When I joined the staff of theUnion, in the summer of 1870, I had had no newspaper experience whatever. I had written for newspapers occasionally, but only as an amateur. I had published one or two small things in magazines, but I knew absolutely nothing of professional newspaper work. Mr. Tilton and his managing editor, Kenward Philp, were good enough to find in my earliest work as a reporter some capacity for lucid expression, and a simple and direct narrative habit which pleased them, so that in spite of my inexperience they were disposed to give me a share in the best assignments. I may say incidentally that among the reporters I was very generally pitied as a poor fellow foredoomed to failure as a newspaper man for the reason that I was what we call educated. At that time, though not for long afterwards, education and a tolerable regularity of life were regardedas serious handicaps in the newsrooms of most newspapers.
My First Libel Suit
Among my earliest assignments was one which brought me my first experience of newspaper libel suits, designed not for prosecution but as a means of intimidating the newspaper concerned. The extent to which the news of the suit appalled me was a measure of my inexperience, and the way in which it was met was a lesson to me that has served me well upon many later occasions of the kind.
A man whom I will call Amour, as the use of his real name might give pain to innocent persons even after the lapse of forty years, was express agent at a railway station in the outskirts of Brooklyn. His reputation was high in the community and in the church as a man of exemplary conduct and a public-spirited citizen, notably active in all endeavors for the betterment of life.
It was a matter of sensational, popular interest, therefore, when his wife instituted divorce proceedings, alleging the most scandalous conduct on his part.
TheUnionwas alert to make the most of such things and Kenward Philp set me to explore this case and exploit it. He told me frankly that he did so because he thought I could "write it up" in an effective way, but he thought it necessary to caution my inexperience that I must confine my report rigidly to the matter in hand, and not concern myself with side issues of any kind.
In the course of my inquiry, I learned much about Amour that was far more important than the divorce complications. Two or three business men of high repute in Brooklyn told me without reserve that he had abstracted money from express packages addressed to them and passing through his hands. When detected by them he had made good the losses, and in answer to his pleadings in behalf of his wife and children, they had kept silence. But now that he had himself brought ruin and disgraceupon his family they had no further reason for reserve. I secured written and signed statements of the facts from each of them, with permission to publish if need be. But all this was aside from the divorce matter I had been set to investigate, and, mindful of the instructions given me, I made no mention of it in the article.
When I reached the office on the morning after that article was published, I met Kenward Philp at the entrance door of the building, manifestly waiting for me in some anxiety. Almost forgetting to say "good-morning," he eagerly asked:
"Are you sure of your facts in that Amour story—can they be proved?"
"Yes, absolutely," I replied. "But why do you ask?"
"Oh, only because Amour has served papers on us in a libel suit for fifty thousand dollars damages."
My heart sank at this, as it had never done before, and has never done since. I regarded it as certain that my career in the new profession I had adopted was hopelessly ended at its very beginning, and I thought, heart-heavily, of the wife and baby for whom I saw no way to provide.
"Why, yes," I falteringly repeated, "every statement I made can be supported by unimpeachable testimony. But, believe me, Mr. Philp, I am sorry I have got the paper into trouble."
"Oh, that's nothing," he replied, "so long as you're sure of your facts. One libel suit more or less is a matter of no moment."
Then, by way of emphasizing the unworthiness of the man I had "libeled" I briefly outlined the worse things I had learned about him. Philp fairly shouted with delight:
"Keno!" he exclaimed. "Hurry upstairs andlibel him some more! Make it strong. Skin him and dress the wound withaqua fortis—I say—and rub it in!"
I obeyed with a will, and the next morning Amour was missing, and the express company was sending descriptions of him to the police of every city in the country. It is a fixed rule with the great express companies to prosecute relentlessly every agent of their own who tampers with express packages. It is a thing necessary to their own protection. So ended my first libel suit.
Later Libel Suit Observations
During the many years that I passed in active newspaper work after that time, observation and experience taught me much, with regard to newspaper libel suits, which is not generally known. It may be of interest to suggest some things on the subject here.
I have never known anybody to get rich by suing newspapers for libel. The nearest approach to that result that has come within my knowledge was when Kenward Philp got a verdict for five thousand dollars damages against a newspaper that had accused him of complicity in the forging of the celebrated Morey letter which was used to General Garfield's hurt in his campaign for the Presidency. There have been larger verdicts secured in a few other cases, but I suspect that none of them seemed so much like enrichment to those who secured them, as that one did to Philp. It was not Mr. Philp's habit to have a considerable sum of money in possession at any time. His temperament strongly militated against that, and I think all men who knew him well will agree with me in doubting that he ever had one-half or one-fourth the sum this verdict brought him, in his possession at any one time in his life, except upon that occasion.
In suing newspapers for libel it is the custom of suitors to name large sums as the measure of the damagesclaimed, but this is a thing inspired mainly by vanity and a spirit of ostentation. It emphasizes the value of the reputation alleged to have been damaged; it is in itself a boastful threat of the punishment the suitor means to inflict, and is akin to the vaporings with which men of rougher ways talk of the fights they contemplate. It is an assurance to the friends of the suitor of his determined purpose to secure adequate redress and of his confidence in his ability to do so. Finally, it is a "don't-tread-on-me" warning to everybody concerned.
Inspired by such motives men often sue for fifty thousand dollars for damages done to a fifty-cent reputation. It costs no more to institute a suit for fifty thousand dollars than to bring one for one or two thousand.
In many cases libel suits are instituted without the smallest intention of bringing them to trial. They are "bluffs," pure and simple. They are meant to intimidate, and sometimes they accomplish that purpose, but not often.
I remember one case with which I had personally to deal. I was in charge of the editorial page of the New YorkWorldat the time, and with a secure body of facts behind me I wrote a severe editorial concerning the malefactions of one John Y. McKane, a Coney Island political boss. I specifically charged him with the crimes he had committed, cataloguing them and calling each of them by its right name.
The man promptly served papers in a libel suit against the newspaper. A timid business manager hurriedly came to me with the news, asking if I couldn't write another article "softening" the severity of the former utterance. I showed him the folly of any such attempt in a case where the libel, if there was any libel, had already been published.
"But even if the case were otherwise," I added, "theWorldwill do nothing of that cowardly kind. The manhas committed the crimes we have charged. Otherwise we should not have made the charges. I shall indite and publish another article specifically reiterating our accusations, as our reply to his attempt at intimidation."
I did so at once. I repeated each charge made and emphasized it. I ended the article by saying that the man had impudently sued the paper for libel in publishing these truths concerning him, and adding that "it is not as plaintiff in a libel suit that he will have to meet these accusations, but as defendant in a criminal prosecution, and long before his suit for libel can be brought to trial, he will be doing time in prison stripes with no reputation left for anybody to injure."
The prediction was fulfilled. The man was prosecuted and sentenced to a long term in state's prison. So ended that libel suit.
The Queerest of Libel Suits
The queerest libel proceeding of which I ever had personal knowledge, was that of Judge Henry Hilton against certain members of the staff of the New YorkWorld. It was unusual in its inception, in its character, and in its outcome.
TheWorldpublished a series of articles with regard to Judge Hilton's relations with the late A. T. Stewart, and with the fortune left by Mr. Stewart at his death. I remember nothing of the merits of the matter, and they need not concern us here. TheWorldwanted Judge Hilton to bring a libel suit against it, in the hope that at the trial he might take the witness-stand and submit himself to cross-examination. To that end the paper published many things which were clearly libelous if they were not true.
But Judge Hilton was not to be drawn into the snare. He instituted no libel suit in his own behalf; he asked no redress for statements made about himself, but he made complaint to the District Attorney, Colonel John R. Fellows,that theWorldhad criminally libeled thememory of A. T. Stewart, and for that offense Col. Fellows instituted criminal proceedings against John A. Cockerill and several other members of theWorld'sstaff, who thus learned for the first time that under New York's queer libel law it is a crime to say defamatory things of Benedict Arnold, Guy Fawkes, or the late Judas Iscariot himself unless you can prove the truth of your charges.
The editors involved in this case were held in bail, but as no effort of their attorneys to secure their trial could accomplish that purpose, it seems fair to suppose that the proceedings against them were never intended to be seriously pressed.
Finally, when the official term of Colonel Fellows drew near its end, Mr. De Lancy Nicoll was elected to be his successor as District Attorney. As Mr. Nicoll had been the attorney of theWorldand of its accused editors, the presence of these long dormant cases in the District Attorney's office threatened him with a peculiarly sore embarrassment. Should he find them on his calendar upon taking office, he must either become the prosecutor in cases in which he had been defendants' counsel, or he must dismiss them at risk of seeming to use his official authority to shield his own former clients from due responsibility under the criminal law.
It was not until the very day before Mr. Nicoll took office that the embarrassing situation was relieved by Colonel Fellows, who at the end of his term went into court and asked for the dismissal of the cases.
One other thing should be said on this subject. There are cases, of course, in which newspapers of the baser sort do wantonly assail reputation and should be made to smart for the wrong done. But these cases are rare. The first and most earnest concern of every reputable newspaper is to secure truth and accuracy in its news reports, andevery newspaper writer knows that there is no surer way of losing his employment and with it his chance of securing another than by falsifying in his reports. The conditions in which newspapers are made render mistakes and misapprehensions sometimes unavoidable; but every reputable newspaper holds itself ready to correct and repair such mistakes when they injure or annoy innocent persons. Usually a printed retraction with apology in fact repairs the injury. But I have known cases in which vindictiveness, or the hope of money gain, has prompted the aggrieved person to persist in suing for damages and rejecting the offer of other reparation. In such cases the suitors usually secure a verdict carrying six cents damages. In one case that I remember the jury estimated the damages at one cent—leaving the plaintiff to pay the costs of the proceeding.
Early Newspaper Experiences
During the early days of my newspaper service there came to me an unusual opportunity, involving a somewhat dramatic experience.
The internal revenue tax on distilled spirits was then so high as to make of illicit distilling an enormously profitable species of crime. The business had grown to such proportions in Brooklyn that its flourishing existence there, practically without interference by the authorities, gave rise to a very damaging political scandal.
In the region round the Navy Yard there were illicit stills by scores, producing spirits by thousands of gallons daily. They were owned by influential men of standing, but operated by men of desperate criminal character to whom homicide itself seemed a matter of indifference so long as its perpetration could conceal crime or secureprotection from punishment by means of the terror the "gang" held over the heads of all who might interfere with its members or their nefarious business.
It was a dangerous thing to meddle with, and the officers of the law—after some of them had been killed and others severely beaten—were in fact afraid to meddle with it. There were warrants in the United States Marshal's office for the arrest of nearly a score of the offenders, but the papers were not served and there was scarcely a pretense made of effort to serve them.
It was made my duty to deal with this matter both in the news columns and editorially. Every day we published a detailed list of the stills that had been in operation during the preceding night, together with the names of the men operating each and detailed information as to the exact locality of each. Every day we printed editorial articles calling upon the officers of the law to act, and severely criticising their cowardice in neglecting to act. At first these editorial utterances were admonitory and critical. With each day's added demonstration of official weakness they grew severer and more denunciatory of the official cowardice or corruption that alone could have inspired the inactivity. Presently the officer chiefly responsible, whom the newspaper singled out by name as the subject of its criticism, and daily denounced or ridiculed, instituted the usual libel suit for purposes of intimidation only.
It had no such effect. The newspaper continued its crusade, and the scandal of official neglect grew daily in the public mind, until presently it threatened alarming political results.
I do not know that political corruption was more prevalent then than now, but it was more open and shameless, and as a consequence men of upright minds were readier to suspect its existence in high places. At this time suchmen began rather insistently to ask why the authorities at Washington did not interfere to break up the illicit stills and why the administration retained in office the men whose neglect of that duty had become so great a scandal. It was freely suggested that somebody at Washington must be winking at the lawlessness in aid of political purposes in Brooklyn.
An Interview with President Grant
It was then that Theodore Tilton, with his constitutional audacity, decided to send me to Washington to interview President Grant on the subject. I was provided with letters from Tilton, as the editor of the Republican newspaper of Brooklyn, from the Republican Postmaster Booth, and from Silas B. Dutcher and other recognized leaders of the Republican party in Brooklyn. These letters asked the President, in behalf of Republicanism in Brooklyn, to give me the desired interview, assuring him of my integrity, etc.
So armed I had no difficulty in securing audience. I found General Grant to be a man of simple, upright mind, unspoiled by fame, careless of formalities and the frills of official place, in no way nervous about his dignity—just a plain, honest American citizen, accustomed to go straight to the marrow of every subject discussed, without equivocation or reserve and apparently without concern for anything except truth and justice.
He received me cordially and dismissed everybody else from the room while we talked. He offered me a cigar and we had our conference without formality.
In presenting my credentials, I was moved by his own frankness of manner to tell him that I was an ex-Confederate soldier and not a Republican in politics. I was anxious not to sail under false colors, and he expressed himself approvingly of my sentiment, assuring me that my personal views in politics could make no difference in my status on this occasion.
After I had asked him a good many questions about the matter in hand, he smilingly asked:
"Why don't you put the suggestions so vaguely mentioned in these letters, into a direct question, so that I may answer it?"
It had seemed to me an impossible impudence to ask the President of the United States whether or not his administration was deliberately protecting crime for the sake of political advantage, but at his suggestion I formulated the question, hurriedly putting it in writing for the sake of accuracy in reporting it afterwards. He answered it promptly and directly, adding:
"I wish you would come to me again a week from today. I may then have a more conclusive answer to give you. Come at any rate."
When the interview was published, my good friend, Dr. St. Clair McKelway, then young in the service on the BrooklynEaglewhich has since brought fame to him and extraordinary influence to the newspaper which he still conducts, said to me at a chance meeting: "I think your putting of that question to General Grant was the coolest and most colossal piece of impudence I ever heard of."
So it would have been, if I had done the thing of my own motion or otherwise without General Grant's suggestion, a thing of which, of course, no hint was given in the published interview.
When I saw the President again a week later, he needed no questioning on my part. He had fully informed himself concerning matters in Brooklyn, and knew what he wanted to say. Among other things he mentioned that he had had a meeting with the derelict official whom we had so severely criticised and who had responded with a libel suit. All that the President thought it necessary to say concerning him was:
Grant's Method
"He must go. You may say so from me. Say it in print and positively."
The publication of that sentence alone would have made the fortune of my interview, even without the other utterances of interest that I was authorized to publish as an assurance that the administration intended to break up the illicit distilling in Brooklyn even if it required the whole power of the government to do it.
In relation to that matter the President said to me:
"Now for your own reassurance, and not for publication, I may tell you that as soon as proper preparations can be made, the distilling district will be suddenly surrounded by a cordon of troops issuing from the Navy Yard, and revenue officers, under command of Jerome B. Wass, whom you know, I believe, will break up every distillery, carry away every still and every piece of machinery, empty every mash-tub into the gutters, and arrest everybody engaged in the business."
I gave my promise not to refer to this raid in any way in advance of its making, but asked that I might be permitted to be present with the revenue officers when it should be made. General Grant immediately sent for Mr. Wass, who was in the White House at the time, and directed him to inform me when he should be ready to make the raid, and to let me accompany him. To this he added: "Don't let any other newspaper man know of the thing."
The raid was made not long after that. In the darkness of the end of a night—a darkness increased by the practice of the distillers of extinguishing all the street lamps in that region—a strong military force silently slipped out of a remote gate in the Navy Yard inclosure, and before the movement was suspected, it had completely surrounded the district, under orders to allow no human being to pass in or out through the lines. I had with mean assistant, whom I had found the night before at a ball that he had been assigned to report, and under the strict rule laid down for the military, he and I were the only newspaper men within the lines, or in any wise able to secure news of what was going on—a matter that was exciting the utmost curiosity throughout the city. On the other hand, the rigidity of the military cordon threatened to render our presence within the lines of no newspaper use to us. Ours was an afternoon newspaper and our "copy," of which we soon made many columns, must be in the office not very long after midday if it was to be of any avail. But we were not permitted to pass the lines with it, either in person or by messenger. At last we secured permission of the Navy Yard authorities to go down to the water front of the Yard and hail a passing tug. With our pockets stuffed full of copy, we passed in that way to the Manhattan shore and made our way thence by Fulton ferry to the office, where we were greeted as heroes and victors who had secured for the paper the most important "beat" that had been known in years.
There are victories, however, that are more disastrous to those who win them than defeat itself. For a time this one threatened to serve me in that way. Mr. Bowen, the owner of the paper, whom I had never before seen at theUnionoffice, presented himself there the next morning, full of enthusiasm. He was particularly impressed by the way in which I had secured advance information of the raid and with it the privilege of being present to report the affair. Unfortunately for me, he said in his enthusiasm, "that's the sort of man we make a general and not a private of, in journalism."
Newspaper employments of the better sort were not easy to get in those days, and my immediate superiors in the office interpreted Mr. Bowen's utterance to mean thathe contemplated the removal of some one or other of them, to make a commanding place for me. He had even suggested, in plain words, that he would like to see me made managing editor.
In that suggestion he was utterly wrong. I knew myself to be unfit for the place for the reason that I knew little of the city and almost nothing of journalism, in which I had been engaged for no more than a few weeks. Nevertheless, Mr. Bowen's suggestion aroused the jealousy of my immediate superiors, and they at once began a series of persecutions intended to drive me off the paper, a thing that would have been calamitous to a man rather inexperienced and wholly unknown in other newspaper offices.
Theodore Tilton solved the problem by removing me from the news department and promoting me to the editorial writing staff.
A Free Lance
After somewhat more than a year's service on the Brooklyn newspaper my connection with it was severed, and for a time I was a "free lance," writing editorials and literary articles of various kinds for the New YorkEvening Postin the forenoons, and devoting the afternoons to newswork on theTribune—writing "on space" for both.
At that time Mr. William Cullen Bryant was traveling somewhere in the South, I think, so that I did not then become acquainted with him. That came later.
TheEvening Postwas in charge of the late Charlton T. Lewis, with whom, during many later years, I enjoyed an intimate acquaintance. Mr. Lewis was one of the ripest scholars and most diligent students I have ever known, but he was also a man of broad human sympathies,intensely interested in public affairs and in all else that involved human progress. His knowledge of facts and his grasp of principles in the case of everything that interested him seemed to me not less than extraordinary, and they seem so still, as I remember the readiness with which he would turn from consideration of some nice question of Greek or Latin usage to write of a problem of statesmanship under discussion at Washington, or of some iniquity in municipal misgovernment which occupied the popular mind. His eyes were often red after the scholarly vigils of the midnight, but they were wide open and clear-sighted in their survey of all human affairs, from the Old Catholic movement to police abuses. His scholarship in ancient literatures in no way interfered with his alert interest in the literature of his own language, his own country, and his own time, or with his comprehensive acquaintance with it.
He was as much at home on the rostrum as at the desk, and his readiness and force in speaking were as marked as the effectiveness of his written words. More remarkable still, perhaps, was the fact that his oral utterances, however unexpectedly and extemporaneously he might be called upon to speak, were as smoothly phrased, as polished, and as perfectly wrought in every way as if they had been carefully written out and laboriously committed to memory.
Personally he was genial, kindly, and courteous, not with the courtesy of courtliness, which has considerations of self for its impulse, but with that of good-fellowship, inspired by concern for the happiness of those with whom he came in contact.
Hearth and Home
The service on theEvening Postinterested me particularly. My impulse was strongly toward the literary side of newspaper work, and it was on that side chiefly that theEvening Postgave me opportunity. But I was working there only on space and devoting the greater part of my time to less congenial tasks. In a little while I gave up both these employments to accept the position of managing editor of a weekly illustrated publication calledHearth and Home. The paper had been very ambitious in its projection, very distinguished in the persons of its editors and contributors, and a financial failure from the beginning.
There were several reasons for this. The mere making of an illustrated periodical in those days was excessively expensive. There were no photographic processes for the reproduction of pictures at that time. Every illustration must be drawn on wood and engraved by hand at a cost ten or twenty times as great as that now involved in the production of a similar result.
A second difficulty was thatHearth and Homewas originally designed to meet a demand that did not exist. It was meant to be a country gentleman's newspaper at a time when there were scarcely any country gentlemen—in the sense intended—in America. Its appeals were largely to a leisure-class of well-to-do people, pottering with amateur horticulture and interested in literature and art.
It had for its first editors Donald G. Mitchell (Ik Marvel), Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Mrs. Mary Mapes Dodge. Mrs. Dodge was the only one of the company who had the least capacity as an editor, and her work was confined to the children's pages. The otherswere brilliant and distinguished literary folk, but wholly without either experience or capacity as editors.
The publication had lost a fortune to its proprietors, when it was bought by Orange Judd & Company, the publishers of theAmerican Agriculturist. They had changed its character somewhat, but not enough to make it successful. Its circulation—never large—had shrunk to a few thousands weekly. Its advertisements were few and unremunerative; and its total income was insufficient to cover one-half the cost of making it.
My brother, Edward, and I were employed to take control of the paper and, if possible, resuscitate it. We found a number of "Tite Barnacles" there drawing extravagant salaries for which their services made no adequate return. To rid the paper of these was Edward's first concern. We found the pigeonholes stuffed with accepted manuscripts, not one in ten of which was worth printing. They were the work of amateurs who had nothing to say and didn't at all know how to say it. These must be paid for, as they had been accepted, but to print them would have been to invite continued failure. By my brother's order they were dumped into capacious waste baskets and better materials secured from writers of capacity—among them such persons as Dr. Edward Everett Hale, Asa Gray, George E. Waring, Jr., Charles Barnard, Mrs. Runkle, Helen Hunt, Rebecca Harding Davis, Sara Orne Jewett, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Rose Terry, and others of like ability.
Mary Mapes Dodge
Mrs. Dodge continued her well-nigh matchless work as editor of the children's pages, until a year or so later, when she leftHearth and Hometo create the new children's magazine,St. Nicholas. She was a woman of real genius—a greatly overworked word, but one fitly applied in her case. Her editorial instincts were alert and unfailing. Her gift of discovering kernels of value inmasses of chaff was astonishing, and her skill in revising and reconstructing so as to save the grain and rid it of the chaff was such as I have never known in any other editor.
Her industry was at times almost appalling in its tireless energy, yet it seemed to make no draughts upon her vitality that her singularly buoyant nature could not meet without apparent strain.
She had also a rare gift of recognizing ability in others, judging it accurately, and setting it to do its proper work. One of the greatest services she renderedHearth and Homewas in suggesting Frank R. Stockton for employment on the staff when we found ourselves in need of an assistant. He had not begun to make his reputation then. Such newspaper work as he had found to do had afforded his peculiar gifts no adequate opportunity and outside a narrow circle he was wholly unknown. But Mrs. Dodge was right in her reckoning when she advised his employment, and equally right in her perception of the kind of opportunity he needed.
The friendship between Stockton and myself, which was begun during the time of our association onHearth and Home, endured and increased to the end of his life. The fame that those later years brought to him is a matter of familiar knowledge to all who are likely to read this book. It is not of that that I wish to write here, or of the character of the work by which that fame was won. It is only of Stockton the man that I need set down anything in these pages.
He was the best of good company always, as I found out early in our association, in those days when we went out together for our luncheon every day and enjoyed an hour of relaxation between the long morning's work and that of the longer afternoon. He never failed to be ready to go when the luncheon hour came. His work was alwaysin shape and he carried no care for it with him when we quitted the office together. He never talked shop. I cannot remember that he ever mentioned anything respecting his work or asked a question concerning it between the time of our leaving the office and that of our return.
Not that he was indifferent to it, for on the contrary I never knew a more conscientious worker, or one who more faithfully attended to every detail. When his "copy" was laid on my desk I knew perfectly that every sentence was as he had intended it to be, that every paragraph break was made at the point he desired it to be, and that every comma was marked in its proper place. While engaged in doing his work he gave his undivided attention to it, but when he went with me to the Crooked Stoop house in Trinity Alley for his luncheon, he gave equal attention to the mutton and potatoes, while his conversation was of things light, airy, and not strenuous.
I spoke of this to him one day many years after the time of our editorial association, and for answer he said:
"I suppose there are men who can part their hair and polish their boots at the same time, but I am not gifted in that way."
I never saw Stockton angry. I doubt that he ever was so. I never knew him to be in the least degree hurried, or to manifest impatience in any way. On the other hand, I never knew him to manifest enthusiasm of any kind or to indulge in any but the most moderate and placid rejoicing over anything. Good or ill fortune seemed to have no effect whatever upon his spirits or his manner, so far as those who were intimately acquainted with him were able to discover. Perhaps it was only that his philosophy taught him the injustice of asking others to share his sorrows or his rejoicings over events that were indifferent to them.
Frank R. Stockton
He was always frail in health, but during all the yearsof my acquaintance with him I never once heard him mention the fact, or discovered any complaint of it in his tone or manner. At one time his weakness and emaciation were so great that he walked with two crutches, not because of lameness for he had none, but because of sheer physical weakness. Yet even at that time his face was a smiling one and in answer to all inquiries concerning his health he declared himself perfectly well.
His self-possessed repression of enthusiasm is clearly manifest in his writings. In none of his stories is there a suggestion of anything but philosophic calm on the part of the man who wrote them. There is humor, a fascinating fancy, and an abounding tenderness of human sympathy of a placidly impersonal character, but there is no passion, no strenuosity, nothing to suggest that the author is anywhere stirred to enthusiasm by the events related or the situations in which his imaginary personages are placed.
He one day said to me that he had never regarded what is called "love interest" as necessary to a novel, and in fact he never made any very earnest use of that interest. In "The Late Mrs. Null" he presented the love story with more of amusement than of warmth in his manner, while in "Kate Bonnet" the love affair is scarcely more than a casual adjunct to the pirate story. In "The Hundredth Man" he manifested somewhat greater sympathy, but even there his tone is gently humorous rather than passionate.
Many of the whimsical conceits that Stockton afterward made the foundations of his books were first used in the more ephemeral writings of theHearth and Homeperiod. It has often interested me in reading the later books to recall my first acquaintance with their germinal ideas. It has been like meeting interesting men and women whom one remembers as uncouth boys or as girls in pantalettes. ForHearth and Homehe wrote several playful articlesabout the character of eating houses as revealed in what I may call their physiognomies. The subject seemed to interest and amuse him, as it certainly interested and amused his readers, but at that time he probably did not dream of making it a considerable part of the structure of a novel, as he afterwards did in "The Hundredth Man."
In the same way in a series of half serious, half humorous articles for the paper, he wrote of the picturesque features of piracy on the Spanish Main and along our own Atlantic coast. He gave humor to the historical facts by looking at them askance—with an intellectual squint as it were—and attributing to Blackbeard and the rest emotions and sentiments that would not have been out of place in a Sunday School. These things he justified in his humorously solemn way, by challenging anybody to show that the freebooters were not so inspired in fact, and insisting that men's occupations in life constitute no safe index to their characters.
"We do not denounce the novelists and story writers," he one day said, "and call them untruthful persons merely because they gain their living by writing things that are not so. In their private lives many of the fiction writers are really estimable persons who go to church, wear clean linen, and pay their debts if they succeed in borrowing money enough for that purpose."
Here clearly was the thought that afterward grew into the novel of "Kate Bonnet."
About that time he wrote a little manual for Putnam's Handy Book Series, in which he undertook to show how to furnish a home at very small cost. All his readers remember what fun he made of that performance when he came to write "Rudder Grange."
A Whimsical View of Plagiary
I do not think this sort of thing is peculiar to Stockton's work. I find traces of it in the writings of others, especiallyof those humorous writers who have the gift of inventing amusingly whimsical conceits. It seems easily possible, for example, to find in "The Bab Ballads" the essential whimsicalities which afterward made the fortunes of Mr. W. S. Gilbert's most famous comic operas.
Stockton's whimsical logic was brought to bear upon everything; so much so that I have often wondered how he would have regarded a "hold up" of his person for the sake of his purse if such a thing had happened to him.
One day a man submitted a manuscript to me for sale. It was an article on Alice and Phœbe Cary. The subject was interesting and the article was pleasingly brief, so that I thought it promising. When I began to read it, the sentences seemed strangely familiar. As I read on I recognized the thing as an editorial I had myself written for theEvening Poston the day of Phœbe Cary's funeral. To verify my impression I went at once to the office of theEvening Post, compared the manuscript with the printed article, and found it to be a verbatim copy.
I was perhaps a little severe in my judgments of such things in those days, and when the plagiarist came back to learn the fate of his manuscript my language was of a kind that might have been regarded as severe. After the fellow had left, breathing threats of dire legal things that he meant to do to me for keeping his manuscript without paying for it, Stockton remonstrated with me for having lost my temper.
"It seems to me," he said, "that you do not sufficiently consider the circumstances of the case. That man has his living to make as a writer, and nature has denied him the ability to create literature that he can sell. What is more reasonable, then, than that he should select marketable things that other people have written and sell them? Hiscreative ability failing him, what can he do but use his critical ability in its stead? If he is not equal to the task of producing salable stuff, he at least knows such stuff when he sees it, and in the utilization of that knowledge he finds a means of earning an honest living.
"Besides in selecting an article of yours to 'convey,' he has paid you a distinct compliment. He might have taken one of mine instead, but that his critical judgment saw the superiority of yours. You should recognize the tribute he has paid you as a writer.
"Still again what harm would have been done if he had succeeded in selling the article? It had completely served its purpose as an editorial in theEvening Post, why should it not serve a larger purpose and entertain a greater company of readers?
"Finally I am impressed with the illustration the case affords of the vagaries of chance as a factor in human happenings. There are thousands of editors in this country to whom that man might have offered the article. You were the only one of them who could by any possibility have recognized it as a plagiarism. According to the doctrine of chances he was perfectly safe in offering the manuscript for sale. The chances were thousands to one against its recognition. It was his ill-luck to encounter the one evil chance in the thousands. The moral of that is that it is unsafe to gamble. Still, now that he knows the one editor who can recognize it, he will no doubt make another copy of the article and sell it in safety to some one else."
This prediction was fulfilled. The article appeared not long afterward as a contribution to another periodical. In the meanwhile Stockton's whimsical view of the matter had so amused me as to smooth my temper, and I did not think it necessary to expose the petty theft.
Some Plagiarists I Have Known
The view taken by Stockton's perverse humor was much the same as that entertained by Benjamin Franklin with greater seriousness. He tells us in his Autobiography that at one time he regularly attended a certain church whose minister preached able sermons that interested him. When it was discovered that the sermons were borrowed, without credit, from some one else, the church dismissed the preacher and put in his place another whose sermons, all his own, did not interest Franklin, who thereupon ceased to attend the church, protesting that he preferred good sermons, plagiarized, to poor ones of the preacher's own.
I have since learned what I did not know at the time of the incident related, that there is a considerable company of minor writers hanging as it were on the skirts of literature and journalism, who make the better part of their meager incomes by copying the writings of others and selling them at opportune times. Sometimes these clever pilferers copy matter as they find it, particularly when its source is one not likely to be discovered. Sometimes they make slight alterations in it for the sake of disguise, and sometimes they borrow the substance of what they want and change its form somewhat by rewriting it. Their technical name for this last performance is "skinning" an article.
I have since had a good deal of experience with persons of this sort. When Horace Greeley died one of them—a woman—sold me a copy of the text of a very interesting letter from him which she assured me had never been seen by any one outside the little group that cherished the original. I learned later that she had simply copiedthe thing from theHome Journal, where it had been printed many months before.
One day some years later I had a revelation made to me of the ethics of plagiarism accepted by a certain class of writers for the minor periodicals. I found in an obscure magazine a signed article on the heroism of women, or something of that sort, the first paragraphs of which were copied verbatim from a book of my own, in which I had written it as a personal recollection. When the writer of the article was questioned as to his trespass upon my copyright, he wrote me an exceedingly gracious letter of apology, saying, by way of explanation, that he had found the passage in an old scrapbook of his own, with no memorandum of its authorship attached. He had thought it no harm, he said, to make the thing his own, a thing, he assured me, he would not have done had he known whose the passage was. This explanation seemed to satisfy his conscience completely. I wonder what he would have thought himself privileged to do with a horse or a cow found wandering along a lane without the escort of its owner.
A Peculiar Case of Plagiary
Sometimes the plagiarist is far more daring in his thefts, taking as his own much greater things and more easily recognized ones than scrapbooks are apt to hold. The boldest thing of the sort with which I ever came into personal contact happened in this wise. As literary editor of theEvening Postduring the late seventies it was a part of my duty to look out for interesting correspondence. One day there came to me a particularly good thing of the kind—two or three columns of fascinating description of certain phases of life in the Canadian Northwest. The writer proposed to furnish us a series of letters of like kind, dealing with the trading posts of the Hudson Bay Company, life among the trappers, Indians, and half-breeds, and the like. The letter submittedwas so unusually good, both in its substance and in its literary quality, that I agreed to take the series on the terms proposed. A number of the letters followed, and the series attracted the pleased attention of readers. Presently, in addition to his usual letter our correspondent sent us a paper relating to the interesting career of a quaint personage who flourished in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois in their territorial days. He was known as "Johnny Appleseed," because of his habit of carrying a bag of apple seeds in his wanderings and distributing them among the pioneers by way of inducing them to plant orchards.
Unfortunately that article had been written by some one other than our correspondent and published long before inHarper's Magazine. When my suspicion was thus aroused with regard to the integrity of the correspondent, I instituted an inquiry which revealed the fact that the letters we had so highly valued were plagiarized from a book which had been published in England but not reprinted here.
The daring of the man appalled me, but the limit of his assurance had not yet been revealed. When I wrote to him telling him of my discovery of the fraud and declining to send a check for such of the letters as had been printed and not yet paid for, he responded by sending me a number of testimonials to the excellence of his character, furnished by the clergymen, bankers, and leading men generally of the town in which he lived. Having thus rehabilitated his character, he argued that as the letters had proved interesting to the readers of the paper, we had got our money's worth, and that it made no difference in the quality of the literature furnished whether he had written it himself or had transcribed it from a book written by another person. Curiously enough there was a tone of assured sincerity in all this which was baffling tothe understanding. I can explain it only by thinking that he plagiarized that tone also.
It was about that time that my work as literary editor of theEvening Postbrought to my attention two cases of what I may call more distinguished plagiarism. Mrs. Wister, a gifted scholar and writer, was at that time rendering a marked service to literature by her exceedingly judicious adaptations of German fiction to the use of American readers. She took German novels that were utterly too long and in other ways unfit for American publication, translated them freely, shortened them, and otherwise saved to American readers all that was attractive in novels which, if directly translated, would have had no acceptability at all in this country. The results were quite as much her own as those of the German authors of the books thus treated.
I had recently read and reviewed one of the cleverest of these books of hers, when there came to me for review an English translation of the same German novel, under another title. That translation was presented as the work of an English clergyman, well known as one of the most prolific writers of his time. As I looked over the book I discovered that with the exception of a few initiatory chapters, it was simply a copy of Mrs. Wister's work. In answer to the charge of plagiarism the reverend gentleman explained that he had set out to translate the book, but that when he had rendered a few chapters of it into English Mrs. Wister's work fell into his hands and he found her version so good that he thought it best to adopt it instead of making one of his own. He omitted, however, to explain the ethical conceptions that had restrained him from practising common honesty in a matter involving both reputation and revenue. That was at a time when English complaints of "American piracy" were loudest.
A Borrower from Stedman
The other case was a more subtle one, and incidentally more interesting to me. As literary editor of theEvening Post, under the editorship of Mr. Bryant, who held the literary side of the paper's work to be of more consequence than all the rest of it put together, I had to read everything of literary significance that appeared either in England or in America. One day I found in an English magazine an elaborate article which in effect charged Tennyson with wholesale plagiary from Theocritus. The magazinist was disposed to exploit himself as a literary discoverer, and he presented his discoveries with very little of that delicacy and moderation which a considerate critic would regard as the due of so distinguished a poet as Tennyson. I confess that his tone aroused something like antagonism in my mind, and I rather rejoiced when, upon a careful reading of his article, I found that he was no discoverer at all. Practically all that he had to say had been much better said already by Edmund C. Stedman first in a magazine essay and afterwards in a chapter of the "Victorian Poets." The chief difference was that Stedman had written with the impulse and in the tone and manner of a scholarly gentleman, while the other had exploited himself like a prosecuting attorney.
The obvious thing to do was to get Stedman, if that were possible, to write a signed article on the subject for theEvening Post. With that end in view I went at once to his office in Broad Street.
I knew him well, in literary and social ways, but I had never before trespassed upon his banker existence, and the visit mightily interested me, as one which furnished a view of an unfamiliar side of the "manyest-sided man"—that phrase I had learned from Mr. Whitelaw Reid—whom I ever knew.
It was during Stock Exchange hours that I made my call, and I intended to remain only long enough to securean appointment for some other and less occupied time. But the moment I indicated the matter I wished to consult with him about, Stedman linked his arm in mine and led me to his "den," a little room off the banking offices, and utterly unlike them in every detail. Here were books—not ledgers; here were all the furnishings of the haunt of a man of letters, without a thing to suggest that the man of letters knew or cared for anything relating to stocks, bonds, securities, loans, discounts, dividends, margins, or any other of the things that are alone considered of any account in Wall Street.
"This is the daytime home of the literary side of me," he explained. "When I'm out there"—pointing, "I think of financial things; when I enter here I forget what a dollar mark looks like."
"I see," I said. "Minerva in Wall Street—Athene, if you prefer the older Greek name."
"Say Apollo instead—for if there is anything I pride myself upon it is my masculinity. 'Male and female created he them, and God saw that it was good,' but the garments of one sex do not become the other, and neither do the qualities and attributes."
He had a copy of "The Victorian Poets" in the den and together we made a minute comparison of his study of Tennyson's indebtedness to Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus with the magazinist's article. For result we found that beyond a doubt the magazinist had "skinned" his article out of Stedman's chapter—in other words, that he had in effect plagiarized his charge of plagiary and the proofs of it.
Stedman refused to write anything on the subject, deeming it not worth while, a judgment which I am bound to say was sound, though I did not like to accept it because my news instinct scented game and I wanted that article from Stedman's pen. His scholarly criticism was literatureof lasting importance and interest. The magazine assault upon Tennyson's fame is utterly forgotten of those who read it.