Recollections of a Varied Life Part 24

The habit of a.s.suming that the distinguished editor of a newspaper writes everything of consequence that appears in its columns, is not confined to rural poets in Ohio, as three occurrences during my service on the _Evening Post_ revealed to me.

[Sidenote: Mr. Bryant and My Poe Article]

When a great Poe celebration was to be held in Baltimore, on the occasion of the unveiling of a monument or something of that kind, Mr.

Bryant was earnestly urged to send something to be read on the occasion and published as a part of the proceedings. He had no stomach for the undertaking. It was said among those who knew him best that his personal feelings toward Poe's memory were of a bitterly antagonistic kind.

However that may be--and I do not know whether it was true or not--he was resolute in his determination to have no part or lot in this Poe celebration. In reply to the urgent invitations sent him, he wrote a carefully colorless note, excusing himself on the plea of "advancing age."

When the day of the celebration came, however, I wrote a long, critical appreciation of Poe, with an a.n.a.lysis of his character, borrowed mainly from what Charles F. Briggs had said to me. My article was published as an editorial in the _Evening Post_, and straightway half a dozen prominent newspapers in different cities reprinted it under the headline of "William Cullen Bryant's Estimate of Poe."

Fearing that Mr. Bryant might be seriously annoyed at being thus made responsible for an "estimate of Poe" which he had been at pains not to write, I went to his room to speak with him about the matter.

"Don't let it trouble you, my dear boy," he said in his most patient manner. "We are both paying the penalty of journalistic anonymity. I am held responsible for utterances not my own, and you are robbed of the credit due you for a very carefully written article."

Again, on the occasion of Longfellow's seventieth birthday, Mr. Bryant resisted all entreaties for any utterance--even the briefest--from him.

I was a.s.signed to write the necessary editorial article, and when it appeared, one of the foremost newspapers in the country reprinted it as "One Great Poet's Tribute to Another," and in an introductory paragraph explained that, while the article was not signed, it was obviously from Mr. Bryant's pen.

During the brief time that I remained on the _Evening Post's_ staff after Mr. Carl Schurz became its editor, I wrote a rather elaborate review of Colonel Theodore Dodge's book, "The Campaign of Chancellorsville." The _Springfield Republican_ reprinted it prominently, saying that it had special importance as "the comment of General Schurz on a campaign in which he had borne a conspicuous part."

[Sidenote: A Tupper Trepidation]

When it was given out that Martin Farquhar Tupper intended to visit America during the Centennial Exposition of 1876, I wrote a playful article about the "Proverbial Philosophy" man and handed it to the managing editor for publication as a humorous editorial. Mr. Sperry was amused by the article, but distressingly perplexed by apprehensions concerning it. He told me of the difficulty. It seems that some years before that time, during a visit to England, Mr. Bryant had been very hospitably entertained by Tupper, wherefore Sperry feared that Mr.

Bryant might dislike the publication of the article. At the same time he was reluctant to lose the fun of it.

"Why not submit the question to Mr. Bryant himself?" I suggested, and as Mr. Bryant entered at that moment Sperry acted upon the suggestion.

Mr. Bryant read the article with many manifestations of amus.e.m.e.nt, but when he had finished he said:

"I heartily wish, Mr. Sperry, you had printed this without saying a word to me about it, for then, when Mr. Tupper becomes my guest, as he will if he comes to America, I could have explained to him that the thing was done without my knowledge by one of the flippant young men of my staff.

Now that you have brought the matter to my attention, I can make no excuse."

Sperry pleaded that Tupper's coming was not at all a certainty, adding:

"And at any rate, he will not be here for several months to come, and he'll never know that the article was published or written."

"Oh, yes he will," responded Mr. Bryant. "Some d.a.m.ned, good-natured friend will be sure to bring it to his attention."

As Mr. Bryant never swore, the phrase was of course a quotation.

LII

There has been a deal of nonsense written and published with respect to Mr. Bryant's _Index Expurgatorius_, a deal of arrogance, and much cheap and ill-informed wit of a certain "superior" sort expended upon it.

So far as I have seen these comments, they have all been founded upon ignorance of the facts and misconception of Mr. Bryant's purpose.

In the first place, Mr. Bryant never published the index and never intended it to be an expression of his views with respect to linguistic usage. He prepared it solely for office use, and it was meant only to check certain tendencies of the time so far as the _Evening Post_ was concerned. The reporters on more sensational newspapers had come to call every big fire a "carnival of flame," every formal dinner a "banquet,"

and to indulge in other verbal exaggerations and extravagances of like sort. Mr. Bryant catalogued these atrocities in his _Index_ and forbade their use on the _Evening Post_.

He was an intense conservative as to the English language, and his conscience was exceedingly alert to preserve it in its purity, so far as it was within his power to do so. Accordingly he ruled out of _Evening Post_ usage a number of things that were creeping into the language to its corruption, as he thought. Among these were the use of "numerous"

where "many" was meant, the use of "people" for "persons," "monthly" for "monthly magazine," "paper" for "newspaper," and the like. He objected to the phrase "those who," meaning "those persons who," and above all his soul revolted against the use of "such" as an adverb--as in the phrase "such ripe strawberries" which, he contended, should be "so ripe strawberries" or "strawberries so ripe." The fact that Webster's and Worcester's dictionaries recognized many of the condemned usages, made not the smallest impression on his mind.

"He must be a poor scholar," he once said in my hearing, "who cannot go behind the dictionaries for his authority."

We had a copy of Johnson's dictionary in the office, and it was the only authority of that kind I ever knew Mr. Bryant to consult. Even in consulting that he gave small attention to the formal definitions. He searched at once the pa.s.sages quoted from cla.s.sic English literature as ill.u.s.trations of usage, and if these did not justify the particular locution under consideration, he rejected and condemned it.

[Sidenote: Mr. Bryant's "Index"]

For another thing, the _Index_ as it has been quoted for purposes of cheap ridicule, held much that Mr. Bryant did not put into it, and for which he was in no way responsible. The staff of the _Evening Post_ was composed mainly of educated men, and each of them was free to add to the _Index_ such prohibitions as seemed to him desirable. Some of these represented mere crotchets, but they were all intended to aid in that conservation of English undefiled which was so dear a purpose to Mr.

Bryant.

In the main the usages condemned by the _Index_ were deserving of condemnation, but in some respects the prohibitions were too strait-laced, too negligent of the fact that a living language grows and that usages unknown to one generation may become altogether good in another. Again some of the prohibitions were founded upon a too strict regard for etymology, in forgetfulness of the fact that words often change or modify and sometimes even reverse their original significance. As an example, Shakespeare uses the expression "fearful adversaries," meaning badly scared adversaries, and that is, of course, the etymological significance of the word. Yet we now universally use it in a precisely opposite sense, meaning that the things called "fearful" are such as fill us with fear.

Finally, it is to be said that Mr. Bryant neither intended nor attempted to enforce the _Index_ arbitrarily, or even to impose its restrictions upon any but the least educated and least experienced of the writers who served his newspaper. I used to violate it freely, and one day I mentioned the fact to Mr. Bryant. He replied:

"My dear Mr. Eggleston, the _Index_ was never intended to interfere with scholarly men who know how to write good English. It is meant only to restrain the inconsiderate youngsters and start them in right paths."

His subordinates were less liberal in their interpretation of the matter.

The man whose duty it was to make clippings from other newspapers to be reprinted in the _Evening Post_, was expected so to edit and alter them as to bring them within _Index_ requirements, and sometimes the alterations were so considerable as to make of the extracts positive misquotations. I have often wondered that none of the newspapers whose utterances were thus "edited" out of their original forms and still credited to them ever complained of the liberties taken with the text.

But so far as I know none of them ever did.

When Mr. Bryant and I were talking of the _Index_ and of the license I had to violate it judiciously, he smilingly said to me:

"After all a misuse of words is sometimes strangely effective. In the old days when I wrote more for the editorial columns than I do now, I had a friend who was deeply interested in all matters of public concern, and whose counsel I valued very highly because of the abounding common sense that always inspired it. His knowledge of our language was defective, but he was unconscious of the fact, and he boldly used words as he understood them, without the smallest fear of criticism before his eyes. Once when some subject of unusual public importance was under popular consideration, I wrote a long and very careful article concerning it. I did my best to set forth every consideration that in any wise bore upon it, and to make clear and emphatic what I regarded as the marrow of the matter. My friend was deeply interested, and came to talk with me on the subject.

[Sidenote: An Effective Blunder in English]

"'That is a superb article of yours, Mr. Bryant,' he said, 'but it will do no manner of good.' I asked him why, and he answered: 'Because you have exhausted the subject, and won't come back to it. That never accomplishes anything. If you want to produce an effect you must keep hammering at the thing. I tell you, Mr. Bryant, it is _reirritation_ that does the business.'

"I thought the matter over and saw that he was right, not only in his idea but still more in the word he had mistakenly chosen for its expression. In such cases it is not only reiteration, but _reirritation_ that is effective."

There are other indexes in other newspaper offices. Those of them that I have seen represent cra.s.s ignorance quite as often as scholars.h.i.+p. One of them absolutely forbids the use of the p.r.o.noun "which." Another which I saw some years ago, put a ban on the conjunctions "and" and "but."

This prohibition, I am informed, was designed to compel the use of short sentences--a very desirable thing, of course, but one which may easily be pushed to extremes. Imagine a reporter having to state that "X and Y were caught in the act of firing a tenement house, and arrested by two policemen, officers A and B, but that X escaped on the way to the station-house after knocking policeman B down and seriously if not fatally injuring him." If the reader will try to make that simple statement without the use of the four "ands" and the one "but" in the sentence, he will have a realizing sense of the difficulty the writers on that newspaper must have had in their efforts to comply with the requirements of the index.

In still another case the unscholarly maker of the index, having learned that it is incorrect to say "on to-day," "on yesterday," and "on to-morrow," has made a blanket application of what he has mistaken for a principle, and has decreed that his writers shall not say "on the fourth of March" or "on Wednesday of next week," or anything else of the kind.

The ignorance shown in that case is not merely a manifestation of a deficient scholars.h.i.+p; it means that the maker of the index knew so little of grammar as not to know the difference between an adverb and a noun. Yet every one of the newspapers enforcing these ignorant index requirements has made fun of Mr. Bryant's scholarly prohibitions.

Reserved, dignified, self-conscious as he was, Mr. Bryant was always a democrat of the proud old conservative sort. He never descended to undue familiarity with anybody. He patted n.o.body on the back, and I have never been able to imagine what would have happened if anybody had taken familiar liberties of that kind with him. Certainly n.o.body ever ventured to find out by practical experiment. He never called even the youngest man on his staff by his given name or by his surname without the prefix "Mr."

In that respect he differed radically and, to my mind, pleasingly from another distinguished democrat.

When Mr. Cleveland was for the third time a candidate for the Presidency, I called on him by Mr. Pulitzer's request just before sailing for Paris, where Mr. Pulitzer was then living. I entered the reception room at his hotel quarters and sent in my card. Mr. Cleveland came out promptly and greeted me with the exclamation:

"Why, h.e.l.lo, Eggleston! How are you? I'm glad to see you."

There was no harm in it, I suppose, but it disagreeably impressed me as the greeting of a politician rather than that of a distinguished statesman who had been President of the United States and hoped to be so again. Had I been an intimate personal friend who could say "h.e.l.lo, Cleveland!" in response, I should have accepted his greeting as a manifestation of cordiality and good-fellows.h.i.+p. I was in fact only slightly acquainted with him, and in view of all the circ.u.mstances his familiarity of address impressed me as boorish. Years afterwards I learned how easy it was for him to do boorish things--how much restraint, indeed, he found it necessary to impose upon himself in order to avoid the doing of boorish things.

[Sidenote: Mr. Bryant on British Sn.o.bbishness]