Recollections of a Varied Life Part 33

LXIII

I had been operating my little literary shop successfully for three or four years after quitting the _Evening Post_, when Mr. Parke G.o.dwin came to me to say that he and some friends were about buying a controlling interest in the newspaper called _The New York Commercial Advertiser_, and that he wanted me to join his staff. I told him I had no desire to return to journalism, that I liked my quiet literary life at home, and that I was managing to make enough out of it to support my family.

He replied that at any rate I might undertake the literary editorship of his newspaper; that it would involve no more than a few hours of office attendance in each week, and need not interfere in any way with my literary undertakings of other kinds.

I had a very great personal regard for Mr. G.o.dwin; a very great admiration for his character, and an abiding affection for him as a man.

When he pressed this proposal upon me, insisting that its acceptance would relieve him of a burden, I decided to undertake what he wanted.

I was the readier to do so for a peculiar reason. In those days pretty nearly all books, American or English, were first offered to the Harpers, and I had to examine them all, either in ma.n.u.script, if they were American, or in proof sheets if they were English. Consequently, whether they were published by the Harpers or by some one else, I was thoroughly familiar with them long before they came from the press. I foresaw that it would be easy for me to review them from the acquaintance I already had with their contents.

[Sidenote: In Newspaper Life Again]

I was resolutely determined not to be drawn again into the newspaper life, but I foresaw no danger of that in making the literary arrangement suggested.

Accordingly, I became literary editor of the _Commercial Advertiser_ under Mr. G.o.dwin's administration as the editor-in-chief of that newspaper. The paper had never been conducted upon the lines he proposed or upon any other well-defined lines, so far as I could discover, and I foresaw that he had a hard task before him. All the reputation the paper had was detrimental rather than helpful. I was eager to help him over the first hurdles in the race, and so, in addition to my literary duties I not only wrote editorials each day, but helped in organizing a news staff that should at least recognize news when it ran up against it in the street.

Mr. G.o.dwin was himself editor-in-chief, and the vigor of his utterances made a quick impression. But his managing editor lacked--well, let us say some at least of the qualifications that tend to make a newspaper successful. Mr. G.o.dwin was an exceedingly patient man, but after a while he wearied of the weekly loss the paper was inflicting upon him. In the meanwhile, I discovered that my attention to the newspaper was seriously interfering with my literary work, and that the fifty dollars a week which the paper paid me did not compensate me for the time I was giving to it at the expense of my other undertakings. I wrote to Mr. G.o.dwin, recommending a very capable young man to take my place, and asking to be released from an engagement that was anything but profitable to me.

For reply I had a prompt letter from Mr. G.o.dwin asking me to see him at his home. There he asked and urged me to become managing editor of the paper from that hour forth. He told me he was losing money in large sums upon its conduct, and appealed to me to come to his rescue, urging that he was "too old and too indolent" himself to put life into the enterprise.

The question of salary was not mentioned between us. He appealed to me to help him and I stood ready to do so at any sacrifice of personal interest or convenience. But when the board of directors of the corporation met a month later, he moved an adequate salary for me and suggested that it should be dated back to the day on which I had taken control. A certain excessively small economist on the board objected to the dating back on the ground that no bargain had been made to that effect and that he was "const.i.tutionally opposed to the unnecessary squandering of money."

Instantly Mr. G.o.dwin said:

"The salary arranged for our managing editor is the just reward of the service he is rendering. He has been giving us that service from the hour of his entrance upon office. He is as justly ent.i.tled to compensation for that time as for the future. Either the board must pay it or I will pay it out of my own pocket. We are neither beggars nor robbers, and we take nothing that we do not pay for." There spoke the great, honest-minded man that Parke G.o.dwin always was.

It was a difficult task I had undertaken. There were many obstacles in the way. The chief of these was pointed out by Mr. John Bigelow when he said to me:

"You're going to make yours a newspaper for the educated cla.s.ses. It is my opinion that there are already too many newspapers for the educated cla.s.ses."

I am disposed to think the old journalist and statesman had a prophetic vision of the early coming time when success in newspaper editing would be measured by the skill of newspaper proprietors in making their appeal to the uneducated cla.s.ses--to the million instead of the few thousands.

[Sidenote: An Editor's Perplexities]

A more perplexing difficulty beset me, however. I had a definitely fixed and wholly inadequate sum of money to expend weekly in making the paper, and when I came to look over my payroll I found that the greater part of the sum allowed me went to pay the salaries of some very worthy men, whose capacity to render effective service to a "live" modern newspaper was exceedingly small. I had sore need of the money these men drew every week, with which to employ reporters who could get news and editors who knew how to write. The men in question held their places by virtue of Mr. G.o.dwin's over-generous desire to provide a living for them.

I represented the case to him in its nakedness. I told him frankly that whatever he might be personally able to afford, the newspaper's earnings at that time did not justify the maintenance of such a pension roll.

Either I must discharge all these men and use the money that went to pay their salaries in a more fruitful way, or I must decline to go on with the task I had undertaken.

He solved the problem by calling the board together, resigning his editorship, and making me editor-in-chief, with unrestricted authority.

With all the gentleness I could bring to bear I detached the barnacles and freed myself to make a newspaper. I had the good fortune in all this to have the support of Mr. G.o.dwin's two sons, who were large stockholders in the newspaper, and of Mr. Henry Marquand, who was also the owner of an important interest.

I had also the good fortune to secure the services of some reporters and some editorial a.s.sistants whose energies and capacities were of the utmost value to me.

Many of them are dead now--as, alas! most other persons are with whom I have been closely a.s.sociated. But those of them who are living have made place and reputation for themselves in a way that justifies the pride I used to feel in their abilities, their energies, and their conscientious devotion to duty when they worked with me. Indeed, as I contemplate the careers of these men, most of whom came to me as "cubs" fresh from college, I am disposed to plume myself not only upon my sagacity in discovering their untried abilities, but also upon the tutelage I gave them in journalism. The eagerness with which other newspapers have since sought them out for important employments, and the rapidity of their promotion on those other newspapers have always been a source of pride to me--pride which is not, I think, vainglorious or unduly personal.

Perhaps the reader will permit me here to pay tribute to those loyal men who so willingly stood by me when the most that I was permitted to pay them was less than one-half--sometimes less than one-third what they might have earned upon other newspapers.

[Sidenote: Some of My Brilliant "Cubs"]

Among them was Charles E. Russell, who has since earned high literary place for himself. Another was Timothy Shaler Williams, who has since been lured from literature, for which his gifts were great, to affairs, and who for many years has been president of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company. I had Earl D. Berry for my managing editor, and I could have had none more capable. In the news department were De Francois Folsom--dead long years ago--Edward Fales Coward, who has since made a distinguished place for himself; Hewitt, the author of Dixey's song, "So English, You Know"; Sidney Strother Logan, one of the shrewdest news explorers I have ever known,--dead years ago, unfortunately,--and George B. Mallon, who came to me fresh from college and whose work was so good as to confirm my conviction that even in a newspaper's reporting room an educated mind has advantages over mere native shrewdness and an acquaintance with the slang and patter of the time. Mr. Mallon's work was so good, indeed, that I personally a.s.signed him to tasks of peculiar difficulty. The New York _Sun_ has since confirmed my judgment of his ability by making him its city editor, a post that he has held for seven years or more.

Another of my "cubs" was Henry Armstrong, whose abilities have since won for him a place on the brilliant editorial writing staff of the _Sun_.

Still another was Henry Wright, who is now editor-in-chief of the paper on which he "learned his trade,"--though the paper has since changed its name to the _Globe_. Another was Nelson Hirsh, who afterwards became editor of the _Sunday World_.

On my editorial staff were Henry R. Elliot--dead now,--James Davis, who carried every detail of a singularly varied scholarship at his finger-tips, ready for instant use, and whose grace as a writer, illuminated as it was by an exquisitely subtle humor, ought to have made him famous, and would have done so, if death had not come to him too soon.

Doubtless there were others whom I ought to mention here in grateful remembrance, but the incessant activities of the score and more of years that have elapsed since my a.s.sociation with them ended have obliterated many details from my memory. Let me say that to all of them I render thanks for loyal and highly intelligent a.s.sistance in the difficult task I then had to wrestle with.

With a staff like that we were able to get the news and print it, and we did both in a way that attracted attention in other newspaper offices as well as among newspaper readers. With such writers as those mentioned and others, the editorial utterances of the paper attracted an attention that had never before been accorded to them.

So far as its books of account gave indication, the _Commercial Advertiser_ had never earned or paid a dividend. At the end of the first year under this new regime it paid a dividend of fifty per cent. At the end of its second year it paid its stockholders one hundred per cent.

The earnings of the third year were wisely expended in the purchase of new presses and machinery. Before the end of the fourth year I had resigned its editorship to become an editorial writer on _The World_.

I intensely enjoyed the work of "making bricks without straw" on the _Commercial Advertiser_--by which I mean that with a staff of one man to ten on the great morning newspapers, and with one dollar to expend where they could squander hundreds, we managed not only to keep step but to lead them in such news-getting enterprises as those incident to the prosecution of the boodle Aldermen and Jake Sharp, the Diss de Barr case, and the other exciting news problems of the time.

The strain, however, was heart-breaking, and presently my health gave way under it. A leisurely wandering all over this continent restored it somewhat, but upon my return the burden seemed heavier than ever--especially the burden of responsibility that made sleep difficult and rest impossible to me.

In the meanwhile, of course, my literary work had been sacrificed to the Moloch of journalism. I had canceled all my engagements of that sort and severed connections which I had intended to be lifelong. In a word, I had been drawn again into the vortex of that daily journalism, from which I had twice escaped. I was worn, weary, and inexpressibly oppressed by the duties of responsible editorship--a responsibility I had never sought, but one which circ.u.mstances had twice thrust upon me.

[Sidenote: The Dread Task of the Editor]

I wonder if the reader can understand or even faintly imagine what all this means. I wonder if I can suggest some shadow of it to his mind.

Think of what it means to toil all day in the making of a newspaper, and to feel, when all is done that the result is utterly inadequate. Think of what it means to the weary one to go home with the next day's task upon his mind as a new burden, and with the discouraging consciousness that all he has done on one day's issue is dead so far as the next day is concerned. Think what it means to a sensitive man to feel that upon his discretion, his alertness, his sagacity, depends not only the daily result of a newspaper's publication, but the prosperity or failure of other men's investments of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

For the value of a newspaper depends from day to day upon its conduct.

It is a matter of good will. If the editor pleases his const.i.tuency, the investment of the owners remains a profitable property. If he displeases that const.i.tuency the newspaper has nothing left to sell but its presses and machinery, representing a small fraction of the sum invested in it.

That responsibility rested upon me as an incubus. All my life until then I had been able to sleep. Then came sleeplessness of a sort I could not shake off. At my usual hour for going to bed, I was overcome by sleep, but after five minutes on the pillows there came wakefulness. I learned how to fight it, by going to my library and resolutely sitting in the dark until sleep came, but the process was a painful one and it left me next morning crippled for my day's work.

In the meanwhile, as I have said, I enjoyed my work as I suppose a man condemned to death enjoys the work of writing his "confessions." I enjoyed my very intimate a.s.sociation with Henry Marquand, one of the most companionable men I ever knew, for the reason that his mind was responsive to every thought one might utter, and that there was always a gentle humor in all that he had to say. He had a most comfortable schooner yacht on board which I many times saved my life or my sanity by pa.s.sing a Sunday outside on blue water, with nothing more important to think of than the cob pipes we smoked as we loafed in our pajamas on the main hatch.

Marquand had a habit of inviting brilliant men for his guests, such men as Dr. Halsted, now of Johns Hopkins; Dr. Tuttle, who has since made fame for himself; Dr. Roosevelt, who died a while ago; James Townsend, Dr. William Gilman Thompson, then a comparatively young man but now one of the supreme authorities in medical science, and others of like highly intellectual quality. Now and then there were "ladies present," but they were an infrequent interruption. I don't mean that ungallantly. But rest and women do not usually go together.

It was our habit to board the yacht down Staten Island way on Sat.u.r.day afternoon, sail out to the lightship and back, and anchor in the Horseshoe for dinner and the night. On Sunday we sailed out toward Fire Island or down toward Long Branch, or wherever else we chose. We were intent only upon rest--the rest that the sea alone can give, and that only the lovers of the sea ever get in this utterly unrestful world of ours.

On deck in the afternoon and evening, and in the saloon at dinner and other meals, we talked, I suppose, of intellectual things. At sea we rested, and smoked, and were silent, and altogether happy. I have always enjoyed the sea. I have crossed the ocean many times, and I have sailed in all sorts of craft over all sorts of seas, with delight in every breath that the ocean gave to me; but I think I may truly say that no other voyage I ever made gave me so much pleasure as did those little yachting trips on the "Ruth" in company with men whose very presence was an intellectual inspiration.

[Sidenote: Parke G.o.dwin]

But the most abiding recollection I have of my service on the _Commercial Advertiser_ is that which concerns itself with Parke G.o.dwin.

He was a man of great thought impulses, only half expressed. That which he gave to the world in print was no more than the hem of his intellectual garment. A certain const.i.tutional indolence, encouraged by his too early acquisition of sufficient wealth to free him from the necessity of writing for a living, prevented him from giving to the world the best that was in him. He would have a great thought and he would plan to write it. Sometimes he would even begin to write it. But in the end he preferred to talk it to some appreciative listener.

I remember one case of the kind. He had several times invited me to visit him at his Bar Harbor summer home. Always I had been obliged by the exigencies of my editorial work to forego that delight. One summer he wrote to me, saying:

"I wonder if you could forget the _Commercial Advertiser_ long enough to spend a fortnight with me here at Bar Harbor. You see, I don't like to issue invitations and have them 'turned down,' so I'm not going to invite you till you write me that you will come."

In answer to that invitation I pa.s.sed a fortnight with him. From beginning to end of the time he forbade all mention of the newspaper of which he was chief owner and I the responsible editor. But during that time he "talked into me," as he said at parting, a deal of high thinking that he ought to have put into print.