The Americanization of Edward Bok Part 32

Those who knew Mr. Cleveland were well aware of the force that he could put into his pen when he chose, and in this proposed article he certainly chose! It would have made very unpleasant reading for Miss Anthony in particular, as well as for her friends. Bok argued strongly against the article. He reminded Mr. Cleveland that it would be undignified to make such an answer; that it was always an unpopular thing to attack a woman in public, especially a woman who was old and ill; that she would again strive for the last word; that there would be no point to the controversy and nothing gained by it. He pleaded with Mr. Cleveland to meet Miss Anthony's attack by a dignified silence.

These arguments happily prevailed. In reality, Mr. Cleveland was not keen to attack Miss Anthony or any other woman; such a thought was foreign to his nature. He summed up his feeling to Bok when he tore up the draft of his article and smilingly said: "Well, I've got if off my chest, that is the main thing. I wanted to get it out of my system, and talking it over has driven it out. It is better in the fire," and he threw the torn paper into the open grate.

As events turned out, it was indeed fortunate that the matter had been so decided; for the article would have appeared in the number of Bok's magazine published on the day that Miss Anthony pa.s.sed away. It would have been a most unfortunate moment, to say the least, for the appearance of an attack such as Mr. Cleveland had in mind.

This incident, like so many instances that might be adduced, points with singular force to the value of that editorial discrimination which the editor often makes between what is wise or unwise for him to publish.

Bok realized that had he encouraged Mr. Cleveland to publish the article, he could have exhausted any edition he might have chosen to print. Times without number, editors make such decisions directly against what would be of temporary advantage to their publications. The public never hears of these incidents.

More often than not the editor hears "stories" that, if printed, would be a "scoop" which would cause his publication to be talked about from one end of the country to the other. The public does not give credit to the editor, particularly of the modern newspaper, for the high code of honor which constantly actuates him in his work. The prevailing notion is that an editor prints all that he knows, and much that he does not know. Outside of those in the inner government circles, no group of men, during the Great War, had more information of a confidential nature constantly given or brought to them, and more zealously guarded it, than the editors of the newspapers of America. Among no other set of professional men is the code of honor so high; and woe betide the journalist who, in the eyes of his fellow-workers, violates, even in the slightest degree, that code of editorial ethics. Public men know how true is this statement; the public at large, however, has not the first conception of it. If it had, it would have a much higher opinion of its periodicals and newspapers.

At this juncture, Rudyard Kipling unconsciously came into the very centre of the suffragists' maelstrom of attack when he sent Bok his famous poem: "The Female of the Species." The suffragists at once took the argument in the poem as personal to themselves, and now Kipling got the full benefit of their vitriolic abuse. Bok sent a handful of these criticisms to Kipling, who was very gleeful about them. "I owe you a good laugh over the clippings," he wrote. "They were delightful. But what a quant.i.ty of spare time some people in this world have to burn!"

It was a merry time; and the longer it continued the more heated were the attacks. The suffragists now had a number of targets, and they took each in turn and proceeded to riddle it. That Bok was publishing articles explaining both sides of the question, presenting arguments by the leading suffragists as well as known anti-suffragists, did not matter in the least. These were either conveniently overlooked, or, when referred to at all, were considered in the light of "sops" to the offended women.

At last Bok reached the stage where he had exhausted all the arguments worth printing, on both sides of the question, and soon the storm calmed down.

It was always a matter of gratification to him that the woman who had most bitterly a.s.sailed him during the suffrage controversy, Anna Howard Shaw, became in later years one of his stanchest friends, and was an editor on his pay-roll. When the United States entered the Great War, Bok saw that Doctor Shaw had undertaken a gigantic task in promising, as chairman, to direct the activities of the National Council for Women. He went to see her in Washington, and offered his help and that of the magazine. Doctor Shaw, kindliest of women in her nature, at once accepted the offer; Bok placed the entire resources of the magazine and of its Washington editorial force at her disposal; and all through America's partic.i.p.ation in the war, she successfully conducted a monthly department in The Ladies' Home Journal.

"Such help," she wrote at the close, "as you and your a.s.sociates have extended me and my co-workers; such unstinted co-operation and such practical guidance I never should have dreamed possible. You made your magazine a living force in our work; we do not see now how we would have done without it. You came into our activities at the psychological moment, when we most needed what you could give us, and none could have given with more open hands and fuller hearts."

So the contending forces in a bitter word-war came together and worked together, and a mutual regard sprang up between the woman and the man who had once so radically differed.

XXVIII. Going Home with Kipling, and as a Lecturer

It was in June, 1899, when Rudyard Kipling, after the loss of his daughter and his own almost fatal illness from pneumonia in America, sailed for his English home on the White Star liner, Teutonic. The party consisted of Kipling, his wife, his father J. Lockwood Kipling, Mr. and Mrs. Frank N. Doubleday, and Bok. It was only at the last moment that Bok decided to join the party, and the steamer having its full complement of pa.s.sengers, he could only secure one of the officers'

large rooms on the upper deck. Owing to the sensitive condition of Kipling's lungs, it was not wise for him to be out on deck except in the most favorable weather. The atmosphere of the smoking-room was forbidding, and as the rooms of the rest of the party were below deck, it was decided to make Bok's convenient room the headquarters of the party. Here they a.s.sembled for the best part of each day; the talk ranged over literary and publishing matters of mutual interest, and Kipling promptly labelled the room "The Hatchery,"--from the plans and schemes that were hatched during these discussions.

It was decided on the first day out that the party, too active-minded to remain inert for any length of time, should publish a daily newspaper to be written on large sheets of paper and to be read each evening to the group. It was called The Teuton Tonic; Mr. Doubleday was appointed publisher and advertising manager; Mr. Lockwood Kipling was made art editor to embellish the news; Rudyard Kipling was the star reporter, and Bok was editor.

Kipling, just released from his long confinement, like a boy out of school, was the life of the party--and when, one day, he found a woman aboard reading a copy of The Ladies' Home Journal his joy knew no bounds; he turned in the most inimitable "copy" to the Tonic, describing the woman's feelings as she read the different departments in the magazine. Of course, Bok, as editor of the Tonic, promptly pigeon-holed the reporter's "copy"; then relented, and, in a fine spirit of large-mindedness, "printed" Kipling's paeans of rapture over Bok's subscriber. The preparation of the paper was a daily joy: it kept the different members busy, and each evening the copy was handed to "the large circle of readers"--the two women of the party--to read aloud. At the end of the sixth day, it was voted to "suspend publication," and the daily of six issues was unanimously bequeathed to the little daughter of Mr. Lockwood de Forest, a close friend of the Kipling family--a choice bit of Kiplingania.

One day it was decided by the party that Bok should be taught the game of poker, and Kipling at once offered to be the instructor! He wrote out a list of the "hands" for Bok's guidance, which was placed in the centre of the table, and the party, augmented by the women, gathered to see the game.

A baby had been born that evening in the steerage, and it was decided to inaugurate a small "jack-pot" for the benefit of the mother. All went well until about the fourth hand, when Bok began to bid higher than had been originally planned. Kipling questioned the beginner's knowledge of the game and his tactics, but Bok retorted it was his money that he was putting into the pot and that no one was compelled to follow his bets if he did not choose to do so. Finally, the jack-pot a.s.sumed altogether too large dimensions for the party, Kipling "called" and Bok, true to the old idea of "beginner's luck" in cards, laid down a royal flush! This was too much, and poker, with Bok in it, was taboo from that moment.

Kipling's version of this card-playing does not agree in all particulars with the version here written. "Bok learned the game of poker," Kipling says; "had the deck stacked on him, and on hearing that there was a woman aboard who read The Ladies' Home Journal insisted on playing after that with the cabin-door carefully shut." But Kipling's art as a reporter for The Tonic was not as reliable as the art of his more careful book work.

Bok derived special pleasure on this trip from his acquaintance with Father Kipling, as the party called him. Rudyard Kipling's respect for his father was the tribute of a loyal son to a wonderful father.

"What annoys me," said Kipling, speaking of his father one day, "is when the pater comes to America to have him referred to in the newspapers as 'the father of Rudyard Kipling.' It is in India where they get the relation correct: there I am always 'the son of Lockwood Kipling.'"

Father Kipling was, in every sense, a choice spirit: gentle, kindly, and of a most remarkably even temperament. His knowledge of art, his wide reading, his extensive travel, and an interest in every phase of the world's doings, made him a rare conversationalist, when inclined to talk, and an encyclopedia of knowledge as extensive as it was accurate.

It was very easy to grow fond of Father Kipling, and he won Bok's affection as few men ever did.

Father Kipling's conversation was remarkable in that he was exceedingly careful of language and wasted few words.

One day Kipling and Bok were engaged in a discussion of the Boer problem, which was then pressing. Father Kipling sat by listening, but made no comment on the divergent views, since, Kipling holding the English side of the question and Bok the Dutch side, it followed that they could not agree. Finally Father Kipling arose and said: "Well, I will take a stroll and see if I can't listen to the water and get all this din out of my ears."

Both men felt gently but firmly rebuked and the discussion was never again taken up.

Bok tried on one occasion to ascertain how the father regarded the son's work.

"You should feel pretty proud of your son," remarked Bok.

"A good sort," was the simple reply.

"I mean, rather, of his work. How does that strike you?" asked Bok.

"Which work?"

"His work as a whole," explained Bok.

"Creditable," was the succinct answer.

"No more than that?" asked Bok.

"Can there be more?" came from the father.

"Well," said Bok, "the judgment seems a little tame as applied to one who is generally regarded as a genius."

"By whom?"

"The critics, for instance," replied Bok.

"There are no such," came the answer.

"No such what, Mr. Kipling?" asked Bok.

"Critics."

"No critics?"

"No," and for the first time the pipe was removed for a moment. "A critic is one who only exists as such in his own imagination."

"But surely you must consider that Rud has done some great work?"

persisted Bok.

"Creditable," came once more.

"You think him capable of great work, do you not?" asked Bok. For a moment there was silence. Then:

"He has a certain grasp of the human instinct. That, some day, I think, will lead him to write a great work."

There was the secret: the constant holding up to the son, apparently, of something still to be accomplished; of a goal to be reached; of a higher standard to be attained. Rudyard Kipling was never in danger of unintelligent laudation from his safest and most intelligent reader.

During the years which intervened until his pa.s.sing away, Bok sought to keep in touch with Father Kipling, and received the most wonderful letters from him. One day he enclosed in a letter a drawing which he had made showing Sakia Muni sitting under the bo-tree with two of his disciples, a young man and a young woman, gathered at his feet. It was a piece of exquisite drawing. "I like to think of you and your work in this way," wrote Mr. Kipling, "and so I sketched it for you." Bok had the sketch enlarged, engaged John La Farge to translate it into gla.s.s, and inserted it in a window in the living-room of his home at Merion.