casket was placed on a grassy knoll before the marble-columned mausoleum where Hearst's parents lie. Bishop Block read a poem, The Song of the River, which W.R. himself had written for his papers in 1941:
The river ran its allotted span Till it reached the silent sea.
Then the water harked back to the
mountain top,
To begin its course once more, So we shall run the course begun
Till we reach the silent shore.
Then revisit earth in a pure rebirth
From the heart of the virgin snow.
So don't ask why we live or die,
Or whither, or when, we go, Or wonder about the mysteries
That only God may know.
In her weeds, William Randolph Hearst's widow, almost a stranger to him for his last 29 years, walked slowly around the casket. As the family and friends departed, the curious lingered, plucked souvenirs from the hundreds of wreaths.
Song of Sorrow. Oldtime Cinemactress Marion Davies, the woman who had shared his life for three decades, did not attend. At her spreading Beverly Hills home, where Hearst had spent his last days and where he died, she told a nurse: "I had thought I might go to church this morning, but I will just stay here alone. He knew how I felt about him, and I know how he felt about me."
On the day after his death, she sat behind drawn shades, Hearst's doleful dachshund Helena beside her. She absently whispered a song: "Little old lady in a big red room, little old lady ..." To a visiting newsman, she spoke of happier days: "About four and a half years ago, we came here and quieted down. Before that, it was San Simeon and guests all the time. Hundreds of them. Oh, it was gay, let me tell you! We were riding and swimming and playing tennis, and Mr. Hearst was very active then. I remember the animals at San Simeon, and how we used to throw pebbles at the lions. We were always running, always doing something."