The Americanization of Edward Bok Part 21

At all events, Bok was no stranger to James G. Blaine when he called upon him at his Lafayette Place home in Was.h.i.+ngton.

"You've gone ahead in the world some since I last saw you," was the statesman's greeting. "It seems to go with the name."

This naturally broke the ice for the editor at once.

"Let's go to my library where we can talk quietly. What train are you making back to Philadelphia, by the way?"

"The four, if I can," replied Bok.

"Excuse me a moment," returned Mr. Blaine, and when he came back to the room, he said: "Now let's talk over this interesting proposition that the President has told me about."

The two discussed the matter and completed arrangements whereby Mr.

Blaine was to undertake the work. Toward the latter end of the talk, Bok had covertly--as he thought--looked at his watch to keep track of his train.

"It's all right about that train," came from Mr. Blaine, with his back toward Bok, writing some data of the talk at his desk. "You'll make it all right."

Bok wondered how he should, as it then lacked only seventeen minutes of four. But as Mr. Blaine reached the front door, he said to the editor: "My carriage is waiting at the curb to take you to the station, and the coachman has your seat in the parlor car."

And with this knightly courtesy, Mr. Blaine shook hands with Bok, who was never again to see him, nor was the contract ever to be fulfilled.

For early in 1893 Mr. Blaine pa.s.sed away without having begun the work.

Again Bok turned to the President, and explained to him that, for some reason or other, the way seemed to point to him to write the articles himself. By that time President Harrison had decided that he would not succeed himself. Accordingly he entered into an agreement with the editor to begin to write the articles immediately upon his retirement from office. And the day after Inauguration Day every newspaper contained an a.s.sociated Press despatch announcing the former President's contract with The Ladies' Home Journal.

Shortly afterward, Benjamin Harrison's articles on "This Country of Ours" successfully appeared in the magazine.

During Bok's negotiations with President Harrison in connection with his series of articles, he was called to the White House for a conference.

It was midsummer. Mrs. Harrison was away at the seash.o.r.e, and the President was taking advantage of her absence by working far into the night.

The President, his secretary, and Bok sat down to dinner.

The Marine Band was giving its weekly concert on the green, and after dinner the President suggested that Bok and he adjourn to the "back lot"

and enjoy the music.

"You have a coat?" asked the President.

"No, thank you," Bok answered. "I don't need one."

"Not in other places, perhaps," he said, "but here you do. The dampness comes up from the Potomac at nightfall, and it's just as well to be careful. It's Mrs. Harrison's dictum," he added smiling. "Halford, send up for one of my light coats, will you, please?"

Bok remarked, as he put on the President's coat, that this was probably about as near as he should ever get to the presidency.

"Well, it's a question whether you want to get nearer to it," answered the President. He looked very white and tired in the moonlight.

"Still," Bok said with a smile, "some folks seem to like it well enough to wish to get it a second time."

"True," he answered, "but that's what pride will do for a man. Try one of these cigars."

A cigar! Bok had been taking his tobacco in smaller doses with paper around them. He had never smoked a cigar. Still, one cannot very well refuse a presidential cigar!

"Thank you," Bok said as he took one from the President's case. He looked at the cigar and remembered all he had read of Benjamin Harrison's black cigars. This one was black--inky black--and big.

"Allow me," he heard the President suddenly say, as he handed him a blazing match. There was no escape. The aroma was delicious, but--Two or three whiffs of that cigar, and Bok decided the best thing to do was to let it go out. He did.

"I have allowed you to talk so much," said the President after a while, "that you haven't had a chance to smoke. Allow me," and another match crackled into flame.

"Thank you," the editor said, as once more he lighted the cigar, and the fumes went clear up into the farthest corner of his brain.

"Take a fresh cigar," said the President after a while. "That doesn't seem to burn well. You will get one like that once in a while, although I am careful about my cigars."

"No, thanks, Mr. President," Bok said hurriedly. "It's I, not the cigar."

"Well, prove it to me with another," was the quick rejoinder, as he held out his case, and in another minute a match again crackled. "There is only one thing worse than a bad smoke, and that is an office-seeker,"

chuckled the President.

Bok couldn't prove that the cigars were bad, naturally. So smoke that cigar he did, to the bitter end, and it was bitter! In fifteen minutes his head and stomach were each whirling around, and no more welcome words had Bok ever heard than when the President said: "Well, suppose we go in. Halford and I have a day's work ahead of us yet."

The President went to work.

Bok went to bed. He could not get there quick enough, and he didn't--that is, not before he had experienced that same sensation of which Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote: he never could understand, he said, why young authors found so much trouble in getting into the magazines, for his first trip to Europe was not a day old before, without even the slightest desire or wish on his part, he became a contributor to the Atlantic!

The next day, and for days after, Bok smelled, tasted, and felt that presidential cigar!

A few weeks afterward, Bok was talking after dinner with the President at a hotel in New York, when once more the cigar-case came out and was handed to Bok.

"No, thank you, Mr. President," was the instant reply, as visions of his night in the White House came back to him. "I am like the man from the West who was willing to try anything once."

And he told the President the story of the White House cigar.

The editor decided to follow General Harrison's discussion of American affairs by giving his readers a glimpse of foreign politics, and he fixed upon Mr. Gladstone as the one figure abroad to write for him. He sailed for England, visited Hawarden Castle, and proposed to Mr.

Gladstone that he should write a series of twelve autobiographical articles which later could be expanded into a book.

Bok offered fifteen thousand dollars for the twelve articles--a goodly price in those days--and he saw that the idea and the terms attracted the English statesman. But he also saw that the statesman was not quite ready. He decided, therefore, to leave the matter with him, and keep the avenue of approach favorably open by inducing Mrs. Gladstone to write for him. Bok knew that Mrs. Gladstone had helped her husband in his literary work, that she was a woman who had lived a full-rounded life, and after a day's visit and persuasion, with Mr. Gladstone as an amused looker-on, the editor closed a contract with Mrs. Gladstone for a series of reminiscent articles "From a Mother's Life."

Some time after Bok had sent the check to Mrs. Gladstone, he received a letter from Mr. Gladstone expressing the opinion that his wife must have written with a golden pen, considering the size of the honorarium.

"But," he added, "she is so impressed with this as the first money she has ever earned by her pen that she is reluctant to part with the check.

The result is that she has not offered it for deposit, and has decided to frame it. Considering the condition of our exchequer, I have tried to explain to her, and so have my son and daughter, that if she were to present the check for payment and allow it to pa.s.s through the bank, the check would come back to you and that I am sure your company would return it to her as a souvenir of the momentous occasion. Our arguments are of no avail, however, and it occurred to me that an a.s.surance from you might make the check more useful than it is at present!"

Bok saw with this disposition that, as he had hoped, the avenue of favorable approach to Mr. Gladstone had been kept open. The next summer Bok again visited Hawarden, where he found the statesman absorbed in writing a life of Bishop Butler, from which it was difficult for him to turn away. He explained that it would take at least a year or two to finish this work. Bok saw, of course, his advantage, and closed a contract with the English statesman whereby he was to write the twelve autobiographical articles immediately upon his completion of the work then under his hand.

Here again, however, as in the case of Mr. Blaine, the contract was never fulfilled, for Mr. Gladstone pa.s.sed away before he could free his mind and begin on the work.

The vicissitudes of an editor's life were certainly beginning to demonstrate themselves to Edward Bok.

The material that the editor was publis.h.i.+ng and the authors that he was laying under contribution began to have marked effect upon the circulation of the magazine, and it was not long before the original figures were doubled, an edition--enormous for that day--of seven hundred and fifty thousand copies was printed and sold each month, the magical figure of a million was in sight, and the periodical was rapidly taking its place as one of the largest successes of the day.

Mr. Curtis's single proprietors.h.i.+p of the magazine had been changed into a corporation called The Curtis Publis.h.i.+ng Company, with a capital of five hundred thousand dollars, with Mr. Curtis as president, and Bok as vice-president.

The magazine had by no means an easy road to travel financially. The doubling of the subscription price to one dollar per year had materially checked the income for the time being; the huge advertising bills, sometimes exceeding three hundred thousand dollars a year, were difficult to pay; large credit had to be obtained, and the banks were carrying a considerable quant.i.ty of Mr. Curtis's notes. But Mr. Curtis never wavered in his faith in his proposition and his editor. In the first he invested all he had and could borrow, and to the latter he gave his undivided support. The two men worked together rather as father and son--as, curiously enough, they were to be later--than as employer and employee. To Bok, the daily experience of seeing Mr. Curtis finance his proposition in sums that made the publis.h.i.+ng world of that day gasp with sceptical astonishment was a wonderful opportunity, of which the editor took full advantage so as to learn the intricacies of a world which up to that time he had known only in a limited way.