Recollections of a Varied Life Part 35

[Sidenote: The Lure of the World]

A little later an evening edition of the _World_ was established. Its success at first was small, but Mr. Pulitzer quickly saw the reason for that. The paper was too closely modeled upon the conservative and dignified pattern of the established afternoon newspapers. To his subordinates Mr. Pulitzer said:

"You are making a three-cent newspaper for a one-cent const.i.tuency.

I want you to make it a one-cent newspaper."

What further instructions he gave to that end, I have never heard, but whatever they were they were carried out with a success that seemed to me to threaten the very existence of such newspapers as the one I was editing. I was satisfied that if the newspaper under my control was to survive it must adopt the new methods of journalism, broaden its appeal to the people, and reduce its price to the "penny" which alone the people could be expected to pay when the _Evening Sun_ and the _Evening World_ could be had for that price.

The board of directors of the newspaper could not be induced to take this view, and just then one of the editors of the _World_, acting for Mr. Pulitzer, asked me to take luncheon with him. He explained to me that Mr. Pulitzer wanted an editorial writer and that he--my host--had been commissioned to engage me in that capacity, if I was open to engagement. In the end he made me a proposal which I could not put aside in justice to myself and my family. My relations with Mr. G.o.dwin and his a.s.sociates were so cordial, and their treatment of me had been always so generous, that I could not think of leaving them without their hearty consent and approval. The summer was approaching, when the members of the board of directors would go away to their summer homes or to Europe.

The last regular meeting of the board for the season had been held, and nothing had been done to meet the new conditions of compet.i.tion. I was discouraged by the prospect of addressing a steadily diminis.h.i.+ng audience throughout the summer, with the possibility of having no audience at all to address when the fall should come.

I hastily called the board together in a special meeting. I told them of the proposal made to me by the _World_ and of my desire to accept it unless they could be induced to let me adopt the new methods at an expense much greater than any of the established afternoon newspapers had ever contemplated, and much greater than my board of directors was willing to contemplate. I said frankly that without their cordial consent, I could not quit their service, but that if we were to go on as before, I earnestly wished to be released from a responsibility that threatened my health with disaster.

They decided to release me, after pa.s.sing some very flattering resolutions, and in early June, 1889, I went to the _World_ as an editorial writer free from all responsibility for the news management of the paper, free from all problems of newspaper finance, and free from the crus.h.i.+ng weight of the thought that other men's property interests to the extent of many hundreds of thousands of dollars were in hourly danger of destruction by some fault or failure of judgment on my part.

As I rejoiced in this sense of release, I recalled what James R. Osgood, one of the princes among publishers, had once said to me, and for the first time I fully grasped his meaning. At some public banquet or other he and I were seated side by side and we fell into conversation regarding certain books he had published. They were altogether worthy books, but their appeal seemed to me to be to so small a const.i.tuency that I could not understand what had induced him to publish them at all.

I said to him:

"I sometimes wonder at your courage in putting your money into the publication of such books."

He answered:

"That's the smallest part of the matter. Think of my courage in putting _other people's money_ into their publication!"

It was not long after that that Osgood's enterprises failed, and he retired from business as a publisher to the sorrow of every American who in any way cared for literature.

[Sidenote: The Little Dinner to Osgood]

When Osgood went to London as an agent of the Harpers, some of us gave him a farewell dinner, for which Thomas Nast designed the menu cards.

When these were pa.s.sed around for souvenir autographs, Edwin A. Abbey drew upon each, in connection with his signature, a caricature of himself which revealed new possibilities in his genius--possibilities that have come to nothing simply because Mr. Abbey has found a better use for his gifts than any that the caricaturist can hope for. But those of us who were present at that little Osgood dinner still cherish our copies of the dinner card on which, with a few strokes of his pencil, Abbey revealed an unsuspected aspect of his genius. In view of the greatness of his more serious work, we rejoice that he went no further than an after-dinner jest, in the exercise of his gift of caricature.

Had he given comic direction to his work, he might have become a Hogarth, perhaps; as it is, he is something far better worth while--he is Abbey.

LXV

I shall write comparatively little here of the eleven years I remained in the service of the _World_. The experience is too recent to const.i.tute a proper subject of freehand reminiscence. My relations with Mr. Pulitzer were too closely personal, too intimate, and in many ways too confidential to serve a purpose of that kind.

But of the men with whom my work on the _World_ brought me into contact, I am free to write. So, too, I am at liberty, I think, to relate certain dramatic happenings that serve to ill.u.s.trate the Napoleonic methods of modern journalism and certain other things, not of a confidential nature, which throw light upon the character, impulses, and methods of the man whose genius first discovered the possibilities of journalism and whose courage, energy, and extraordinary sagacity have made of those possibilities accomplished facts.

It has been more than ten years since my term of service on the _World_ came to an end, but it seems recent to me, except when I begin counting up the men now dead who were my fellow-workmen there.

I did not personally know Mr. Pulitzer when I began my duties on the _World_. He was living in Europe then, and about to start on a long yachting cruise. John A. c.o.c.kerill was managing editor and in control of the paper, subject, of course, to daily and sometimes hourly instructions from Paris by cable. For, during my eleven years of service on the _World_, I never knew the time when Mr. Pulitzer did not himself actively direct the conduct of his paper wherever he might be. Even when he made a yachting voyage as far as the East Indies, his hand remained always on the helm in New York.

[Sidenote: John A. c.o.c.kerill]

Colonel c.o.c.kerill was one of the kindliest, gentlest of men, and at the same time one of the most irascible. His irascibility was like the froth that rises to the top of the gla.s.s and quickly disappears, when a Seidlitz powder is dissolved--not at all like the "head" on a gla.s.s of champagne which goes on threateningly rising long after the first effervescence is gone. When anything irritated him the impulse to break out into intemperate speech seemed wholly irresistible, but in the very midst of such utterance the irritation would pa.s.s away as suddenly as it had come and he would become again the kindly comrade he had meant to be all the while. This was due to the saving grace of his sense of humor. I think I never knew a man so capable as he of intense seriousness, who was at the same time so alertly and irresistibly impelled to see the humorous aspects of things. He would rail violently at an interfering circ.u.mstance, but in the midst of his vituperation he would suddenly see something ridiculous about it or in his own ill-temper concerning it.

He would laugh at the suggestion in his mind, laugh at himself, and tell some brief anecdote--of which his quiver was always full--by way of turning his own irritation and indignation into fun and thus making an end of them.

He was an entire stranger to me when I joined the staff of the _World_, but we soon became comrades and friends. There was so much of robust manhood in his nature, so much of courage, kindliness, and generous good will that in spite of the radical differences between his conceptions of life and mine, we soon learned to find pleasure in each other's company, to like each other, and above all, to trust each other. I think each of us recognized in the other a man incapable of lying, deceit, treachery, or any other form of cowardice. That he was such a man I perfectly knew.

That he regarded me as such I have every reason to believe.

After our friends.h.i.+p was perfectly established he said to me one day:

"You know I did all I could to prevent your engagement on the _World_.

I'm glad now I didn't succeed."

"What was your special objection to me?" I asked.

"Misconception, pure and simple, together with ill-informed prejudice.

That's tautological, of course, for prejudice is always ill-informed, isn't it? At any rate, I had an impression that you were a man as utterly different from what I now know you to be as one can easily imagine."

"And yet," I said, "you generously helped me out of my first difficulty here."

"No, did I? How was that?"

"Why, when the news went out that I had been engaged as an editorial writer on the _World_, a good many newspapers over the country were curious to know why. The prejudice against the _World_ under its new management was still rampant, and my appointment seemed to many newspapers a mystery, for the reason that my work before that time had always been done on newspapers of a very different kind. Even here on the _World_ there was curiosity on the subject, for Ballard Smith sent a reporter to me, before I left the _Commercial Advertiser_, to ask me about it. The reporter, under instructions, even asked me, flatly, whose place I was to take on the _World_, as if the _World_ had not been able to employ a new man without discharging an old one."

"Yes--I know all about that," said c.o.c.kerill. "You see, you were editor-in-chief of a newspaper, and some of the folks on the _World_ had a hope born into their minds that you were coming here to replace me as managing editor. Some others feared you were coming to oust them from snug berths. Go on. You didn't finish."

"Well, among the speculative comments made about my transfer, there was one in a Springfield paper, suggesting that perhaps I had been employed 'to give the _World_ a conscience.' All these things troubled me greatly, for the reason that I didn't know Mr. Pulitzer then, nor he me, and I feared he would suspect me of having inspired the utterances in question--particularly the one last mentioned. I went to you with my trouble, and I shall never forget what you said to me. 'My dear Mr.

Eggleston, you can trust Joseph Pulitzer to get to windward of things without any help from me or anybody else.'"

"You've found it so since, haven't you?" he asked.

"Yes, but I didn't know it then, and it was a kindly act on your part to rea.s.sure me."

[Sidenote: An Extraordinary Executive]

c.o.c.kerill's abilities as a newspaper editor were very great, but they were mainly executive. He had no great creative imagination. He could never have originated the Napoleonic revolution in journalism which Mr.

Pulitzer's extraordinary genius wrought. But Mr. Pulitzer was fortunate in having such a man as c.o.c.kerill to carry out his plans. His alert readiness in grasping an idea and translating it into achievement amounted to genius in its way. But during all the years of my intimate a.s.sociation with him, I never knew c.o.c.kerill to originate a great idea.

With a great idea intrusted to him for execution, his brain was fertile of suggestions and expedients for its carrying out, and his industry in translating the ideas of his chief into action was ceaseless, tireless, sleepless. He would think of a thousand devices for accomplis.h.i.+ng the purpose intended. He would hit upon scores of ways in which a campaign projected by another mind could be carried out effectively.

There was at one time a good deal of speculation as to whose brain had made the phenomenal success of the all-daring _World_ experiment in journalism. I think I know all about that, and my judgment is unhesitating. Mr. Pulitzer was often and even generally fortunate in his mult.i.tudinous lieutenants, and that good fortune was chiefly due to his sagacity in the selection of the men appointed to carry out his plans.

But the plans were his, just as the choice of lieutenants was, and the creative genius that revolutionized journalism and achieved results unmatched and even unapproached, was exclusively that of Joseph Pulitzer.

I do not mean that every valuable idea or suggestion which contributed to the result was originally his, though on broad lines that was true.

But it was part and parcel of his genius to induce ideas and call forth suggestions at the hands of others, to make them his own, and to embody them in the policy of the _World_. So readily did he himself appreciate this necessity of getting ideas from whatever source they might come, that he often offered premiums and rewards for helpful suggestions.

And when any member of his staff voluntarily offered suggestions that appealed to him, he was always ready and very generous in acknowledging and rewarding them.

But it was Joseph Pulitzer's genius that conceived the new journalism; it was his brain that gave birth to it all; it was his gift of interpreting, utilizing, and carrying out the ideas of others that made them fruitful.

I emphasize this judgment here because there has been much misapprehension regarding it, and because I knew the facts more intimately and more definitely perhaps than any other person now living does. I feel myself free to write of the subject for the reason that it has been more than a decade of years since my connection with the _World_ ceased, and the personal friends.h.i.+p I once enjoyed with Mr. Pulitzer became a matter of mere reminiscence to both of us.

My relations with c.o.c.kerill were not embarra.s.sed by any question of control or authority. c.o.c.kerill had general charge of the newspaper, but the editorial page was segregated from the other sheets, and so far as that was concerned, William H. Merrill was in supreme authority.

Whenever he was absent his authority devolved upon me, and for results I was answerable only to Mr. Pulitzer.

I shall never forget my introduction to my new duties. It was arranged between Merrill and me, that I should take a week off, between the severance of my connection with the _Commercial Advertiser_ and the beginning of my work on the _World_, in order that I might visit my family and rest myself at my little place on Lake George. I was to report for duty on the _World_ on a Sunday morning, when Merrill would induct me into the methods of the newspaper, preparatory to his vacation, beginning two or three days later.