The Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society Part 26

Finding his position filled when he arrived at Sitka, he was given charge of a trading post on Cook's Inlet until the transfer of the territory to the United States in 1867. Subsequently Petroff was appointed acting custom officer on Kodiak Island and was put in charge of the seized barkentine Const.i.tution, with which he arrived in San Francisco in October, 1870. Mr. Bancroft at once sought his services as Russian interpreter for the library. After his return to the government service in the north, he distinguished himself both in 1880 and 1890 by his zeal in securing information concerning Alaska desired by the census bureau, and several times risked his life in this service. Returning to Washington he was subsequently employed both by the census bureau and the state department. With one exception, the Utah volume, this was the last of the series of history proper to the actual authorship of any considerable part of which Mr. Bancroft can lay claim.)

So great was the opposition created among Gentiles in Utah by a turn in the Bancroft history more favorable to the Mormons than they considered fair, and so many and so fierce the charges against Mr.

Bancroft in consequence, that he has apparently been very careful to give, in the Literary Industries (pp. 631-640), an extended account of the manner of collecting the material for the History of Utah. Here he tells us that, at an early date in the development of the history project, he realized the difficulty of gaining data on Mormon history, an obstacle apparently so great as to be insuperable. For though the Mormon church have a regular historian, whose duty it is to preserve their archives, the director of the Bancroft project at once perceived the objections which would be made to the turning of this material over to be written up by one not in sympathy with their faith. But he must have seen very clearly that a Gentile history of Utah not unfavorable to the Mormons was the one thing they desired above all else. Accordingly, in 1880, he tells us that he succeeded in showing to their satisfaction that he was not prejudiced against them, and asked Orson B. Pratt, official historian of the Mormon church, for the desired information. John Taylor, president of the church, called a council of its twelve apostles, with the result that it was agreed to comply with the request, and Franklin D. Richards was sent to San Francisco as Professor Pratt's representative, to furnish the Bancroft library with such material as was desired from the official church records.

The year 1880 is an important one for the history project in another and more important respect also. The end of that year found definite plans made for the publication of the History of the Pacific States.

Mr. Bancroft had long since decided that, unlike the Native Races, this work should be handled exclusively by his own house, and Mr.

Nathan J. Stone was placed in charge of the publication department of the firm, now A. L. Bancroft and Company, to attend especially to this matter. The date of commencement of work by the printers Oak sought to have deferred that there might be no haste in searching out and digesting facts, but against his advice Bancroft determined to begin the publication of the series in 1882, impatient doubtless at the prospect of a deferred return from his large financial investment in the work, and somewhat fearful, as he tells us, lest through some calamity it might never come to publication.

This decision for an early beginning of publication with the general change in plan which it brought, rendered Mr. Oak's complicated tasks too severe, as he was now in failing health. The work of taking notes on the vast amount of material on California and the Spanish Southwest generally had been finished some time before, and, as Oak had now completed his preliminary researches, he determined to give up part of his duties that he might have time to write the volume covering his field. To Mr. Nemos, who up to this time had been employed chiefly on the Mexican volumes, was accordingly turned over the general direction of the half-dozen younger writers, together with the plans of writing, and the management of the note-takers, a change which gave him all interior supervision except over special departments attended to by Mr. Bancroft--such as the work of Oak and Mrs. Victor. Nemos had wonderful ability for drilling men into a common method and served as director of library detail "with remarkable ability and success."

(This was Oak's expression. All who speak of Nemos have much commendation for his ability. He was born in Finland, February 23, 1848, the son of a n.o.bleman. German and piano lessons were first given him by his mother, who belonged to a wealthy family of good stock.

After a year's study in a private school at St. Petersburg, he returned home to attend school, and later took a course at the gymnasium, or cla.s.sic high school, at Stockholm preparatory to entering Upsala university, where a brother was at the time in attendance.

This ambition was not to be attained, however, for in his seventeenth year, family matters compelled him to give up his studies, and a place for him was found in a London commission and ship-broker's office by a family friend who believed that the acquisition of English and a business experience would be of the greatest advantage to the young man. Rather than drag the family t.i.tle into the by-ways of trade, he laid it aside and a.s.sumed the name of Nemos.

Evening and leisure hours were now devoted to the study of philosophy and kindred higher branches under an Upsala graduate. After a business training of eighteen months, he was transferred to a responsible position in a house trading with India. When five years had been spent in this capacity, the fear of consumption induced him to take a long sea voyage, and in the spring of 1870 he left Liverpool by sailing vessel for Australia, arriving at Melbourne in the third month out. A venture at mining resulted disastrously through the dishonesty of his partners, and after a stop at Sydney, he came to San Francisco, where he landed in the summer of 1871. He had completed an engagement as a.s.sistant civil engineer on a proposed railroad in Oregon when he returned to California and accepted a position in the library. Nemos is described as retiring in all his tastes and enthusiastic as a student. He was especially fond of philosophy and languages, and had a knowledge of all the princ.i.p.al tongues of Europe.)

Oak, although he now considered himself chief only in name, still acted as librarian, business agent for most of the intercourse with the printing house, and reviser of the final proofs of all the volumes.

For protection against fire, the library was in October, 1881, moved to a building constructed for its reception on Valencia Street. At the same time, the printers began work on the first volume to be published, Central America I, which was immediately followed by Mexico I. After that time Mr. Bancroft (Lit. Ind., 585,) gave out for the press whatever was most convenient, so that frequently parts of several volumes were in type at one time. When the printing began, material aggregating fifteen volumes was ready. These included ma.n.u.script for Mexico and Central America, the field a.s.signed Savage and Nemos, matter prepared by Oak for California, by Mrs. Victor for Oregon, by Bancroft for Popular Tribunals, Literary Industries, and The Northwest Coast, and by Petroff for Alaska. Bancroft estimated at this time that the notes were also taken for three fourths of the works which were yet to be written.

Material upon which to base the remaining fourth was collected in the same way as previously, Mr. Bancroft visiting the country to be written up, ascertaining the nature and location of the materials, collecting what could be had conveniently, and then leaving the further ingathering in the hands of agents. A visit to Mexico in 1883 furnished him with some material on social conditions in that country which he tells us was utilized in the last volume of the Mexican history: (Lit. Ind., 701). More extensive collections remained to be made in the regions farther north.

After the completion of the two volumes on Oregon, Mrs. Victor's attention was next directed to the volume on Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming. In the carrying on of this work, a greater number of suggestions as to manner of treatment were made by Mr. Bancroft, we may believe, than was usual in the preparation of a volume, for the reasons that it was hurried more for publication than earlier works, that it was written under his immediate direction, and that he himself collected and forwarded material from the field as required. The record of the progress of the work, as it occurs in Mr. Bancroft's letters to the writer of the volume, is of unusual interest in that the methods followed, though in some ways exceptional, may perhaps be taken as fairly typical of those employed by Mr. Bancroft in the preparation of the later volumes of the series which he immediately supervised.

In August, 1884, shortly before the completion of the second volume of the History of Oregon, Mr. Bancroft went to Salt Lake City, where he left with Franklin D. Richards a memorandum to guide him in extracting material on the Mormons in Nevada which, he said, would be about the first material needed. Pending the arrival of this, on September 11th, he advised Mrs. Victor to familiarize herself with the history of Wyoming and Colorado, he himself having done the same for Nevada.

A letter written a few days later presents the idea of making a plan of the volume "as the men do on Mexico, etc.," and says, "By so doing you can give each section its due proportion and by working to the plan save unnecessary labor." As to the method of treating early expeditions to Colorado and Wyoming, he says to consult the History of Utah, and the two opening chapters which he himself had already written on Nevada. When these chapters were prepared, it was the intention to devote an entire volume to this state. In planning the work as recommended in this letter, Mrs. Victor ascertained that these chapters were out of proportion for the volume as now planned, and wrote to Mr. Bancroft to this effect. On September 21st, however, he advised her that he recognized the fact, but that they would "have to do." On the same date he forwarded the dictations of three of the first Mormons in Nevada, requesting that when the material had been used for this volume, they be turned over to Mr. Bates, then at work on the History of Utah. He also suggested a perusal of Benton's City Saints and other Utah books for light on Nevada, and directed that Mr.

Newkirk search the library thoroughly for Nevada material.

From Colorado Springs on October 7th he wrote announcing that a package of material on Colorado had been sent, though evidently with more thought of pleasing those who furnished the dictations than of affording material for the history of their state. Said he, "Some of the dictations don't amount to much, but I would like them used for all they are worth, and more too, putting them in list of authorities, quoting them freely, and giving biographical notice, etc." On October 11th, he wrote that he would go to Denver in a few days to finish gathering what material for Colorado he could procure. With reference to this he says, "I am told that there is no file of the _Rocky Mountain News_, or any other early paper I can get. Possibly I may obtain access to one. Still I think we will have stuff enough, all there will be room for. I will then go to Cheyenne to get what I can on Wyoming, and that will finish up the business of gathering for that volume, or any other volume except what the canva.s.sers bring in."

He calls attention to the fact that in the Colorado dictations there is frequently material on Montana, and in the Utah dictations, material on Idaho and Nevada. The reason for this he gives in the typical Bancroft sentence:

"If I strike a man here, as I frequently do, who has been to these other places in early times I follow him up there for all it is worth of course, the same as here."

At Colorado Springs Mrs. Helen Hunt Jackson, author of a Century of Dishonor, asked Mr. Bancroft to adopt her views on the Colorado Indian wars. With reference to this matter, he wrote on October 13th, the day of his departure for Denver, as follows:

"She wishing a thing done would be the very reason I would not do it if I could help it. I speak of it that you may get the work and use the information. I do not care about mentioning her name one way or another in the whole work. She has been polite enough here, although she has a broken leg, but I don't care for her politeness. I should have had fair recognition for the service I did her in the matter of her California articles in the _Century_ which I never got."

Writing subsequently from Denver on November 2d, he says: "Everybody in Colorado, nearly, is against Mrs. Jackson on what some call the Chevington ma.s.sacre. That side don't call it a ma.s.sacre, but a fight.

I should give their side in full, then say some few took exception to this action, and there let it stand on its merits--that is, I think so now."

In the same letter Mr. Bancroft announced that he was going over the _Rocky Mountain News_ with Mr. Byers, the founder and former editor, "a man of remarkable ability and memory," whose dictation to a shorthand reporter was given, he said, in such a way that it was almost pure history and could be taken from his ma.n.u.script as fast as one could write. This he advised Mrs. Victor to take as a basis for Colorado history, building upon it and giving it the preference in regard to discrepancy of statement. He also called attention to the fact that "a lot of people" had in one way and another wandered over the region before white men settled there, and said he supposed that what Coronado did should first be considered. As to the wanderings of Spaniards in Colorado, a schedule sent about this time refers Mrs.

Victor to all Oak had written on the subject, to the first few pages of the History of Utah, and to the original authorities upon which the latter was based. After calling attention to some works of travel, such as Fremont's writings and Renton's Adventures in Mexico and the Rocky Mountains, he asked Mr. Nemos to see that the material for Mrs.

Victor's use in preparing the volume be taken out more thoroughly than had heretofore been the case, and upon this point directed him to consult the early volumes of the series and make this correspond. Mrs.

Victor subsequently asked that she be permitted to take out her own notes, and the request was granted as Mr. Bancroft had now decided to reduce the number of his force as fast as possible and bring the work to a conclusion. Already on October 25th, he had given as his opinion that Colorado should make about half of the volume, at the same time inquiring what laws of Colorado and Wyoming were desired, and recommending a study of "Hepworth Dixon's work on the Great West, Bonneville's Adventures, and Bayard Taylor's Travels."

Writing from Cheyenne on November 8th, Mr. Bancroft announced the shipment of a small package of Wyoming stuff, all that he had been able to secure, and also his intention to have some one take matter from the office files of the newspapers of that place, the _Sun_ and _Leader_, the latter of which was very complete. Though returning himself to Denver, that day, he promised to have more Wyoming dictations taken.

In a letter dated the next day, he expressed the opinion that a proper division of the work would be made by devoting three hundred and fifty pages to Colorado, two hundred and twenty-five to Nevada, and one hundred and seventy-five to Wyoming, and requested that the writing be done on that basis until some change should be found necessary. In closing, he suggests another line of research to be carried through the volume in the words: "And all the way from the Gulf of Mexico to British Columbia, I want to pay special attention to the cattle interest and cattle men, the origin and development of the industry, one of the most marvelous and important of modern times."

The last letter dealing with the manner of treatment of material dated October 9, 1885, asks Mrs. Victor to do the best she can with Mackey and the silver question in order to satisfy Mr. Stone, the publishing agent, whose work, Mr. Bancroft said, was hard enough at best.

It thus appears that three leading objects were kept constantly in mind at this time: one, the handling of the various subjects in such a way as not to displease the people in the district written up, that the work might be popular and the work of the canva.s.sers easy as they went about soliciting subscriptions for it; another, the writing of the various chapters in such a way that the first draft would const.i.tute finished history and take up no more s.p.a.ce than that a.s.signed in the volume; and finally, and really at the bottom of the preceding, a desire to have the history written as soon as possible.

Evidence that Mr. Bancroft wished to have the work done in the least possible time and with the least possible cost is abundant in these letters.

In October Nemos had been set to counting the pages which Mrs. Victor had written since entering the library, a proceeding which she resented, believing that it afforded no just basis for judging her historical work. The next letter from Mr. Bancroft, on October 20th, brought the request that she bring the work "at first writing within the requisite compa.s.s so as not to make it so terribly costly." An intimation that greater haste would be pleasing was again conveyed on November 1st, when Mr. Bancroft expressed the confidence that if Mrs.

Victor were to write three volumes more, they would be done in three years instead of six, a view of the case most contrary to hers, since before entering the library she had already worked out many of the problems in Oregon history, and now that she was entering upon another field, found more time necessary. That Mr. Bancroft did not make allowance for this, however, is shown by a letter written on November 17th. Here he begins the subject by stating that it would be a great mistake to suppose that he was dissatisfied with Mrs. Victor's work, or that any one had in the faintest degree criticised it, and says that all he wants is to practice such economy of time and money as will enable him to complete the work before he is dead or has failed in business. Then he proceeds to reckon up results thus:

"I do not know when the present volume will be finished ready for the printer. But six years have already pa.s.sed, and, calling this volume done, it would be two years to a volume. About fifteen hundred of your pages make a volume, I believe, and counting three hundred days to the year, would be two and a half pages a day. When you first came, you started off with ten pages, which we all thought rapid, but the outcome makes it exceedingly small. This, with what other work has been done on your volumes, would make every page of your ma.n.u.script ready for the printer cost me considerably over two dollars a page."

After a denial that this is intended as a complaint about the past, he says:

"Go on and do the best you can. I have written equivalent to six volumes during the last six years besides devoting my time to revising and outside matters. But I don't expect any one to work as I do. I am not satisfied with old hands now, however, who do not give me say, four or five pages a day all ready for the printer."

According to the printed rules of the library, the hours were from 7.15 sharp to 6 o'clock in the evening, with half an hour for lunch.

When we recall the complexity and minuteness of research and thought necessary in historical writing, we must consider three hundred such days a year heavy work. The requirement of an average of a certain number of pages a day was therefore one which would naturally tend to increase the worry of the writer. This requirement was also exacted of Mr. Oak, and we may well conclude that if such pressure were brought to bear on the two most experienced writers in the library, upon the junior writers it must have been intense indeed.

The writing of the volume on Colorado, Nevada, and Wyoming, so far as the material at hand permitted, was completed at the end of the year 1885. With all of the precautions taken, however, the pages on Colorado had to be condensed nearly a third to bring them within the s.p.a.ce allowed. This was done, as was frequently the case, by throwing matter into fine type and printing as footnotes, instead of making many changes in the ma.n.u.script.

The system of biographical footnotes as it appears in the history, Mrs. Victor claimed as her contribution to the general plan of the work. The idea was followed with excellent results in her own volumes as well as those written by others, the object being to make biographical mention for the benefit of posterity of every man who took a prominent part in the building of a Pacific state or territory.

For carrying out such a purpose, the time of writing during the lives of at least part of the same generation that founded these commonwealths, offered unusually good advantages.

The original intention, Mrs. Victor has told us, was for her to prepare the volume on Utah, since before coming to the coast, she had had occasion to make a study of early Mormon history through coming in contact with some refugees from Nauvoo. But so much work had already been a.s.signed her that when the time came to do the writing, this was impossible. Mr. Bancroft had already made a study of the early Spanish history of the territory, and had written this part when he a.s.signed the work on the bulk of the remainder to Mr. Alfred Bates, a writer of polished English and a man of scholarly attainments who had previously a.s.sisted Mr. John S. Hittell in his work on The Commerce and Industries of the Pacific Coast. (From Literary Industries, 267-68, we learn that Bates was a native of Leeds, England, born May 4, 1840. His father was a wool stapler who lost his fortune in the panic of 1847.

Compelled at an early age to earn his own livelihood, he began teaching at the age of fifteen, and later taught at Marlborough College of which the dean of Westminster was then head. To him young Bates became private secretary in 1862. While preparing for Cambridge the following year, he accepted a lucrative position in New South Wales, where he suffered much from ill health, at one time being given up by three doctors. An offer of a position as teacher in California took him thither and he continued at this work for a year. During the two years spent with Mr. Hittell, he was the most valued of his a.s.sistants.) Those acquainted with the circ.u.mstances and the men have accordingly held that certain incidents in Utah history unfavorable to the Mormons could not have been toned down by Bates as they are in the printed volume, and that the Mormon turn to the work was therefore given by Bancroft in the pages which he wrote and in his revision of Bates' work. (See article by Frances Fuller Victor in _Salt Lake Tribune_ of April 14, 1893.) This seems probable from what Mr.

Bancroft tells us of his efforts to secure material for the volume from the Mormon church, as well as his natural desire to please subscribers to the work.

Mr. Nemos, who was a foreigner, had no preference as to the field in which his writing was done, and it was consequently scattered through different volumes. Besides collaborating with Mr. Savage and others on the Mexican and Central American volumes, he wrote part of the material on British Columbia and Alaska. By the time Mrs. Victor's third volume was completed at the end of the year 1885, Oak had completed his work on the North Mexican States and the five volumes on California under Spanish and Mexican rule. The writing of the two volumes containing the American portion of California history was thereupon a.s.signed to Mrs. Victor and Nemos, the former a.s.suming responsibility for the preparation of the political chapters, a field in which her work had been p.r.o.nounced especially good, and the latter taking up the inst.i.tutional chapters, a part which he had largely fulfilled toward all the Spanish volumes of the history.

The introduction of the inst.i.tutional feature is to be accredited to Nemos. The writing done by Oak was in the form of annals, a form in general suited admirably to the provincial records which he worked up; but against such a style throughout the series, Nemos tells us that he presented suggestions and arguments to Mr. Bancroft for introducing material which should tell the history of the people, and that in this he prevailed.

In April, 1886, the burning of the Bancroft business house threatened temporarily to bring the history project to an abrupt termination at a time when only the first volumes had been published, but the enterprise soon recovered from the blow. Under the leadership of Mr.

Bancroft, both business and history writing went on as before, the firm of Bancroft and Company being organized for the conduct of the former, while the publication of the history previously carried on as a department of the general book concern was now turned over to The History Company, a corporation organized by Mr. Bancroft for the purpose of handling the work.

At the completion by Oak of his volume on New Mexico and Arizona in May, 1887, he retired from the library with health very much shattered, leaving Mr. Nemos at the head of affairs. After spending some time on a new work now undertaken by Mr. Bancroft, the latter also severed his connection with library matters in August, 1888.

At the time of Oak's departure, Bancroft was planning a biographical work to be issued at the conclusion of the task which was then engaging the attention of the library force. This work, at first called Chronicles of the Kings, but published under the t.i.tle Chronicles of the Builders of the Commonwealths, was to present in detail the lives of wealthy and influential men who had borne a prominent part in the affairs of the various Pacific Coast states. For such notice they were charged from a thousand to ten thousand dollars according to the length of the published sketch. (This is according to the printed schedule, the minimum price being paid for three pages print, the maximum for thirty. This included also the printing of a portrait engraved on steel.) The attempt to burden the prestige gained by the histories and their projector with such a load could result only in crippling both. The volumes printed subsequent to the inauguration of this scheme could not be received with the same open-mindedness as former works. The information subsequently made public that money was accepted for notice in the Chronicles lost for Mr. Bancroft the regard of the press of the coast, caused grave doubts to be expressed concerning his disinterestedness as an historian, called out an expression of many bitter--in some cases utterly false--statements concerning his work, and sadly damaged the literary reputation he had been for nearly twenty years building on the work done under his direction.

While it was inevitable that the publication of the Chronicles as a parasite upon the history should result thus disastrously and deplorably for the fame of the latter work, we must not fail to recognize the fact that the labors of the writers upon both works were not a whit less conscientious and painstaking than they had always been. After the sixth and seventh volumes of the California history were completed in 1888, the volume on Washington, Idaho, and Montana was written. In 1890, the final volume on California was published, followed in the next year by the supplementary volumes, Essays and Literary Industries, which ended twenty years of library work for Hubert Howe Bancroft and his a.s.sistants.

The History of the Pacific States, we have seen, was an evolution, pa.s.sing through the stages of handbook and encyclopaedia before it became a history. But when the last idea had been reached, the development of the project was by no means complete, but rather just begun. The necessity of the Native Races was demonstrated before work had proceeded for a twelve-month. As late as 1878, Mr. Bancroft estimated that the history proper would comprise but fourteen volumes at the outside.

In his letter to Mrs. Victor, dated August 1st of that year, we get an interesting glimpse of the plan in an earlier stage. The work is to be divided, he says, somewhat in the following manner: Conquest of Darien, one volume; Conquest of Mexico, one volume; Mexico under the Viceroys, two volumes; Mexican Revolution and Modern History, one or two; Explorations Northward and the History of California, three or four; the Northwest Coast, Oregon and British Columbia together, two or three; Alaska, one. Under the head of California history was to be included somewhere the histories of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Nevada, and the history of Oregon was likewise to include Washington, Idaho, and Montana. Oregon and British Columbia he thought could be written in a year. Not until six more years had pa.s.sed was it finally recognized that natural expansion as the work proceeded would necessitate devoting to the series of history proper a number of volumes exactly double that which was then contemplated. To this series were added as a supplement an even half dozen volumes.

If we find that the outline grew from that of a few volumes in 1872 to one of almost forty in 1884, and that the work expanded fourteen volumes after it had been definitely laid out, we are not at all surprised that the part of the whole which Mr. Bancroft intended to write grew relatively less as time went on, and the part a.s.signed to others became correspondingly greater. There is some evidence to show that when writing began on the first volume of the Central American History in 1873, the director of the project actually had in mind the plan which he gives in the Literary Industries, that of writing with the aid of a.s.sistants who were to be responsible for "the study and reduction of certain minor sections" which he was to "employ" in his own writing. Thus we find, according to the information left by Nemos, that Bancroft actually wrote half of the volume, that Oak at first took out notes, and that Nemos prepared his work in the rough, leaving a considerable part of it to be rewritten. For the next volume undertaken, the first of the six on Mexico, we see that the chief was unable to prepare so much material in its final form, and rested with but two chapters completely to his credit, together with the rewriting of part of Nemos' work on the remainder. In four or five years, he expresses the determination of writing what he can himself and leaving the rest to his aids. This as we shall see amounted in the end to his doing about one seventh of the history, slightly revising the work of the other authors, often by the aid of critics in his employ, and preparing most of the material for the supplementary volumes.

Thus it came about that the original plan, the plan as published, was exactly reversed, and instead of Mr. Bancroft's doing all the work in final form, except some minor sections a.s.signed to those whom he called his a.s.sistants, it was the so-called a.s.sistants who really wrote the History of the Pacific States, and Mr. Bancroft who did a few minor, or at any rate less difficult parts. Nor is it at all true, as one authority has said (Appleton's Encyclopaedia of American Biography, I, 156), that Mr. Bancroft wrote the most important chapters. Of course, the surprising thing about this is that Mr.

Bancroft should have stated in the Literary Industries that he had followed a plan for the division of labor originally intended, but not followed at all. Especially unfortunate is this, in view of repeated charges of absorbing the literary reputation of his collaborators and aids, and appropriating the credit for their work.