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 General Ma^azinl 
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 All the eighteenth century magazines embellished their covers and 
 pages with copper-plates. Our first magazine, The General Magadne, 
 sported the three plumes of the Prince of Wales ; the American showed 
 a haughty and fat Indian leaning upon his club, whom a dapper 
 Frenchman was tempting with money from a war-chest while a virtuous 
 Englishman extended a Bible and charter 
 
THE MAGAZINE 
 IN AMERICA 
 
 BY 
 
 ALGERNON TASSIN 
 
 WITH FRONTISPIECE 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 
 1916 
 
-^ 
 
 %^ 
 
 Copyright, 1915 
 By DODD, mead AND COMPANY 
 
 Copyright, 1916 
 By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC 
 

 TO 
 
 ARTHUR BARTLETT MAURICE 
 
 a4351>2 
 
 i r.. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 These papers, for the most part published in The Book- 
 man, present an informal history of the magazine move- 
 ment in the United States, from its beginning down to 
 the close of the nineteenth century. The author has 
 not undertaken the business of the genuine historian. In 
 the few studies he has encountered of magazines of spe- 
 cial periods, he has found as many contradicted state- 
 ments of fact as an informed reader may discover in his 
 own pages. Many of the statistics of magazines have 
 been entirely lost, partly through contemporaneous in- 
 difference to such ephemera and partly because the persons 
 who knew the facts were willing to let them disappear. 
 This account seeks merely to arrange our magazines and 
 their tendencies in order, and to assemble such published 
 opinions about both as the author in his reading has found 
 interesting either in themselves or in their disagreement. 
 Perfectly fair-minded people unfortunately have at the 
 time little that is interesting to say and less occasion for 
 saying it. Only out of some fullness of the heart have 
 mouths spoken of matters which were mistakenly sup- 
 posed to be of small concern to the general public. Edi- 
 tors and proprietors notoriously put their best foot for- 
 ward, and avoid mention of derogatory items which com- 
 petitors and contributors are as eager to detach and 
 emphasise. As a consequence, the facts of the period are 
 to be found only by minute search and comparison of 
 sophisticated or biassed documents. The author has had 
 no opportunity to verify, sift, and weigh all the collectable 
 evidence — which is the duty of veritable history. 
 
 For such as it is, however, this running account of the 
 magazine in America has arranged for the first time the 
 widely scattered and submerged material which it pre- 
 
PREFACE 
 
 sents, and sought to make a continuous picture of the in- 
 tellectual and literary movements of our country as ex- 
 pressed in its periodicals for one hundred and fifty years. 
 Of the modern magazines much that might be said has 
 been omitted, merely because it has not yet found its way 
 to print. With them by intention as with their ancestors 
 by necessity, the author has interviewed only the written 
 word — the spoken though perhaps quite as reliable is at 
 least less responsible. He has not rushed in where writers 
 fear to tread. To everything that has been printed, how- 
 ever, he has helped himself liberally. Aside from the 
 many authors, dead and living, whose reminiscences have 
 gone to the making of this volume, he owes thanks to 
 several surveys in specialised fields, chiefly for their valu- 
 able aid in orientation. These are Professor A. H. 
 Smyth's The Philadelphia Magazines, 1741-1850; Mr. 
 E. R. Rogers* Four Southern Magazines; Mr. W. B. 
 Cairns' Development of American Literature, 18 15-1833 ; 
 Mr. W. H. Venable's Beginnings of Literary Culture in 
 the Ohio Valley ; and Mr. H. E. Fleming's Magazines of 
 a Market-Metropolis. These have all supplied statistics. 
 But the maker of this mosaic frankly confesses that his 
 interest lies rather in hearing what people have thought 
 of themselves and of each other than in the absolute facts 
 at the bottom of their opinions ; and ventures to think that 
 in so indulging himself he gets a clearer idea, as- well as a 
 more colourful one, of the fundamental truth. 
 
 A.T. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I Eighteenth Century Magazines .... i 
 
 II The Making of the Boston Tradition . . 28 
 
 III Baked Beans and Brown Bread .... 55 
 
 IV Philadelphia, the Valley of Self-suffi- 
 
 cientness 85 
 
 V New York and the Making of a Metropolis 109 
 VI The Willowy Willis and the Piratical Poe 
 
 in New York 131 
 
 VII The Waves of the Atlantic 154 
 
 VIII South and West — Athenses That Might 
 
 Have Been 178 
 
 IX Putnam's and the New Journals of Opinion 205 
 X Harper's — The Converted Corsair . . . 232 
 XI Righteousness and Peace Have Missed Each 
 
 Other 256 
 
 XII Century Born Scribner's 287 
 
 XIII Some Magazine Notions Dead and Dying . 312 
 
 XIV The End of the Century 34Q 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY MAGAZINES 
 
 In January, 1741, three days apart and in the small city 
 of Philadelphia, were published the first two magazines 
 of this country. These facts themselves make one sus- 
 pect cut-throat work. It is perhaps significant that the 
 stormy and colourful career of the magazine in America 
 began with a royal row. 
 
 One was published by Andrew Bradford, the other by 
 Benjamin Franklin. Their appearance had been preceded 
 by the usual announcements in the newspapers and by a 
 very unusual altercation. For Franklin claimed that the 
 idea and the plans of the magazine had been stolen from 
 him. Webbe, who had announced Bradford's, admitted 
 that Franklin had told him of the project but said this did 
 not restrain him from publishing one himself without Mr. 
 Franklin's leave. During the quarrel both Franklin and 
 Bradford accused each other of using their position of 
 Post Master to foster their private ends. Only three 
 numbers appeared of Bradford's magazine, the American 
 or a Monthly View; and only six numbers of Franklin's, 
 the General Magazine or Historical Chronicle. Franklin 
 in his first number ridiculed his competitor's ; but he seems 
 not to have been proud of his own, as no mention of it 
 occurs in his autobiography. 
 
 Between this and the end of the century there were at 
 least forty-five magazines started. Besides those ad- 
 dressed to a more general audience, they included a 
 musical magazine, a military, a German religious, and a 
 children's magazine. Thus, the sparsely settled new 
 States were decidedly over-exploited. When in 1787, 
 Mathew Carey requested advice about founding the 
 American Museum Jeremy Belknap wrote him from Bos- 
 
2 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 ton : " Several atiempts have been made within my 
 memory both here and at the Southward to establish such 
 a repository of literature, but after a year or two they have 
 uniformly failed. To what other causes the failure may 
 be ascribed I will not say, but this appears to me to be 
 one, viz : the too frequent publication of them. We are 
 fond of imitating our European Brethren in their monthly 
 productions without considering the difference between 
 our Circumstances and theirs. Such a country as this 
 is not yet arrived at such a pass of improvement to keep 
 up one or two monthly vehicles of importance." How- 
 ever barren were some departments of literature in the 
 early days, then, magazines indicated at the outset their 
 eternal disposition to multiply faster than the traffic will 
 stand. 
 
 From a very early date editors had been keenly con- 
 scious of the need for variety. The New England Maga- 
 zine, 1758, price eight pence a number of sixty pages, gave 
 in an advertisement this description of its contents : 
 
 Containing and to Contain: 
 
 Old-fashioned writings and Select Essays, 
 
 Queer Notions, Useful Hints, Extracts from Plays; 
 
 Relations Wonderful and Psalm and Song, 
 
 Good Sense, Wit, Humour, Morals, all ding dong; 
 
 Poems and Speeches, Politicks, and News, 
 
 What Some will like and other Some refuse; 
 
 Births, Deaths, and Dreams, and Apparitions, Too; 
 
 With some Thing suited to each different Geu (gout?) 
 
 To Humour Him, and Her^ and Me, and You. 
 
 The editor of the Massachusetts Magazine was con- 
 stantly adding new departments, but insisted that all its 
 contributions should be of a popular nature. " It has 
 been hinted by some well-wishers that deeper researches 
 into the arcana of science, more especially the abstruser 
 parts of philosophy and the mathematics, would give the 
 magazine a celebrity with the learned. In reply we beg 
 leave to remark that the British Universal Magazine was 
 materially injured by an adherence to this plan; and 
 
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY MAGAZINES 3 
 
 America presents a more recent instance of a magazine 
 supported by a host of scholars which literally sunk be- 
 neath the impending weight of technical terms and the 
 pressure of amplified definitions.'' If they had not 
 hitherto consulted the desires of the fair sex sufficiently 
 or gratified the delicacy of their taste, they trusted to 
 compensate for their negligence in the future; and they 
 hoped at the same time that the scientifick sons of Provi- 
 dence and the accomplished seniors of Yale would deposit 
 their respective offerings at the shrine of Fame; and it 
 could be seen that the proceedings of Congress and the 
 Commonwealth had been detailed with all the amplitude 
 which prescribed limits would allow. The Nightingale 
 was establishing a department of Criticism which would 
 give candid and impartial accounts of all American publi- 
 cations. " The food which the editors served up has 
 been found to be disagreeable to some fastidious palates 
 and inadequate to supply the cravings of some insatiable 
 stomachs. Yet they do not conceive their dishes to be 
 filled with the mere whipt-syllabub of learning and the 
 flummery of the muses. The most hungry might have 
 found a solid beef stake of science to feast upon, and they 
 are sure the pepper of criticism and satire have been given 
 in abundance sufficient to prevent a nausea. Good 
 humour has always smiled at their table, and variety has 
 garnished the viands." Indeed, when one considers the 
 exceedingly heavy fare offered almost without exception 
 by the books and pamphlets of the day, the magazines 
 should have afforded a delightful treat. Political and 
 religious controversies were sedulously avoided by most. 
 All of them had their regular light essayists of the Bicker- 
 stafT lineage — the Gleaner, the Drone, the Babbler, the 
 Trifler, the Scribbler, Philobiblicus. The poetry some- 
 times constituted a fourth or a sixth of the issue, and 
 with a recklessness which would turn the modern editor 
 pale was collected in a department at the end of each 
 number. The chief function of poetry as a filler-up of 
 chinks left between more solid prose had not yet evolved. 
 
4 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 Every magazine had its Pegasus, its Cabinet of Apollo, 
 its Seat of the Muses, its Parnassiad; even the most 
 prosaic had its Poetical Essays or its Poetical Provision. 
 Nor was the poetry all of the lofty variety of " An Ele- 
 gant Ode on the Mechanism of Man " ; there were lines 
 "To a Lady on Striking a Fly with Her Fan," or to 
 " The Fly On Being Let into a Lady's Chamber " ; and 
 there was much narrative verse, serious or jocose. Even 
 the Boston Magazine, 1784, six of the twelve original 
 members of which became the parents of the Massachu- 
 setts Historical Society by virtue of their design to publish 
 a Gazeteer of the State giving a sketch of every town in 
 the commonwealth, announced that though it would 
 rather be too grave than too sprightly and though it 
 hoped it would never be trifling or superficial or ludicrous, 
 it would apply itself to the publication of everything that 
 is curious and entertaining. 
 
 All the editors, too, were alive to the desirableness of 
 embellishing their magazines with " elegant copper- 
 plates." A frequent announcement runs, " As soon as a 
 number of Subscribers equal to the expence of this maga- 
 zine are procured, every number shall then be ornamented 
 with some pleasing representation." These were very 
 expensive, and in days when there were very few adver- 
 tisements (indeed, almost none at all in the monthlies, 
 except on the cover pages) they were a decided considera- 
 tion. Yet at a time when into the average household 
 never entered a picture of any sort, they must have given 
 great delight. The first volume of the Boston Magazine 
 contained twenty-seven illustrations; its plan was two 
 engravings and a piece of music to each number. The 
 Massachusetts Magazine tried for a time the experiment 
 of furnishing eight additional pages of letter press in lieu 
 of copper plate engravings, ** but the admirers of this 
 polite art earnestly called for their re-assumption." Thus 
 in addition to popularising literature, the early magazines 
 were popularising art also. 
 
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY MAGAZINES 5 
 
 The prospectus of the New York Instructor, 1755, 
 might well have served for most. 
 
 The design of this paper is to communicate to the Publick 
 Select Pieces on the Social Duties, and such historical or Specu- 
 lative Remarks as may be thought useful to be collected from 
 the best English writers; which if read either in a Morning at 
 Tea, or after Dinner by the Younger Sort, cannot fail of leav- 
 ing a good effect upon the mind, as well as improving them in 
 their Reading and Morals. If any Getlemen of Taste will 
 please to recommend any particular Pieces, all due Regard 
 shall be paid to them in their Turn. And these collected into 
 One or more Volumes will be worth preserving, especially to 
 those who cannot readily come at the Originals. Occasional 
 News will sometimes be added likewise. N.B. No Contro- 
 versy of any kind will have Admittance. To be continued 
 Weekly (if suitable Encouragement). Price, Two Coppers. 
 Whoever pleases to preserve these Papers entire and will re- 
 turn them to the Printer at the end of the year shall have a 
 Copper a Piece for each. 
 
 Alas for the thrifty who saved their papers! It is 
 thought that only ten numbers were published. 
 
 Almost as frustrated as their appeal for subscriptions 
 was their demand for original pieces. The second 
 volume of the Massachusetts Magazine laments the want 
 of more originality. " Indulge us to observe that men of 
 learning in this country are not always blest with leisure. 
 Yet the Massachusetts Magazine can compare in point 
 of originality with its American brethren and transatlantic 
 cousins. There is no work of this kind in any quarter 
 of the globe which is totally original. A correspondence 
 has been established in Europe, and an agreeable inter- 
 change of literary good offices promises to be a happy 
 result." The second volume of the Boston Magazine 
 confesses that it began with high hopes of originality, 
 the first volume indeed having a third of its pieces 
 original. But the second volume has been compelled to 
 publish many extracts, which will, however, increase 
 learning, improve the morals, and mend the heart. The 
 editor is particularly obliged to the sons of Harvard for 
 
6 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 their productions and he shall always be happy to have it 
 in his power to announce to the public the effusions of 
 their pens. The American Moral and Sentimental, New 
 York, 1797, printed for the editor next door to the Tea- 
 Water pump, was a type of a great many magazines which 
 did not essay the struggle for originality. This publica- 
 tion, as perhaps might be gathered from its name, reeks 
 with edification. The Philadelphia Magazine and Re- 
 view, 1799, thought that the desire for originality had 
 wrecked many ventures. " We are led to believe that 
 they failed for some other cause than the want of dis- 
 cernment or liberality in those to whom the editor looked 
 for support. For one publication of ours we receive 
 at least fiwt hundred from Great Britain ... yet we 
 shall always be glad to print any original verse or prose 
 or agreeable talk." Mathew Carey designed the Ameri- 
 can Museum in 1787 to fill a new niche. " Having long 
 observed in the various papers printed on this continent 
 a vast number of excellent and invaluable productions, I 
 have frequently regretted that the perishable nature of 
 the vehicles which contained them entailed oblivion on 
 them after a very confined period of usefulness and circu- 
 lation. The respectable character who now fills the presi- 
 dential chair of this commonwealth having expressed 
 the same sentiment a few months since, I conceived that 
 a publication designed to preserve the most valuable could 
 not fail to be highly useful and consequently among an 
 enlightened people to meet with encouragement.'* He 
 contemplated also a re-publication of many of the best 
 pamphlets prior to and during the war, with occasional 
 selections from European prints. But even this lofty 
 design had room for pieces of a more popular kind, 
 though, with the exception of some of the verse, none 
 were for entertainment merely. In the announcement 
 for volume two he said : " So far was public opinion 
 against it and so very confined were the expectations 
 formed of a work which professed to be void of origi- 
 nality and to be in some measure only a handmaiden to 
 
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY MAGAZINES 7 
 
 the newspapers, that at the appearance of the first number 
 there were not twenty subscribers." 
 
 The editors all felt that their mission was to educate 
 the people. " M " is writing to a magazine and accounts 
 for the defective literature of his native country by the 
 scarcity of books. 
 
 There is hardly a library in the United States, public or pri- 
 vate, which would enable a man to be thoroughly learned in any 
 one language. The public library of Philadelphia is a respect- 
 able one for its age and will probably in time exhibit a very- 
 large collection. The same may be said of the library belong- 
 ing to the University of Cambridge in Massachusetts. If I mis- 
 take not, however, they are both very defective, and the latter 
 particularly so, in modern publications. Nor are the deficiencies 
 of our public libraries by any means supplied by private collec- 
 tions, or by the enterprise and literary character of booksellers. 
 There is hardly a greater desideratum in the United States than 
 a bookseller who to a large capital in business would unite a 
 taste for literature, a zeal to promote it, and a disposition to 
 make the public as early as possible acquainted with every new 
 publication of value that is made either in Europe or America. 
 As it is, we seldom see a European publication here, unless it be 
 of a peculiarly popular cast or unless it be sent for by a gen- 
 tleman who has heard of its character. Thus you see, Mr. Edi- 
 tor, I view everything of this kind with cordial satisfaction and 
 cannot help flattering myself that the establishment of your 
 magazine will materially subserve the interest of letters and 
 science in America. 
 
 The tenor of another letter is the same. 
 
 It is with pleasure we observe the numerous literary institu- 
 tions in these States, happily calculated to disseminate a knowl- 
 edge of the Arts and Sciences. But very few of our Youth can 
 be educated in these seminaries, and though good policy may 
 forbid that any considerable number of them should receive a 
 collegiate education, it may, notwithstanding, be of essential 
 service to the community that our young men in general who 
 shall devote themselves to commerce and to mechanical and 
 agricultural employment should possess considerable degrees of 
 literature. A deficiency of learning hath often been very sensi- 
 bly regretted by many worthy characters in these States when 
 elevated to public and important offices; and frequently igno- 
 rance hath not only exposed them to ridicule but been injurious 
 to the interests of the public. We mention particularly a cir- 
 
8 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 cumstance that exposed a very popular patriot in London a few 
 years past, to contempt and occasioned him to become a subject 
 of ridicule in the public papers of the metropolis. In an oration 
 he made at Guildhall, instead of speaking in the superlative de- 
 gree, which he wished to have done, through ignorance he made 
 use of the double comparative — more better. 
 
 This last appeared in the Christian's, Scholar's and 
 Farmer's Magazine, published By a Number of Gentle- 
 men in Elizabethtown, New Jersey. The title is a de- 
 lightful illustration of that breadth of aim which most 
 of our early magazines exhibited. It was the design of 
 this performance to promote religion, to diffuse knowl- 
 edge, and to aid the Husbandman in his very necessary 
 and important toil. The full title of the Massachusetts 
 Magazine was Monthly Museum of Knowledge and Ra- 
 tional Entertainment — Containing Poetry, Musick, 
 Biography, History, Physics, Geography, Morality, Criti- 
 cism, Philosophy, Mathematicks, Agriculture, Architec- 
 ture, Chemistry, Novels, Tales, Romances, Translations, 
 News, Marriages and Deaths, Meteorological Observa- 
 tions, etc., etc. But the desire to cover as wide a ground 
 and to give as much as possible for the money is perhaps 
 illustrated best by Mathew Carey's announcement that he 
 had procured a set of smaller types (his type, like that 
 of all the magazines, was already maddeningly minute) 
 better calculated for the purpose of his magazine; as 
 they would comprise one-third more matter than the for- 
 mer in the same number of pages ! 
 
 " In America," ran the announcement of the Philadel- 
 phia Monthly Magazine, " periodical publications may 
 properly be termed the literature of the people. The state 
 of manufactures, agriculture, arts may as yet be deemed 
 in their infancy, and in them new discoveries and im- 
 provements are daily making. We solicit the aid of our 
 readers that these may become known. Medical Facts 
 and observations, Law Cases and Decisions, together with 
 the miscellaneous material which usually adorns a maga- 
 zine we intend to publish. Magazine poetry has usually 
 
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY MAGAZINES 9 
 
 been considered as synonymous with the most trivial and 
 imperfect attempts at verse-writing [in 1798!], but no 
 piece will be admitted which cannot lay claim to true 
 genius and poetic merit. Review of new publications will 
 proceed generally by extracts." 
 
 It is possible that each new editor, even with before 
 him examples of constant failure, hoped to make some 
 money (if he did, he spent it at once on enlargement), 
 and certainly he expected to pay expenses. But chiefly 
 he thought of himself as a torch-bearer. To popularise 
 literature in the States, where few books of literature 
 were read and almost none were published ; to disseminate 
 news of improved ways of doing things among people 
 who would never hear of them otherwise — this was their 
 high calling. Making all allowance for their stately and 
 diplomatic periods, it animates every line of their an- 
 nouncements. 
 
 Nor did either editors or contributors apparently have 
 any desire to exploit themselves. Anonymity was in 
 general the rule of the day. The editors of the Chris- 
 tian's, Scholar s and Farmer's sincerely regret that want 
 of leisure will oblige them to discontinue it. As not 
 literary fame but the benefit of mankind was the great 
 object of the editors in publishing this miscellany, they 
 beg leave still to conceal their names from public view. 
 " The imprinted seal of secrecy forbids the development 
 of names," announced the Massachusetts Magazine, " but 
 the late graduated sons of Harvard and Hanover will 
 pardon the well-founded presumption that our readers 
 are greatly indebted to many of them for the instructive 
 essay or the amusing tale." Most of the articles were 
 either unsigned or signed by fanciful names indicative of 
 the style of the writer. There were almost no hired 
 editors, they were often the printers and generally the 
 proprietors. Thomas Paine was an exception. He was 
 engaged by R. Aitken as editor of the Pennsylvania 
 Magazine in 1775 at a salary of twenty-five pounds a 
 year. The contract, says Isaiah Thomas, called for a 
 
lo THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 certain quantity of original matter, but often he found it 
 difficult to prevail on Paine to comply with his engage- 
 ment. Aitken is responsible for the statement that Paine 
 would never write for him without a decanter of brandy 
 on the desk and the workmen waiting for the copy. The 
 first prominent appearance of Freneau was in the United 
 States Magazine with a metrical version of a psalm. 
 It was of course unsigned, and a footnote says it was 
 written " by a young gentleman to whom in the course 
 of this work we are greatly indebted.'* The Weekly 
 Magazine, begun in Philadelphia in 1898, introduces us^ 
 to the first professional man of letters in America. It 
 was The Man at Home, by Charles Brockden Brown, 
 unsigned, and it ran through thirteen numbers. In the 
 second volume he began his first important novel, Arthur 
 Mervyn. Mathew Carey in the American Museum had 
 a list of notable contributors — Franklin, Dr. Rush, Fre- 
 neau, Trumbull, Humphreys, Francis Hopkinson, and 
 Governor Livingston. Most of these articles appeared 
 for the first time; and thus it is seen that Carey's boast 
 that he had provided a medium to the literary talent for 
 the country was well founded. He, alone of all the 
 editors, said that he rapidly accumulated material beyond 
 his needs. 
 
 In September, 1786, the Columbian Magazine or 
 Monthly Miscellany, was inaugurated by Mathew Carey 
 and four others. It was modelled upon the Gentleman's 
 Magazine and the London Magazine, and was decidedly 
 the most ambitious periodical project yet undertaken in 
 America. The expense of printing alone was said to be 
 one hundred pounds a month. In December Carey with- 
 drew, saying that he could not work with so many editors. 
 The preface to volume one announced that the great pur- 
 pose of the magazine was to communicate essays of 
 entertainment without sacrificing decency to wit, and to 
 disseminate, the works of science without sacrificing in- 
 trinsic utility to a critical consideration of style and com- 
 position ; and it indulged the pleasing and patriotic hope 
 
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY MAGAZINES ii 
 
 of advancing the best interests of society. Its obligations 
 to society the Columbian, in common with most of our 
 early magazines, took with extreme seriousness. " Os- 
 myn of Bassora, an Eastern Tale," it answered a corre- 
 spondent, " is prettily written, but to what end ? Unless 
 rendered subservient to the interests of virtue, composi- 
 tions of this kind are unworthy of attention. However 
 distinguished, they are but a splendid nothing." What 
 tales it published were patently edifying, as may be 
 guessed from their titles: Chariessa, or a Pattern for 
 the Sex; Angelico, or the Munificent Heiress; The 
 Danger of Sporting with Innocent Credulity. The 
 writer of Some Verses On Applying Pigeons to a Lady's 
 Feet When Dying is informed that the circumstance 
 is in their opinion very improper for a subject of gal- 
 lantry. Nor are they by any means content with matter 
 alone; form is to be regarded. Lavinia, Junior, is told 
 though her poem is replete with good sentiments, as a 
 poem it is not sufficiently correct and finished; however 
 disposed they might be to favour a young female pen 
 which seems to merit encouragement, the public eye will 
 make no allowances. The Western Tour is too much 
 like verse to be good prose and too prosaic to be anything 
 like a poem. The address to the Public affixed to volume 
 two reads as follows : " The completion of another year 
 furnishes the customary opportunity of rendering our 
 thanks to those who have contributed to support this 
 work by their subscriptions or to embellish it by the exer- 
 cise of their talents. If the public find no reason to be dis- 
 satisfied with the number or variety of the latter descrip- 
 tion, the proprietors will feel less disposition to lament 
 the insufficiency of the former. They have uniformly 
 declared that the emoluments which might well have been 
 
 I expected from their undertaking formed but a secondary 
 object; and in truth, as the account stands, after some- 
 thing more than two years of labour and expence, unless 
 they have succeeded in affording a rational entertainment 
 i^o their readers, they must suffer the mortification of a 
 I 
 
12 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 defeat in every hope." Variety they had certainly 
 afforded: literary essays grave and light; The For- 
 esters, an American tale in several instalments portray- 
 ing the history of the country and of the Constitution; 
 also in instalments the History of the Late War, and the 
 biography of Governor Winthrop; many articles of in- 
 formation on improvements in agriculture and manu- 
 facture; regular departments of Historical Scraps, For- 
 eign and Domestic Intelligence, Law Budget, Literary 
 and Political Fables, Household Receipts, The Columbian 
 Parnassiad, Marriage and Death Announcements from 
 all the States, and Meteorological Observations. In May, 
 1789, the magazine gave an extended account of Wash- 
 ington's progress to New York and his receptions on the 
 way. For entertainment there are the usual letters to an 
 Old Bachelor and from Maiden Aunts to their' Nieces ; 
 a humorous description of the manners and fashions of 
 London, in a letter from a Citizen of America to his 
 correspondent in Philadelphia ; and letters on the state of 
 society in Philadelphia and the various pursuits of social 
 pleasure. This last is by The Trifler, who conducts a 
 regular department in a sprightly fashion. 
 
 This city, Mr. Trifler, differs very essentially from New York 
 in the great outlines of society. In Philadelphia there are sev- 
 eral classes of company — the cream, the new-milk, the skim- 
 milk, and the canaille (as I have heard them whimsically di- 
 vided) ; but in New York there are only the genteel and the vul- 
 gar. In the latter place every person whose manners and edu- 
 cation are above the vulgar, is entitled to rank with the genteel ; 
 but in the former all the modifications of birth, fortune, and pol- 
 itics are to be consulted in order to ascertain the upper circle of 
 acquaintance. The cream generally curdles into a small group 
 in the most eligible situation in the room; the new milk seems 
 floating between the wish to coalesce with the cream and to es- 
 cape from the skim-milk ; and the skim-milk in a fluent kind of 
 independence laughs at the anxiety of the new-milk and grows 
 sower upon the arrogance of the cream. Hence it is, sir, that 
 our concerts and assemblies have lost their charms — for the 
 superiority established on the one hand and the mortification 
 felt upon the other, seem to have produced the resolution, that 
 
I 
 
 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY MAGAZINES 13 
 
 never again shall the ears of cream and new-milk listen to the 
 same melody, or their feet caper in the same dance. Notwith- 
 standing these variances, however, each class closely imitates its 
 immediate superior; and from the conduct of one you may easily 
 conceive the conduct of all. 
 
 Florio has fretted himself into a fever that almost cost him his 
 life, because a modest taylor had made a yellow pair of breeches 
 decently large for his limbs, and had not carried the cape of 
 his coat as high as the crown of his hat. It is not within the 
 scope of my present subject to animadvert upon a fashion which 
 exposes some things that aught not to be seen and conceals 
 others which need not be hidden ; but I will mention en passant 
 that it is reported one part of the fashion was introduced by 
 an Irish gentleman and the other by an unfortunate adventurer 
 who wished to keep from public view the odious depredations 
 of the pillory. Of the female dresses it may be said that for- 
 ever changing they are still the same. Miss Becky Catastrophe, 
 a young lady of diminutive size, has quitted the ball room in 
 the extremest mortification because her bishop was not as large 
 as Mrs. McRump's, a matron whose natural swell might have 
 disclaimed the assistance of art; and Mrs. Palace has scarcely 
 excited so much envy by the elegance of her manners and the 
 brilliancy of her equipage as by her voluminous craw, which, 
 like the fortifications of Gibraltar, serves to keep everybody at 
 a distance, but then the difficulty of conveying provisions to the 
 garrison is equally great in both instances. 
 
 The preface to volume three reads : " The utility of a 
 comprehensive periodical miscellany as it tends to diffuse 
 knowledge among all ranks, has been acknowledged in 
 every government, but in America the importance of such 
 a work is extremely obvious. The literati are therefore 
 earnestly requested to favour this native production with 
 their communications, and it is hoped the public in general 
 will lend their names to the list of its supporters." The 
 increase of the latter under the new plan, they announce 
 gratefully, is considerable; and they have obtained a 
 circulation also in different parts of Europe and the West 
 Indies. The new plan, occasioned by their merger with 
 a projected magazine, brought them a new title. The 
 Universal Asylum and Columbian. This was issued 
 " By a Society of Gentlemen," whereas the previous 
 editor had been Dallas. Part of the latter's policy was 
 
14 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 to report the debates of the State Convention; and the 
 Federalists, becoming annoyed at his attitude, finally with- 
 drew their subscriptions. Benjamin Rush had written to 
 Noah Webster (Mr. Albert Smyth tells us in his Phila- 
 delphia Magazines), "From the impudent conduct of 
 Mr. Dallas in misrepresenting the proceedings and 
 speeches in the Pennsylvania Convention, as well as from 
 his deficiency of matter, the Columbian Magazine of 
 which he is editor is in the decline." But most of its 
 readers did not agree with him. The pages had been 
 increased from fifty- four to sixty without additional 
 expense to the subscribers and not less than two copper- 
 plates published. An Impartial Review of American 
 Publications had been added, and the proprietors an- 
 nounced that they intended to make this a permanent basis 
 on which a more extensive review might be established. 
 At times a second edition was necessary, and the types 
 were reset at great expense. An appendix was published 
 containing the laws of the United States, and these with 
 the Political Register, it was hoped would extend the 
 usefulness of the magazine. It printed also many 
 authentic documents in its history of the Revolution, 
 which ran through several volumes. 
 
 In fact, the continued and increasing success of the 
 Columbian made it unique among American eighteenth 
 century magazines. Nor did it die, like most of them, of 
 starvation. It preferred suicide with honour. The num- 
 ber for January, 1792, they had increased to eighty pages 
 to make room for a report on manufactures. A note on 
 the cover read : " We fear it will not be in our power 
 to forward this work to some gentlemen in the interior 
 parts of the country unless Congress shall think it proper 
 to amend the post-of?ice bill so as to place monthly on 
 the same footing with daily or weekly publications." 
 Congress did not think proper, and at the end of that 
 year they announced their discontinuance. " The law 
 which charges for monthly publication the postage rate 
 on private letters or packages is a prohibition as injurious 
 
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY MAGAZINES 15 
 
 in its consequences as the principles on which it is founded 
 are partial and oppressive. The postal laws of Great 
 Britain, which transported magazines on the same terms 
 as newspapers, were continued in America for some 
 years; and the salutary effects were apparent in the 
 political and other useful information diffused among the 
 people. That this privilege should be wrested from them 
 so soon after their struggle for liberty and equal rights 
 is at once a subject for astonishment and regret. The 
 operation of this unequal and oppressive law having 
 rendered it impossible to convey this miscellany to their 
 numerous subscribers in the interior parts of this country 
 but at the expence of losing a great proportion of them 
 through a bad conveyance, they have determined to re- 
 linquish the undertaking and employ their time and 
 capital in a way which may be more conducive to their 
 private interest." 
 
 From the very first the magazines had cocked a dis- 
 dainful calculating eye on the woman-interest. Of the 
 twenty-three articles in a number of the General Maga- 
 zine ten are connected with parliamentary proceedings. 
 The others are religious, philosophical, or informational, 
 the lightest being a dialogue against ridiculing personal 
 defects. In the midst of all this comes oddly a package 
 of letters from a Mrs. Martha Harward, purporting to be 
 genuine and found after her decease. " The fate of the 
 writer," reads the head-line, " is a strong instance of the 
 violence of human passions when they get loose from the 
 government of reason and the restraints of religion." 
 The lines are a poignant cry in a humdrum world. On 
 the back of one incoherent sobbing letter is this super- 
 scription. ** To the most inhuman of his sex, W. P. 
 Read, Betrayer, read, pity one moment. But ever forgive 
 your Patty. For yours, come happiness or woe I ever 
 am. Could I have parted any other way, I for your dear 
 sake would. Impossible was it to live without your love. 
 Forgive, my dear, dear Creature. To Death, to all 
 Eternity must my soul adore her Billy. Forgive too 
 
1 6 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 severe Reproaches. You could not love; oh, how could 
 such a wretch as I expect it. Adieu forever to your 
 wretched Darling Patty." Poor Patty! Excellent op- 
 portunity for sermonising as her letters afford, one feels 
 resentfully that they were made to suffer this last in- 
 dignity of all not so much to point a moral as to adorn a 
 tale — to add one touch of crimson colour to an otherwise 
 dull page. 
 
 So all along. With a dancing-master bow, derisively 
 de rigiieur, the editors make their compliments to ladies, 
 exploiting their sins and their follies and their vanities 
 while pretending to censure them — for the sake of the 
 human interest the long list of failures had shown was 
 indispensable. The Royal American, Boston, began life 
 in 1774, an exceptionally grave magazine, with such a 
 sense of fact, indeed, that a number was delayed a week 
 on account of the Meteorological Register and finally 
 printed with an explanation for its absence. But as time 
 went on it felt the need of popularising, and began to 
 insert letters from lorn or perplexed females. " Sir : 
 I am addressed by two gentlemen of equal merit but show 
 neither the least encouragement, and assure them I am 
 determined never to alter my present happy state of life. 
 But these, they say, are things of course, for all women 
 say the same. Pray, Sir, is it not a misfortune that a 
 woman's resolution carries no weight? and must those 
 who have fortitude enough suffer for the inconstancy of 
 the rest of the sex? By indulging this a place in your 
 magazine, I hope to put a stop to their pretensions. Your 
 obliged Humble Servant, Rosalinda." " Mr. Editor, 
 does not conjugal happiness immediately decrease, or does 
 the fondest husband * after matrimony's over Hold out 
 more than half a lover ' ? And is not this a considerable 
 objection against matrimony? In your next I expect an 
 answer. Yours, etc., Lucy." But Lucy never heard, for 
 there was no next. The magazine ended abruptly on 
 account of the Revolution. It is another of the few 
 magazines that did not die of starvation ; nor did it seem 
 
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY MAGAZINES 17 
 
 likely that it would have done so, for Isaiah Thomas, who 
 printed it for six months of its eleven, says it had a hand- 
 some list of subscribers. It had had a tempestuous 
 career. The prospectus was issued many months before 
 its first number, but the turbulent state of public affairs 
 delayed its appearance* and fretted its brief existence, and 
 the blockade of the port finally compelled it to suspend. 
 
 The first magazine that openly catered to women was 
 the Gentleman and Lady's Town and Country, Boston, 
 sold at Shakespear's Head. It appeared in 1784 and was 
 only a nine months' wonder. Its tone was rather brisk, 
 and its desire for a wider variety than had been obtained 
 before was somewhat unfortunately symbolised by its 
 several styles of type. Their wish was " to please rather 
 than to wound, woman the noblest work of God." In 
 the first number the editors present their most respectful 
 compliments and solicit the Candour of the public in 
 favour of the magazine which is now submitted to the 
 benevolent age. The embellishment of a frontispiece and 
 other plates they could not obtain, but take the liberty of 
 proffering a beautiful engraving from the design of an 
 excellent master to be bound up with the volume at the 
 close of the year. The list of Births, Deaths, and Mar- 
 riages, etc., will be procured and duly inserted from this 
 and the neighbouring towns. In the room of Meteoro- 
 logical Observations they flatter themselves to afford 
 something more agreeable to the general taste than the 
 account of snow-storms after the sky is serene or the 
 history of North Westers when the wind is South East. 
 A pleasing hope is indulged that the Learned and Ingeni- 
 ous will honour them with a valuable correspondence. 
 All pieces of merit will be carefully noticed, and those 
 which are refused neither blasted by indelicate censure nor 
 solemn criticism. The Ladies in particular are requested 
 to patronise this work by adding the elegant polish of 
 the Female Pencil, where purity of sentiment and impas- 
 sioned fancy are happily blended together. 
 
 The policy of this magazine was decidedly to pamper 
 
i8 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 the ladies. Most of the tales are love-tales, and there are 
 many more than usual. Those traditional elegant em- 
 ployments of women, poetical enigmas and rebuses, are 
 conspicuous; and the department of Parnassian Blossoms 
 grew and waxed fat. Its essays show flattering attention 
 to the gentler kind. The Advantages of a Mutual Cor- 
 respondence Between the Two Sexes ; Desultory Thoughts 
 Upon the Utility of Encouraging a Degree of Self- 
 Complacency, Especially in Female Bosoms; Advice to 
 a Young Lady Concerning Marriage (wherein Leonora 
 is advised to emulate the example of Maria, whose 
 modesty will not permit her to attend more than one 
 ball a winter and even then accompanied by her hus- 
 band) ; Rules and Maxims for Promoting Matrimonial 
 Happiness, Addressed to Ladies (wherein they are 
 cautioned to read frequently the marriage service not 
 overlooking the word Obey, and to consider that the 
 person they are going to spend their days with is a man 
 not an angel, and not to dispute with him be the occa- 
 sion what it will). Interest was adroitly carried over 
 from month to month by letters and advertisements. 
 C. N. announces that he wants a wife who will agree 
 to his system of economy and is agreeable in her per- 
 son, " with such perfections as are necessary for my 
 circumstances, who will give up luxuries and propa- 
 gate love." Such a lady will favour him by giving him 
 notice in the next month's production. Julia, in reply, 
 says she is one of many prudent, discreet females, un- 
 married and as capable of propagating love as himself; 
 she desires, however, a description of his person in the 
 next number before advancing further. A. B. writes 
 that her husband left her shortly after the conjugal rites 
 were ended and, void to all humanity, took a second wife ; 
 she wants to know, since her husband married first, if 
 she can lawfully marry during his life; or if it is felony 
 in her, was it not in him also ? 
 
 Scarcely longer lived the second magazine which recog- 
 nised the sex in its title. This one, published in Philadel- 
 
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY MAGAZINES 19 
 
 phia in 1792, By a Literary Society, announced itself as 
 being entirely devoted to their affairs, and was called 
 the Lady's Magazine and Repository of Entertaining 
 Knowledge. The announcement is of unusual interest 
 in several ways. 
 
 The first volume of the Lady's Magazine is now submitted in 
 all deference to the perusal of the fair daughters of Columbia. 
 The extraordinary marks of applause with which the Ladies of 
 Philadelphia received the proposals for this work claims our 
 warmest acknowledgments. The female patronesses of litera- 
 ture while they discover an understanding in the fairest part of 
 intelligent creation to distinguish works of real merit from the 
 false glare of empty profession, at the same time also shed a 
 lustre on the amiable qualities which adorn the minds of the 
 fair. It is theirs to give ease to the weary traveller in the 
 rugged paths of science and soften the rigours of intense study ; 
 it is theirs to chace the diffidence of bashful merit and give real 
 dignity to the boldest thought. As to the reception this publi- 
 cation may meet with in the world of literature, we hope we are 
 secure from the attacks of envy or malevolence, since it is de- 
 voted to the fair sex. Every lover of the ladies will stand forth 
 as a champion in defence of a work peculiarly calculated for 
 the instruction and amusement of the lovely. It has been ob- 
 served that monthly magazines are so contracted that they leave 
 the reader in ignorance and suspence from one month to an- 
 other as to the sequel or winding up of an interesting piece. 
 It is proposed to have the Lady's Magazine published every six 
 months in a handsome large octavo volume of at least three 
 hundred pages, ornamented with an elegent frontispiece and 
 marble cover. It is presumed the above mode of publishing a 
 work of this nature will be preferred to a monthly one, as it 
 shall never be stuffed with that disgusting and worn-out ex- 
 pression to he continued. The sex in general may rely on the 
 editor's utmost endeavours to render it one of the most lively 
 and instructive publications now in circulation. Their corre- 
 spondence is respectfully requested in either poetry or prose. 
 The elegant productions of their pen have hitherto adorned the 
 most valuable libraries, and it is expected the females of Phila- 
 delphia are by no means deficient in those talents which have 
 immortalised the names of a Montague, a Craven, a More, and 
 a Seward in their inimitable writings. If the present work 
 meets with the encouragement we have reason to expect, it is 
 intended to adorn the succeeding volumes with an engraving to 
 each number, with the addition of the newest and most fashion- 
 able patterns of needlework for gowns, aprons, etc. 
 
20 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 The frontispiece presents the Genius of the Ladies' 
 Magazine accompanied by the Genius of Emulation, who 
 carries in her hand a laurel crown, approaching Liberty 
 and submitting to her, kneeling, a copy of the Rights Of 
 Woman. But lest you may think you have in this poetic 
 allegory an early harbinger of the suffrage movement, let 
 us hasten to quote further from the announcement. 
 " Persons of erudition and learning have suggested to us 
 that a book of this kind will be universally recommended 
 in all boarding schools throughout the country — as it is 
 to contain everything requisite to disseminate the knowl- 
 edge of real life, portray virtue in the most amiable point 
 of view, inspire the Female Mind with a love of religion, 
 of patience, prudence, and fortitude. In short, whatever 
 tends to form the accomplished Woman, the Complete 
 Economist, and the greatest of all treasures, A Good 
 Wife." 
 
 The first number disclosed an adroitness worthy of 
 longer life than a year. A number of letters were pub- 
 lished. " The men have every access to books at college, 
 but our sex are kept at very short allowance by our par- 
 ents, who are afraid to give us improper books and do not 
 know what are or are not proper. Signed, A Multitude 
 of Subscribers." " We are of the opinion that you ought 
 frequently to give us articles that are calculated for gentle- 
 men; I would therefore advise you to omit many things 
 that are of the feminine kind. Signed, More Than One 
 Half Your Subscribers." Miranda writes that she is 
 tired of the continual reprehensions of woman's dress 
 and recommends that other subjects be found for censure 
 or satire. Matrona is glad to hear the follies and the 
 foibles of the sex will appear in their true colours, espe- 
 cially the modes of dress, which are becoming every day 
 more and more ridiculous. Mary, Lydia, and Rebecca 
 write that they have nothing in their library but old 
 musty Spectators and hope that they may hear of all the 
 new novels and plays. Hannah Motherly writes that 
 they must caution the fair against fiction. Simon Soberly 
 
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY MAGAZINES 21 
 
 and Tim Noodle write what you might expect of them. 
 These and similar letters the editor presents with an 
 intimation that every taste will be satisfied, and with dark 
 allusions to the farmer who tried to please every one in 
 his treatment of his ass. 
 
 There is a series called the Ladies* Friend (wherein 
 Emilia thinks aloud on bash fulness, conjugal affection, 
 benevolence, and the like) and also one called Letters 
 From a Brother To A Sister at Boarding School. 
 (Strangely prophetic of a more famous series in a much 
 later Philadelphia magazine, the burden of which is the 
 same.) Thus even in that newest of new things, a 
 woman's paper, there is nothing new under our sun. 
 
 In his preface to volume two of the American Museum 
 Mathew Carey wrote : ** After a careful examination of 
 the various shoals on which periodical publications have 
 been wrecked in this and other countries, I am in dread 
 of only one — which I am almost ashamed to intimate. 
 This shoal is a w^ant of due punctuality in paying the 
 subscriptions. These being small, each individual is but 
 too apt to suppose it a matter of great indifference 
 whether he pays his quota at the time appointed or in 
 six or twelve months afterwards. This is a great mis- 
 take. It is further to be observed that the expence of 
 sending twice or thrice or, as is often the case, four times 
 for the amount of a subscription, bears no small propor- 
 tion to the sum received.'' This was, indeed, one of the 
 chief reasons for wreckage. Whatever magazines sur- 
 vive the year return thanks, though often somewhat 
 hollowly, for increase of subscriptions but all call attention 
 (with a doughty diplomacy in which no note of weariness 
 is allowed to enter!) to the great number of old ones 
 remaining unpaid. The Massachusetts Magazine, having 
 weathered six volumes, regrets that the remissness of 
 their subscribers at a distance (together with the appre- 
 ciation of journey-work and the enhanced price of paper) 
 will necessitate them to omit publication for three months 
 aftei the completion of the present volume, to collect 
 
2^ THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 outstanding debts and make plans for resuming publica- 
 tion on an improved plan. Isaiah Thomas inserts the 
 following notice in his Worcester Magazine — a weekly 
 " Containing Politicks, Miscellanies, Poetry, and News,'* 
 published 1 786-1 788 as a substitute for his newspaper, 
 the Spy, in order to avoid the tax on newspapers, which 
 he thought an improper restraint on the press. 
 
 Please to Read it! Somehow or other, many persons who 
 subscribe to newspapers and magazines never bother themselves 
 to make payment. When the Printer gives by way of advertise- 
 ment a general dun, they either think that they are not called 
 upon or whether they pay or not it will be of little consequence 
 as the debt is small, or they content themselves with thinking 
 that sometime or other they will call or send him the money 
 due,, or otherwise they will send him some articles of produce 
 to discharge their accounts. Thus by some means or other the 
 printer remains unpaid. He now requests All who are indebted 
 to him (Post- Riders are also desired to remember that they are 
 included in the word All) to come and settle with him. If 
 brought within three weeks from the date, he will receive the 
 following articles of produce in payment, viz.: Wood by the 
 load or cord. Butter, Cheese, Beef, Pork, Wheat Flour by the 
 Barrel, Rye and Indian Corn, Wheat, and Flax Seed. For all 
 these articles the market price will be paid. Those who now 
 neglect to pay him will not think themselves ill-used if their ac- 
 counts are lodged with a Magistrate. 
 
 The South Carolina Weekly Museum, a magazine of 
 thirty-two pages, took the unusual liberty of announcing 
 in stern accents on the completion of its first volume, in 
 1797, that it would not deviate from the rule of making 
 theirs altogether a Cash business. Their severity in this 
 respect did not de-humanise them in other ways, however, 
 for they announce also that the unavoidable delay in 
 getting out the first, the January, number arose because 
 the festive season had been celebrated by some of their 
 hands in a more liberal manner than usual ; and to make 
 up the deficiency they had added a supplement and would 
 at the end of six months present the public with an addi- 
 tional number. One of the favourite tricks to catch the 
 dilatory subscriber was the presentation of the seventh 
 
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY MAGAZINES ^3 
 
 number gratis on payment for the preceding six. The 
 attempt to make the subscriber pay half his year's sub- 
 scription on receipt of the first number never seems to 
 have succeeded. In one v^ay and another most of the 
 magazines echoed the New American published in 1758 at 
 Woodbridge, Nev^ Jersey, by Sylvanus Americanus. 
 " This number completing the first quarter, v^e earnestly 
 hope our kind subscribers v^ill now (agreeable to the 
 proposals) discharge their arrears to the Gentleman 
 who took in their subscriptions, that we may be enabled 
 to proceed in this expensive undertaking." As this maga- 
 zine was a very tidy little affair, the expense must have 
 been considerable; but in this case as in most of the 
 others the kind (or courteous or respectable or obliging 
 or generous) patrons remained adamant, and the editor 
 suspended. 
 
 Charles Brockden Brown, who seems always to have 
 had the magazine bee buzzing in his bonnet, wrote to 
 his brother some time before he started in 1799, the 
 New York Monthly, his first periodical : " Four hundred 
 subscribers will repay the annual expence of sixteen hun- 
 dred dollars. As soon as this number is obtained, the 
 printers will begin and trust to the punctual payment of 
 these for reimbursement. All above four hundred will 
 be a clear profit for me; one thousand subscribers will 
 provide $4,500 and deducting the annual expence will 
 leave $2,700." Thus it will be seen from this calculation 
 (which proved like that of the potter who carried the 
 tray on his head) that the expense of running a magazine 
 was not very great. At the end of the first volume of the 
 Philadelphia Monthly Magazine, 1798, the editor returns 
 thanks to his nine hundred subscribers, but hopes that a 
 more extensive circulation will allow him to engage men 
 of talent to help him, for the whole business of editing, 
 attending the press, and circulating the numbers is now 
 done by himself, Thomas Condie. The story was every- 
 where the same whether the editor could afford to get 
 any one to help him or not. Mathew Carey, in his auto- 
 
24 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 biography, said of the American Museum, " I was much 
 attached to this work and had great reluctance to abandon 
 it, unproductive and vexatious as was the management 
 of it." 
 
 The gallant story is perhaps best told in the various 
 announcements of the New York Magazine which, begun 
 in 1790, had an exceptionally long career. This was a 
 publication of sixty-four pages, and George Washington 
 and John Adams headed the list of subscribers. The 
 preface to volume two hints at the well-known fact that 
 they could employ their press to more advantage in the 
 present state of pecuniary emoluments, but they will con- 
 tinue in the hope that they will derive a compensation 
 from the liberality of their fellow-citizens. The growing 
 opulence of the city induces them to believe that they will 
 one day meet the reward of their present labours. 
 Volume three announces that though the subscription is 
 still lacking, the magazine has thus far outlived any at- 
 tempts of the kind heretofore made in the city. Volume 
 four says that the history of printing could be challenged 
 for a single instance of persons willing to persevere in 
 a work whose profits were so very inadequate. Their 
 own particular interest and the profession of holding up 
 the Literary Reputation of this city are equally responsible 
 for the continuance. In the latter respect they have been 
 successful to a degree beyond expectancy. The typo- 
 graphical part has been executed in a manner that makes 
 them proud. Such engravings as have appeared have 
 been executed in as neat a manner as could be done on 
 this side of the Atlantic, the print is beautiful. Volume 
 six says it has often been remarked that literature receives 
 but a partial welcome in the United States, and with re- 
 spect to magazines the observation is trite that their 
 patrons are too few in number to render an undertaking 
 of that kind an object worthy of attention either as it 
 respects emolument or improvement. " It is impossible 
 to arrest the attention of those attached to the active 
 scene of business. In the pleasure with which we present 
 
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY MAGAZINES 25 
 
 this volume, we have only to regret that the number is 
 not so respectable as the class addressed." The next 
 volume is made to begin a new series, so that subscribers 
 may neither possess an incomplete work nor go to the 
 expense of procuring the six preceding volumes. These 
 considerations, they think, have withheld some new sub- 
 scribers. The proprietors have not heretofore secured 
 a reasonable compensation for printing, exclusive of the 
 labour of editing. The preface to the second volume of 
 the new series announces that the magazine has toiled 
 eight long years, but the harvests have been poor indeed. 
 " Shall every attempt of this nature desist in these 
 States ? Shall our country be stigmatised, odiously stig- 
 matised, with want of taste for literature? " 
 
 The appeal to patriotism is everywhere voiced by these 
 sturdy soldiers of a forlorn hope. The United States 
 in 1779 had announced that America must show that she 
 was able to cultivate the belles-lettres, even disconnected 
 with Great Britain, and disprove^the British jeer that the 
 colonies when separated from England would become 
 mere illiterate ourang-outangs. " Foreigners view works 
 of this nature as evidence of the literary character of our 
 city," implored the New York Magazine. " Shall we not 
 then exert ourselves to appear as respectable abroad as 
 we really are at home? Strangers generally refer their 
 decision of the state of learning to the number of original 
 compositions a place boasts. Though originality is not 
 an absolute requisite to the composition of a good maga- 
 zine, nevertheless it is a weighty consideration. Num- 
 bers of the Sons and Daughters of Columbia are well 
 qualified to shine in the walks of literature. Let each, 
 then, lend a helping hand." Even more vigorous appeals 
 were made in the name of local pride. " We believe it to 
 be pretty generally the case," said this magazine, " that 
 other periodicals of America receive considerable support 
 from neighbouring States, but such is not the case with 
 us. No one will ever doubt the ability of the city of New 
 York to support a monthly publication," it continues with 
 
26 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 all the emphasis of uneasiness. The editor of the Ameri- 
 can in 1787 in announcing his discontinuance with the 
 twelfth number had said, " Business will require the pro- 
 prietor to leave the city immediately on the delivery of 
 this number, and whether the most flourishing city in 
 America will continue and support this periodical remains 
 yet to be determined." The Nightingale or A Melange 
 de Literature, Boston, 1796, in announcing a change in 
 its policy piped a shrill key : " We are sanguine that a 
 literary periodical can be supported in America. It has 
 been suggested that the inhabitants of Boston prefer 
 viewing the manifest of a ship's cargo to a lounge in the 
 library. Let it not be said that in the pursuit of gain. 
 Literature and the Muses are left at a distance, and that 
 a sordid lust for gold has banished every noble sentiment, 
 every mental delight from the bosoms of the avaricious 
 Bostonians. God forbid that any foe to our country ever 
 shall have reason to say that our native town is the resi- 
 dence of Ignorance, though it should be the emporium of 
 Plutus!" 
 
 One is profoundly impressed with the sporting blood 
 of the devoted band. They entered the arena and shouted 
 smilingly, " We who are about to die salute you ! " 
 They bade their fellows godspeed and, later, a grim 
 farewell. The Massachusetts Magazine said with its 
 fourth volume : " Four years' experience has partly 
 baffled the expectations of hope. The increase of sub- 
 scriptions has unfortunately fallen below anticipation. 
 Some part of the time alluded to another magazine re- 
 ceived a degree of continuance in this State, and pub- 
 lications of a similar nature were fostered in New Jersey, 
 Pennsylvania, Nova Scotia, etc. Death though the de- 
 stroyer of human hope often invigorates the confidence 
 of the living. The American Museum, Columbian 
 Asylum, New Jersey Repository, and Nova Scotia Magch 
 sine are now no more. Their passing shades move si- 
 lently along and beckon the Massachusetts Magazine to 
 follow. Fond of life and anticipating length of days, 
 
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY MAGAZINES 27 
 
 she bids them a tender adieu and presses forward to the 
 mark of the high calling of the Literati." Three years 
 later its preface announces that it will go on in spite of 
 difficulties. " As this is at present the only publication 
 of the kind in the States, we fondly hope it will receive 
 both literary and pecuniary assistance. Should it, how- 
 ever, finally share the fate of all other American publica- 
 tions of the kind, those who have been and still are in- 
 terested in its success will have at least the satisfaction 
 of reflecting that in comparison with the rest it died in a 
 good old age." From 1789 to 1796, it was indeed a 
 notable record. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE MAKING OF THE BOSTON TRADITION 
 
 The Anthology began life with an insouciance scarcely 
 decorous in the future parent of the North American 
 Review, It is mildly disquieting when large coming 
 events refuse to cast their shadow before. You fear that 
 the world may be after all but a random affair. In one 
 way, however, it must be owned that a characteristic note 
 was sounded. The cover announced, " Edited by Syl- 
 vanus Per Se." But sprightliness, not to say flippancy, 
 awaited within. " Although we have the feeling of a 
 parent for the publication before us, yet it may be proper 
 to declare to the world that it is not indebted to us for 
 birth nor was it born in our house. We knew neither its 
 father nor its mother, nor hardly of its existence until 
 naked, hungry, and helpless it was brought and laid at our 
 door. In proportion as it engaged our care it won our 
 affection. We shall give to our charge expensive ad- 
 vantages, in order to make him extensively and per- 
 manently useful." The " we " of this editorial later de- 
 clared themselves to be " a society of gentlemen who have 
 undertaken the publication merely for their own amuse- 
 ment and for the diffusion of literary taste, and they 
 would be satisfied to defray expenses and have no desire 
 for remuneration ; the Anthology has never been a favour- 
 ite with the public at large, nor were they ambitious of 
 popularity, but the ablest pens of the country have 
 praised them and their highest ideal is the pleasing con- 
 sciousness of having done the State some service." This 
 is well on in the fifth volume, however, and the Olympian 
 accents of the future North American are now beginning 
 to shape themselves. 
 
 The first volume of the Monthly Anthology and Boston 
 
MAKING OF THE BOSTON TRADITION 29 
 
 Review contained no such prescience. Though it had an 
 air of saving something uncommon (proceeding perhaps 
 from its professed indifference to remuneration) and 
 printed occasional Latin poems, you might look in vain 
 in the earlier numbers for any consciousness that it was a 
 carrier of destiny. Indeed, it still pursued the pedestrian 
 custom of publishing the month's marriages and births 
 and deaths of the city of Boston. And although a 
 translation of the Sanskrit Sakuntala ran through six 
 numbers, still Matilda desired Mr. Editor to print the 
 following verses, written by the intimate companion of 
 her early years, of which — though they were not written 
 to be published and she supposes will not bear criticising 
 — she desires a fairer and more desirable copy than she 
 can write herself. ( Fancy asking the parent of the North 
 Aniericam Review to become one's amanuensis !) Silvius 
 has a regular department of literary and social chat (a 
 cosiness which was sternly rebuked in the second genera- 
 tion) ; and there were the Literary Wanderer, The Re- 
 marker, The Family Physician, and The Botanist to but- 
 tonhole you monthly in a somewhat superior but still 
 neighbourly fashion. Yet already, in the second volume, 
 there was a faint premonition of that Nirvana which its 
 enemies (soured New Yorkers) maliciously hinted that 
 it had reached two-score years later. The editors dis- 
 missed the year with neither pride nor depression; the 
 work had amused many idle hours; they have endeav- 
 oured to diffuse an undefiled taste; if they had been at 
 times severe, it was because the disorders of American 
 literature were to be cured only by the lancet. But they 
 added an expression which by no stretch of the imagina- 
 tion can one picture the North American of the mid- 
 century employing — " we have endeavoured to add to the 
 general stock of innocent gaiety " ; and, also, they had be- 
 come worldly enough to confess satisfaction at seeing their 
 subscribers doubled within the year. Like all the editors 
 of our splendid-spirited early magazines, they took oc- 
 casion of the increase of subscription to enlarge; and, 
 
30 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 unlike the rest, they had by this time a concrete and spe- 
 cific object in addition to their wider pubHc service. 
 All the surplus was to be applied to the support and in- 
 crease of a Public Library. There never was any sur- 
 plus ; in fact, the Anthology Club relinquished their pub- 
 lication at the end of the tenth volume, because the mem- 
 bers felt that they could lose money to better advantage, 
 but that did not prevent them from leaving another fine 
 memorial of their civic conscience in the shape of the Bos- 
 ton Athenaeum. 
 
 The Anthology, it is true, never quite achieved the 
 rotund voice, the makings of which it bequeathed to the 
 North American; but it is interesting to see the resonance 
 gathering strength in their yearly addresses. And even 
 in the beginning, it was thought sufficiently chesty by the 
 Emerald — which had its high ideals also, for " though 
 variety of subject was to be its sedulous endeavour, they 
 always stood willing to sacrifice it to elegance of expres- 
 sion, chastity of thought, and value of information." 
 There now exists no literary paper but the Anthology in 
 this place, it went on to say, and the gravity of its pages 
 would claim little that could be suitable to those of the 
 Emerald. The Anthology in 1811 would never have 
 dreamed of returning to the vertiginosity of 1805. In 
 that volume they regretted that while their predecessors 
 had been uniformly favourites of the ladies, they received 
 only frowns and neglect; but they had no intention of 
 wooing the sex with love-tales or commentaries on 
 fashion ; or acrostics and rebuses ; and furthermore their 
 phizzes were too hopelessly ugly to be moulded into a 
 simper or tortured into an ogle. Though patronage could 
 be increased by making their work popular or insipid, they 
 desire the praise only of those who relish manly thinking 
 and manly literature. Volume four says that the Review 
 is conducted under the conviction that public criticism 
 upon writers for the public does not in itself imply either 
 injustice or malevolence. " The respectable patronage 
 now given the Anthology is sufficient to encourage their 
 
MAKING OF THE BOSTON TRADITION 31 
 
 perseverance; and they trust that the love of letters and 
 art will increase with the growing wealth of the country, 
 which fosters luxury unless restrained by literature and 
 taste. We may this year offer strictures on different 
 modes of education." From this last sentence it may be 
 gathered that the gait of the North American — that of 
 offering strictures — was now being struck. The sixth 
 volume establishes the stride quite distinctly. " The 
 facility with which the promises of editors are made at 
 the present day is exceeded only by the indifference with 
 which they are broken ; so we will make no promises be- 
 yond hoping that the Anthology will yet be the repository 
 of the sound literature of New England. We have found 
 that some publishers and editors have not scrupled at alter- 
 ing English republications ; and our reviewers will particu- 
 larly be on their guard against such liberties." In the 
 seventh volume the tone becomes slightly playful again, 
 but it is the Johnsonian playfulness of the conscious 
 dictator. " Seven years is a great age among the literary 
 ephemera of this country, and we have arrived at this 
 degree of maturity in spite of innumerable predictions to 
 the contrary. We almost flatter ourselves that our con- 
 stitution and temperament are more vigorous and that 
 our uncommon duration is not accidental, but is the evi- 
 dence of something sound in our stamina. We have 
 been accused of depreciating our own country and every- 
 thing indigenous. Owing to some glaring faults in our 
 scheme of widespread superficial education, we are 
 harassed with a class of authors more numerous here, in 
 proportion, than in any other country — worthless weeds 
 springing up prematurely, and their number is augmented 
 by those who have mistaken virtuous patriotic sentiments 
 for inspiration. These we have felt bound to contribute 
 our efforts to eradicate." 
 
 This complaint, howxver justified at the period, is the 
 badge of the high-toned. One cannot get so far back in 
 literature that he fails altogether to hear that there is 
 now a mob of gentlemen that write with ease. In Boston 
 
32 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 even the Royal American had said in 1774, when, like 
 all the other magazines, it was constantly calling for copy : 
 " We all write nowadays, learned and unlearned ; we 
 write even though we cannot spell." The Anthology had 
 often regretted that some persons of wit and sentiment of 
 their acquaintance had not augmented their stock of en- 
 tertainment or knowledge, and that it had to support itself 
 on the unregulated contributions of a few literary men 
 who were pleased with the public's profit or pleasure in 
 their w-ritings but who had no extraordinary stimulus to 
 write. Though the broth was almost entirely their own, 
 they always felt that too many cooks were having a 
 hand in it. At last, in 181 1, they made this announce- 
 ment: 
 
 One of the greatest inconveniences we experience from 
 month to month is that which arises from the want of an editor 
 devoted to the work, whose literary reputation would in a 
 measure be at stake. Hitherto the receipts of the Anthology 
 have not enabled us to make such a provision. One of our 
 number has voluntarily assumed the responsibility of seeing the 
 work through the press ; and when the materials have not been 
 furnished to his hands, he has been obliged to make such hasty 
 selections, in order to complete the number of pages, as his 
 leisure amidst professional engagements would permit. For 
 this evil we have hopes of a speedy remedy, and if our hopes 
 are not disappointed, the Anthology will be placed under the 
 peculiar care of a gentleman whose learing, talents and taste 
 will enable him to make it all that its friends can desire. 
 
 This gentleman was apparently William Tudor, and it 
 was he who, at the end of the tenth volume, merged it 
 into the North American. Whatever the broth furnished 
 by the first number of this, it was not spoiled by too many 
 cooks, for Tudor wrote, with the exception of a poem, 
 every one of its one hundred and fifty pages. Begin- 
 ning life as a bi-monthly, it became a quarterly and then 
 a monthly. Perhaps this youthful preoccupation with 
 matters purely temporal is what prevents it now, in its 
 old age, from classing itself with those magazines which 
 take liberties with time throughout the year in order 
 
MAKING OF THE BOSTON TRADITION 33 
 
 to get two Christmases into December. During its very 
 first year the editor, in answering a complaint of delay, 
 begged his distant subscribers to recollect that the number 
 does not appear until the middle of the month by which it 
 is dated, and even later. At first the new Americans 
 were like the old Anthologies. The departments of gen- 
 eral intelligence were retained, and even the practice re- 
 sumed of publishing those fascinating documents, meteor- 
 ological tables. Yet, though there were occasional 
 anecdotes, there were no chatty letters or social descrip- 
 tions and very little poetry. This last was not the editor's 
 fault, however, as he says he has been so seldom favoured 
 with poetical offerings that he rejects any with some 
 regret and hesitation, and later congratulates himself that 
 the department of Original Poetry is growing. But the 
 earlier volumes are marked by the gradual retirement of 
 the editor from public confidences; and on the seventh 
 volume by the rigid retirement of fact as well as fancy, in 
 the suppression of the departments of Poetry and In- 
 telligence. The former lasted long enough to get in 
 that trivial piece of work Thanatopsis, but not for a 
 long period was the North American to open its august 
 doors to any other poetical prattle. Already the reviews 
 were increasing in length and showed the tendency to 
 group several books into an article of fifty pages or more 
 on the British type, in which the books are but corpora 
 vilia — sloven and unhandsome corpses which arouse the 
 author's reflective remonstrance by coming between the 
 wind and his nobility. Tudor, from the beginning, 
 sought to emancipate the magazine from the somewhat 
 Bostonian tone of its parent, although his efforts toward a 
 general circulation were content with attempting to widen 
 the material rather than the subscription list. " I tried to 
 abstract myself," he wrote, " from the narrow prejudices 
 of locality, however I might feel them." An article in 
 the second volume lamented the literary delinquency of 
 America and its dependence on England — we have not 
 yet made an attempt toward a literature of our own, it 
 
34 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 said. But Tudor, justly, wrote afterward, in his Miscel- 
 lanies : 
 
 The North American certainly shows that there Is a consid- 
 erable stock of literature already accumulated in the country, 
 when such a journal should have continued for several years 
 increasing in value and preserving itself from the bigoted sway 
 of any political or religious party. 
 
 Though Tudor reported growing patronage, the en- 
 terprise was supported by a club of gentlemen who sus- 
 tained the same relation to it as had the Anthology Club 
 to its monthly. For several years it was necessary for 
 them to dip into their pockets at their regular suppers 
 and dinners. In 1817 Jared Sparks, then a tutor at 
 Harvard, wrote to a friend : 
 
 It will doubtless be strange news to you to hear that I have 
 engaged to take charge of the North American Review after 
 the next number, when Mr. Tudor resigns. A certain number 
 of our most distinguished literary gentlemen have associated 
 themselves and agreed to furnish articles in their turn, and it is 
 on this condition only that I would engage in the affair. 
 
 The difficulties in the way of getting good articles and 
 of holding up benevolent gentlemen to their own good in- 
 tentions — says H. B. Adams in his Life of Jared 
 Sparks, which contains the fullest and most docu- 
 mentary account of the early years of the magazine — 
 began to dawn upon the young editor before his first 
 number was ready. In 18 19 Sparks went to Baltimore 
 and was succeeded by Edward T. Channing, who resigned 
 soon after to take a chair at Harvard (later editors found 
 no difficulty in holding down the two chairs at once) and 
 was followed by Edward Everett. Duyckinck says that 
 Dana was in line for the editorship but was considered 
 too unpopular, whereupon he resigned from the staff and 
 left the club. The departure of Sparks to Baltimore 
 was of great consequence to the magazine, for he per- 
 formed even more valuable service for it when absent 
 than when present. By his work among his new friends 
 and his constant correspondence with Channing and , 
 
 I 
 
MAKING OF THE BOSTON TRADITION 35 
 
 Everett he widened its influence and helped to make it 
 our first approximation to a national magazine. When he 
 returned in 1823 to conduct it again, it showed at once 
 the effects of his wider horizon; and his first important 
 articles were upon the colonisation movement and upon 
 Baltimore. Furthermore, he had been industriously ex- 
 tending the subscription list all the while he was away and 
 helping Channing and Everett to introduce business 
 methods in circulating the magazine — something which 
 Tudor had never even attempted. Once again editor, he 
 employed better business agents and established many 
 new local connections throughout the country, with the 
 result that its circulation rapidly increased. 
 
 The North American Review Club, continues Adams, 
 for several years controlled the policy of the magazine, 
 both editorial and financial. 
 
 Edward Everett wrote Sparks in 1820: "The North Amer- 
 ican Club voted to ask you to write a paper." T. Parsons 
 wrote Sparks in 1822: "I shall never write again for the 
 North American without being paid for it, and the question of 
 pay or not pay is now agitating the Club. None of the own- 
 ers of the book work but Everett and you." Everett, who had 
 rapidly conformed his magazine to the English type, wrote him 
 frankly in 182 1 : " Your remark against its want of American- 
 ism is just, but you must remember some things: First, you 
 cannot pour anything out of the vessel but what is in it. I am 
 obliged to depend on myself more than any other person, and 
 I must write that which will run fastest. I am ashamed of this, 
 but I cannot help it. Second, there is really a dearth of Ameri- 
 can topics: the American books are too poor to praise, and to 
 abuse them will not do. Third, the people round here, our most 
 numerous and oldest friends, have not the raging Americanism 
 that reigns in your quarter." J. G. Palfrey wrote Sparks in 
 1823: "Everett informs us that he has informed you that he 
 resigns the North American to you, on condition of your edit- 
 ing it in Boston, and on the same terms that he has done." 
 
 ' With the advent of Sparks came not only a far more 
 substantial subscription list, but pay for the writers. 
 This was uniformly one dollar a page, and no copy thrown 
 in. " Every writer pays for his book like any other sub- 
 
36 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 scriber," said Sparks. The remark illustrates not only 
 the definiteness of the new business management, but the 
 old idea that to see one's self in print was a solid com- 
 pensation. It was an idea that persisted many years 
 both with shaky and with stable magazines. But the new^ 
 policy of paying their writers did not impede the maga- 
 zine's success. 
 
 *' For the last seven years," Sparks wrote Everett in 1828, 
 "the work has increased in value about $2,000 a year. I paid 
 for it $10,900. The first two years I had it I realised very 
 little. I then sold a quarter of it to Mr. Gray [for $4,000], 
 with the agreement that he should have out of the proceeds 
 $1,100 a year as publisher and I $2,200 a year as editor; and if 
 anything remained, it was to be divided according to the re- 
 spective value of our shares. The largest amount that I have 
 ever received in a year was $2,283 — this was my compensation 
 as editor and for the interest on the amount of my share, three- 
 quarters of the whole. The work was valued last May at 
 $20,705. If you are inclined to purchase one-quarter of it, you 
 shall have it for $5,000. I will then agree to receive as editor 
 $1,500, and Mr. Gray shall have $1,100 as publisher. The sur- 
 plus will be divided according to our respective shares, it being 
 understood that I shall be paid for what I write at the same 
 rate as yourself. The exact number of efficient subscribers I 
 cannot tell. I doubt whether it is more than 3,200. We shall 
 scarcely expect the same ratio of increase hereafter as hereto- 
 fore. The new journals that have been set on foot, and with 
 a considerable success, must in the nature of things, fill up 
 some of the channels into which our work would otherwise 
 run." Finally he sold his three-quarter interest to Alexander 
 Everett, in 1830, for $15,000. "I am not very light-hearted 
 about it," he wrote to one of his friends. " But I have sold it 
 for $9,100 more than I gave for it; and during the six years 
 that I owned it, I have actually realised from it $22,000." 
 
 Prescott, who from 1821 to 1833 contributed annually 
 an article to the magazine, came to the conclusion — says 
 Ticknor — that criticising the works of others is all but 
 worthless. Hence, the letter of his in 1837 may be 
 slightly prejudiced. " The last number of the North 
 American has found its way into our woods. I have only 
 glanced at it, but it looks uncommonly weak and water- 
 
MAKING OF THE BOSTON TRADITION 37 
 
 ish. I suppose the paltry price the North pays (all it can 
 bear, too, I believe) will not command the variety of con- 
 tributions and from the highest sources, as with the Eng- 
 lish journals. For a' that, however, the old North is the 
 best periodical we ever had or, considering its resources, 
 are likely to have, for the present." 
 
 As Irving was our first writer to obtain success abroad, 
 so the North American was our first magazine to obtain 
 an international reputation. The Edinburgh Revieiv, in 
 noticing the Sketch Book, said : 
 
 It is the work of an American entirely bred and trained in 
 that country ; and it is the first American book, we rather think, 
 of any description, but certainly the first purely literary pro- 
 duction to which we could give the praise of being written 
 throughout with the greatest care and accuracy, and worked up 
 to great purity and beauty of diction on the model of the most 
 elegant and polished of our native writers. The American 
 genius has hitherto been defective in taste, certainly, rather 
 than in talent. While we are upon the subject of American 
 literature, we think ourselves called upon to state that we have 
 lately received two numbers of the North American Review, 
 or Miscellaneous Journal, published quarterly at Boston, which 
 appears to us to be the best and most promising production of 
 the press of that country that has ever come to our hands. It 
 is written with great spirit, learning and ability, on a great 
 variety of subjects; and abounds with profound and original 
 discussions on the most interesting topics. Though abundantly 
 patriotic, or rather national, there is nothing offensive or abso- 
 lutely unreasonable in the tone of its politics; and no very 
 reprehensible marks either of national partialities or antipa- 
 thies. The style is generally good, though with considerable 
 exceptions, and sins oftener from affectation than from ignor- 
 ance. But the work is of a powerful and masculine character, 
 and is decidedly superior to anything of the kind that existed 
 in Europe twenty years ago. It is a proud thing for us to see 
 Quarterly Reviews propagating bold truths and original specu- 
 lations in all quarters of the world; and when we grow old and 
 stupid ourselves, we hope still to be honoured in the talents and 
 merits of those heirs of our principles and children of our 
 example. 
 
 It is amusing to see that a little later, in 1826, Alexander 
 Everett was writing Sparks from Madrid : " Properly 
 
38 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 managed and followed up with spirit, it ought in time to 
 take the place of the Edinburgh and Quarterly, which are 
 at present mostly job-work and have nearly lost the vital 
 spark that made them popular." He added that he 
 doubted whether the President of the United States had 
 a higher trust to be accountable for than the editor of the 
 North American. This has been a congenial view for 
 many editors of the magazine in its admirable career 
 since. But some people abroad derived from it, as 
 Everett implied, their only notion of American affairs. 
 In 1826 there was a regular sale of over one hundred 
 copies a month in London and twelve copies in remote 
 Calcutta. And it had already become as disturbing a 
 factor in one quarter as a President. For in 1824 it 
 received the first, and for many decades to come the only, 
 distinction of the kind ever accorded to an American 
 magazine — that of being prohibited. On account of 
 its anti-Bourbon spirit, France would not allow it to cross 
 her frontiers. How is this for the record of a ten-year- 
 old magazine which some persons at home were calling 
 unAmerican ! 
 
 Reviewing its editors in its centenary number, the North 
 'American said that its great epochs were during the ad- 
 ministration of Edward Everett, of his brother Alexander 
 Everett, and of Lowell and Norton. Sparks had decid- 
 edly failed to equal his predecessor and its high reputa- 
 tion for strong and varied articles had fallen off, when in 
 1830 Alexander took it and for six years restored it to 
 the level which his brother had established. With Dr. 
 Palfrey in 1836 it became more distinctly a literary and 
 historical publication, and almost entirely relinquished its 
 political character. Before he gave up the reins to Pro- 
 fessor Francis Bowen, the charger had become a steady- 
 going hack, and almost all the important early contribu- 
 tors had passed beyond these voices. During the re- 
 spectable and apathetic administration of these two, you 
 would never have guessed, says the retrospect, that the 
 most active minds in New England were in a state of 
 
MAKING OF THE BOSTON TRADITION 39 
 
 social and spiritual ferment. The grandfather's clock 
 was ticking drowsily when Dr. Peabody entered the sanc- 
 tum in 1853 and gave it a mild jolt. In his ten years he 
 succeeded in coaxing the magazine out of the Harvard 
 cloisters but did not venture to drive it as far as Main 
 Street. In i860 Lowell and Charles Eliot Norton laid 
 reluctant hands upon it and jogged it more decidedly, but 
 nevertheless with filial moderation. Lowell had written 
 in 1848, " Bo wen seems to regard me as the wit of his 
 Review, and I must keep up my character if I die for it." 
 This was about his article on Browning, for which, he 
 said, " I shall get twenty odd dollars on All-Fools-Day.'' 
 Longfellow noted that new life had been infused into the 
 North American with the very first number under the new 
 editors; and every wTiter noted that the magazine had 
 departed from at least one of its cherished traditions, and 
 was willing to pay more than one dollar a page. Norton 
 purposed, gently but firmly, to achieve innovations. 
 ** There is opportunity now," he wrote to a friend, " to 
 make the North American one of the means of develop- 
 ing the nation, of stimulating its better sense, of setting 
 before it and holding up to it its own ideal — at least of 
 securing expression for its clearest thought and most ac- 
 curate scholarship." 
 
 Scudder in summing up Lowell's connection with the 
 magazine writes: 
 
 It had for fifty years been the leading representative in 
 America of dignified scholarship and literature. At times it 
 had been spirited and aggressive, but for the most part it had 
 stood for rather elegant leisure and a somewhat remote criti- 
 cism. The publishers, hoping to reinstate it in authority, ap- 
 plied in 1863 to Lowell to take charge of it. He consented 
 with Norton as his assistant. " You have heard," wrote he to 
 Motley, " that Norton and I have undertaken to edit the North 
 American — a rather Sisyphian job, you will say. It wanted 
 three chief elements to make it successful. It wasn't thor- 
 oughly, that is, thickly and thinly loyal; it wasn't lively; and 
 it had no particular opinions on any particular subject. It was 
 an eminently safe periodical and accordingly was in great dan- 
 ger of running aground. It was an easy matter, of course, to 
 
 k 
 
40 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 make it loyal — even to give it opinions (such as they were) 
 but to make it alive is more difficult. Perhaps the day of the 
 quarterlies is gone by, and those megatheria of letters may be 
 in the mere course of nature withdrawing to their last swamps 
 to die in peace. Anyhow, here we are with our megatherian 
 on our hands, and we must strive to find out what will fill his 
 huge belly, and keep him alive a little longer." 
 
 Yet though its new editors attempted to widen the 
 horizon of the magazine, and invited representative men 
 from all over the country to write for it and even extended 
 the invitation across the Atlantic, it still remained a some- 
 what local product. " In Cambridge where I went from 
 Venice to live after a brief sojourn in New York," says 
 Mr. Howells, " one was, as it were, domesticated with 
 the North American, for both the editors lived there, and 
 one was orally asked to do this paper or that. And by 
 and by when both Norton and Lowell went abroad, the 
 editorship began to fluctuate from one scholarly Cam- 
 bridge intelligence to another." And in spite of innova- 
 tions, it did not dream of bundling away its early nine- 
 teenth century ideal of the Edinburgh. When Longfel- 
 low looked over Cushing's Index to the North American, 
 he said, " It is like walking through a graveyard and 
 reading the inscriptions on the graves. So many familiar 
 names, so many old associations ! " And Mr. Howells 
 says that it " fondly realised its descent from the supreme 
 English quarterlies. It emulated the look of these in size 
 and shape, and if it had not the stiff covers, half of the 
 thickness of pasteboard, which enabled them to hold them- 
 selves upright on a shelf, the grey of its outside was of a 
 scholarly quiet, which richly satisfied." Scholarly and 
 dignified quiet was, however, ceasing to be the ideal else- 
 where in America. Even religious periodicals had long 
 since yielded to the literary demands of a democratic and 
 busy age for brevity and briskness. " The North Ameri- 
 can/' said Dr. H. M. Field, " was like the English quarter- 
 lies which it copied, very respectable and very dull." And 
 spruce young worldly journals like the Round Table wQvt 
 
MAKING OF THE BOSTON TRADITION 41 
 
 even more caustic. Having little space at its disposal, 
 this paper naturally deemed brevity the soul of wit. It 
 said in 1869 : 
 
 We believe the quarterlies could be made more popular with- 
 out losing a wit in dignity and character. At least two of the 
 English quarterlies are now as eagerly looked for in cultivated 
 circles as is the last number of the Ledger by fascinated scul- 
 lions. The stupid Puritan fallacy that writing to be respecta- 
 ble must needs be dull has always affected most literary work 
 in this country, and the quarterlies have perhaps borne heavier 
 marks of it than other publications. Dreary essayists who 
 could not get a hearing in other countries have in the much 
 enduring columns of the quarterlies had their exceeding great 
 reward in being called scholarly and profound by nodding scio- 
 lists whose cue it is to pretend to like being bored. Our quar- 
 terlies are almost the synonyms for dulness and provincial 
 torpidity. The North American, admirable as have been some 
 of their numbers in point of solidity, instructiveness and per- 
 manent value, has suffered in this particular. If it can but 
 gather together a staff of writers who not only know things 
 but know how to say them, it may have a future of national 
 credit and importance. 
 
 Lowell himself seemed to feel how impossible it was 
 for mortal man to live up to the Boston tradition and its 
 palladium. In 1867 he wrote whimsically to Godkin: 
 " 'Tis the curse of an editor that he must be always right. 
 Ah, when I am once out of the North American Review, 
 won't I kick up my heels and be as ignorant as I please ! 
 But beware of omniscience. There is death in that pot, 
 however it be with others." He had said it. The Boston 
 Tradition and its chief embodiment was dying of its own 
 omniscience. Until both consented not to know it all, 
 the mechanics of life might still be present but animation 
 was lacking. And that day was yet distant. But here, 
 for the present, must we leave the sempiternal North 
 American and turn to transitory things. They will come 
 and pass and must be dealt with in their own place, but it 
 will go on for all chapters. 
 
 " Conscious of inability, we dare not say that the 
 flowers of the Polyanthos shall be all indigenous," ran 
 
 I 
 
42 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 the announcement in 1806 of this small and chubby maga- 
 zine of seventy-two pages, which might well have bor- 
 rowed from New York of just a decade before the title of 
 The Lady and Gentleman's Pocket Magazine of Literary 
 and Polite Amusement. It paid much attention to the 
 drama and the local theatre, and reviewed also the New 
 York and Philadelphia companies. It is curious and in- 
 structive to note how eagerly the magazines seized upon 
 the infant theatre as a topic likely to widen their appeal. 
 At the beginning of the century President D wight had 
 written in Travels in New England : " When the first 
 proposal was made to establish a theatre in this town, a 
 considerable number of the inhabitants eagerly engaged 
 in forwarding the design. Accordingly, a theatre was 
 built, and soon after that another. There is reason to 
 believe that the stage is now regarded with very general 
 indifference. One of the theatres has already been taken 
 down, and the other, it is said, is far from being crowded." 
 The same year that saw the Polyanthos bud marked the 
 introduction of the Emerald, which — Containing 
 Sketches of the Manners, Morals, Amusements of the 
 Age — flashed its corrective comment on the stage also. 
 " The drama has become a public amusement of prime im- 
 portance and there can be no doubt that much advantage 
 will accrue from checking its absurdity and rewarding 
 its merit." Thus, though President Dwight was doubt- 
 less stating a fact, doubtless also the wish was father to 
 the deduction that the pulling down of the second theatre 
 indicated that public interest in the stage was waning. 
 Rather was it an illustration of the perennial habit which 
 the theatre shares with the magazine of multiplying faster 
 than the audience. The Cabinet in 181 1 was at times al- 
 most a theatrical magazine, and showed that the exploita- 
 tion of the theatre as a business had increased as well as 
 the public interest. It devoted much space to George 
 Frederic Cooke, who had just arrived after sixteen nights 
 in New York, and took the occasion of some sharp prac- 
 tice in the matter of tickets to scold the Boston theatre 
 
k 
 
 MAKING OF THE BOSTON TRADITION 43 
 
 roundly. " The company is miserably deficient, the 
 orchestra intolerable; the foreground of the stage is 
 hardly illuminated sufficiently to discern the face of a per- 
 former the distance of four boxes from the scene, the 
 smoke that arises from the most execrable oil makes 
 matters worse and * dims the ineffectual fire ' of the side 
 lights. The coldness of the house renders it dangerous 
 for ladies to venture thither at all, much more to appear 
 there dressed with taste, elegance and fashion. Nor are 
 the boxes fit for their reception, being neither washed nor 
 properly swept. The management, taking advantage of 
 the anxiety to see Mr. Cooke, forced the public to pur- 
 chase at an advanced price a ticket for a night he would 
 not perform if they would get places for the nights he 
 did." All the papers seemed to feel from the very start 
 of their theatrical comment that correcting the players 
 was a very ticklish matter ; though it appears to have been 
 genuinely appreciated that criticism of acting — even 
 when the general level of criticism of all kinds was vitu- 
 perative and personal — had fallen to disgraceful depths. 
 There was also some wholesome fear that the truculent 
 tribe would make a scene. Theatrical criticism, wrote 
 J. F. Buckingham, always called down curses on the head 
 of the author. In his magazine, the Ordeal, 1809, he 
 tried to lift the business into a higher zone. " The con- 
 ductors of the Theatrical Department will direct their 
 remarks to the apparent taste of the public and the merit 
 of the compositions rather than the defects of men 
 and women, whose secondary intellect and capricious- 
 ness of passion would reduce the dignity of criticism 
 to the clamorous ebullition of frivolous garrulity." This 
 booming sentence was but the conventional editorial man- 
 ner, for in his Memoirs he wrote quite humanly of his 
 theatrical criticisms in the Polyanthos: " They are all 
 my own. Some of them are severe, but I am not aware 
 that any of them are unjust. Mr. Poe, the father of the 
 late E. A. Poe, took offence at a remark on his wife's 
 acting and called at my house to ' chastise my imper- 
 
44 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 tinence/ but went away without effecting his purpose." 
 Several times during his long and varied career, he notes 
 similar calls and announces, perhaps with pardonable 
 pride, similar results. In spite of several fracases with 
 both lawyers and actors, he went unlicked to a good 
 citizen's grave. 
 
 The announcement of the Ordeal is interesting. 
 
 At a time when the crisis in our public affairs is so alarming 
 as to threaten the very existence of the nation, it may well be 
 enquired of the editors what result they can expect but failure. 
 But the paramount necessity of securing our civil and political 
 existence should unite all honest men in an ardent effort to 
 exhibit to the view of the people the deformities which disgrace 
 the present administration of government, by tearing away the 
 curtain of hypocrisy under which they have long been con- 
 cealed. The strong connection which subsists in all good gov- 
 ernments between politics, religion, and literature inculcates the 
 necessity of a like exposure of their absurdities. The office of 
 the satirist, though ungrateful, is necessary; and satire will be 
 one of the engines which the editors of this publication will 
 employ to further their general design. Articles of serious dis- 
 cussion or general information shall have a general or implied 
 local application. The department of Poetry in every literary 
 journal in the United States has always been meagre of original 
 stamina or support, particularly in respect to satirical effusions. 
 As we shall have in view the censure of the ridiculous, as well 
 as the approbation of the dignified, we shall frequently have 
 recourse to foreign storehouses for weapons to overthrow the 
 adversaries of good sense. We call on our poetical friends to 
 help us scourge the absurd taste which prevails in the poetry 
 of the times. None will be considered as subscribers but such 
 as pay for one volume at the time of subscribing. 
 
 Here is a condensation of Buckingham's simple account 
 of his splendid work for the city of Boston: 
 
 My first attempt to amuse, instruct and edify the public was 
 the Polyanthos. The ungrateful or undiscerning public — not- 
 withstanding my expressed flattery of their taste and confidence 
 in their liberality — suffered it to wither and die at the end of 
 twenty months. Yet the attempt ought to have succeeded. The 
 engravings were not quite equal to those we meet now in maga- 
 zines [1852], but they were the best that could be obtained. 
 The portraits were accompanied with biographical notices. 
 
MAKING OF THE BOSTON TRADITION 45 
 
 The difficulty of obtaining either was discouraging, but I should 
 have persevered if the subscription had been sufficient to pay 
 the cost, without regarding my own labour. The suspension 
 of the Polyanthos was a relief to my labour and an advantage 
 to my pocket; for the publication produced not enough to pay 
 the actual cost of paper, printing and engraving. Considering 
 that it was the first attempt in Boston (if not in the United 
 States) to publish a magazine with a regular series of portraits, 
 I do not feel that there is reason to be ashamed of my labour 
 
 — there have been many reasons to regret that I was foolish 
 and improvident enough to make the experiment. In 181 2 the 
 publication was resumed and two volumes issued of the original 
 size and form. These were succeeded by four volumes, octavo, 
 the contents of similar character. The biography and theat- 
 rical criticism were still for the most part, and unless when 
 otherwise acknowledged, my own. The Ordeal I began in 
 1809. The matter was chiefly political. The whole amount of 
 subscriptions fell short of the expense, and it was discontinued 
 at the end of six months. 
 
 I ventured in 181 7 to issue a prospectus of the New England 
 Galaxy and Masonic Magazine. Freemasonry was then in its 
 palmy days, and this was the first periodical masonic paper. 
 Notwithstanding the confident tone of my prospectus and salu- 
 tatory address, it was not without doubt and misgivings that I 
 proceeded in my undertaking. A wife and six children had no 
 other resource than my labour; and all apparatus was to be got 
 (if got at all) on credit, and of that I had none. Mrs. Susanna 
 Rowson was a highly valued correspondent. I am myself ac- 
 countable for all the trash " From the Shop of Pertinax Period 
 and Co.," and every original article, the authorship of which 
 is not acknowledged or indicated by a signature, was of my own 
 manufacture. The Galaxy, as may be inferred from my ad- 
 dress to its readers on the commencement of the second year, 
 had not met with entire approbation. As the circulation in- 
 creased, endeavours to stir up resentment against its freedom 
 of remark were multiplied. Criticisms on the operations of the 
 missionary societies, certain practices of the banks and brokers, 
 public lecturers and itinerant preachers and instructors, and the 
 proceedings of political caucuses received admonitory and 
 threatening letters, mostly anonymous. In its fourth year the 
 title Masonic Magasine was dropped, as it had proved one ob- 
 stacle in the way of its general circulation, but the interests of 
 the institution were still watched with fidelity. Our success 
 was becoming substantial, when in 1822 a prosecution for libel 
 
 — an occurrence which was to happen again four times, but 
 from which I suffered only anxiety and vexation and some loss 
 
46 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 of money — led to a modification of the common law of libel. 
 Custom once imperiously, even tyrannically, imposed on editors 
 an annual tax in the shape of a New Year's address. The task 
 was always irksome from the difficulty of guiding thought to 
 a new channel and of giving to an old and hackneyed sentiment 
 new forms of expression. In 1828 I sold the Galaxy to Willard 
 Phillips and Theophilus Parsons, having conducted it over 
 eleven years, in order to devote my entire attention to the 
 Boston Daily Courier. 
 
 The New England Magazine is Buckingham's finest 
 monument in the magazine line. It was a publication 
 admirable for its day, and containing for ours not only 
 a wealth of indispensable historical material but a sur- 
 prising amount of good literature. Articles were at first 
 unsigned or signed only with initials. As time went on, 
 some full names appeared ; but the practice does not seem 
 to have justified itself in the editor's mind. Buckingham 
 began the magazine on account of his son, Edward. This 
 young man immediately made sure of the support of 
 several of the popular writers of the day, Edward Everett, 
 Hildreth, Hilliard, Hannah Gould, Frothingham. But 
 the persons who will now attract most attention — says 
 George Willis Cooke in the second New England Maga- 
 zine, which went to join its elder brother many years 
 after — were then known but little or not at all. These 
 were Longfellow, Whittier, Hawthorne, and Holmes. 
 Two papers of the Autocrat appeared here, and the re- 
 sumption of them in the Atlantic several decades later 
 showed only a maturer mellowing of the same method. 
 " The circulation has increased monthly," ran the an- 
 nouncement of the second volume, " though it is yet far 
 from being a source of pecuniary profit. It was intended 
 to embellish the magazine with a series of portraits, and 
 this intention it has been impossible to fulfil. There is 
 some difficulty in procuring original likenesses, and more 
 in obtaining correct copies of originals. The fastidious- 
 ness of individuals in two or three instances has frus- 
 trated our design, but with all these discouragements the 
 design will not be abandoned." The year saw the realisa- 
 
MAKING OF THE BOSTON TRADITION 47 
 
 tion of that hope, but the next year marked the extinction 
 of another. In July, 1833, Edward Buckingham died. 
 An editorial announcement paid him a dignified and 
 touching tribute, and there was also a memorial poem. 
 This is a striking instance of the real bonds which existed 
 between the editors and the subscribers of the early maga- 
 zines. " The New England Magazine was the offspring 
 and the property of Edward Buckingham. In projecting 
 the work, the idea of making money was no part of the 
 consideration. The elder of the editors had previously 
 had sufficient experience to enable him to feel how uncer- 
 tain and delusive are all calculations of that sort. The 
 other needed a chance for improvement in the pleasanter 
 departments of literature. He for whom the magazine 
 was created and by whom it existed is no more. The 
 surviving editor feels that he cannot desert it now.'* 
 
 When he retired from the management, said Park 
 Benjamin, the papers became less general and didactic, 
 with the result of an increase in circulation. The new 
 editors were Dr. S. G. Howe and D. O. Sargent, both 
 of whom had been writing for its columns. Finally, at 
 the request of the proprietors, Park Benjamin, who had 
 been a constant contributor, became sole editor. The 
 Nezv England is the first magazine we have had occasion 
 to chronicle which from the beginning paid its writers. 
 At the end of its first year under the new management, 
 it said to its contributors : " The remuneration which we 
 have been able to extend is not, we are deeply conscious, 
 commensurate with your deserts; but the terms of one 
 dollar by the page of prose and double the sum for poetry, 
 is all that the magazine can afford ; and though lamentable 
 the confession, we must own that even with these rates 
 not one solitary penny is left to reward the editorial 
 labour at the close of the year. With the extension of 
 our subscription list, your compensation shall be increased 
 to two — yes, three dollars a page; and even then we 
 could wish it were more. We will look for our own 
 reward in the consciousness of having done something 
 
48 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 to encourage American literature/* It is to be hoped that 
 Dr. Howe still continued to pay himself for his articles, 
 otherwise he would positively have lost money by assum- 
 ing the editorial chair. All honour to the New England! 
 In this, as in every other aspect of its professional activity, 
 it set from the start a high standard. It is one of the few 
 magazines in the long list whose untimely death may at 
 this distance be genuinely regretted. 
 
 It was not long before Park Benjamin issued his vale- 
 dictory. Although there were to be some years of fluctu- 
 ation in the traffic, he may be called the first in the 
 procession of editors and magazines heading toward 
 New York. 
 
 It could not be expected that a journal affording very limited 
 means of compensation to authors could attain a very high 
 standard of excellence. [Note that no sooner had the practice 
 begun than those rapacious writers started to bargain at once ! 
 Ten years before they had been glad to write for the good of 
 the country and their own reputation.] It has presented from 
 month to month the best papers from writers who were gen- 
 erously content with a very inadequate remuneration. Authors 
 of celebrity, whose books are sure of a popular reward, are 
 vainly solicited to waste their efforts in the pages of a monthly 
 magazine. Could the American publishers afford, like the Eng- 
 lish, to pay handsomely for articles, we should soon see our 
 journals assuming a different character and vying successfully 
 with the best transatlantic productions. As the case stands, it 
 is unfair to make comparisons between the light literature of 
 Great Britain and the United States. There are few educated 
 men in this country who can yield themselves to the pursuits of 
 literature and the liberal studies. With the exception of those 
 whom fortune has placed beyond the necessity of exertion, there 
 are no authors by profession. When a poor man has attempted 
 to live by scholarship, he has been compelled to seek a resource 
 as instructor or lecturer or some such mind-wearying employ- 
 ment. I believe, however, that we shall soon see better days. 
 The worth of literary labour is beginning to be appreciated. 
 The magazine will hereafter be conducted under better aus- 
 pices. It will be united with another work of a similar kind in 
 New York, and be styled in future the American Monthly 
 Magazine. 
 
 This proved to be, it is true, but one of the long, long 
 
MAKING OF THE BOSTON TRADITION 49 
 
 thoughts of a young man; yet, O Boston, Boston, how 
 often in the years to come wert thou to hear from high 
 places that westward the course of empire was taking its 
 way! Now, however, all unconscious of the worst blow 
 fate had in store for her — when the North American, 
 cradled in her bosom, was to prove sharper than a ser- 
 pent's tooth — she had set about, undeafened by the com- 
 mercial clamours of New York and Philadelphia, the 
 making of the Boston tradition. 
 
 Dr. Hale says the people of Boston took an interest in 
 what we should now call idealistic or sentimental enter- 
 prises, such as was not paralleled in what he knew of 
 other cities. In Boston, by a sort of natural law, the 
 prophets of new beliefs and new superstitions made ren- 
 dezvous. This local ferment, eager expectation, and 
 readiness for new things did not characterise Boston at 
 the beginning of the new century, and certainly, he adds, 
 does not characterise it to-day. 
 
 A picturesque place where one who was wise enough might 
 watch some of its currents, was the modest book-shop kept in 
 a private house by Miss Elizabeth Peabody. Somehow or other 
 she and her sisters — afterward Mrs. Horace Mann and Mrs. 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne — opened a " foreign circulating library " 
 in what was the front parlour. I am afraid that the subscrip- 
 tion to the library and the sales of books did not amount to 
 much. But what happened was this: If you had a vacant ten 
 minutes you went in there, for it was just in the middle of the 
 Boston of that time. Who was there that you did not meet 
 who was wide-awake and interested in the future? Perhaps 
 somebody told you that Margaret Fuller's conversation of that 
 week would be on the myth of Juno or the myth of Ceres, and 
 wouldn't you like to come round on Thursday evening? Or 
 somebody said that thus-and-so would be going on in prepara- 
 tion for Brook Farm. If you had that ten minutes and looked 
 in at 12 West Street, you were made sure, if you had not known 
 it before, that this world had a future and that very probably 
 it was true that the kingdom of God was at hand. I think the 
 Brook Farm people all made their regular headquarters at the 
 Foreign Circulating Library. I am afraid that the helter- 
 skelter in which everybody availed himself of its hospitalities 
 did not promote its pecuniary success. 
 
50 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 This last sentence might have been written of the Dial, 
 the publication which this eager idealistic band projected 
 as the fountain-light of all their day. At no time in its 
 four years did its subscription list reach three hundred 
 names. Even the open-handed Miss Peabody, who was 
 quite inured to such behaviour from the Boston intel- 
 lectuals, complained at its being systematically loaned 
 from house to house. Mr. F. B. Sanborn says it died of 
 starvation, chiefly because it was ahead of the times ; but, 
 as Miss Peabody testified that it could have paid expenses 
 with five hundred subscribers, it died evidently of the 
 thrift of its admirers. 
 
 Mr. George Willis Cooke in the Journal of Speculative 
 Philosophy has written the most complete account of it. 
 As early as 1835, he says, Emerson wrote of an " organ 
 of a spiritual philosophy " which was to have been called 
 the Transcendentalist, or the Spiritual Inquirer. He 
 suggested to Carlyle, whom all his American enthusiasts 
 were urging to settle in America, that he take the editor- 
 ship. " We have some confidence," wrote Emerson (not 
 remembering what plain livers were Boston's highest 
 thinkers), "that it could be made to secure him a sup- 
 port." Out of the discussion over the proposed periodical 
 grew several meetings of what came to be known as the 
 Transcendentalist Club, a dozen people who desired a 
 more spiritual interpretation of religion. The talk was 
 large and leisurely and did not grow definite until 1839. 
 Margaret Fuller was selected for editor, and the first issue 
 was set for April, 1840. But only thirty subscribers had 
 appeared by June. Nevertheless, in July the Dial essayed 
 the outer air. The announcement ran : 
 
 We invite the attention of our countrymen to a new design. 
 With some reluctance the present editors of this work have 
 yielded themselves to the wishes of their friends, finding some- 
 thing sacred and not to be withstood in the importunity which 
 urged the production of a Journal in a new spirit. Many sin- 
 cere persons in New England reprobate that rigour of our 
 conventions of religion and education which is turning us to 
 Stone, which renounces hope, which looks only backward, which 
 
MAKING OF THE BOSTON TRADITION 51 
 
 asks only such a future as the past, which suspects improve- 
 ment and holds nothing so much in horror as new views and 
 the dreams of youth. No one can converse much with different 
 classes of society in New England without remarking the 
 progress of a revolution. It is in every form a protest against 
 usage and a search for principles. If our Journal share the 
 impulse of the time, it cannot now prescribe its own course. 
 It cannot foretell in orderly propositions what it shall attempt. 
 Let it be one cheerful, rational voice amid the din of mourners 
 and polemics. 
 
 The editors for the first two years were Ripley and 
 Margaret Fuller. For her it was the principal event in 
 that literary career of hers which somehow did not come 
 off. Charles Taber Congdon thought, like every one else, 
 that she considered her own opinion conclusive and a little 
 resented any attempt to change it; and that she swayed 
 all around her by sheer force of her royal intellect. She 
 had physical peculiarities which were not pleasant, and 
 even Emerson confessed that she repelled him upon first 
 acquaintance. Later, Greeley wrote that he could never 
 agree with his guest about diet or about tea, of which she 
 drank great draughts. But arrogant and opinionated as 
 Margaret was, she wrote Emerson on her withdrawal that 
 his purpose would be to represent his own tastes and make 
 a good periodical, while hers had rather been to let all 
 kinds of people have freedom to say their say for better 
 or for worse. And she proved right ; for Emerson paid 
 far more attention to merely good writing, and for the 
 rest gave a voice only to those reforms he personally 
 sympathised with. The first number, says Cooke, rather 
 disappointed them all: Alcott wrote in his sententious 
 way, " It measures not the meridian but the morning 
 ray — the nations wait for the gnomon that shall mark 
 the broad noon." And later he wrote, " A fit organ for 
 such as myself is not yet, but is to be.*' Emerson con- 
 tented himself with writing to Carlyle : " It is not much 
 but it is better than anything we had." The intention 
 had been to pay Margaret two hundred dollars for the 
 editing, but the money did not materialise. As time went 
 
52 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 on she found that her health would not bear the strain 
 of teaching and editing at the same time; and she saw 
 that it was in vain to hope any longer for a maintenance 
 from the paper, so that she might devote herself to her 
 pen. During the second year, too, the publishers failed ; 
 and it was only with difficulty that the editors secured 
 the small subscription list. Miss Peabody then under- 
 took the publishing, and even wrapped the numbers for 
 mailing. She wrote Emerson that she would first pay 
 the printer and then Margaret Fuller, — if after the latter 
 had received three hundred a year there was any left, she 
 would take the usual commission. But she succeeded, 
 says Cooke, no better than " that rascally firm who were 
 her predecessors." 
 
 Emerson recorded in his diary : *' I must settle the 
 question, it seems, of its life or death. I wish it to live, 
 but I do not wish to be its life, neither do I like to put 
 it in the hands of the Humanity and Reform men, be- 
 cause they trample on letters and poetry; nor in the 
 hands of scholars, for they are dead and dry." Later he 
 wrote Carlyle : " I had not the cruelty to kill it, and so 
 must answer with my own proper care and nursing for its 
 life. Perhaps it is a great folly in me, who have little 
 adroitness in turning out work. Lately at New York, I 
 found it to be to a certain class of men and women an 
 object of tenderness and religion." And yet it could not 
 muster its five hundred subscribers ! So all the thrift was 
 not Bostonian — perhaps this coterie had a neighbourhood 
 copy also. At the beginning of its third year, when 
 Emerson took charge, its subscribers numbered only two 
 hundred and twenty. Emerson's early publisher, James 
 Munroe, offered a better business management than it 
 had hitherto received and smaller expenses by reason of 
 its connection with his own firm ; but as a year's experi- 
 ence demonstrated that the expenses were greater and 
 that the commission for his management would have been 
 large enough even if they had been decreased, Emerson 
 
MAKING OF THE BOSTON TRADITION 53 
 
 managed it himself for two years. It seems to have cost 
 him some hundreds of dollars. 
 
 Emerson as editor was much concerned not only with 
 good literature, but with liveliness and variety. " W. E. 
 Channing's Letters are very agreeable reading," he wrote 
 to Thoreau, " and their wisdom lightened by a vivacity 
 very rare in the Dial. I have a valuable manuscript — 
 a sea-voyage — from a new hand, which is all clear, good 
 sense, and I may make some of Lane's graver sheets give 
 way for this honest story." Thoreau wrote to Emerson : 
 " I think this is a noble number. It perspires thought and 
 feeling. I can speak of it now a little like a foreigner 
 [he had assisted Emerson in editing the paper in 1843] ; 
 and to me it is a long letter of encouragement and reproof, 
 and no doubt it is so to many another in the land. So 
 don't give up the ship." To such as accepted it at all, 
 says Cooke, Transcendentalism came as a gospel; and 
 the periodical was its voice. Emerson wrote Thoreau in 
 1843 : " The New Englander from New Haven angrily 
 affirms that the Did is not as good as the Bible. By all 
 these signs we infer that we make some figure in the 
 literary world though we are not as yet encouraged by a 
 swollen subscription list." In April, 1844, George Wil- 
 liam Curtis wrote to Dwight ; " The Dial stops. Is 
 it not like the going out of a star? Its place was so 
 unique in our literature! All who wrote and sang for 
 it were clothed in white garments ; and the work itself so 
 calm and collected, though springing from the same undis- 
 mayed hope which furthers all our best reforms. But the 
 intellectual worth of the times will be told in other ways, 
 though the Dial no longer reports the progress of the day." 
 
 Curtis had appeared there for the first time ; and so had 
 Thoreau, Dwight, Cranch, and Dana. For all its writers 
 it had been almost the first means of self-expression, 
 whether like Emerson and Alcott they had appeared be- 
 fore or not. The fervour of the writers, their air of 
 having something to say which outsiders could not appre- 
 ciate, their unconcern for facts and literary laws — all 
 
54 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 these things, says Cooke, made it an object of ridicule 
 to those not in sympathy; and even to those who were, 
 for Cranch and James Freeman Clarke in Louisville 
 caricatured the extravagance and naivete of the Orphic 
 Sayings of Alcott, which were often as profound as 
 they were absurd. " How surprised would some of these 
 writers be," says Frothingham's Transcendentalism in 
 New England, " if they should now in their prosaic days 
 read what they wrote under the spell of that fine frenzy ! " 
 Much of his best writing in prose and verse Emerson 
 contributed to its pages ; and almost all its staff afterward 
 won distinction and a few fame seemingly permanent. 
 But in spite of their one hundred and thirty-six pages, 
 Carlyle thought the numbers had too little body; and 
 Brownson owned in the Boston Quarterly, while praising 
 it highly, that it lacked manliness ; and the Philistine press 
 called it a chaos of obscurity and nonsense, while the 
 religious press scented atheism. Perhaps Furness said 
 the best thing about it when he wrote to Emerson in 
 1852 : "I am attracted and repelled by all this talk and 
 speculation about things unseen and unseeable. How 
 continually does it degenerate into a wisdom of words, 
 and how hard it is to keep humble and self -forgetting. 
 It is a favourite idea of mine that the all-ministering 
 Providence gives us these speculations and theology and 
 religious forms, etc., etc., to occupy us and divert our 
 attention from the work going on within us, which our 
 self-conceit, if it meddles with it, is sure to spoil; just 
 as we rattle a bunch of keys before a baby when it is 
 being vaccinated." 
 
 Certainly, the Dial moved a large number of rare-fibred 
 spirits to express themselves in intangible words, and per- 
 haps one should be as philosophical about Transcendenta- 
 lism as David Harum was about fleas — a certain amount 
 is good for a dog, to keep him from brooding on the fact 
 that he is a dog. There is no knowing how much of his 
 fine mechanism Emerson would have meddled with other- 
 wise. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 BAKED BEANS AND BROWN BREAD 
 
 Boston and even Boston periodicals, however, were 
 engaged in other things beside increasing her air-chambers 
 for the production of a stentorian voice. Most Boston- 
 ians were employed in the more profitable business of 
 making their living, and among its limited number of 
 readers most were more concerned with enlivening their 
 own existence than with what immortal thoughts they 
 might bequeath to posterity. 
 
 Boston and New England, which later admitted her 
 to be the centre she already considered herself, had 
 achieved about twenty-six magazines in the eighteenth 
 century, besides some so-called magazines which were in 
 reality only newspapers. Of the magazines, three went 
 down (if indeed they ever set sail beyond the prospectus) 
 without leaving so much as a ripple; of those with a 
 known voyage, thirteen hailed from Boston, one each 
 from Worcester, New Haven, Concord, N. H., Benning- 
 ton, Rutland, Fairhaven, Vt., and two from Hartford. 
 Three were going at once in 1743, '86, '95, '96; two at 
 once in 1744, '87, '89, '92, '93, '94, and 1800. Both 
 Hartford and New Haven had confident expectations of 
 becoming hubs themselves. It is perhaps unlikely that 
 the other small towns had such glorified visions. But 
 in those days of uncertain and impeded communication, 
 they saw no reason why they should transport by stage- 
 coach all of their divine draught from the fountain-head. 
 Why not be their own Rebeccas and dip from their native 
 well? "A number of gentlemen" of Middlebury, Ver- 
 mont, published 181 2-18 17, a Literary and Philosophical 
 Repertory. Doubtless, too, it was not to home-grown 
 
 55 
 
56 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 vigour alone that we owe some of these magazines. Some 
 of their editors must have pioneered from Boston, bearing 
 their precious ointment along with their household goods. 
 Although he had little goods besides his youthful hose 
 well-saved, such a man was Joseph Dennie. He helped 
 to found at Walpole, New Hampshire, the Farmer's 
 Museum, a magazine which soon became so popular that 
 the little town had to provide it with a mail bag all to 
 itself, to start it on its lengthy journey as far as Nova 
 Scotia one way and Georgia the other. Dennie, born 
 in 1768, had left Boston because the law could not sup- 
 port him. *' There we behold a shoal of junior lawyers 
 keeping vacant offices,'* said he, " mere barber-shops 
 for chat which are never darkened by the shadow of 
 clients, — who must seek a precarious support from the 
 gaming table or else in mere desperation marry some girl 
 of fortune and be carried home by her to a father's house. 
 By accurate calculation I can live here one-third cheaper 
 than in any part of Massachusetts, and men of learning 
 in these wilds are rare. I cannot be respected in Boston 
 or its environs while I am poor and while that poverty 
 obliges me to wear a threadbare coat. Much stress is 
 laid there on externals, and unless the guinea is expended 
 at the tavern, unless the glossy vest is worn, characters 
 however amiable and knowing are sedulously shunned." 
 Nevertheless, he found that even in New Hampshire the 
 farmers lived more peacably than he could wish or settled 
 their own disputes. He drifted into the church, which 
 had been enchanted with his city accents and asked him 
 to read the service and a sermon for them on Sunday, 
 pledging him eighty pounds a year and to increase his 
 salary for ten years until it was doubled. But, thus 
 deflected for a moment, he was still intent on his early 
 ambition to practise and to write. " The revenues of the 
 Church in these infant Republics," he wrote, " are too 
 scanty to allure from an avowedly lucrative profession " 
 — which was quibbling, of course, not scribbHng — "a 
 young man whose ambition is daring." But while he 
 
BAKED BEANS AND BROWN BREAD 57 
 
 was elocutionising on Sunday to the delighted rustics, he 
 was gaining some literary reputation also ; and at last he 
 collected his week-day diversions together and went to 
 Boston to see if he could dispose of them. There he 
 donned at once the glossy vest from which he had been 
 divorced over long for a youngster of his elegant tastes, 
 and immediately demonstrated that he had rightly guessed 
 the passport to Boston society. 
 
 A publisher, crafty in other ways it turned out, seeing 
 him the feasted darling of fashion, lured him to remain 
 and start a magazine on half profits. It was represented 
 that his share would be one hundred and fifty pounds a 
 year. The magazine was the Tablet (1795), a miscel- 
 laneous paper devoted to Belles Lettres, three dollars per 
 annum. " The favourite child," said Dennie, " after buf- 
 feting the billows of adverse fortune for thirteen short 
 weeks, sickened and died. If I had been in possession of 
 property, neither the waywardness of. the times nor the 
 dulness of the Bostonians would have repulsed the growth 
 of my miscellany" — a sentence which might have been 
 passed by Spectator itself. But the child had lived long 
 enough to father the man, and he determined that litera- 
 ture should be his calling. Once more casting aside his 
 brocaded vest, he set out for vestless parts. " In Walpole 
 there was a press conducted by a young man, and I was 
 determined to convince him that my pen could be useful. 
 Without saying a syllable respecting a stipend, I gave him 
 an essay on Wine and New Wine and called it the Lay 
 Preacher. It had been objected to my earliest composi- 
 tions that they were sprightly rather than moral. Ac- 
 cordingly, I thought I would exhibit truths in a plain dress 
 to the common people." The Farmer's Weekly Museum 
 was the paper, and he soon became such a successful editor 
 of it that to its title was added the Lay Preacher's Gazette. 
 So much attention did he attract to it that it was enabled 
 to publish more original literary compositions than any 
 magazine in the United States, and indeed was, in the 
 number of them, not equalled for a great many years to 
 
58 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 come. The publisher of Walpole proved more able to 
 keep his word than the publisher of Boston, and paid him 
 the extraordinary sum (in cold cash) of one hundred 
 and ten pounds a year. This, combined with the ninety 
 pounds which he picked up practising law, permitted him 
 to don the glossy waistcoat again, before the ravished eyes 
 of the Walpole farmers, who were as much charmed with 
 his sartorial graces as had been the Charlestonian rustics 
 with his elocution. It is sad to note, however, that he 
 flowered seemingly at the expense of his root, for the 
 publisher in a year or so went bankrupt. Isaiah Thomas 
 bought the paper and retained Dennie as editor on the 
 somewhat curtailed wardrobe of four hundred dollars 
 a year. The paper is an excellent specimen of the tedious 
 rhetorical juggling which was once the ideal of our early 
 magazines of a certain type and which is now considered 
 futile by all save college pegasuses stretching their wings. 
 Pieces of " chaste humour " and " the choicest efforts 
 of the American Muse," and a department Colon and 
 Spondee were equally characteristic with the essays of 
 the Lay Preacher. They made up the greatest bid for 
 literary fame ever put forward by any New Hampshire 
 village; and while Dennie remained there, Philadelphia 
 and New York and Baltimore came knocking at its door, 
 all applicants for the brilliant editor who was hiding the 
 bushel under his candle. 
 
 Boston had been for a quarter of a century relaxing 
 its ascetic ideas, as became a growing port. Jean Pierre 
 Brissot in 1788, had been somewhat surprised not to find 
 it so triste as he had expected, and as for progressiveness 
 it compared very favourably with cities at home. " You 
 no longer meet here that Presbyterian austerity which 
 interdicted all pleasures, even that of walking. Music, 
 which their teachers formerly prescribed as a diabolic 
 art, begins to make part of their education ; in some houses 
 you hear the piano-forte. They publish a magazine here, 
 though the number of gazettes is very considerable. The 
 multiplicity of gazettes proves the activity of commerce 
 
BAKED BEANS AND BROWN BREAD 59 
 
 and the taste for politics and news. Yet commerce occu- 
 pies all their ideas and absorbs all their speculations. 
 Thus you find few estimable works and few authors. 
 The expense of the first volume of the Memoirs of the 
 Academy of this town is not yet recovered; it is two 
 years since it appeared. You may judge that the arts, 
 except those that respect navigation, do not receive much 
 encouragement here. Let us not blame the Bostonians; 
 they think of the useful before procuring to themselves 
 the agreeable. Their streets are well illuminated at 
 night; while many ancient cities of Europe containing 
 proud monuments of art have never thought of preventing 
 the fatal effects of nocturnal darkness." 
 
 At the beginning of the nineteenth century, President 
 Dwight pronounced, in his unimpetuous accents, that 
 Boston was in many ways a superior town. " This is 
 the only large town within my knowledge in which schools 
 have been formed into a system. The number of private 
 schools is great. The literary societies are the American 
 Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Antiquarian 
 Society, Massachusetts Historical, Boston Literary Soci- 
 ety, Massachusetts Agricultural, Boston Athenaeum. The 
 Boston Style is a phrase proverbially used throughout a 
 considerable part of this country to denote a florid, pom- 
 pous manner of writing, and has been thought by persons 
 at a distance to be the predominant Style of this region. 
 It cannot be denied that several publications written in 
 this manner have issued from the press here, and for a 
 time been much celebrated. Still it has never been true 
 that this mode of writing was either general in this town 
 or adopted by men of superior talents. The people in 
 this town are distinguished by their attachment to litera- 
 ture. Their pecuniary contributions to this object have 
 exceeded those of any city in this American Union. 
 There are proportionately many more liberally educated 
 men here than in New York, and far more than in any 
 other town in America." 
 
 Yet Philadelphia loudly pooh-poohed such claims. 
 
6o THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 The prospectus of a magazine in 1800 moved a gentleman 
 of Philadelphia to utter this withering paragraph. " Lit- 
 erary projects have almost always proved abortive in 
 Boston. Many attempts have been made to establish 
 periodical works in that small town; but miscellaneous 
 readers ask in vain for a magazine or a review or a literary 
 journal in the capital of New England. The poverty of 
 the inhabitants is the probable cause of the deficiency. 
 But the hopes of authors like the desires of lovers are 
 not easily extinguished ; and a Mr. Hawkins, in the san- 
 guine spirit of a projector, adventures to expose himself 
 in the cold clemency of a commercial port. He proposes 
 the publication of a Monthly Magazine entitled the 
 Columbian Phenix, But from the dust and ashes 
 of its predecessor this Columbian Soarer will hardly 
 arise. The Bostonians will probably prefer as usual, 
 the perusal of some of their meagre and time-serving 
 newspapers, or rather that informing and witting work 
 called an advertisement." 
 
 The spiteful prediction proved true. The Columbian 
 Phenix and Boston Review, Forming a Compendium of 
 the Present State of Society, lived through one subscrip- 
 tion, and the editor did not call upon his personal friends 
 for another. These, he said, had been largely responsible 
 for the first, and the man of business and the miscel- 
 laneous reader whom he had hoped to attract never came. 
 Nevertheless, this faraway Mr. Hawkins must have pur- 
 sued his even tenor philosophically. He announced that 
 he had lived long enough to know that the editor who does 
 not promote the ambitions of individuals, flatter their 
 pride and avarice or gratify their hate, finds in general 
 but scanty support; and experience had shown him that 
 a man to derive pecuniary reward from his talents must 
 pamper the vices and follies of mankind. But he had — 
 whether for publication or otherwise — none of the con- 
 tempt for Boston which his brother editor in Philadel- 
 phia had, whether professionally or otherwise. The 
 reason why works of taste were so little supported in 
 
BAKED BEANS AND BROWN BREAD 6i 
 
 America, was not due to poverty or stupidity but to cir- 
 cumstances peculiar to a young, growing nation. Yet 
 there is a critical period between infancy and manhood 
 in nations as well as individuals. ** Whatever we have 
 done in agriculture, in commerce, in politics, and in war ; 
 in the belles-lettres we have not yet passed this period. 
 Literature, well or ill-conducted, is the great engine by 
 which all civilised states must ultimately be supported or 
 overthrown." 
 
 The New England Quarterly (1802) echoed and re- 
 inforced this last statement. In a republic ignorance is 
 the worst of evils. New England had now stored up a 
 great deal of fat and it was high time she began to live 
 upon it. " Although the literary periodicals which have 
 lately issued from the Boston presses have been from 
 various causes discontinued, the editors conceive that the 
 inhabitants of New England are willing and able to sup- 
 port a magazine. Massachusetts and the neighbouring 
 states do not compose the Boeotia of America. What 
 has prevented literary publications from receiving merited 
 encouragement is not the dulness of the Public but its 
 pursuits and habits. Business and Politics have en- 
 grossed most of their time; and during an interesting 
 European War in which each of the belligerent parties 
 have wanted the commercial assistance of our neutral 
 and fertile nation and each has had its partisans among 
 our citizens, it could not be expected that the silent charms 
 of literature would attract the attention of our merchants 
 and politicians. The late war in Europe while it has 
 drawn our attention from scientific pursuits has brought 
 sufficient affluence into our country, to enable it to rise 
 to a higher grade in the scale of national literature. But 
 is New England to be engaged solely in agriculture and 
 commerce ? Are we to resemble Thebans and Dutchmen ? 
 Let it not be said that New England which is superior to 
 other parts of the United States in other points of com- 
 parison, is inferior in the most honourable respect, in 
 literature and arts and the sciences/' 
 
62 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 During the three years run of the Boston Weekly 
 Magazine begun in 1802, it was honoured, says the vale- 
 dictory, " by upwards of fourteen thousand subscribers of 
 the most respectable characters in town and in all parts 
 of the country." There, the business office appears to 
 have been unusually active. The first number was sent 
 out to the inhabitants of Boston gratis, with the announce- 
 ment that the second would be delivered only to those 
 who " have signified a desire to encourage this infant 
 establishment " at a subscription price of two dollars per 
 annum. As if conscious that already was gathering in 
 the town that body of august voices which, practising its 
 vocalisation in the Anthology, was finally to trumpet its 
 basso prof undo in the North American, it sought while 
 there was yet time to cultivate the less resounding chords. 
 
 The magazine's motto was a blithe one, " To Soar aloft 
 on fancy's wing, and bathe in Heliconia's Spring; Cull 
 every flower with careful hand, and strew them o'er our 
 native land." This challenge of the Elysian Fields to 
 high Olympus was again flashed by the Emerald in 1806. 
 For only two years did this periodical protest the growing 
 gravity of the Anthology. It announced itself as Con- 
 taining Sketches of the Manners, Morals and Amusements 
 of the Age. We think the town, it said, wants to be 
 weeded of over-grown absurdity and folly and extrava- 
 gance; and like all such culturists from Spectator days 
 down, it took care not to weed too unremittingly lest it 
 find its occupation gone. One of its editorials in 1807 
 is of interest as showing that the making of magazines 
 remained for many years the chief artistic activity of 
 America. " Architecture is in some little degree ad- 
 vanced, but painting scarcely finds an amateur, and sculp- 
 ture is almost unknown. Yet it is not correct to attribute 
 an entire disregard to literature to the citizens of the 
 United States. Though the national literary character 
 stands not on the magnitude of individual exertion, it 
 points to the community at large for that general good 
 sense and correct information which gives respectability 
 
BAKED BEANS AND BROWN BREAD 63 
 
 to all and eminence only to a few. It is in conformity 
 with general sentiments that periodical publications, with 
 various merits and success, have been numerous in the 
 United States." Indeed, but for these the country might 
 have been accused of that insensibility to literary appeal 
 which editors were always uneasily denying — more in 
 the hopeful salutatory, it is true, than in bidding farewell 
 to their hardly shepherded flock. " Cold neglect has so 
 frequently chilled the aroma of literary ambition," said 
 the Cabinet, A Repository of Polite Literature, in 181 1, 
 " that you may well ask why is another publication an- 
 nounced in Boston.^' This periodical devoted much space 
 to the drama, and sought to elevate it into a fashionable 
 function, freed from vulgarity. Of the eighteen maga- 
 zines listed by Isaiah Thomas in 18 10, seven are of 
 Boston, and of these two are religious. The rest with 
 the exception of the Anthology and the Bibliotheqiie Por- 
 traitive are of a lighter nature — the Omnium Gatherum, 
 the Mirror, and Something. The names of the last three 
 are sufficiently indicative of the casual quality of their 
 contents. 
 
 Boston literary producers seem to have been grouped 
 into two camps, the High-brows and the Low. The activ- 
 ities of the former were absorbed by the Anthology 
 and the religious periodicals. The Anthology Club was 
 composed of Liberal Congregationalists who were on the 
 road to Unitarianism, and of equally high-thinking lay- 
 men; and it was their magazine which focused, if it did 
 not establish, the close Boston connection between re- 
 ligious and critical literature which linked the two in 
 Boston periodicals for more than half a century. This, 
 with the historical and scientific spirits who had begun 
 early to group themselves into societies, formed the basis 
 for that air of self-conscious distinction which even at 
 the beginning of the century had become known as the 
 Boston culture. In 1876, Holmes wrote to Lowell: 
 ** We Boston people are so bright and wide-awake and 
 have really been so much in advance of our fellow-bar- 
 
64 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 barians with our Monthly Anthologies and "Atlantic 
 Monthlies and North American Reviews, that we have 
 been in danger of thinking our local scale was the abso- 
 lute one of excellence — forgetting that 212 Fahrenheit 
 is but 100 Centigrade.'^ But if Lowell, himself, stood 
 in some need of the roguish warning in 1876, no brahmin 
 in the first decade of the century ever dreamed of meas- 
 uring either hot air or cold by any other than the local 
 thermometer. Boston, too, was naturally the place where 
 the young plants from the Harvard nursery across the 
 river, first unfolded their green shoots to the atmosphere 
 of the outer world. It was an atmosphere scarcely less 
 artificial than the academic one — the college youth 
 merely continued across the Charles their philosophic and 
 bookish discussions and their college ideals and pedantic 
 playfulness, made scarcely aware in their passage that 
 they had crossed a rubicon. 
 
 In 1820, from February to July, some of these youths 
 printed in Boston an elegant little magazine called the 
 Club-Room. It was a debonnair pamphlet decidedly 
 composed for the cognoscenti. Among those who wrote 
 its unsigned articles were Prescott, Edward Everett, War- 
 ren, Gardiner, Parsons, Dexter, Ware. It was Prescott 
 who had suggested making into a periodical the papers 
 which had been read at their club. The price of this 
 elegant little pamphlet was forty-five cents. Its culture 
 was fairly represented by one of its moments of stately 
 unbending — a Latin poem entitled Julietta-Romeoni 
 and the introduction which went with it. " Club begs to 
 apologise to his fair readers for putting on these pedantic 
 airs and assures them he deliberated no less than five 
 minutes upon the expediency of talking Latin or of leaving 
 the pages wholly blank. He was finally determined by 
 the consideration, that to the greater part of the sex, one 
 would be quite as acceptable as the other — while to those 
 young ladies in training for Blue-Stockings, the former 
 would be of manifest advantage as a finish to their educa- 
 
BAKED BEANS AND BROWN BREAD 65 
 
 tion in teaching them to construe Latin and compose 
 love-letters at the same time." 
 
 Longfellow was one of those youths who was writing 
 for the magazines even while at college. The American 
 Monthly of Philadelphia had printed some of his prose 
 and promised him an honorarium which he never got. 
 He turned hopefully to an editor nearer home — Theo- 
 philus Parsons, who conducted the semi-monthly United 
 States Literary Gazette begun in April, 1824 — but appar- 
 ently he was not, for his earlier contributions, even 
 promised an honorarium (word redolent of a high-class 
 distinction, conveying the delicate discrimination genteel 
 ladies observe between boarders and paying guests!). 
 He seems to have published several poems there before 
 he took the bull by the horns when he sent another batch. 
 Then Parsons wrote him : " In reply to the question 
 attached to them, I can only say that almost all the poetry 
 we print is sent us gratis, and that we have no general 
 rule or measure of repayment. But the beauty of your 
 poetry makes me wish to obtain your regular aid. Would 
 you be kind enough to let me know what mode or amount 
 of compensation you desire? For the prose we publish 
 we pay one dollar a column. Perhaps the best course 
 will be for you to supply me for a few numbers with both 
 prose and poetry. For all that is used you shall receive 
 a compensation which you shall think adequate. . . . The 
 North American Review does not seek for novelties so 
 much as a Gazette must." The next year, the new editor, 
 Mr. Carter, begged with due compliments a continuance 
 of contributions and hoped at no distant day to adopt 
 the Edinburgh Review price of a guinea a page, and 
 promised to " be as agreeable as possible." He said he 
 had made arrangements with Mr. Percival to contribute 
 a stated amount regularly, " if he does not disappoint us 
 as poets sometimes do. We shall then bring the two 
 American poets, as some of the newspapers call Bryant 
 and Percival, side by side. I think you had better let us 
 
66 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 have three American poets." It is interesting to observe 
 that, on the scale of Longfellow's necessary expenditure 
 at college, a remuneration of one dollar a close column 
 from a semi-monthly which wanted him to write regu- 
 larly, was not bad. In 1825, the Library of Harvard 
 College cost the students just that sum per quarter, room- 
 rent was from thirty to fifty dollars a year, and board 
 from two to three dollars a week — his total expenses 
 for one year, he said, could be fairly calculated at one 
 hundred and eighty-four dollars. Thus, had the pub- 
 lishers of the Literary Gazette made the same arrange- 
 ment with him as with Bryant, he could more than have 
 paid his way through the college year. Bryant had told 
 Judge Parsons, when asked to name the remuneration 
 he expected, that he wanted two dollars apiece for his 
 poems ; but Cummings and Hilliard so appreciated him as 
 a contributor, that they offered him two hundred dollars 
 a year for an average of one hundred lines a month. 
 (His profits on his first book were not quite fifteen dol- 
 lars!) The periodical took Bryant's entire output during 
 his most prolific years, says Godwin. Never before had 
 so many good poems been contributed to one periodical 
 in so limited a space of time, he goes on, and their 
 poetry attracted so much attention that a volume was 
 made of it, which the North American Review pro- 
 nounced a signal event in our literary history. From 
 1823 to 1825 continued the United States Literary 
 Gazette, its terms five dollars a year. It aimed to be 
 bright and good but not too much so for human nature's 
 semi-monthly partaking. It said, with a side glance at 
 the North American Reviezv: *' Our numbers shall not 
 be filled with literary gossip, or articles which are not 
 to be understood and appreciated but with a degree of 
 labour almost equal to that required for their composition. 
 We have long seen and felt the need of such a work. We 
 shall try to communicate a distinct and accurate impres- 
 sion of the literary and intellectual condition and progress 
 of this country. No existing journal performs the uses 
 
BAKED BEANS AND BROWN BREAD 67 
 
 of a General Review ; it will be a leading principle of the 
 Gazette to maintain this character, and to make it strictly 
 national/' 
 
 This was another of the attempts to secure a place be- 
 tween the larger Reviews and the more ephemeral produc- 
 tions of the day, which were for many years to engage 
 vainly the efforts of those Bostonians who wanted to 
 hear what was going on in the intellectual world without 
 being plunged anew, at the critical mention of every book, 
 into multitudinous seas of words upon the development 
 of the subject from the dawn of history or into the evolu- 
 tion of civilisation in general and of the subject often 
 not even in particular. If one looked for a criticism of 
 a new work in the North American, he found mostly 
 prolegomena and olla podrida; and a word to the wise 
 was considered insufficient. Even the dignified and com- 
 petent Journal of Philosophy and the Arts (1823-24), 
 though far less exhibitionistic, had made little attempt to 
 meet the more mundane half way. Nor did it specialise 
 on literature. Its function was to show the progress of 
 discovery in the sciences and the fine and useful arts in 
 Europe and America. It hoped, in beginning on the 
 second volume, that as Boston had herself almost met 
 the expenses of the first, it might attract in the future 
 some attention at a distance, although it had hitherto 
 failed to do so. The greater Boston had not yet begun, 
 however, and a magazine with so solid an appeal did 
 not secure beyond her borders the support it had hoped. 
 More successful in this respect, was the Boston Monthly, 
 begun the following year, 1825 ; but the brahmins, always 
 distrustful of mere entertainment however high, may 
 have slighted it at home, for it soon disappeared. Its 
 announcement was attractive; it sought to be a vehicle 
 chiefly for the diffusion of the products of our own 
 minds. " We warn away those who cannot relish home- 
 made bread and good roast beef, now and then a piece 
 of stall-fed, with a plumb-pudding ornamented with a 
 fresh plucked rose. On the table will be found no 
 
68 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 stewed lampyres, fried mushrooms, fricasseed coots and 
 wild fowl whose exquisite flavour arises from the process 
 of decay. We wall not be as grave as Quakers, but among 
 our correspondents shall number no Lady Snearwells. 
 Being long easier to purchase literature than to raise 
 or manufacture it, we became acquainted with every little 
 tell-tale writer of England while our own native talent 
 was neglected. It requires only the genial ray of a just 
 and liberal patronage to bring it forth and make it flourish. 
 But as to our own immediate affairs — it must be dis- 
 tinctly understood that we cannot pursue our own labours 
 without a prompt remuneration for them; and the ex- 
 penses of our establishment are not trivial. Our principal 
 reliance for the first year was on Boston; but we are 
 happy to state we have found numerous friends through- 
 out the Commonwealth. We must pay a passing compli- 
 ment to Maine, who has been generous in her subscrip- 
 tions and liberal in her communications. She has a 
 reading community." 
 
 There are several allusions in the magazines of the 
 decade to the unexpected intellectual awakening of Maine. 
 One speculates if it were symptomatic of the growing 
 taste for the forbidden fruits of another unpuritanical 
 pursuit. Samuel Longfellow notes in the life of his 
 brother that in 1820 the natives of Portland exhibited 
 that dexterity in evading prohibitions for which they have 
 since become famous. Theatrical performances being 
 against the law, the sporting element of the staid little 
 town achieved a masterpiece worthy of the generation 
 which had been brought up on the canny slogan Trust 
 in God but keep your powder dry. At a concert of 
 vocal and instrumental music, there were played between 
 the parts gratis, a three act play called The Point of 
 Honor, and the three act farce Katherine and Petru- 
 chio. Boston, herself, — so soon to form the avuncular 
 habit of escorting the younger generation to the circus 
 for educational purposes merely — was to establish its 
 best-supported theatre by a similar device, and lure the 
 
BAKED BEANS AND BROWN BREAD 69 
 
 devout beyond the stuffed birds of the spacious lobby of 
 the Boston Museum into the perilous precincts beyond. 
 There are people still alive whose parents took them as 
 children to the Museum when they would never have 
 dreamed of going to any other theatre from which the 
 devil had not been exorcised. Stuffy vestibule of the 
 Boston Museum, with your mouldy and dingy cases of 
 commonplace curios to be encountered in many a shop 
 window in the streets outside, what a symbol of the pleas- 
 ing hypocrisies of Puritanism you lived to become! 
 Boston culture was many years, however, in hitting upon 
 some justification for reading merely for pleasure. For 
 many years no magazine tainted with mere entertainment 
 could gain a permanent foothold in Boston. Gazettes 
 might so disport themselves without sin, but a monthly 
 journal, never ! Neither culture nor religious controversy 
 left her reading public any time for such low pursuits; 
 and both were to look askance — the former ruefully and 
 the latter bitterly — upon the sprightly Dr. Holmes, when 
 ten years later he frittered away talents which might have 
 been directed to the good of .humanity in his two instal- 
 ments of the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table for the 
 New England. Holmes, securely set within the circle of 
 the elect, might have leavened Boston in spite of herself, 
 but for his long absence from the periodical field. In 
 1834 he wrote to John Sargent from Paris that his medi- 
 cal studies prevented him from contributing to the maga- 
 zine. To another he wrote, " I have entirely relinquished 
 the business of writing for journals." A half dozen 
 years after he left college, he practically laid down his 
 pen. When he took it up again for the Atlantic Monthly, 
 he found that Boston had got rid of enough of its literary 
 snobbishness to treat entertaining trifles with tolerance, 
 but he still encountered opposition from the religious 
 branch of cultured readers, who accused him of lending 
 a lofty name to vicious relaxations of thought. 
 
 But even to Holmes in his youthful days, there clung 
 some of the Boston notion of showy swagger to any 
 
70 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 public print which chattered brightly about matters 
 frankly unedifying. In 1828 he wrote : " I have seen and 
 read a good many numbers of the Yankee, and certainly 
 it is an entertaining paper. * I ' is a man of some talent 
 but you cannot deny that he is one of the most egotistical, 
 impudent, conceited fellows that ever lived. Indeed, I 
 believe that his paper owes half its popularity to the 
 singular audacity and effrontery of its editor." How 
 were young men to maintain the well-known Boston su- 
 premacy if they were not nurtured on deep draughts of 
 ambrosia? Had the adolescent Holmes never been con- 
 vinced of the Boston supremacy at home, he blushingly 
 owned it abroad. From Paris in 1834, he wrote, " If 
 I should class the young men who have been out here from 
 our three great cities, I should say that I consider that 
 Boston went first, Philadelphia second, and after a long, 
 long interval comes limping in New York." Yet already 
 had the Boston Literary Gazette, praised though it had 
 been by the North American, been obliged to amalgamate 
 with the New York Literary Gazette in order to exist; 
 and soon there were to be amalgamations which, as in 
 the New England itself, even removed the editorial chair 
 from the sacred city. The Nevu England, little dreaming 
 that its day of ignominy was already fixed, conceded the 
 superior mountain peaks of the Knickerbocker school, 
 but serenely maintained that in Boston a higher level of 
 culture w.as diffused than elsewhere to be found in 
 America. This was probably true for the scanty audience 
 of her magazines and the general average of their contri- 
 butions; and had not most of her brightest minds been 
 feverishly engaged in religious controversy, there would 
 probably have been much less disparity in the mountain 
 ranges also. But souls desperately engaged amid many 
 claimants in reading their title clear to heavenly man- 
 sions, had little eyes for the innocent brightness of the 
 new-born day. Thus, in spite of many attempts to pro- 
 duce a lighter and more miscellaneous journal, the North 
 American still remained the only lasting monument of a 
 
BAKED BEANS AND BROWN BREAD 71 
 
 strictly literary type ; and though Boston was endearingly 
 termed the Literary Emporium by fond youngsters, it 
 bought precious Httle of their wares. 
 
 Meantime, too, the meagre audience for a less exalted 
 literature was lessened by a succession of reprint periodi- 
 cals. The Atheneum or Spirit of the English Magazines, 
 1825, published forty pages twice a month. The reprint 
 magazines then and later could always make out a good 
 case for themselves. " The articles of the Atheneum are 
 not the first feeble efforts of young and inexperienced 
 writers but are by men of cultivated intellect. Although, 
 therefore, we cannot recommend our work to public 
 patronage as a production of American writers and on 
 that ground claim a support from the patriotism of the 
 community, we can recommend it as a production of 
 writers whose location in another part of the world is 
 not a sufficient objection to their writings as long as they 
 possess a quality of such paramount importance as that 
 of intrinsic merit. We are by no means unfavourable 
 to * the encouraging and patronising of American genius ' 
 but we do not think in order to do this it is necessary to 
 banish from the country all except American works." 
 This magazine ran for four years, and was succeeded by 
 the Banished Briton and Neptunian, by the Anglo-Ameri- 
 can, and by other reprints which in spite of their wide 
 choice in material and its inexpensiveness, could not 
 maintain themselves until in 1844, E. Littell started the 
 Living Age, which struck an enduring root. Its fruitage 
 upon our library shelves occupies more space than any 
 other magazine but the North American. 
 
 These magazines provoked indignant though imper- 
 sonal rejoinders from the " patriotic " periodicals ; but 
 they could afford the luxury of dignified silence as they 
 saw the home-born products struggle each through a 
 year or two and die at last of starvation. Some publica- 
 tions sought to take the middle ground which Harpers 
 held so successfully two decades later and which both 
 the Atlantic and the Century began to take but immedi- 
 
^2 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 ately forsook as no longer necessary to their success. 
 They tried to maintain an American character while avail- 
 ing themselves of English material. Interesting for this 
 reason and others, is the announcement of the American 
 Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge, m 
 1834. " During the last few years the increase and multi- 
 plication of magazines and periodicals of every character 
 has been without a parallel. Yet some of them are 
 strikingly defective in one respect — the subjects of which 
 they treat are almost exclusively of foreign growth, and 
 on that account alone, of little or no value to nine-tenths 
 of their readers. The object of the American Magazine 
 shall be to correct this defect and describe subjects, 
 scenes, places, and persons to be found in our own fine 
 and native country. It has appeared to us strange that 
 such a work has not been heretofore undertaken. We 
 shall not exclude anything valuable of European origin, 
 but the work shall be professedly on American subjects. 
 The engravings with which the work shall be embellished 
 will be of the first order. Several of the gentlemen in- 
 terested in the magazine are themselves engravers and 
 have contributed in no small degree to bring that beautiful 
 though long-neglected art to the high point of perfection 
 which it has attained in this country." The American 
 was profusely illustrated, to be sure, but with architectural 
 and zoological and statistical subjects rather than with 
 those of artistic intention; yet it very well fulfilled its 
 purpose to present native topics and is a mine of interest- 
 ing material. 
 
 With the American Monthly, 1829, entered into Boston 
 life one of our most showy literary figures and one who 
 remained for fifteen years the most popular in America, 
 and was until his death our best-paid magazinist. 
 " When the picturesque Willis was a young and already 
 famous man," says Holmes, " he was something between 
 a remembrance of Count D'Orsay and an anticipation of 
 Oscar Wilde. Lowell was a schoolboy, Emerson unheard 
 of, Longfellow not yet conspicuous, and Whittier just 
 
BAKED BEANS AND BROWN BREAD 73 
 
 beginning to make his way against writers better edu- 
 cated." Not so dashing and splendid a personality as he 
 was shortly to become after he had received the London 
 hall-mark, young Willis was still quite a blade when he 
 set up an editorial chair in Boston just two years after 
 his sober father had begun there that most successful 
 and long-lived of young people's periodicals, the Youth's 
 Companion. From boyhood he had been successful. A 
 classmate of his at New Haven, quotes Mr. H. A. Beers 
 in his Life, testifies that he had taken while at college 
 many prizes in outside literary competitions. " It was 
 then customary for the editors of weekly and monthly 
 periodicals who ordinarily paid their contributors nothing, 
 to stimulate Columbia's infant muse by an annual burst 
 of generosity in the shape of a prize for the best poem 
 they had printed during the year." When he came to 
 Boston from New Haven, he was both Jack and Master 
 of all literary trades. " The editor is a young man," he 
 announced with that competent briskness and cosmopoli- 
 tanism of tone which stayed by him through life, " but 
 he trusts that with the promised assistance of several able 
 writers and an entire devotion on his part, the Monthly 
 may be found worthy of the patronage it solicits. The 
 Monthly is intended to resemble as nearly as possible the 
 London New Monthly edited by Thomas Campbell. 
 There is a call for a magazine of the literary character 
 it proposes. The two leading Reviews of this country 
 are published but seldom and are confined to the heavier 
 branches of literature and science; and though there are 
 lighter periodicals of very considerable merit, there is a 
 wide interval between the two. Payment in advance 
 ($5.00 a year) is required for the following reasons. 
 The expenses of a new establishment make it desirable 
 and proper. In Europe periodical works are paid for 
 either in advance or when each number is taken. This 
 practice is fast gaining in America, and it is hoped may 
 become universal. In that case, the little debts which 
 are so often troublesome to subscribers, and so discourag- 
 
74 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 ing and sometimes ruinous to publishers, are not suffered 
 to exist." Among the several able writers who had 
 promised assistance were young Appleton and Motley, 
 both students at Harvard; and the devotion he himself 
 promised he made good at the rate of from thirty to forty 
 pages every month of tales, essays, and reviews. Al- 
 though he said he was the only editor in the country who 
 paid anything for verse, he announced that he could not 
 pay as much as the English magazines for contributions. 
 " The difficulty of transmission over such an immense 
 country and the comparatively small proportion of literary 
 readers limit our circulation to a thousand or two at the 
 farthest." But literary Boston, though mildly captivated 
 by this engaging person, was not in the habit of paying 
 in advance or even taking single copies regularly on such 
 hard terms; and after two years and a half Willis shook 
 the dust of the ungrateful town from his shoes and made 
 tracks for New York with his magazine, which he amalga- 
 mated with the New York Mirror in 183 1. " The mines 
 of Golconda," he said afterwards, " would not tempt me 
 to return and live in Boston." When he resumed his 
 editorial work in New York, he had learned that the way 
 to keep a publication alive was not to pay " not much " 
 but to pay nothing at all, except to his own editorial staff ; 
 and he said so with the utmost frankness. The circula- 
 tion of New York magazines like those of Boston was 
 largely local, but those Bostonians who stumbled across 
 the Mirror must have comforted themselves for their 
 growing fear of metropolitan eminence by the consoling 
 thought that it was reflecting many of its editor's articles 
 which had first seen light in their own American Monthly. 
 Willis in his large amount of writing for the Boston 
 magazine had contributed to it a social smartness and 
 fashionable tone which, when he specialised on polite 
 subjects in his New York publications, soon gained him 
 recognition as arbiter of elegance. After a decade of 
 the usual failures to float light-reading in Boston, was 
 projected a magazine which frankly styled itself a Reposi- 
 
BAKED BEANS AND BROWN BREAD 75 
 
 tory of Literature and Fashion, in the endeavour to cap- 
 ture some of the phenomenal success of Godeys in Phila- 
 delphia, — which might, indeed, have stolen from Boston 
 the source of its success, — Mrs. Hale, once editor of the 
 Ladies Magazine. This new periodical was the Boston 
 Miscellany, edited by Nathan Hale, Junior. It scandal- 
 ised the academicians by featuring fashions as well as 
 literature. This, of course, was nothing new, but Boston 
 cared to feel — in spite of ample demonstration to the 
 contrary — that she had outgrown the necessities of her 
 Colonial literary struggles. Yet even the Atheneum 
 which got all its material for nothing and charged five 
 dollars a year, had helped itself along with coloured 
 fashion-plates as well as engravings. Nathan raged at 
 the ignominious clog of fashions which dangled from the 
 hind leg of his soaring steed, yet it is probable that on 
 account of it his Pegasus was permitted to continue its 
 flight to the middle of the second year. The son of a 
 literary family, he started out with high ideals. " Who 
 is that Hale Jr. that sent me the Boston Miscellany f 
 Mrs. Stowe w^ote to her husband from Cincinnati^ ** and 
 will he keep his word with me? His offers are very 
 liberal — twenty dollars for three pages of not very close 
 print. Is he to be depended on? If so, it is the best 
 offer I have received yet.'' Lowell got fifteen dollars 
 a poem from it when Graham was paying him ten. 
 Edward Everett Hale upon it and his father's Monthly 
 Review with occasional nibbles of the North American, 
 sharpened his literary eye-teeth. " When I left college. 
 Dr. Palfrey asked me, very kindly, to furnish some 
 articles for the North American, which he then edited; 
 and these must be my first magazine articles. In Janu- 
 ary, 1 84 1, my father began the publication of the Monthly 
 Chronicle of Events, Discoveries, Improvements and 
 Opinions and continued it for three years. In the end 
 of '41 my brother Nathan was made editor of the Boston 
 Miscellany and I was a sort of Man Friday on his staff 
 also. Short stories, proof sheets, an occasional poem 
 
ye THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 written up to the one engraving of the month — every 
 thing I was called on to lay a hand to and did as well 
 as I could." The announcement of the paper struck 
 a somewhat high and vague note. "Of the large demand 
 in our country for an elegant literature, the number and 
 circulation of the already established magazines furnishes 
 at least some indication. It is a late day to undertake 
 any defence of what is called light-reading — it has de- 
 fended itself. It needs no wild belief in the glories or 
 the truth of the ideal at the expense of the real to bid us 
 enjoy and cultivate an acquaintance with artificial lives." 
 For the latter part of the community it intended to have 
 two copper-plates a number, a coloured page of Paris 
 Fashions, and a piece of music. Neatly bridging the 
 chasm between the paying artificial and the unprofitable 
 ideal were such signed contributors as Lowell, Edward 
 Everett, C. F. Hoffman, W. W. Story, T. W. Parsons, 
 N. P. Willis, Fields, Hawthorne, and Poe. Lowell wrote 
 many poems in by no means his lightest vein and contri- 
 buted some critical work which would have been caviar to 
 any miscellany whatever, to say nothing of one which 
 eschewed the scholar's midnight lamp. " The appear- 
 ance of an article on the Old English Dramatists in a 
 Miscellany of Literature and Fashion," said that journal, 
 " seems at first sight as much out of place as Thor's 
 hammer among a set of jeweller's tools or Roland's two- 
 handed sword on the thigh of a volunteer captain on 
 parade day." Lowell himself seems to have felt its incon- 
 gruity and regarded the appearance of the criticisms 
 mainly as a cheap and convenient way of reprinting the 
 best scenes and passages. In November, 1841, he wrote: 
 " The magazine is published this morning. The figure 
 on the cover with wings, etc., is intended, saith the artist, 
 to portray the Genius of Literature. But how any man 
 in his senses could set forth such a fat, comfortable look- 
 ing fellow as the vera effigies of what is hungriest, leanest, 
 empty-pursiest, and without-a-centiest on earth I am at 
 a loss to say." This was two months before the New 
 
BAKED BEANS AND BROWN BREAD ^^ 
 
 Year's reckoning when he wrote that he thought he might 
 safely calculate on earning four hundred dollars by his 
 pen the coming twelve month, which would be enough 
 to support him. 
 
 Before that year ended, Lowell issued the prospectus 
 of a magazine of his own. As the editors, Lowell and 
 Robert Carter, were the proprietors as well, they scorned 
 the succour of the Fashion Plates and Fashion articles 
 which had so chafed the literary editor of the Miscellany, 
 and which had after all proved unable to keep the periodi- 
 cal afloat. Lowell's poor health compelled him slightly 
 to anticipate the destined failure of his magazine in a 
 short time. It numbered among its literary supporters, 
 Hawthorne, Parsons, Dwight, Poe; but its financial 
 supporters were' not forthcoming. Poe in New York 
 praised the magazine highly, as he usually did any maga- 
 zine when it was printing him; and it highly deserved 
 his praise, as most of the magazines did not. The 
 Pioneer chose its name because it intended to push farther 
 into an undiscovered country from whose bourne no 
 traveller had yet returned — to seek to create and embody 
 a national literature by awakening a national conscious- 
 ness. " When I was beginning life," wrote Lowell many 
 years later, " we had no national unity, and the only kind 
 of unity we had was in New England but it was a pro- 
 vincial kind." In the five years he had been writing, 
 he had found an audience in the magazines of Philadel- 
 phia and New York, and thus he had a wider field of 
 vision than most dyed-in-the-wool Bostonians. Yet he 
 had more of the Boston scorn than should have been 
 possessed by a young man who had seen in three cities 
 that compromise was the only law of life in the magazine 
 world. " The contents of each number will be entirely 
 Original and will consist of articles chiefly from Ameri- 
 can authors of the highest reputation. Its object is to 
 furnish the intelligent and reflecting portion of the Read- 
 ing Public with a rational substitute for the enormous 
 quantity of thrice diluted trash in the shape of namby- 
 
78 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 pamby love tales and sketches which is monthly poured 
 out to them by many of our popular magazines, — and 
 to offer instead thereof, a healthy and manly Periodical 
 Literature whose perusal will not necessarily involve a 
 loss of time and a deterioration of every moral and in- 
 tellectual faculty." 
 
 On the starvation of the Pioneer three months later, 
 the field was again left open to what Lowell called the 
 trashy monthlies and the weeklies ; and it was again dem- 
 onstrated in Boston that the reflecting part of the Read- 
 ing Public would not buy lighter literature. They found 
 all the room for reflection they cared for in the pages of 
 the North American, which disdained lightness, and in the 
 religious periodicals, which not only did not disdain it but 
 admitted as good quality of it as was published in most 
 magazines especially devoted to it. Moreover, there 
 were weeklies and news-sheets constantly appearing which 
 did the same thing. All of these re-printed as they 
 pleased, with or without acknowledgment, any tid-bit they 
 had discovered in the magazines. Their literary page was 
 scissored impartially from all exchanges, and chestnuts 
 were plucked systematically from the fire that the maga- 
 zines had taken so much trouble and risk to build and 
 keep going. There was small incentive for any house- 
 hold to take in a periodical devoted to light literature when 
 it could get gratis with its news and its politics as much 
 of the best light literature as it could digest. For new 
 literary material, the papers paid as a rule nothing what- 
 ever; and most of our writers began to publish in that 
 way. Lucy Larcom asked five dollars from Sartain's 
 Magazine, but she was sending poems to the National Era 
 at the same time without asking or expecting remunera- 
 tion. A few years later, the weeklies were quite generally 
 paying popular writers by the column for their work, 
 and in another generation they and the newspapers some- 
 times featured literary leads at fabulous prices. In 1868, 
 Mrs. Stowe wrote Mrs. Fields about Old Town Folks 
 (the copy for which Fields had been vainly endeavouring 
 
BAKED BEANS ANH BROWN BREAD 79 
 
 to extract for her, although she had been paid in advance 
 so that she might concentrate all her efforts upon it) : 
 " It would be greatly for my pecuniary interest to get it 
 done before the first of September, because I have an of- 
 fer of eight thousand dollars for the newspaper use of the 
 story I am planning to write afterward.'* But this glad 
 day was not yet. 
 
 With competition, then, from news and political and 
 religious papers plentifully besprinkled with literature, 
 monthly periodicals devoted to the latter could not long 
 exist. As true in 1845 ^^ in 1835 were the words of the 
 Boston Pearl. " We beg to say that in our humble opin- 
 ion no monthly magazine exists in this land which can 
 be said to be exceedingly creditable to the country." It 
 might have made an exception of the New England, but 
 for some reason, probably personal, it had little liking for 
 that meritorious magazine and lost few chances of saying 
 so. " We are told that puffing is the order of the day," 
 it said editorially, " and that the New England eschews 
 such a course. But the non-puffing character of the New 
 England is not quite attained yet — for we pronounce it 
 the most notorious reservoir of puffs in the country." 
 The Pearl published a weekly review of the theatre and 
 a musical department which also furnished original com- 
 positions. But in spite of numbering Whittier, John 
 Neal, Tuckerman, Pike, Longfellow, Mrs. Stephens, and 
 Mrs. Sigourney among its contributors, and in spite of 
 publishing poems of sometimes very considerable length 
 (one of fifty Childe Harold stanzas, for instance) it did 
 not aspire to nor was it accorded the dignity of letters to 
 which any monthly periodical might lay claim by the sole 
 title of its less frequent appearance. The North Ameri- 
 can, which wore the highest crown of all, was still a 
 quarterly. The pert stand of the Pearl in the matter of 
 subscriptions would alone show how remote it was from 
 the loftiness of the true literary spirit. It, at times, pub- 
 lished a list of delinquents and threatened to stereotype 
 the persistent offenders ! 
 
8o THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 When the Dial ran down in 1844 because its ardent sup- 
 porters practised not wisely but too well the plain living 
 they preached, and borrowed rather than bought, the 
 Harbinger of Brook Farm became its successor in 1845. 
 The same spirit informed it and the same people wrote for 
 it. Its editors were Ripley, Dana, and Dwight; and 
 among the contributors were Clarke, Curtis, Channing, 
 and Cranch. Edited in a less temperamental manner and 
 managed with better business skill, it outlived the social 
 experiment of which it was the organ ; and when Brook 
 Farm was abandoned, it was still strong enough to scrab- 
 ble two years for its living in the streets of New York. 
 The Harbinger was almost as endeared to its readers as 
 the Dial had been. The great civilising work of Clarke in 
 the West was equalled in a more specialised way by that of 
 Dwight in Boston. There he issued in 1852 the first num- 
 ber of Dwight' s Journal of Music, destined to perform 
 a great cultural mission. It was to give an honest report, 
 week by week, "of what we hear and feel and in our poor 
 way understand of the great world of music. Music has 
 made rapid progress within the last fifteen and even the 
 last ten years. It requires a regular bulletin. Very con- 
 fused, crude, heterogeneous is this sudden musical activ- 
 ity in a young utilitarian people. It needs a faithful, 
 severe, friendly voice to point out steadfastly the models 
 of the true, the ever beautiful, the divine." The periodi- 
 cal continued in various sizes for over thirty years, and 
 its farewell was attended by a tribute greater than any 
 other American periodical had ever received. In 1880, 
 the year before it closed its long and honourable career 
 during which its editor had consistently refused to allow 
 it to be published in the interests of any music house (a 
 unique record), it was tendered a testimonial concert by 
 the musicians of its native city which it had done so 
 much to make the foremost musical centre of America. 
 But the six thousand dollars they raised were insufficient 
 to keep it going in the face of competition from musical 
 
BAKED BEANS AND BROWN BREAD 8i 
 
 journals whose fortunes were watched over by interested 
 firms. 
 
 It is rather ironic to find that after all of Boston's 
 attempts in the first half of the century to sustain a mis- 
 cellany which should equal in stability the North Ameri- 
 can Review and secure, as it had secured, some favour- 
 able European mention, destiny had reserved the latter 
 boon, though not the former, to the Lozvell Offering. 
 What had been denied to Dennie, to Tudor, to Bucking- 
 ham, to Emerson, to Lowell as editors, was bestowed, and 
 in the most public and flattering manner, upon the mill- 
 girls of Lowell! Also, its circulation, though limited, 
 was probably wider than any of the Boston magazines of 
 the half-century period. Aside from the unique and mov- 
 ing nature of its appeal, there is something particularly en- 
 gaging about this candid human document. Never before 
 had a periodical written as its valedictory, " It has sup- 
 ported itself and has supported us, and very likely better 
 than we should have supported ourselves in any other 
 way." It was a magazine of thirty one-column pages, 
 price six and a half cents. On the first copy was the an- 
 nouncement '^ This number wholly written by Females 
 employed in the Mills/' In order to combat the prejudice 
 against female editors and publishers, it was thought best 
 that the enterprise be endorsed by some of the leading men 
 of the city. There are no longer any Females ; and one 
 supposes the anti-suffragists might counter gloomily 
 " And no mill girls who can publish a magazine either T" 
 Yet on second thoughts, even an anti-suffragist could 
 hardly take a periodical composed and printed by even 
 pre-historic mill-girls as an argument that woman's place 
 is the home. Flushed with its success, the magazine 
 adorned its plain cover with a vignette, and explained it 
 thus : " To represent the New England school-^girl, of 
 which the factories are made up, standing near a bee- 
 hive, emblem of industry and intelligence, and in the back- 
 ground the Yankee school-house, church, and factory." 
 
82 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 The motto was The Worm on Earth May Look up to the 
 Star. " But this rather abject sentiment," writes Har- 
 riet Robinson, '* was changed finally to Is Saul among the 
 Prophets? It may be said that at one time its fame 
 caused the mill-girls to be considered very desirable for 
 wives. In answer to many doubting Thomases the editor 
 said : ' The articles are all written by factory-girls and 
 ive do not revise them. We have taken less liberty with 
 them than editors usually take.' " Perhaps it was because 
 of this lack of editorial interference that within the space 
 of three years' time seven books had been published by its 
 contributors. Lucy Larcom wrote for it, and says that 
 on the advice of the editor she summoned up enough cour- 
 age to demand payment for a poem submitted to a maga- 
 zine of the outer world. The North American in its 
 stately way indorsed the Lowell Offering and said that it 
 was probably exciting more attention in England than any 
 other American publication. There, Harriet Martineau 
 had eagerly pounced upon it as propaganda for her revolu- 
 tionary idea that working hands might have thinking 
 brains which the country would be better for cultivating ; 
 Dickens said in his American Notes that it would com- 
 pare advantageously with a great many English annuals. 
 In France, George Sand glowed with this message from 
 the new world that a factory need not stifle mental and 
 emotional energy; and Thiers actually carried it into the 
 Chamber of Deputies as an exhibit of the possibilities of 
 working women under a Republican government. 
 
 The Lowell Offering was, however, but the daintiest of 
 rapier thrusts in comparison to the bludgeon which was in 
 pickle for the Boston high-brows. The Hub had refused 
 to support a magazine of light literature, and the gods, as 
 if in retribution, were to make her the protesting parent of 
 the popular illustrated weekly in America. Recall, if you 
 will, the shudder of culture at illustrations even of the 
 better sort, and you will see that this was a heavy blow. 
 The cradle of the North American, the country's longest 
 lived and most dignified publication, was to be desecrated 
 
BAKED BEANS AND BROWN BREAD 83 
 
 by a bouncing and tattooed infant which made not the 
 least pretensions whatever to literature in the Boston 
 sense, and yet sprang almost at once into Boston's most 
 profitable periodical. Gleason's, afterwards Ballou's 
 Pictorial, fell away just as far as her shameless name be- 
 tokens from the standard of the Tradition. Its pictures 
 were multitudinous for that day and would be many for 
 ours. They illustrated not only its wildly romantic tales 
 and serials but topics of the day also. Gleason's was not 
 even good enough to be embalmed in history, ungener- 
 ously derided like the Ledger by the prominent writers 
 whom it paid better than any other periodical. The his- 
 torian cannot discover that it even shocked the sober re- 
 ligious papers by any pyrotechnics, as did the Ledger 
 when it captured Beecher, for instance. It was only hope- 
 lessly and fatly bourgeois. Nor was its great financial 
 success in its native town the sole thorn it planted in her 
 side. To have given birth to a Pictorial was bad enough 
 for a well-connected matron, but even with this affliction 
 Boston had not sufficiently atoned for her sin of scorn- 
 ful indifTerence to all but ambrosia. The builder of the 
 Boston tradition became the grandmother of a brood of 
 pictorials, and thus was the means of debauching the taste 
 of all America with pictures. For on deacon's staff was 
 a young Englishman named Carter, who perceived that 
 the old idea of just enough pictures to float the text was 
 a back number, and that one would get more profitable 
 returns if he figured upon just enough text to float the 
 pictures. This young man came to New York, and, 
 changing his name (possibly to bury completely his Bos- 
 ton past), started in 1855 Frank Leslie's Illustrated News- 
 paper. And upon the money which he harvested during 
 the Civil War, through his field correspondents accom- 
 panied by artists, he committed misdemeanour after mis- 
 demeanour. He became a " pictorial " factory, and the 
 national influence of his ten illustrated papers and maga- 
 zines proved really frightful (viewed with the eyes of the 
 Boston Tradition). Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly 
 
84 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 
 (1876) lived up for almost a quarter of a century to its 
 epithet. And by that time Boston had grown less proud 
 of her attitude, and realised that she was getting a little 
 stiff in the joints. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 PHILADELPHIA, THE VALLEY OF SELF-SUFFICIENTNESS 
 
 " Dissect ridicule and you will find envy," saith the sage. 
 The pedigree of the stock joke about Philadelphia should 
 comfort that city for adding to the gaiety of comic week- 
 lies and vaudeville monologues. It dates back to the time 
 when she was easily first in the sisterhood of cities. Bos- 
 ton and New York, smarting at her greater culture and 
 social development, took refuge in a contemptuous sniff; 
 and New York sniffed the louder because she had more 
 reason to be jealous. 
 
 Yet, of all human mechanisms, that which is known as 
 " saving the face " is most constantly on the job; and the 
 transparent gibe began to have real point as it came of 
 age. For when Philadelphia grew conscious that her 
 supremacy was dwindling, she in her turn sought to sup- 
 port her chagrin by adopting that buttressed complacency 
 for which she is now notorious. At the beginning of the 
 century Neal, in an English magazine, jealously referred 
 to her natives as " mutton-headed Athenians," but he 
 knew in his soul that Philadelphia had the right to call 
 herself the Athens of America. Later, Irving said the 
 Philadelphians did nothing but pun, and a little later still, 
 Longfellow said they did nothing but dance. Toward 
 the end of the fifty-year period which this chapter covers, 
 Lowell, with no jealousy whatever (although he had come 
 to Philadelphia because Boston couldn't support him), 
 termed the city a provincial valley of self-sufficientness 
 and contentment. Leland, returning from Europe in 
 1842 to his birthplace, said there was no city in the 
 world of which so little evil could be said and so much 
 good, yet of which so few ever spoke with enthusiasm. 
 
 Ss 
 
86 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 Its inhabitants were all well bathed, well clad, well behaved, 
 all with exactly the same ideas and the same ideals. A degree 
 of refinement was everywhere perceptible, and they were so 
 fond of flowers that I once ascertained by careful enquiry that 
 in most respectable families there was annually much more 
 money expended for bouquets than for books. When a Phila- 
 delphian gave a dinner or supper his great care was to see 
 that everything on the table was as good or perfect as possible. 
 I had been accustomed to first considering what should be placed 
 around it on chairs as the main item. 
 
 Nevertheless, in spite of them all and in spite of the 
 undeniable smugness which Philadelphia had now 
 achieved, she published and read more books than either 
 of her sisters. During the first half of the century there 
 were at least one hundred and sixteen Philadelphia maga- 
 zines. Of these in general, only two items can here be 
 noted. As early as 1805 she had tried to float the first 
 theatrical magazine in America, and within the decade 
 she repeated the attempt five times. In 1824 she kept 
 twelve magazines going at once, three literary, four re- 
 ligious, three medical, and two political. And though 
 Boston had snatched the fillet from her brow, and only 
 within her household was heard any longer the boast that 
 she was the American Athens, she was still centre of cul- 
 ture enough to inaugurate and centre of practicality 
 enough to maintain the three most successful magazines 
 — artistically or financially or both — of the entire period. 
 Thus if she had become the Tomlinson of cities, it was to 
 some purpose. In them she did more to encourage 
 " light literature " in America than Boston, who had 
 seized the sceptre in 181 5, or New York, who soon began 
 to clamour for it. 
 
 From up Boston way, in 1789, the American Addison 
 came to the American Athens ; and with his coming Phila- 
 delphia knew her treble supremacy complete. The seat 
 of government, of society, and of the arts (or, as the 
 original Friends might have put it, the world and the 
 flesh and the Devil), she had in all respects her heart's 
 desire. And Joseph Dennie, who was Secretary to the 
 
VALLEY OF SELF-SUFFICIENTNESS 87 
 
 Department of State, the brilliant centre of her coterie of 
 fashion, and as Oliver Oldschool the founder of her Port 
 Folio, summed up in his one person all three. Here is a 
 picture of the famous man, as Buckingham saw him when 
 a printer's devil in his northern editorial sanctum : " A 
 pea-green coat, white vest, nankin small-clothes, white 
 silk stockings, pumps with silver buckles, which covered 
 at least half his foot. His small-clothes were tied at the 
 knees with ribbon of the same colour in double bows, the 
 end reaching down to the ankles. His hair in front was 
 well loaded with pomatum, craped and powdered; the 
 ear-locks had undergone the same process; behind, his 
 natural hair was augmented by a large queue, which, en- 
 rolled in some yards of black ribbon, reached half way 
 down his back." This was, if you please, his simple 
 working costume and in provincial New England. Fancy 
 how his brave vibration glittered free when he really 
 spread himself among his peers in Philadelphia, home of 
 wealth and fashion and courtly refuge of many titled 
 foreign exiles! But well for him that the table-loving 
 metropolis was hospitable, and thus he could economise 
 in other ways, for as secretary his salary of one thousand 
 dollars only just equalled his earnings in Walpole, New 
 Hampshire. 
 
 " He contributed to chasten the morals and to refine 
 the taste of the nation," inscribed J. Q. Adams upon his 
 tombstone. An Addisonian in life, you see, in death they 
 were not divided. Where is it fled, that stately and 
 heavy Addisonian ideal? Can one imagine the familiar 
 epitaph ever being chiselled again? Refine the taste of 
 the comparatively refined, the Port Folio certainly did 
 
 — Josiah Quincy said it was far and away the best 
 American periodical and quite as good as any English one 
 
 — but the unrefined saw very little of it. Established in 
 1 80 1, on its fourth birthday it had raised its price to six 
 dollars — a strapping sum for the Philadelphia yeoman. 
 But, a thoroughly high-class magazine, it would have been 
 caviare to the general. The middle class, when it came 
 
88 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 their way, foamed at its lack of patriotism. It unspar- 
 ingly condemned what in America was bad and bump- 
 tious ; it did not feel that America had created all at once 
 an entirely new set of values j it admitted Thomas Moore 
 and Alexander Wilson (visitors in Philadelphia) direct 
 to its columns, instead of stealing them by reprint, as any 
 patriotic American magazine should have done. Seeing 
 these several treacheries, what self-respecting American 
 would have cared how much it had extolled the art of 
 Benjamin West and sought a market for him; or that 
 it praised ardently the native products it could praise ; or 
 that it attacked the reviewers and magazine-makers of 
 Great Britain (even when their cadences were most Addi- 
 sonian ! ) for " the fastidious arrogance with which they 
 treat the genius and intellect of this country," and said 
 it was only equalled by their profound ignorance of the 
 situation ; or that it attacked American critics for " enter- 
 ing into a conspiracy to exterminate American poetry "? 
 In short, refusing to praise Americans because they were 
 Americans and blame Britons because they were Britons, 
 it ran counter to native prejudice, as other unpatriotic 
 Americans have done since ; and if it leaned too much to 
 the English side, one must not forget the Addisonian pull 
 and the fact that to many an old-school gentleman like 
 Dennie, Noah Webster's proposition of a Columbian 
 Dictionary seemed impious. " Let it be called Noah's 
 Ark," he stormed, " full of its foul and unclean things ! " 
 When the old gentleman — our second professional 
 man of letters — departed the Philadelphia coterie he had 
 so handsomely graced and the heady new world he had 
 so stubbornly striven to hold to Addisonian ideals, the 
 momentum he had given his elegant magazine lasted 
 for some years. In fact, even after it had begun to 
 take in sail it was an unconscionable while a-dying. No 
 sooner had it climbed to what Dennie would have thought 
 the high top-gallant of his joy — being extensively copied 
 by the London Monthly — than it was ready to decline. 
 In 1820 it was attempting in vain to arouse the sleep- 
 
VALLEY OF SELF-SUFFICIENTNESS 89 
 
 ing citizens with a Cassandra call that New York and 
 Boston were threatening their supremacy. Up to that 
 time her contributors had numbered every person of 
 literary consequence within her border; now the traitors 
 and ingrates were sending their wares to New York! 
 As for that upstart city, one of its urchins, Salmagundi, 
 had even dared to sit and grin in public at the three- 
 cornered hat and the breeches of the Last Leaf. " One 
 of the editors of the Port Folio/' snickered the saucebox, 
 " has been discharged for writing common sense." In 
 1823 the magazine was feeling bitterly its fluttering pulse. 
 " The last volume contains very few communications 
 from any friend to us and to our cause. In the days of 
 our first predecessors such was the number and zeal of 
 contributors that the editor was obliged to exchange the 
 labour of composition for that of selection." Indeed, 
 that year had seen little but European reprints — neither 
 its courage nor its choice, but its necessity in being old. 
 Until 1827 it paced its banquet-hall deserted; then, with 
 the queue of its courtly founder, it went to a postponed 
 but dignified interment. 
 
 It was in 1838 that Poe moved to Philadelphia and 
 arranged to write for the Gentlemen's Magazine. This 
 had been founded the preceding year by William E. Bur- 
 ton, the actor, who seems to have mounted his hobby- 
 horse gaily and with no more serious purpose than taking 
 a fling with his literary tastes and his own pleasant but 
 occasional pen. Poe became at once his chief contributor, 
 and before the second year was up his editor. The finan- 
 cial arrangement seems to have been more or less of Poe's 
 own making; and when he afterward complained of it 
 he not only forgot this fact, but the important additional 
 one that his fixed salary of ten dollars a week demanded 
 but two hours work a day, and the arrangement especially 
 contemplated giving him ample leisure to write at his 
 regular rates for the magazine and for other periodi- 
 cals also. When Poe had first applied to him, Burton 
 wrote : 
 
90 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 The expenses of this magazine are already wofully heavy; 
 more so than my circulation warrants. I am certain that my 
 expenditure exceeds that of any publication now extant, includ- 
 ing the monthlies which are double in price. Competition is 
 high — new claimants are daily arising. I am, therefore, com- 
 pelled to give expensive plates, thicker paper and better print- 
 ing than my antagonists, or allow them to win the goal. My 
 contributors cost me something handsome, and the losses upon 
 credit, exchange, etc., are becoming frequent and serious. I 
 mention this list of difficulties as some slight reason why I do 
 not close with your offer, which is indubitably liberal, without 
 delay. 
 
 Burton thus looked upon Poe in the light of a luxury 
 which he feared he could not afford, as he himself up to 
 this time had been editor of his own magazine. The new 
 editor at once demonstrated his value, however, and for 
 awhile everything was satisfactory. But at the end of 
 six months his besetting sin got the better of him once 
 more and began to diminish his efficiency. Burton ap- 
 pears to have treated him with the friendliest considera- 
 tion, although another besetting sin of Poe's was landing 
 the magazine into difficulties. " You must get rid of 
 your avowed ill-feelings toward your brother-authors," 
 wrote Burton. " You see, I speak plainly — indeed, I 
 cannot speak otherwise. Several of my friends, hearing 
 of our connection, have warned me of your uncalled-for 
 severity in criticism." But though Poe somewhat 
 mended his ways in the one respect, he did not in the 
 other. Burton returned to the city one day to find the 
 number still unfinished after the regular date of publica- 
 tion and Poe incapacitated. When the same thing oc- 
 curred again, Poe was dismissed. Burton resumed the 
 editorial chair. But in this case, as in several others, 
 Poe could look back upon his departure from a magazine 
 as the beginning of a wane in its popularity. Like Mr. 
 By- Ends in Pilgrim's Progress, he often had the luck 
 to jump in his conclusions with the times. Not long 
 afterward. Burton asked George Graham to buy his 
 magazine and said he wanted to raise money for his new 
 
VALLEY OF SELF-SUFFICIENTNESS 91 
 
 theatre. He had run it for four years and was now 
 finding it encroach too much upon his acting. It had 
 just thirty-five hundred subscribers, and he would sell 
 it for that number of dollars. Graham was running a 
 magazine called The Casket on fifteen hundred sub- 
 scribers. He united the two, and the five thousand 
 subscribers found their good-will desired for a new maga- 
 zine entitled Grahmns. Fortune smiled upon the union 
 and blessed it with riches and honour, if not with length 
 of days. In a comparatively short time it had reached 
 a circulation of over thirty thousand, an unprecedented 
 popularity; and at the beginning of its second year, in 
 1842, Greeley printed in the Tribune that it was already 
 one of the best magazines of the country and that in 
 refusing its pages to puerile love-stories, maudlin senti- 
 ment and stupid verse it had elevated the standard of 
 periodical literature. 
 
 Park Benjamin wrote to Graham when he was starting 
 out, " I think I could get Longfellow to write an occa- 
 sional poem for you at twenty dollars; he asks twenty- 
 five." Graham had immediately set about building up 
 his circulation by publishing the best writers in the 
 country; and though he was not the first editor to pay 
 as much as he could afford, he soon became the first to 
 make a habit of paying well. " I shall be happy to re- 
 ceive stories at twenty-five dollars and poetry at ten 
 dollars per article," he wrote to Frances Osgood as early 
 as 1843. To the principal contributors he was paying 
 as high as twelve dollars a page. Though these prices 
 had been beaten by the New York Knickerbocker, the 
 average contributors to that periodical paid dearly for it 
 and the new writers habitually received no money what- 
 ever. Peterson told Mrs. Osgood in 1844 that two 
 dollars a page and five dollars a poem were the regular 
 Philadelphia rates for all publishers but Graham. 
 Though Poe was not necessarily sincere in his published 
 criticism of contemporary periodicals in the New World 
 in 1843, he told the plain truth when he said: "The 
 
92 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 most popular of all the magazines is that published by 
 Mr. Graham, who is a practical business man and a friend 
 to men of talents of every cast. Every article which he 
 prints is liberally paid for, and he has the honour of 
 patronising a larger number of eminent writers in prose 
 and verse than any other publisher in the country." 
 Bryant, in his private correspondence in 1842, several 
 times marvelled at the " vastness " of its circulation. 
 Indeed, the success of the newer style of publications — 
 Graham's, Godey's, and the Ladies' Companion — 
 seemed to him disquieting, in spite of the fact that our 
 best writers were appearing in all three. He may 
 have thought, as did Mrs. Stowe, that poets and essayists 
 should not elbow their way among coloured fashion- 
 plates. Graham appears to have tried for awhile to 
 conduct the editorial and the business departments of his 
 magazine both at once, but the exactions of the latter 
 proved too much for him. " I sometimes wish," he wrote 
 to Mrs. Osgood in 1843, "that I had gone on quietly 
 in my little law office, using my pen modestly as a writer 
 for a few years more, instead of embarking on the stormy 
 sea of publishing heart and — I sometimes fear — soul. 
 I do not fancy I should have made much more, but I 
 fancy I should have had more moments of delight than 
 can be possibly stolen from the bustle of an active and 
 successful business life. Do you know that among my 
 forty thousand readers there are but few, and among 
 several score of agents there are none, who do not think 
 a publisher bound to answer all their impertinence, as 
 well as to furnish them books for their money ? " In 
 less than a year Graham decided that he could not serve 
 God and mammon at the same time, and decided to call 
 Poe — who seems to have been recommended to his at- 
 tention by Burton, in spite of their two mishaps — to the 
 exclusive service of the former. 
 
 If one may venture to carry out this somewhat startling 
 figure of speech, it can be added that Poe was no sooner 
 installed than he sought to purge the temple of its money- 
 
VALLEY OF SELF-SUFFICIENTNESS 93* 
 
 changers. Although he showed an excellent head for 
 business, it did not seem to occur to him, any more than 
 to Bryant or Mrs. Stowe, that it may have been the 
 money-changers who so swelled the congregation. He 
 wrote Thomas much later that his reason for resigning 
 from Graham's was " disgust with the namby-pamby 
 character of the magazine; I allude to the contemptible 
 pictures, fashion-plates, music and love-tales." The 
 salary, too, did not pay him, he said, for the labour he was 
 forced to bestow. When he was seeking to interest 
 Anthon in his own project of a magazine, he wrote : 
 
 In about eighteen months after I became editor of Graham's 
 its circulation increased from about five thousand to no less 
 than fifty thousand [which was decidedly stretching it at both 
 ends !] — astonishing as this may appear. It is now two years 
 since I left it, and the number is not more than twenty-five 
 thousand. In three years it will be extinct. The nature of this 
 journal was such that even its fifty thousand subscribers could 
 not make it very profitable. Its price was three dollars, but 
 not only were its expenses immense, owing to the employment 
 of absurd steel plates and other extravagances, which tell not 
 at all, but recourse was had to innumerable agents who received 
 it at a discount of no less than fifty per cent, and whose frequent 
 dishonesty occasioned enormous loss. 
 
 Graham testifies that Poe was an admirable editor. 
 Poe's weakness may have been the cause of their separa- 
 tion, but it is more likely to have been the quarrel which 
 Graham avers. At any rate, their relations remained 
 friendly. Graham accepted a story from him in New 
 York, for which Poe asked and was paid fifty-two dollars. 
 As the story was unpublished for a year, the author asked 
 and received permission to submit it for a prize of one 
 hundred dollars ofifered by the Dollar Magazine of Phila- 
 delphia. The story was The Gold Bug, and it won 
 the competition. In March, 1850, Graham printed an 
 open letter to Willis defending Poe against Griswold's 
 biography. He said : " For more than eighteen months 
 I saw him almost daily, much of the time writing or con- 
 versing at the same desk, and he was always punctual 
 
94 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 and unwearied in his industry and the soul of honour 
 in all his transactions. This, of course, was in his better 
 days; but even after his habits had changed there was 
 no literary man to whom I would more readily advance 
 money for labour to be done." Not content with this, 
 Graham afterward printed a mordant letter to Griswold 
 himself. 
 
 For a short while after Poe's departure the magazine 
 was run by Ann Stephens and Peterson together — or, 
 at least, she allowed her name to be used. This presents 
 an interesting discrimination quite worthy in its subtlety 
 of the most genteel of modern anti-suffragists. Mrs. 
 Stephens had tried her hand at running several magazines 
 and considered it ladylike employment, but an editorial 
 position on a newspaper (even a Sunday supplement) 
 was unsexing. She once wrote to Griswold that she had 
 been made ill by the cruel rumour that she had become 
 editor of the Sunday News. It had so wounded her 
 that if she were not compelled to write for her daily 
 bread she would never put pen to paper again. " I feel 
 indignant that any member of the press should believe 
 me capable of accepting a situation proper only for the 
 other sex ; and no one knows how keenly I feel anything 
 calculated to represent me as unwomanly." Neverthe- 
 less, she did not shrink at driving a very masculine bar- 
 gain, if Poe's statement in that firebrand article of his on 
 the New York Literati was true. In spite of announce- 
 ments, he affirmed she had nothing to do with the editing 
 of Graham's, of the Ladies' Companion, or of Peterson's. 
 In the days when the sex was first entering the business 
 field, the incompatibilities of the Old woman and the 
 New engendered in the distracted minds of those ladies 
 who were thus seeking to be twins some charming 
 sophistries. 
 
 But — whatever anti-suffragist ladies may persuade 
 themselves — sophistries are not solely feminine. Here 
 is one of the masculine gender. Said the United States 
 Gazette in 1845 : 
 
VALLEY OF SELF-SUFFICIENTNESS 95 
 
 We perceive that our neighbours Godey and Graham have 
 both taken out a copyright for their respective magazines. This 
 is rather new, but on looking at the matter carefully we think 
 it is entirely correct. The articles in each cost, we suppose, 
 from three hundred dollars to five hundred dollars. These are 
 frequently taken out bodily, and before the magazines reach 
 half their subscribers their contents have been made familiar 
 to the community through the daily or weekly papers. Not to 
 give offence to anybody, we will state a fact: Graham gave us 
 fifty dollars for a story, and we published the same article al- 
 most as soon as it appeared in the magazine. We, of course, 
 asked permission. 
 
 The abuse was a very extensive one. " It is no doubt 
 gratifying to a publisher to have liberal extracts made 
 from his work," wrote another conscientious editor, " but 
 credit to the magazines is often omitted by newspapers." 
 Even the chief victims of the practice did not, for a long 
 time, dream of questioning it. Apparently, they thought, 
 despite the inconvenience and loss occasioned by it, the 
 most they had a right to demand was credit for the re- 
 printed article. In one of Godey's numbers is this edi- 
 torial statement : " Nearly one-half of our book for 
 the ensuing month was copied into one of the weekly 
 papers some ten days before we were ready to publish. 
 We had sent an early copy of our work to our editor, 
 then absent, who placed it in the hands of the gentleman 
 pubHsher to have an article of poetry copied in his paper. 
 He copied nearly one-half of the contents." Perhaps 
 even the Baltimore Visitor would have thought this 
 stretching too far the courtesy of the trade, but it would 
 have objected to the subterfuge rather than the thing 
 itself. It expressed its opinion of this new high-handed 
 act of self-protection very tartly: "It pains us to see 
 that Mr. Godey has resorted to the narrowly selfish course 
 of taking out a copyright for his book. He will rue it 
 bitterly. Think of this insulting proposition: *We 
 have no objection to any paper copying any story from 
 our magazine, if they will not do it until the succeeding 
 number is published/ Wonderful liberality, Mr. Godey, 
 
96 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 toward that department of the press to which you are 
 more or less indebted for a handsome fortune ! " 
 Poe wrote at the time in his Broadway Journal: 
 
 It is really difficult to see how any one can, in conscience, 
 object to such a course on the part of Messrs. Godey and Gra- 
 ham. It has long been the custom among newspapers, the 
 weeklies especially, to copy magazine articles in full and circu- 
 late them all over the country — sometimes in advance of the 
 magazines themselves. To such an extent had their piracy been 
 carried that many magazine subscribers had ceased to be such, 
 because they could procure all that was valuable from the news- 
 papers very little later, and often at less cost. 
 
 It was in November, 1842, that Poe left Graham's. 
 The next important occupant of the chair was Rufus 
 Griswold, about whose character and competence existed 
 in that day as in this such vehement difference of opinion. 
 Certainly, many admirable people of his day admired him ; 
 and few persons, says Leland, ever possessed more en- 
 thusiastic or steadily devoted friends. There were those 
 who maintained, with Greeley, that nobody had ever so 
 drawn to an American magazine all the talent of the 
 country. Irving was the only important man who never 
 wrote for it, and that was apparently because the Knicker- 
 bocker had arranged for all the work which he was 
 willing to publish in this way. " Our October number is 
 very good," wrote Griswold to Fields, " with Bryant, 
 Cooper, Longfellow, Hoffman; in November we have 
 Longfellow, Cooper, Bryant, R. H. Dana, Sr., Tucker- 
 man, Hoffman, Osgood." So many names of the first 
 magnitude constantly shone in Graham's that the maga- 
 zine seems to have been the first to give point to the 
 unending controversy of fame versus merit. This had 
 not arisen in the case of the equally brilliant Knicker- 
 bocker, for their pages were always open to nice young 
 authors who would write for nothing. Half a dozen 
 years later, when both Graham's and the Knickerbocker 
 were desperately trying to live up to their past, Kimball 
 in New York wrote to young Leland in Philadelphia: 
 
VALLEY OF SELF-SUFFICIENTNESS 97 
 
 " Come over to New York. It is better to have the 
 influence with a periodical which gratuitous contributions 
 will bring, rather than the money which you might re- 
 ceive for them." But Leland, who was getting five dol- 
 lars a page, " when the publishers want me at all," was 
 not at the time willing to write for nothing, unless he 
 did it (as shortly happened) in an editorial capacity. But 
 these days for Graham's were yet distant, and in 1843 
 Hawthorne was writing to Griswold : " I am advised 
 that the publishers of magazines consider it desirable to 
 attach writers exclusively to their own establishments 
 and will pay at a higher rate for such monopoly. If 
 this be the case, I should make no difficulty in forswearing 
 all other periodicals for a specified time — and so much 
 the more readily on account of the safety of your maga- 
 zine in a financial point of view." But then, as now, the 
 big guns sometimes failed to go off. The magazine had 
 quite a run on Cooper, and published his Lives of the 
 Naval Commanders and a serial story. Graham said the 
 eighteen hundred dollars he paid for the latter might as 
 well have been thrown into the sea, for it never brought 
 him a new subscriber. " I am not surprised at what 
 you say concerning Graham's and Godey's," wrote P. P. 
 Cooke to Griswold in 1847, in answer to a letter the 
 contents of which may be surmised. " Magazine articles 
 derive nine-tenths of their pecuniary value to publishers 
 from the known and famous names attached to them. 
 Longfellow's worst poem, however a chance effort of 
 mine might excel it, would be vastly more valuable to 
 Graham than anything I could send him. Before hearing 
 of the prize-poem method of getting supplies, these were 
 my views on the subject, and I expected very little from 
 the magazines pecuniarily." Graham's was not doing 
 so well now; and Greeley — who was trying to find a 
 market for a new writer, Thoreau, for whom Margaret 
 Fuller had asked his interest — found him slow pay, and 
 after waiting a year drew on him for the money. *' If 
 you choose to publish this," wrote Greeley in 1846, " and 
 
98 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 pay as much as you pay others for right good prose, 
 where you are not buying the name." The price, which 
 both Griswold and Greeley called liberal, was seventy-five 
 dollars -^ for an essay which formed the leading article 
 for tv/o numbers. 
 
 Although Poe said that Griswold left the magazine in 
 disgrace, he continued to act off and on as its assistant 
 editor for years. Graham, evidently feeling with his 
 diminishing revenues that he could no longer afford an 
 editor-in-chief, resumed active charge, assisted by E. P. 
 Whipple to do the editorial reviews. Bayard Taylor and 
 Leland came into the office later. Graham gave it up 
 about 1855, ^^^ four years later it sought to revive its 
 existence under the new name of the American Monthly. 
 Thus Poe's amiable prophecy of its extinction within three 
 years after he had ceased to guide its fortunes was almost 
 a decade out of the way. On Griswold's death, Leland, 
 who was then editor, printed in the magazine that under 
 his care and direction it first achieved a high literary tone 
 and acquired authority. Nor could Poe have convinced 
 Leland, as he so easily convinced himself, that Griswold's 
 management had anything to do with the decline in its 
 fortunes. That it did steadily decline after Poe's de- 
 parture is true, although Poe's statement that it at once 
 lost half its subscription list was eminently Poe-like. 
 By the time Leland took it the circulation had become 
 almost nothing, and the new editor succeeded in forcing 
 it up to seventeen thousand. In his autobiography he 
 said: 
 
 I filled It recklessly with all or any kind of literary matter 
 as best I could, little or nothing being allowed for contribu- 
 tions. For this I received fifty dollars a month. When I finally 
 left it, the proprietors were eighteen months in arrears and tried 
 to evade payment. Finally they agreed to pay me in monthly 
 instalments, and fulfilled the engagement. While editing it I 
 had one day a space to fill. In a hurry I knocked off " Hans 
 Breitmann's Party." I gave it no thought whatever. Clark 
 republished it soon after in the Knickerbocker, saying that it 
 was evidently by me. I wrote in those days a vast number of 
 
VALLEY OF SELF-SUFFICIENTNESS 99 
 
 such anonymous drolleries, many of them, I dare say, quite 
 as good, in Graham's Magazine and the Weekly Bulletin, but 
 I took no heed of them. They were probably appropriated in 
 due time by the authors of " Beautiful Snow." 
 
 Indeed, Leland seems habitually to have equalled 
 Tudor's feat with the first number of the North Ameri- 
 can; for, besides his literary contributions, the various 
 editorial departments had now so stretched out as to 
 occupy the major portion of the magazine. The Monthly 
 Summary and the Review on Fashions were voluminous ; 
 and the Editor's Table was decidedly of the extension 
 variety, leaf after leaf being inserted each month. 
 
 Wrote Graham's in 1844: 
 
 It has become the fashion among a certain set, a very small 
 one, to sneer at the " light " magazines — as if the literature of 
 a young and growing nation must be heavy to be good, or 
 would be popular if it were. The light magazines are but so 
 many wings of a young people panting for a literature of their 
 own. They are training a host of young writers and creating, 
 an army of readers, who are urging on a happier day. We do 
 not despair, if we live, of seeing a high-toned magazine with 
 fifty thousand readers, or of publishing it, and without the aid 
 of pictures; but the man who expects it now is a quarter of a 
 century ahead of his time, a fellow with his eyes shut, dream- 
 ing of a heaven which he has no ability to assist in creating. 
 We have satisfied ourselves in our attempt to make Graham's 
 the best of its class, and the highest even in literary reputation 
 of any American magazine, and shall gradually blend with the 
 lighter character of the work as much of the useful as may be 
 deemed prudent. It is perhaps true that the popular magazines 
 of the day are too much devoted to the merely ornamental; 
 and the department of Our Portrait Gallery, with biographies 
 of our own writers and naval heroes, must be hailed as a re- 
 lief as well as a good omen. We believe the day is not far 
 distant when the pioneers in the lighter magazine may be able 
 to modify much the character of their magazines. There can 
 be no doubt that as taste improves and extends, the public will 
 be content with one or two exquisite original engravings worth 
 a dozen copies of stale prints. If the elegant original works 
 we have now in hand are properly appreciated, we shall adopt 
 at once the plan of having all our pictures painted expressly 
 for this magazine. In the meanwhile — gentlemen critics — 
 
100 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 remember that ours is a magazine of art as well as literature; 
 and that we are furthering the interests of a large number of 
 artists as well as writers, and judge us accordingly. 
 
 The policy of gradually diminishing the number of 
 engravings in favour of a few original ones evidently 
 proved a mistake. In 1848 they announced that they 
 v^ould revive the original splendour of the pictorial de- 
 partment, though every attempt v^ould be made to keep 
 it from degenerating into the picture-book for children 
 v^hich the magazines of feebler aims had become. In 
 1852 occurs this editorial comment: 
 
 One of the magazines mentions the astonishing sum of five 
 hundred dollars as designed ta be spent upon the illustrations 
 of each number. We have published many a number on which 
 we have expended four times that sum without any parade 
 about it. The printing and paper of one of our steel plates cost 
 over that sum always, to say nothing of the original cost of the 
 engraving, which is from one to two hundred dollars. 
 
 In a sketch of George Graham, with his portrait, in 
 July, 1850, Charles J. Peterson said: 
 
 He infused a new spirit into magazines. The monthlies had 
 been filled with second-hand British stories or indifferently writ- 
 ten original tales; while their poetry, except what was taken 
 from well-known authors, was such " as both gods and men ab- 
 hor " ; the illustrations were few and indifferent. Its fresh- 
 ness, beauty and ability at once placed it before all others in 
 popular favour. Success from the start allowed him to per- 
 severe in increasing its literary and pictorial excellence. No 
 sooner were Longfellow, Bryant, Cooper discovered to be per- 
 manent contributors than thousands who had heretofore looked 
 with contempt on American monthlies hastened to subscribe. 
 The benefit thus done to popular literature cannot be calcu- 
 lated. It will be long, perhaps, before any one man will have it 
 in his power to do again as much. 
 
 In 1844 the magazine was advertising that the best 
 American writers were almost all of them publishing in 
 Graham's exclusively. The next year Lowell wrote to 
 a friend from Philadelphia, where he was living — even 
 if very simply — chiefly on his contributions to the maga- 
 
VALLEY OF SELF-Sllf J?.ICIEirrMSS loi 
 
 zine : " Graham has grown fat, an evidence of his suc- 
 cess. He lives in one of the finest houses in Arch Street 
 and keeps his own carriage." By the latter part of 1848, 
 however, scarcely one of the well-known names advertised 
 on the title-page as the principal contributors appeared 
 within — although the list still included very respectable 
 names and Poe was contributing monthly " Marginalia." 
 George Graham announced during the year that a series 
 of misfortunes had deprived him of any proprietary 
 interest, and that the present publishers had treated him 
 liberally : 
 
 From two not very profitable magazines, Graham's sprung at 
 once into boundless popularity and circulation. Had I not in 
 an evil hour forgotten my own true interests and devoted that 
 capital and interest to another interest, which should have been 
 exclusively confined to this magazine, I should to-day not be 
 writing this notice. What a daring enterprise in business can 
 do, I have already shown in Graham's and the North American 
 (a newspaper). And, alas! I have also shown what folly can 
 do, when business is forgotten. But I can yet show the world 
 that he who started life with but eight dollars in his pocket and 
 has run such a career as mine is hard to be put down. 
 
 It was announced that year that Bayard Taylor would 
 assist in the editorial department. This youngster had 
 written in 1843 that his highest ambition was to appear 
 in Graham's. Now, five years afterward, one of the new 
 owners went over to New York to propose that he manage 
 the magazine. Taylor regarded the opportunity as an 
 exceptionally fine one : " He offers me the situation at 
 a thousand a year, promise of increase in a year or two, 
 and perfect liberty to write for any other periodical. I 
 will have a fine office to myself, and the work will only 
 occupy three to four hours daily. I have consulted with 
 Greeley and Willis, who advise me to go." He was also 
 to write an article a month, receiving extra pay for it. 
 " How shall I leave this mighty city of New York? " he 
 wrote to another friend. " Philadelphia is merely an 
 immense provincial town; here is the metropolis of a 
 continent." He need not have worried, however, as the 
 
102 . THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 involved business affairs of the magazine were so ar- 
 ranged in the end that he became editor in name only, 
 and, an absentee, merely contributed a little more fre- 
 quently. In 185 1 Graham regained control of the maga- 
 zine, and before the end of the year thanked his friends 
 for rallying to him and allowing him to guide his shat- 
 tered bark into harbour once more. But in spite of as- 
 surances of great increases in subscriptions, there were 
 decided evidences of scrimping. The brisk editorial tone 
 of former days was much reinforced. About 1852 the 
 department Small Talk became not only prominent by 
 elongation, but by the adoption of a lively button-holing 
 style of casual comment on things in general and the 
 excellence of Graham's in particular that seems startlingly 
 modern. Thus ever, in the magazine world, voices 
 heighten as they take their flight ! 
 
 Graham's and Godey's are linked f orevermore by Haw- 
 thorne in the House of Seven Gables. Here he mentions 
 them as if they were the two principal magazines of 
 America. Contemporary estimation linked them also in 
 blame as well as praise. Briggs wrote Lowell that he 
 had always misunderstood Poe, " from thinking him one 
 of the Graham and Godey species." Readers thought 
 of them together, because of their similar run on steel 
 engravings and fashion-plates. And last — but not least 
 — writers bracketted them in red letters as sure and good 
 pay. When Willis was about to start a magazine of his 
 own he wrote : 
 
 Adieu to the third sign of the Zodiac ! Adieu, O Gemini ! 
 Adieu, Godey and Graham! Most liberal of paymasters, most 
 gentle of taskmasters, pashaws of innumerable tales, adieu ! 
 Pleasant has been our correspondence ! Pleasant the occasional 
 meetings in your city of Phil-gemini, Phil-Graham and Godey. 
 Adieu to our captivity in magazine land. The messenger which 
 you sent us that it was time to write was not more punctual 
 than the golden echo to our compliance. We may look back 
 from the land of promise, as the Israelites hankered after the 
 flesh-pots of Egypt — but we shall return no more ! Cling to 
 
VALLEY OF SELF-SUFFICIENTNESS 103 
 
 our hand at parting, and wish us well on our own-hooktivity. 
 We leave you reluctantly. 
 
 But, alas! inseparable in life, in deaths they were very 
 much divided. Long, long after Graham's had breathed 
 its last did the most successful of Philadelphia magazines 
 continue to boast " the greatest circulation in the world." 
 In the attic of what boy and girl was there not a pile of 
 old Godey'sf Into what wondering eyes now grown dim 
 with age did not the hydrocephalic and high-lighted heads 
 which spattered its raven-black steel engravings spring, 
 as though they would leap from the page ? Who has not 
 shaped his childish dream of high romance out of its 
 wooden-limbed cavaliers and its swan-necked ladies 
 dripping with draperies? Well might Godey, whose 
 voice was hoarse proclaiming his own modesty, style 
 himself a national institution. Begun in 1830, it united 
 in 1837 with the decorous Ladies' Magazine of Boston, 
 which had started two years earlier; and the editor of 
 that periodical, Mrs. Sarah Josepha Hale, moved south- 
 ward with the editorial chair. 
 
 She was amply worth the transportation. Continuing 
 for forty years the editor of the literary department, she 
 advocated the higher education of women and other re- 
 forms, yet shocked no mater familias by her tactful pro- 
 gressiveness. Writer of plays and cook-books; mother 
 alike of Thanksgiving Day and Mary's Little Lamb; one 
 foot on land as completer of the Bunker Hill monument 
 and one on sea as founder of the Seamen's Aid Society ; 
 to one thing was she constant her whole life long — to 
 render the Lady's Book " the guiding star of female 
 education, the beacon-light of refined taste, pure morals, 
 and practical wisdom." Assisted in the beginning by 
 "the good and gifted Mrs. Sigourney," she saw to it 
 that nothing having the slightest appearance of indelicacy 
 was ever admitted to these pages. Every month she 
 contributed a moral sentimental essay on the duties and 
 the privileges of the sex, quite admirable in its genre and 
 
104 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 for its age — Victorian in its accents, yet progressive 
 and human in its spirit. Her publisher announced that 
 she had shone in every species of writing, and all dis- 
 tinguished by the chastity, morality and sympathy v^hich 
 she had put into them. There never lived a more ideal 
 president of a Mother's Congress. In i860 Godey an- 
 nounced : " We do not publish a mere story-book. We 
 seek to enlighten and instruct v^omankind. Mothers take 
 it for their daughters, v^hose mothers took it for them. 
 It is an heirloom in families. If mere stories are w^ant- 
 ing, outraging Munchausen, you must subscribe to some 
 other publication. Those articles of fiction we do publish 
 have all a moral tendency, and won't suit the readers of 
 The Ensanguined Dagger, The Perils of a Housemaid or 
 The Benevolent Pirate of the Gulf." 
 
 Moral tendency they had, indeed — according to the 
 Victorian definition. Happiness ever awaited virtue, and 
 though heaviness might endure for a night, joy came with 
 the milkman. Already a changed taste was appearing 
 when, in i860, Howells wrote of their incredible insipid- 
 ity. Dear Mrs. Hale, what would she have thought had 
 she lived to see not only taste change, but morality also ! 
 Judge of her consternation had the sad fate awaited her 
 which came two decades later to the mother of that 
 sweet child Elsie Dinsmore — who lived to hear her off- 
 spring termed an of^cious brat hurling her golden texts 
 in a very orgy of exhibitionism at every handy passer-by. 
 Blessed are the dead who die in time ! 
 
 Mrs. Hale took the literary control and managed her 
 editorial department. There were other departments 
 besides — Arm Chair, Literary Notices, Centre-Table 
 Gossip, Health, and Fashions. " How often must we 
 say that Mrs. Hale is not the Fashion Editor," the Arm 
 Chair was frequently scolding. The Fashion Editor took 
 orders for making the hair of loved ones into beautiful 
 bracelets and pins ; and she would buy bonnets and man- 
 tillas for you, and even hinted at more extensive shopping 
 on certain interesting occasions. As the magazine pub- 
 
VALLEY OF SELF-SUFFICIENTNESS 105 
 
 lished instructions for drawing, it agreed to furnish for 
 a small consideration the proper pencils. The " sociable 
 air "of Godey's was widely commented upon. They 
 printed many flattering letters from correspondents (a 
 quaint custom, which might well be revived!). As early 
 as 1847 there was a series of articles on Model Cottages, 
 with pictures and ground plans (and what Mansard and 
 Swiss horrors they were!). In 1849 they offered a 
 handsome bouquet for the best essay from the pen of 
 some fair correspondent on a subject which had of late 
 been all-absorbing, " What Becomes of the Pins? " The 
 " family air " of Godey^s might be crystallised by Mrs. 
 Hale's announcement in 1846 of the death of Mr. Godey's 
 mother. " The numerous readers of the Lady's Book, 
 who may have regretted its delay for several months past, 
 will now understand the painful nature of those duties 
 which engrossed the proprietor, and their kind hearts 
 will sympathise with the sorrows of an only son." Dear 
 Mrs. Hale! it is difficult to picture her in anything but 
 black silk, with a fall of lace at the sleeves and at the 
 slightly surpliced neck — a veritable Lucy J. Hayes in 
 her white sanctum. 
 
 But while she was speaking in her soft and edifying 
 accents, Godey was sounding the first strident note of 
 modern magazine advertising. There are few contem- 
 porary magazines which more insistently proclaim their 
 own perfections. Godey had an impressive way of re- 
 ferring to his magazine as The Book. He certainly 
 quoted it to serve his own purpose. He was always pre- 
 dicting that the next number would surpass all records, 
 and admitting the succeeding month that he had guessed 
 right. Perhaps the first American slogan was ** What 
 Will Godey Do Next ! " It was a chanticleer call, making 
 up in noise and punctuality for what it lacked in variety. 
 Sometimes he juggled the notes a bit. " Why don't our 
 contemporaries originate something? Why always fol- 
 low in our track ? " The charge was always being sub- 
 stantiated by something like this, in 1845 : " When we 
 
io6 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 adopted, some two years since, the wave rule around and 
 through our page, the pages of every magazine in the 
 country were thus altered immediately. Indeed, a maga- 
 zine in a neighbouring city copied our pages so exact 
 that we would defy any person to tell the difference be- 
 tween the two, excepting in the reading matter. And, 
 lo ! the London World of Fashion has also appeared in our 
 late dress. Worse than this, a respectable five-dollar 
 magazine (Godey's was three dollars, or two for five 
 dollars, or five for ten dollars, or eight for fifteen dol- 
 lars) copies on its cover the announcement for 1845, only 
 altering the title and price of the work ! " Said Godey 
 proudly in 1839: 
 
 You will find in no English magazine such a store of entertain- 
 ment. We were the first to introduce the system of calling forth 
 the slumbering talent of our country by offering an equivalent 
 for the efforts of genius. Our subscription list now doubles the 
 list of any other magazine in America. A few years ago the 
 Lady's Book had not an original article in its columns, with but 
 eight steel plates per annum and four plates of fashion on cop- 
 per; now it is entirely original and includes the first names of 
 the day, and its embellishments surpass any other magazine of 
 double the price. Nor must our readers suppose we have ex- 
 hausted our stock of contributions from our lady writers. All 
 accounts not settled during the year will be taxed an additional 
 fifty cents at the end of it. If we must wait, we must be paid 
 for it. By Jupiter, this shall not be revoked! 
 
 You cannot imagine Mrs. Hale saying " by Jupiter." 
 Nor can you imagine her gentle heart otherwise than 
 grieving over a series of very unladylike critiques by 
 Poe, which must have rejoiced the stomach of Godey. 
 So great was the demand for the first instalment of the 
 Literati of New York that they reprinted it in the next 
 number. Poe was at that time running on a shoestring 
 the Broadway Journal, and he had many scores to settle. 
 The series involved the Lady's Book in some very unlady- 
 like proceedings. Dr. Thomas Dunn English resented 
 Poe's attack on him, and retaliated with a statement in 
 the New York Mirror. Poe dipped his pen in the prussic 
 
 I 
 
VALLEY OF SELF-SUFFICIENTNESS 107 
 
 acid which Lowell said often served him for ink and 
 indicted a rejoinder. This even the shrewd and com- 
 mercial Gcdey refused to print; and all of Mrs. Hale's 
 laces must have sighed with relief as she sat down at her 
 desk to breathe her monthly message of peace and love. 
 Mrs. Hale adhered to the time-honoured custom of 
 announcing accepted contributions; and she requested 
 contributors to keep copies, as she could not undertake 
 to send back rejected articles. "If the writers do not 
 find their contributions noticed within three months, they 
 are rejected." At other times would come this significant 
 notice. " We have been looking over our collection of 
 original poetry. Some of these articles have been on 
 hand so long that their authors may have forgotten them 
 or given them to some other publications. We hope the 
 latter." Therefore, the following announcement may 
 not come as a surprise : " We want it distinctly under- 
 stood that, unless by previous understanding to that effect, 
 no articles published in this magazine will be paid for. 
 Young writers and those who have not acquired a literary 
 reputation must remember that the mere insertion of their 
 articles in the Lady's Book is quite a compensation in 
 itself. It is useless for them to ask what price we pay; 
 it would be better to ask if we will insert their produc- 
 tions." Yet the funeral-baked meats of these youthful 
 rejected writers were sliced up at will to furnish forth 
 the Editor's Table. Mrs. Hale, like most editors of the 
 time, coolly carved out the good morsels to garnish her 
 own feast. In fact, the Table seems to have been devised 
 in the beginning for this thrifty hash of viands, which, 
 like the ^gg of the meek curate, were " excellent in spots." 
 It must have given the verdant authors a peculiar mixture 
 of exasperation and solace to behold themselves thus 
 willy-nilly minced up into a salad. The extensive prac- 
 tice affords an excellent illustration of the papal editorial 
 attitude of the early days — an attitude not entirely with- 
 out its influence over our own. After all, these times 
 were not so long ago; and United States congressmen 
 
io8 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 and publishers were not the only ones who had confused 
 notions of literary property. Authors themselves seemed 
 to be genuinely surprised when an editor — as a New 
 York paper said pointedly of one who had gone into 
 bankruptcy through his '' generosity " — paid for some- 
 thing he could get for nothing. It is amusing to see 
 magazines which confessedly remunerated only their 
 prominent contributors constantly trumpeting their open- 
 handedness. And when, as with the Lady's Book, they 
 found it profitable to exploit women's work, their blasts 
 might have aroused sleeping chivalry itself, secure within 
 its Dark Tower. 
 
 " I sometimes think," said the Editor's Table in 1842, 
 " that the Lady's Book owes much of its unparalleled 
 success to the blessings which the poor of our sex who 
 are benefited by its publication are constantly calling 
 down upon it. Not to reckon the host of female writers, 
 who are promptly paid, there are, besides, more than one 
 hundred females who depend for their daily bread on 
 the money they receive from colouring the plates of 
 fashions, stitching, doing up the work, and so on." And 
 again : " We were the first to bring the happiest produc- 
 tions of the female mind home to the myriad of firesides. 
 This January number is entirely the production of lady 
 writers, and with the exception of the poem of the cele- 
 brated Miss Joanna Baillie, from the pens of American 
 ladies." They got out a number of this sort frequently. 
 The signed contributors were of that forgotten galaxy 
 of ladies — Mrs. Embury, Mrs. Seba Smith, Mrs. Ellet, 
 Mrs. Osgood — whose sentimental voices were sometimes 
 raised shrilly at each other, and whose little hands occa- 
 sionally sought to tear out each other's eyes. The literary 
 harem was maintained on very limited rations ; and think 
 of all the apprentice female pens rhyming and essaying 
 for nothing, awaiting their chance to squeeze in and de- 
 mand their share of the crumbs that fell from the master's 
 table. It behooved the fortunate inmates to watch each 
 other narrowly for indications of waning charms. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 NEW YORK AND THE MAKING OF A METROPOLIS 
 
 "I AM satisfied," wrote Benjamin Rush in 1799, "the 
 ratio of intellect is as twenty to one and of knowledge 
 one hundred to one, in these States compared with what 
 they were before the American Revolution/' This was 
 the year that Charles Brockden Brown thought both were 
 ripe enough to create in New York City a demand for a 
 purely literary journal. .The Monthly Magazine and 
 American Review had been a long-cherished plan. It 
 languished and dwindled until in 1801 it was rebaptised 
 into a momentary resuscitation, the American Review 
 and Literary Journal. 
 
 Juliet might persuade herself there was nothing in a 
 name, but the proprietors of American magazines — like 
 the proprietors of American theatres — seem always to 
 have reasoned differently. Since the beginning they have 
 sought to hoodwink their hoodo, in the manner of the 
 landlord who hoped to lay his unprofitable ghost by 
 putting up another sign on his inn. In Brown's case, 
 as in all similar shifts in the magazine world, the expedi- 
 ent proved unsuccessful. A magazine that changes its 
 name in hopes of bettering its condition should remember 
 the old counsel to brides, and change the letter also. As 
 long as this remained the same, there was no sufficient 
 public for Brown's magazine. At the century's very be- 
 ginning, and in New York City, neither intellect nor 
 knowledge was present in sufficient quantity to support 
 a periodical consisting entirely of reviews, reports of 
 foreign works, and a literary journal. It was just an- 
 other one of those magnificent and foolish undertakings 
 of which we have seen so many ; " yet by the bones about 
 the wayside we have come into our own. " 
 
 109 
 
no THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 The " vision '* of the pioneer, Brown shared with the 
 rest; and he stated it in a dignified announcement free 
 from verbiage and the already stereotyped diplomacies 
 of the trade : 
 
 The American people are perhaps more distinguished than 
 those of Europe by an universal attention to the active and 
 lucrative pursuits of life. This habit has grown out of the ne- 
 cessities of their situation. Some European critics hold our 
 pretensions in contempt, and many among ourselves seem in- 
 clined to degrade our countrymen below the common level. It 
 is only the gradual influence of time that will generate and con- 
 tinue a race of artists and authors purely indigenous and who 
 may vie with those of Europe. This period is, probably, at no 
 great distance; and no means seem better calculated to hasten 
 so desirable an event than those of literary repositories. It is 
 from the want of a clear and comprehensive survey of our 
 literary products that we are in a great measure to ascribe the 
 censures of foreign cities. The plan of a Review, so new in 
 America, has had many prejudices and obstacles to surmount. 
 It was thought that young American writers would not bear 
 criticism and must be treated with peculiar indulgence. Experi- 
 ence has proved this objection to be without foundation. How 
 far those who have executed the department of criticism are 
 qualified for the undertaking, the public have it in their power 
 to decide. Their purpose has been not so much to exhibit their 
 own opinions as the spirit and the manner of the author. It is 
 not probable that any individual can be found who with the 
 requisite ability and inclination has leisure and perseverance 
 enough, successfully to conduct a work of this kind. Depend- 
 ing then as it must do on persons of various pursuits and differ- 
 ent political sentiments, it is not surprising that occasional dif- 
 ference of opinion should appear. Original essays we confi- 
 dently hope for, but no promises are given. 
 
 In the last-mentioned hope, as in all the others, he 
 was destined to disappointment. He had been obliged 
 to furnish almost the entire contents of the earlier maga- 
 zine ; it was the same with this and with its successor, the 
 Literary Magazine and American Register, established 
 in Philadelphia in 1803. This third of his gallant, pre- 
 mature endeavours struck, in the more intellectual soil 
 of the latter city, roots hardly sufificient to suck up a five 
 years' subsistence. But even there he ran his engine at 
 
THE MAKING OF A METROPOLIS iir 
 
 one-man power. In 1804 he wrote to his brother: 
 " You will find but a single communication in this num- 
 ber — all the rest of the original prose I have been obliged 
 to supply myself, for which I am sorry, for the sake of 
 the credit of the work as well as of my own ease. The 
 whole original department of July I have been obliged 
 to spin out of my own brain. You will probably find 
 it, of consequence, very dull.'* 
 
 A letter he had written his brother from New York in 
 1800 mentions other difificulties. " Yesterday the due 
 number of copies of number three of the magazine was 
 put on board the stage for your city, where I hope they 
 have seasonably arrived. This once the printers have 
 been tolerably punctual and hereafter I have reason to 
 think they will be regular. Book-making, as you observe, 
 is the dullest of trades, and the utmost that any American 
 can look for in his native country is to be reimbursed for 
 his unavoidable expenses. The salability of my works 
 will much depend upon their popularity in England." 
 Perhaps he would have lost faith in his vision if he could 
 have foreseen that a half century later his chief successor 
 in New York would still be fighting desperately — to fall 
 at last — the same foe, if under a new face. Said the 
 Knickerbocker in an article on Leland in 1856: " Apart 
 from the editors of newspapers, where shall we find a 
 body of men, however innumerous, who can earn their 
 daily bread by their pen alone? We are filled with 
 shame and indignation at the legislative stupidity which 
 offers a few miserable types of American professional 
 litterateur as victims to the niggardly reprinting of a 
 rival literature." The main situation had not altered 
 much, even if a book could count upon wider distribu- 
 tion than in the eleven cities where Brown had agents. 
 " As collection of small sums is difficult and expensive, 
 those who reside at a distance from Boston, Hartford, 
 New Haven, Albany, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Richmond, 
 Alexandria, Norfolk, Charleston, and Savannah, where 
 numbers are sold, will kindly designate some person in 
 
112 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 their town as agent to receive and pay for their copies.'* 
 This difficulty and others caused Brown to turn his maga- 
 zine into a quarterly at fifty cents a number. " The thin 
 population of the United States renders it impossible to 
 procure sufficient support from any one city, and the 
 dispersed situation of readers, the embarrassments attend- 
 ing the diffusion of copies over a wide extent of country, 
 and the obstacles to a prompt collection of the small sums 
 which so cheap a publication demanded, are, it is pre- 
 sumed, satisfactory reasons for altering the publication 
 so as to diminish these inconveniences." 
 
 In spite of all shifts, however, his thoroughly creditable 
 and well-arranged review went down. There was not 
 enough public for its purely intellectual appeal. All 
 European travellers of the period agreed that Americans 
 were inordinately devoted to making money, and the 
 Scotch Mackenzie said that the descendants of the Dutch 
 particularly were avaricious. Those people in New York, 
 too, that might have had leisure and inclination to improve 
 their minds, spent all their time out of the counting-house 
 in social pleasures. The little Dutch town, said Felix de 
 Beaujour, was the only one in America which had a really 
 continental quality — the others were English or West 
 Indian. Close-fisted these Dutchmen might be, but they 
 were very fond of gaieties; and very hospitable in enter- 
 tainment at their own homes. A resident of Philadelphia 
 remarked in 1806 that there were fewer taverns fre- 
 quented by the genteel than in his own city, and strangers 
 received far more attention. Most of the energy which 
 cultivated New Yorkers could spare from business went 
 out in maintaining a round of social pleasures, strictly 
 after business hours. The only people who cared about 
 reading, they naturally seized eagerly upon a kind which, 
 so far from taking time from their social pursuits, added 
 a zest to them. Rarely has a more delightful morning 
 dawned in a gay, gossipy little world than January 24, 
 1807, when the first number of Salmagundi appeared. 
 
 "It's object," wrote Paulding, "was to ridicule the 
 
THE MAKING OF A METROPOLIS 113 
 
 follies and foibles of the fashionable world. Though we 
 had not anticipated anything beyond a local circulation, 
 the work extended throughout the United States and 
 acquired great popularity. It was, I believe, the first of 
 its kind in the country ; produced numerous smaller pub- 
 lications, none of which, however, extended beyond a 
 few numbers; and formed somewhat of an era in our 
 literature. It reached two volumes, and we could have 
 continued it indefinitely; but the publisher, with that 
 liberality so characteristic of these modern Maecenases, 
 declined to concede to us a share of the profits, which had 
 become considerable.'' Yet it seems to have been dis- 
 tinctly understood in the beginning that Longworth, the 
 publisher, in assuming all the risks, would assume the 
 profits also. " We have nothing to do with the pecuniary 
 concerns of this paper," ran the editorial announcement 
 in the first number ; " its success will yield us neither 
 pride nor profit, nor will its failure occasion to us either 
 loss or mortification." The authors, indeed, could not 
 have calculated on the paper's doing more than pay ex- 
 penses — well-nigh universal experience would have 
 taught them to expect even less. When Longworth sug- 
 gested, fairly enough, that they take out a copyright, 
 they had answered that it was not worth while. Conse- 
 quently Longworth was quite within his rights when, 
 having taken it out himself in addition to the initial risk, 
 he refused to share his profits with them. But he seems 
 at least to have begun to do so, for the three authors 
 received from him one hundred dollars apiece. It may 
 well be that as they saw the profits unexpectedly mounting 
 up, they took an attitude which the publisher felt some 
 justification in resenting. The immediate cause of their 
 abrupt retirement on the twentieth number was his ad- 
 vancing the price to one shilling. Paulding calculated 
 that he and Irving had enriched their publisher by ten 
 thousand dollars when the copyright expired in 1822. 
 
 The success of Salmagundi at the time was quite enough 
 to turn the head of any publisher who had in the teeth of 
 
114 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 experience handsomely undertaken to assume all risks, 
 and of authors who flew afterward on fire to hear such 
 rich reprisals were so nigh and yet not theirs. Eight 
 hundred copies of the fourth issue sold on the day of 
 publication in a town of eighty thousand inhabitants was 
 electrifying. At first it was to have been published — 
 like the Philistine almost a century later — " every once 
 in a while," but in the first flush of triumph it became 
 a weekly. Though it moderated its pace later, it con- 
 tinued to show all competitors Atalanta's heels — espe- 
 cially its " next-door neighbour, Town," which soon 
 dropped out of the running. The waggish impertinence, 
 buoyant and bland, of the mysterious trio, Launcelot 
 Langstaff, Anthony Evergreen, and William Wizard, 
 decidedly caught on. It was a new thing for authors to 
 take themselves so lightly (their levity possibly being 
 occasioned by the comforting knowledge that Longworth 
 was footing the bills). " The paper on which this work 
 will be printed is that held in highest estimation by young 
 ladies for buckling up their hair," read the announcement. 
 Imitations, as Paulding said, shot up everywhere. 
 Though most of them withered overnight, the neat droll- 
 eries of the original remained for a long while the 
 aspiration of every young writer. Why not, indeed, 
 since Irving was the only American who had as yet cap- 
 tured the coveted London approbation ? " We had a 
 Dennie," said the Philadelphia Critic censoriously in 1820, 
 " yet his classical elegance has not availed to preserve 
 his countrymen from being intoxicated by the quaintness 
 and affectation of the Salmagundi school." But Beatrice 
 Ironside, the sprightly editress of the Baltimore Observer, 
 snapped her fingers at the earlier Addisonian tradition 
 of Dennie with as much delight as the rest of her country- 
 men. The modified type was more suitable to the cen- 
 tury. " Although our city readers have most probably 
 generally seen Salmagundi/* she wrote, " yet we cannot 
 forbear extracting the following ludicrous and admirable 
 description. We were almost apprehensive that the wit 
 
THE MAKING OF A METROPOLIS 115 
 
 which sparkled with such continual brilliancy in the first 
 numbers would have too soon wasted fire, but we are 
 delighted to find the fifth number even perhaps surpasses 
 those which preceded it, and that the genius and satirical 
 talents of the facetious editors appear to be as inexhausti- 
 ble as the subjects which call them forth/' 
 
 In 1 8 19 Paulding made an attempt to resuscitate Sal- 
 magundi while Irving was in Europe. A letter to him 
 in 1820 tells the story. 
 
 Hearing last winter that you had finally declined coming 
 home and finding my leisure time a little heavy, I set to work 
 and prepared several numbers of a continuation of our old joint 
 production. At that time and subsequently, I was entirely ig- 
 norant that you contemplated anything of the kind [in the 
 Sketch Book]. But for an accidental delay, my first number 
 would have got the start of yours. As it happened, however, 
 it has the appearance of taking the field against you, which 
 neither my head nor my heart will sanction. I believe my work 
 has not done you any harm in the way of rivalship, for it has 
 been soundly abused by many persons and compared with the 
 first part with many degrading expressions. It has sold toler- 
 ably, but I shall discontinue it shortly. 
 
 Paulding was always disposed to rate their youthful 
 venture much higher than did Irving. " I know you 
 consider old Sal as a sort of saucy flippant trollope not 
 worth fathering," he wrote. Saucy she might well be — 
 the only American magazine who retired with flags flying 
 in the very midst of her triumphs. Had Father Knicker- 
 bocker, who came along twenty-five years later, taken 
 her breezy tip, his voyage would have been more graceful. 
 
 " The dapper little town of the Dutch days," said the 
 Knickerbocker making its opening speech, " has bloated 
 into the big metropolis. The object of our magazine is 
 to represent life and letters as existing here, not to 
 assume their regulation. In literature, young, fresh, and 
 unhackneyed as Americafis are, we are already, by some 
 strange fatuity, grievously given to twaddle." About 
 ten years before Bryant had written the same thing to 
 Dana concerning his magazine, the Review and Athe- 
 
ii6 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 nceum. " It is true, as you say, that there is a want of 
 literary entertainment in our journal. But as to the 
 multitude of clever men here who might furnish it, let me 
 say that we have some clever men here, to be sure, but 
 they are naughtily given to instructing the world, to eluci- 
 dating political economy and jurisprudence, etc. They 
 seem to think it a sort of disgrace to be entertaining. 
 Since the time of Salmagundi the city has grown exceed- 
 ingly grave and addicted to soHd speculations. Paulding 
 sometimes writes for our magazine, and we pick up the 
 rest of it as well as we can." This, then, was the ideal 
 of the Knickerbocker — to avoid heavy twaddle and to 
 seek to entertain, as would a courtly gentleman at his 
 own table. When in 1862 it had escaped for the moment 
 the many calamities that threatened bankruptcy, it per- 
 mitted itself in thanking its new friends a little retro- 
 spect of its honourable history. " People were ' a little 
 aristocratic ' then — it was the tone. Knick held up 
 its head with the best of them ; the old gentleman always 
 kept good company and scorned the canaille. Well, he 
 found friends in those later darkened days. It is not 
 always enough to get your money's worth in mere paper 
 and names. Pray remember that every magazine has its 
 peculiar subtle influence. He who reads Knick breathes 
 the American tone for thirty years, and renders himself 
 liable of being suspected to be a gentleman through long 
 habit and association." And years after it had descended 
 into rest, Leland wrote endearingly in a similar strain, 
 from the midst of more successful magazines of a later 
 day, " There was never anything quite like the Knicker- 
 bocker and there never will be again. It required a 
 sunny, genial, social atmosphere, such as we had before 
 the war and never after ; an easy writing of gay and culti- 
 vated men for one another, and not painfully elaborating 
 
 jocosities as in . But never mind. It sparkled 
 
 through its summer time, and oh, how its readers loved it ! 
 I sometimes think that I would like to hunt up the old 
 title-plate with Diedrich Knickerbocker and his pipe, 
 
THE MAKING OF A METROPOLIS 117 
 
 and issue it again every month to a few dozen subscribers 
 who loved quaint odds and ends, till I too should pass 
 away." 
 
 Everything was done, from the beginning, to increase 
 this atmosphere. An early number regretted that the 
 important ground once occupied by the London Gentle- 
 man's when it made itself the medium through which 
 gentlemen of taste or science communicated with each 
 other, had been abandoned by modern periodicals. It 
 would always be happy to have its readers exchange 
 views with each other. The Editor's Table, where it 
 chatted at ease over everything in particular and nothing 
 in general, was its glory. Besides this, the editor had 
 gossip with readers and correspondents and remarked 
 upon the various contributions. The last-named practice 
 had been slowly making its way, and it won a permanent 
 if equivocal place in the editorial heart. Probably no 
 modern editor would care to examine the logic of it. 
 Bryant had written to Dana in accepting a contribution 
 for the Review and Athenceum, " You will appear in com- 
 pany with Mr. Halleck. The poem entitled Marco 
 Bozzaris is a very beautiful thing. Anderson was so 
 delighted with it that he could not forbear adding the 
 expression of his admiration at the end of the poem. I 
 have my doubts whether it is not better to let the poetry 
 of magazines commend itself to the reader by its own 
 excellence." The Knickerbocker, though subscribers 
 were always praising its Table as the chief and peculiar 
 attraction, seemed never to have thought of departing 
 from the fine print in which it had been the modest 
 fashion to clothe editorial utterance. Possibly it typified 
 the still small voice of the sleepless monitor. " So in- 
 teresting a part of your magazine ought not to appear 
 in such diminutive type," protested one diplomatic corre- 
 spondent. Following the fashion, too, the type always 
 grew smaller as the Table lengthened from month to 
 month. Even the most voracious guest must have found 
 twenty-six pages of well-nigh invisible print trying. But 
 
ii8 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 minute as it was, the very vanishing point was achieved 
 in the monthly extracts from rejected articles. Perhaps 
 this was also a symbol. Such type nowadays has taken 
 its last stand, for the ordinary God-fearing citizen, in the 
 franker torture-chamber of oculists. In i860 Editor's 
 Table began to publish a retrospect of their contribu- 
 tors. It was a war measure and the magazine was being 
 starved out, but the history was one Which justified self- 
 satisfaction. The extracts from their editorial corre- 
 spondence, too, included all of America's well-known 
 names and many English ones. Their Ollapodiana, they 
 said, had proved the most popular series of papers they 
 had ever published. 
 
 These were written by Willis Clark, brother of the 
 editor, upon whose death, in 1841, the Table had a four- 
 page article. The announcement of his connection with 
 the magazine in 1834 is an interesting item. " The edi- 
 tor's labours will be shared with his brother, whose resi- 
 dence in Philadelphia will oppose no obstacle to a regular 
 division and execution of the duties pertaining to the 
 work, the mail being so prompt as to render the connec- 
 tion entirely practicable. Philadelphia correspondents, 
 or of towns to the south and west of that city, will write 
 to him (post-paid always)." When Poe attacked the 
 Knickerbocker in 1843, he said that the only redeeming 
 quality of the editor was that he was the brother of the 
 late Willis Clark. The genial fertile author of Ollapo- 
 diana, indeed, exactly realised Bryant's ideal of a maga- 
 zine man. " I suspect we shall be sorely tried to get 
 matter for the miscellaneous department," he had written 
 Dana in 1826 on launching his magazine. " A talent for 
 such articles is quite rare in this country, and particu- 
 larly in this city. There are many who can give grave, 
 sensible discussions on subjects of general utility, but 
 few who can write an interesting or diverting article for 
 miscellany." It is amusing to recall that New York 
 once confessed that it had to go to Philadelphia for the 
 light, gay chatter which should keep people awake. 
 
THE MAKING OF A METROPOLIS 119 
 
 A very brilliant start had the magazine, but its able 
 inaugurator gave up the editorship in less than a year on 
 account of failing health. To him and his successor 
 Poe thus paid his respects in his article, the New York 
 Literati. " Mr. Charles Fenno Hoffman was the origi- 
 nal editor of the Knickerbocker, and gave it while under 
 his control a tone and character the weight of which may 
 be best estimated by the consideration that the work re- 
 ceived an impetus which has enabled it to bear on alive, 
 though tottering, month after month, under Mr. Lewis 
 Gaylord Clark. He subsequently owned and edited the 
 American Monthly, one of the best journals we have 
 ever had; and for a year conducted the New York 
 Mirror/' Nevertheless, in spite of Poe's animosity, 
 Clark conducted the tottering steps of the magazine for 
 twenty years and for about half that time at least gave 
 it a success undreamed of by its earlier editor. " By all 
 means cultivate the Knickerbocker/' wrote Bridge to 
 Hawthorne, seeking to find an opening. " For one's 
 name to appear there is an introduction.'* A young 
 writer, however, effected an introduction to the reader 
 far less readily than to the editor. For some time 
 his articles seem to have been modestly signed " By 
 a New Contributor." For the most part, only the 
 better-known names appeared. These immediately gave 
 the magazine prestige. On the financial side, the num- 
 ber of copies had by the middle of the third year 
 grown from five hundred to over four thousand. " With 
 proper encouragement American periodicals will soon sur- 
 pass those of England," the editor permitted himself to 
 remark in 1837, surveying his increasing success. Sev- 
 eral obstacles lay in the way, however. The chief was 
 that old bogey, the unpaid subscription. " Instead of 
 purchasing our magazines as in England," the dying 
 Port Folio had said bitterly in 1820, " we subscribe for 
 them." Knickerbocker had, in the past two years alone, 
 lost over five thousand dollars. Appealing in 1837 to 
 delinquent subscribers, it begged to point out that maga- 
 
120 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 zines, unlike newspapers, had little or no advertising to 
 help defray expenses. One hundred and seven voluntary 
 subscriptions had come in last month, they recorded 
 proudly; but the editor could not have failed to reflect 
 that subscribers often dodged the main issue. Again, 
 the business management of the magazine sometimes did 
 not keep faith. After Knickerbocker had begun under 
 the most flattering auspices, the unprincipled manage- 
 ment of the original proprietor soon disgusted the public ; 
 and the new proprietor had slowly to win back their 
 confidence again. Agents,- too, swindled both public and 
 management. As with Graham's and Godey's, there was 
 the increasing complaint on the part of distant sub- 
 scribers that their numbers reached them late in the 
 month, and after they had read the best articles in the 
 journals. Early in 1840, they would try the plan of 
 mailing every copy, the most distant first, before the first 
 day of the month, on which day they would promptly 
 serve their city readers. The plan seems to have been 
 unsuccessful in frustrating the newspapers, however, and 
 at the close of 1840 they announced that they would 
 secure for their articles the protection of copyright. 
 
 The easy appropriation of their articles by foreign 
 prints was by no means so exasperating. After all, to 
 have become successful enough to be black-mailed has 
 been a fortifying reflection to many a self-made man; 
 and a grievance which can be profitably aired has de- 
 cidedly good points. It was impressive to be able to 
 complain each month that an article of the month before 
 had been lifted in England, even without acknowledg- 
 ment or " with numerous mutilations and interpolations 
 suitable to the meridian of London." In 1836 is re- 
 corded with a complacent purr that no less than nine 
 distinct articles of theirs, each inserted as original, had 
 appeared in one number of the London Ladies' Cabinet 
 of Fashion; in 1840 " Old Knick is growing cosmopoli- 
 tan — several of our articles have appeared in French 
 and German magazines." The year before there had 
 
 1 
 
THE MAKING OF A METROPOLIS 121 
 
 been much swagger in their fine scorn of Bentley's when 
 it announced that '* arrangements had been made for the 
 appearance of the Crayon Papers simuhaneously with 
 their appearance in the United States." Bentley's, of 
 course, had done nothing of the sort, but what would 
 you? — success had its penalties and poor Bentley's its 
 predicaments. 
 
 Knick had been very proud of capturing Irving at last. 
 At the close of its first year, it had regretted that the 
 illustrious editor of Knickerbocker's History had not 
 honoured the magazine, the name of which was the 
 greatest compliment America had ever paid to his genius. 
 It was in March, 1839, that Irving engaged to contribute 
 monthly to its pages, for two thousand dollars a year in 
 stated instalments, " I am tired of writing volumes," he 
 said as he made his bow. " They do not afford exactly 
 the relief I require as I grow old. I have thought there- 
 fore of securing to myself a snug corner in some periodi- 
 cal where I might loll at my ease in my elbow chair and 
 chat sociably on any chance subject that might pop into 
 my brain." The task of writing every month proved 
 irksome to him, however, and — says Pierre Irving — 
 the returns were less prompt than he had anticipated. 
 But his good will to the magazine and to Lewis Clark 
 induced him to continue his connection for two years. 
 
 In 1843 Poe ran amuck among the magazines in a style 
 which was amazing even for him. He printed in the 
 New World of March eleventh an article which Knicker- 
 bocker announced the following month it had rejected. 
 It seems likely, says Griswold caustically, that he had 
 subsequently somewhat altered his remarks upon that 
 magazine, as he could scarcely have expected them to 
 assert that their own glory had forever departed and that 
 the principal cause of its melancholy decline might be 
 traced to its peculiar and unappreciated editor, Lewis 
 Clark. " The present condition of this periodical is 
 that of a poorly cooked-up concern, a huge, handsome- 
 looking body, but without a soul. The sooner it dies the 
 
122 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 better it will be for the proprietors ; but if they will secure 
 an able and efficient editor, we doubt not that it might be 
 placed in the noble station it once occupied. Neither do 
 we like the nominal editor of Graham's Magazine. A 
 pretty good compiler, he possesses too many of the 
 peculiar characteristics of Mr. Lewis Clark. He is 
 wholly unfit, either by intellect or character, to occupy 
 the editorial chair." 
 
 In 1862 the magazine announced that it had passed 
 unto a new proprietor. It confessed to the public that 
 it had many times been in sore straits. " Sooth to say, 
 friends, it would have been little to the credit of America 
 if a periodical which had been made glorious at one time 
 or another by all the great writers of America, and' ever 
 maintained a high-toned, refined and moral standard, so 
 that it was emphatically the magazine for a gentleman, 
 should die for want of friends." Later in the same year 
 it asserted that immediately after the change the circula- 
 tion had nearly trebled, in consequence of the fresh array 
 of talent attracted to it, notwithstanding the severe pres- 
 sure of the times. Of this change Leland wrote in 1861 
 in his memoirs : " The old Knickerbocker had been for 
 a long time running down to absolutely nothing. Its 
 new purchaser endeavoured to galvanise it into life. Its 
 sober grey-blue cover was changed to orange. Mr. Clark 
 left it to my sorrow; but there was no help for it, for 
 there was not a penny to pay him. [Clark had received 
 a salary and divided the profits as joint-proprietor.] I 
 consented to edit it, for I had an idea. This was to make 
 it promptly a strong Republican monthly, which was 
 utterly opposed to all of Mr. Clark's ideas. The financial 
 depression in the North at this time was terrible. I 
 prophesied editorially a prosperity close at hand such 
 as no one ever dreamed of, and I advocated emancipation 
 of slaves as a war measure only and without any regard 
 to philanthropy. As publishing such views in the Knick- 
 erbocker was like pouring the wildest of new wine into the 
 weakest of old bottles, the proprietor resolved at once to 
 
THE MAKING OF A METROPOLIS 123 
 
 establish in Boston a political monthly to be called the 
 Continental, to be devoted to this view of the situation. 
 It was the only political magazine devoted to the Repub- 
 lican cause published during the war. It was often said 
 that its bold course hastened by several months the 
 emancipation of the slaves by Abraham Lincoln." 
 
 " There is always a warmth of feeling awakened when 
 we look upon its neat lilac cover," had said the United 
 States Gazette in 1845. One may imagine Knick turning 
 orange for very shame to be thus ungenteelly hustled 
 into the turmoil of the street. The old gentleman leaning 
 upon his stick in the comfortable Dutch chair was 
 fashioned for looking out of the window with the eyes 
 of a contemplative philosopher. To make him an active 
 politician was something like turning Colonel Carter into 
 a ward heeler. " The time is past in this town," had 
 said Philip Hone, another representative of Knicker- 
 bocker culture two decades before, " when a gentleman 
 can afford to run for mayor." With Knick, the political 
 career thus thrust upon him in his over-ripe old age, 
 meant his speedy departure from the world. But even in 
 dying he managed a graceful appearance. His name and 
 the familiar vignette remained for some months after 
 1864 upon the title page of the American Monthly, and 
 so he slipped unperceived from a rough world which no 
 longer held to the ancient ideals. 
 
 That Poe should have written an article discussing in 
 such a tone the leading magazines of the day; that he 
 should insert therein an attack upon the editor who had 
 just rejected it; that any periodical should have been 
 willing to publish it — each is a glimpse into the editorial 
 urbanities of the time. The press was generally held to 
 be a legitimate vehicle for the venting of personal spite. 
 Another glimpse into the manners and morals of the New 
 York printing world is afforded in Leland's memoirs. 
 
 Frank Leslie, who had been with me on Barnum's, was now 
 (i860) publishing half a dozen periodicals and newspapers, and 
 offered me a fair price to give him my mornings. There was 
 
124 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 much rather shady, shaky Bohemianism about the frequenters 
 of our sanctum. When the war broke out and Frank LesUe 
 found that he no longer required my services, he paid my due, 
 which was far in arrears, in his usual manner — that is, by 
 orders on advertisers for goods which I did not want and for 
 which I was charged double prices. Alexander Cummings had 
 a very ingenious method of " shaving," when obliged to pay his 
 debts. His friend, Simon Cameron, had a bank — the Middle- 
 ton — which if not a very wild cat was far from being tame, as 
 its notes were always five or ten per cent, below par, to our 
 loss — for we were always paid in Middleton. I have often 
 known the clerk to take a handful of notes at par and send out 
 to buy Middleton wherewith to pay me. I am sorry to say 
 that such tricks were universal among the very great majority 
 of proprietors with whom I had dealings. To " do " the em- 
 ployes to the utmost was considered a matter of course, espe- 
 cially when the one employed was a " literary fellow " of any 
 kind or an artist. . . . Heaven knows I worked hard enough on 
 Barnum's Illustrated News, and, what was a great deal to boast 
 of in those days, never profited one cent beyond free tickets to 
 plays, which I had little time to use. I had great temptations 
 to write up certain speculative enterprises and never accepted 
 one. My pay was simply despicably small [he was the sole 
 literary editor], and there were editors in New York who for 
 less work earned ten times my salary. When I returned to 
 Philadelphia after my year in New York I had become familiar- 
 ised with characteristic phases of American life and manners; 
 but my father thought I had gone through a severe mill with 
 rather doubtful characters. 
 
 But aside from these time-honoured accompaniments 
 of the business side of the production of literature, there 
 were spiritual by-products no less inevitable to a literary 
 factory. The journalistic world of New York had begun 
 to dig a wide gulf between itself and the Boeotian cities 
 of Philadelphia and Boston. How else should it read 
 its title clear? Fired by tales of returning sojourners 
 in London and Paris, the town had learned what goes to 
 the making of a metropolis. For a metropolis two items 
 were indispensable — Bohemia within and " provinces '* 
 without. When duty whispered low thou must, the youth 
 replied I can. Blushing for its callowness, it set about 
 the job forthwith. It swaggered and posed and thought 
 itself as devilish as any sophomore that ever coaxed a 
 
THE MAKING OF A METROPOLIS 125 
 
 moustache. Its sedulous Bohemianism of the cellarage 
 variety shocked or bored the youthful immigrants from 
 soberer North and West hastening for draughts from the 
 fountain-head. There were several dashing strangers to 
 set the pace for the home talent. " Frank Forester " 
 was one of them — an Englishman compact of natural 
 and cultivated eccentricities, author of picturesque histori- 
 cal novels very successful in their day, and editor of the 
 American Monthly. He suited his action to his word 
 in a manner that was satis fyingly typical — especially 
 when he committed suicide at a banquet he had spread 
 for his friends. This was not that American Monthly 
 (by no means first or last of the name) which the young 
 Park Benjamin had come from Boston to edit, bursting 
 from the cocoon of the New England magazine. After a 
 five-years career — during which the editor had estab- 
 lished his metropolitanism by adopting the cut and thrust 
 of Poe's critical tactics — it had been gathered to its 
 fathers in 1838, long before the Knickerbocker dreamt of 
 reincarnating under its title. Poor Knick! All uncon- 
 scious of the irony its latter end would afford the remark, 
 it had dismissed its younger rival with a courtly word of 
 valedictory. " We regretted when it mingled politics with 
 literature. It is in vain to wed the two in this country — 
 a divorce is sure to succeed." 
 
 Scarcely less than Bohemianism,* however, did cockney- 
 ism prove congenial to the taste of the New York literati. 
 After all, the higher halo of a metropolis is its circlet of 
 "provinces." While Boston was quietly annexing all 
 New England, New York had begun to label the outer 
 world provincial. In 1841 Knick with its kindly superior 
 smile had patted the North American Review upon its 
 massive back, as it quoted some paragraphs which had 
 been fortunate enough to meet with approbation. " We 
 take pleasure in introducing it to the public proper in con- 
 tradistinction to a small but select circle of readers in Bos- 
 ton and elsewhere." And of the first number of the Dial, 
 it remarked indulgently: ** There are good thoughts 
 
126 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 here, but they are smothered in words, words. * If your 
 meats are good, what is the use of disguising them ? ' 
 said a Yankee to a chef at Paris. * For my part I should 
 like to know what I eat.' Four pails of water to a turnip 
 does not make an edifying soup." In 1844 Maria White 
 wrote to Briggs, who was starting the Broadway Journal: 
 " Both James and myself feel greatly interested in your 
 journal, in spite of its proposed name. James told me 
 to express his horror to you at the cockneyism of such a 
 title. The Broadway Chronicle chronicles the thoughts 
 and feelings of Broadway, not those of the New England 
 people, whom you seem willing to receive somewhat 
 from." 
 
 But in the metropolis, on Bohemians and cockneys as 
 on gentlemen, there rested an unaccountable blight. New 
 York could not even support her scholars, as Boston and 
 Philadelphia had done. 
 
 The shifts and turns of the Literary Review, founded 
 in 1822, the first literary periodical of pronounced merit 
 since Brown's day, are typical of their scrabble for a liv- 
 ing. R. C. Sands was its chief contributor. In 1824 the 
 Atlantic Magazine was started and he was made editor. 
 An amalgamation of the two starvelings was proposed in 
 1826, and the New York Review and Athencoum emerged 
 from the melting pot. Bryant and Sands were the edi- 
 tors and had " the co-operation of several gentlemen, 
 amply qualified to furnish the departments of Intelligence, 
 Poetry, and Fiction." Bryant wrote to Dana : " My 
 salary is $1,000; no great sum to be sure, but it is twice 
 what I got by my practice in the country. The business 
 of sitting in judgment on books as they come out is not 
 the literary employment most to my taste, nor that for 
 which I am best fitted, but it affords me for the present 
 a certain compensation, which is a matter of some conse- 
 quence to a poor devil like myself." But he was counting 
 his chickens before the hatching. His quarter ownership 
 and his $500 a year salary never amounted to that, and 
 the prospective increase in real money never arrived. 
 
THE MAKING OF A METROPOLIS 127 
 
 Nor was what he had " certain." Two more magazines 
 the Review absorbed in its attempt to secure a New York 
 public, and then the four-in-one migrated to Boston in 
 hope of food; and here in speedy oblivion the five went 
 down together. " Compared with the ample dimensions 
 and vivacious contents of our later periodicals," says 
 Parke Godwin, " it was but a meagre and dull affair. It 
 wanted distinctiveness, perhaps aggressiveness of charac- 
 ter. Its disquisitions were heavy. It was no doubt as 
 good as any of its contemporaries, even the North Ameri- 
 can, on which it was modelled. In respect to poetry, it 
 surpassed them all. Two subjects were given prominence 
 in the prose department which greatly needed coddling, 
 the Fine Arts and the Italian Opera." 
 
 Sedgwick had written of the editor of the Atlantic 
 Magazine: " Bliss and White, his publishers, are liberal 
 gentlemen; they pay him $500 a year and authorise an 
 expenditure of $500 more." A first-class magazine for 
 a thousand a year! The proprietors evidently counted 
 upon the editor and " communications " furnishing the 
 body of each number. This could, at a pinch, have been 
 counted upon for several decades to come ; and very often 
 it was, whether editors were promised a salary and had 
 a financial interest or not, and whether they got their 
 salary when they had been promised it. The two editors 
 of ArctiiniSj started in 1841, wrote almost all the early 
 articles. This was the next notable attempt after 
 Bryant's to make New York support a purely literary 
 magazine. '^ Arcturus" wrote Lowell, " is as transcen- 
 dental as Gotham can be." 
 
 Its sub-title was a Journal of Books and Opinions, and 
 it was edited by Cornelius Mathews and Evert Duyckinck. 
 It died as modestly as it was born. " The late James 
 Smith in one of his humorous sketches said his hero 
 was accustomed to lie like the prospectus of a new maga- 
 zine," said they reticently as they began. At the end 
 of the first year, the publisher still assured them there 
 was enough in the pouch to pay travelling expenses, but 
 
128 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 before another year the hopeful journey was ended. The 
 magazine was an elegant one, and it left an impression 
 deeper than many of much longer life. Poe agreed with 
 Dana that in many respects it was decidedly the best ever 
 published in this country. 
 
 " It was on the whole too good to enjoy extensive popularity, 
 although I am here using an equivocal phrase, for a better jour- 
 nal might have been far more acceptable to the public. It was 
 excessively tasteful, but this character applies more to its ex- 
 ternal or mechanical appearance than to its essential qualities. 
 Unhappily, magazines and other similar publications are in the 
 beginning judged chiefly by externals. People saw Arcturus 
 looking very much like other works which had failed through 
 notorious dulness, although admitted as arbitri elegantiarum in 
 all points of what is termed taste or decorum; and they had no 
 patience to examine further. It cannot be said that it wanted 
 force. It was deficient in power of expression, and this defi- 
 ciency is to be attributed mainly to the exceeding brevity of its 
 articles — a brevity that degenerated into mere paragraphism 
 precluding dissertation or argument. The magazine had in fact 
 some of the worst or most inconvenient features of a weekly 
 literary newspaper. The mannerism to which I refer seems to 
 have had its source in undue admiration and consequent imi- 
 tation of the Spectator. 
 
 But Duyckinck thought he saw ultimate success m the 
 very item which Poe deemed responsible for its failure; 
 and five years later, in 1847, he established the Literary 
 World, a weekly. It lasted until 1853. E. P. Whipple 
 wrote Griswold that the new journal was better than 
 anything we had had before; and that it would, if it 
 succeeded and cut loose from all sectional and personal 
 predilections, be a valuable aid to American literature. 
 William Allen Butler wrote of it after Duyckinck's death : 
 '* The experience of a purely literary journal, dependent 
 on its own merits and not on the patronage of a publish- 
 ing house, and appealing rather to the sympathies than 
 to the needs of that very small portion of the public which 
 took satisfaction in a weekly presentation of the progress 
 of ideas without reference to their own party politics, 
 religious denomination, their craving for continuous fie- 
 
THE MAKING OF A METROPOLIS 129 
 
 tlon, or their preference for woodcuts and caricatures, 
 was not encouraging." 
 
 The religious and Hterary periodical had been a very 
 important early phenomenon in America. Samuel Os- 
 good could not understand why such a publication, at 
 least, had been unable to get a firm foothold in a com- 
 munity so orthodox and theological. The Literary and 
 Theological Review and the New York Review had both 
 of them signally failed, while in Boston the Christian 
 Disciple begun in 181 3 and becoming the Christian Exam- 
 iner in 1824 had kept flying the standard of liberal schol- 
 arship for a long and vital career. Possibly, he specu- 
 lated, it was because Boston confided to it all new and 
 debatable opinions. Certain it is that when later this 
 paper based its hopes less upon liberal thought and sought 
 refuge in more conventionally theological New York it 
 went down after a few years' struggle in 1869. 
 
 The strange blight seemed to rest upon magazines of 
 the entire period. Not only did very promising native 
 infants peak and die, but older children who had been 
 fairly hardy at home lost their individuality when they 
 were taken to New York and attempted to acquire 
 metropolitan dash and vim — which, after all, failed to 
 harden them sufficiently to thrive on a starvation diet. 
 Perhaps it was in some cases a rush of Bohemianism to 
 the head; perhaps in others cockneyism produced a gal- 
 loping consumption. Perhaps, as Poe thought with 
 Arcturus, it was Spectatorism and dry-rot. But Samuel 
 Osgood thought he was pronouncing a high eulogy upon 
 Duyckinck when he said that that editor clung closely 
 to the old English standards of culture and went in 
 stoutly for a New York school that should be a full 
 match at least for the rising New England literature: 
 he meant Arcturus to be the bright and particular star 
 of New York culture, and New York culture was Irving 
 with his modified Addison. From 181 5 to the beginning 
 of the Knickerbocker in 1832 there were at least thirty 
 New York magazines, not one of which even for a short 
 
130 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 while flourished. " For years before we started," said 
 that magazine in 1833, " ^^w York had no periodical 
 of any kind. Now we have four, not to mention others 
 in embryo or rumour." But the second crop was like 
 the first — almost all withered in metropolitan soil. 
 And Philadelphia, with neither Bohemia nor provinces, 
 kept chuckling to herself. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE WILLOWY WILLIS AND THE PIRATICAL POE 
 IN NEW YORK 
 
 The New York Mirror, into which Willis merged the 
 Boston American Monthly, had been begun in 1823 by 
 Morris and Woodworth. Samuel Woodworth is quoted 
 daily by people who never heard his name, the author of 
 a strain almost as familiar as Home Sweet Home. The 
 lyrist of the Old Oaken Bucket had in 1812, as one of 
 a " society of gentlemen," made an unsuccessful attempt 
 to conduct a Swedenborgian magazine, the Halcyon 
 Luminary, combining Swedenborg with polite literature. 
 It may have been their song-writing that brought these 
 two gentlemen together, for in 1823 Morris was a very 
 handsomely paid balladist, getting fifty dollars for any 
 song he wrote, cash before delivery; and it may have 
 been the latter's worldliness which whirled them apart, 
 for in 1825, Morris wrote Briar Cliff, a drama, for 
 which he received the extraordinary sum of thirty-five 
 hundred dollars. Only a year was Woodworth con- 
 nected with the Mirror, and then Morris held it up to the 
 town alone. For twenty years it conspicuously con- 
 tributed to the literary, dramatic and artistic interests of 
 New York. With all their jibing at the metropolis for 
 her unsuccessful attempts in founding journals, neither 
 Boston nor Philadelphia could show a literary weekly un- 
 connected with a religious organisation, of anything like 
 its longevity ; and its temporary failure in 1842 was owing 
 not to diminished vitality but to a series of wide-spread 
 financial disasters. 
 
 It was in 1831 that Willis, disappointed in the tight 
 purses of Boston culture, decided to take his dolls and 
 leave home. ** The apprenticeship which he had served 
 
 131 
 
132 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 for two years in Boston," says R. H. Stoddard in his 
 Recollections, " made him a master workman by the time 
 he joined the staff of the New York Mirror. Its editors 
 cast about for ways and means to increase its circulation 
 and enlarge its narrow bank-account, and it was resolved 
 over an oyster supper at the plebeian Delmonico's of that 
 day, that Willis should travel abroad and write letters 
 home. The moderate fortune of five hundred dollars 
 was somehow scraped together and his passage was taken. 
 He was to write fifty letters for five hundred dollars — 
 upon which sum he would be expected to maintain himself 
 like a gentleman in the capitals of Europe. His Pencil- 
 lings By the Way were so popular that they were copied 
 from the Mirror into hundreds of city and country 
 journals." For four years he wrote weekly letters at 
 ten dollars each. In January, 1839, Hawthorne promised 
 Morris to furnish five stories for the Mirror. 
 
 For only one year did the Mirror remain darkened, 
 and then, reburnished, it again reflected metropolitan life 
 as the New Mirror. In 1844 it became a daily, the 
 Evening Mirror, and in this shape lasted for two years 
 longer. But in all its triplicate forms its light had been 
 about the same. Its last change of name and issue, like 
 the second, had not been made with the usual motive 
 of pumping life into the moribund. Morris and Willis 
 announced, in September, 1844, that they had been driven 
 out of the field of weekly journalism by the United States 
 Post Office. The Mirror, being stitched, could not be 
 mailed at newspaper rates but was taxed at the caprice of 
 postmasters from two to fifteen cents a copy; and this 
 more than doubled the price to country readers and 
 killed the mail subscription. To avoid this, the editors 
 had decided to publish every day. 
 
 Protests against postal regulations had arisen ever 
 since the press had been officially admitted to the mails 
 and before then, when it had been admitted unofficially. 
 When the service was established by the Government, it 
 had refused to handle printed matter. The postmaster, 
 
WILLOWY WILLIS AND PIRATICAL POE 133 
 
 less stern, was in the habit of sending the newspaper on 
 with the mails for nothing; and consequently when the 
 bags were full he let them wait over. This occasioned 
 many complaints — the mail was always late enough in 
 any case, since the post never travelled at night. In 
 1790 there were seventy-five post-offices in the country, 
 almost three times as many as there had been in 1776; 
 and five years later there were four hundred and fifty- 
 three. The tremendous rate of increase kept necessitating 
 reorganisation of the system; and the Government, seeing 
 that the riders were carrying the newspapers anyway, de- 
 cided to get some revenue out of it. Consequently, news- 
 papers were made mail matter in 1792. Having had their 
 transportation for nothing, merely at the cost of in- 
 expensive complaints on the part of subscribers at the 
 delays under the old system, the newspapers naturally 
 protested. They were alarmed, too, lest their circulation 
 would be greatly cut down under the new law — particu- 
 larly as this also allowed Congressmen to frank letters 
 of information to their districts. The new law, however, 
 did not harm the newspapers but worked hardship to 
 the magazines, which it did not allow to enter the mails 
 on the same footing with daily or weekly papers. The 
 Columbian, at the end of 1792, announced that it could 
 no longer exist under the oppression of paying letter 
 rates, and the American Museum was discontinued also. 
 In 1794 the postage rate on a single newspaper within 
 its own State was reduced to one cent, and the regulation 
 for other printed matter was somewhat ameliorated. 
 When the size of the mail and the mode of conveyance 
 would permit, magazines and pamphlets might be taken 
 at the rate of one cent a sheet for fifty miles or less, 
 half as much more for the next fifty, and for ten cents 
 when the distance was over one hundred miles. This 
 for magazines, which were invariably unable to collect 
 their subscriptions at home, was something of a mockery. 
 Nor, however limited their subscribers in number, did any 
 of the superior magazines have only a local circulation. 
 
134 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 The National Magazine published at Richmond in 1799 
 had returned thanks in the second number for an order 
 of fifty-five copies from Georgia and sixty-six from Con- 
 necticut. It apologised for the delay in getting out this 
 number, although a semi-quarterly, because of the time 
 necessary to secure correspondencies and communications 
 from so wide an area. Beginning with ninety-six octavo 
 pages, it ended as a weekly quarto pamphlet of twelve 
 pages, printed in the District of Columbia for convenience 
 of transportation. The publisher announced that he had 
 been led to take this step because of the difficulty in 
 distributing so large a number — in the back countries 
 sometimes months elapsed before it was received, and the 
 publication was so bulky that it was refused admittance 
 to the mail except on the main line, and even there it had 
 been very unwelcome. " The year 1804," says Mr. Mc- 
 Masters, " may be taken arbitrarily as the beginning of 
 a new epoch in the history of magazine enterprise. The 
 opening of the mail to books and packages enabled the 
 magazine publishers to find a larger class of general read- 
 ers and also a large class whose interests were centred on 
 a common object or profession. Then, for the first time, 
 magazines devoted to particular interests began to appear 
 in quick succession. Medicine, theology, law, were, of 
 course, the three professions thus exploited. The Ameri- 
 can Law Journal, of Baltimore, in 1809, the second in the 
 English language, was the first native product of the 
 new law in the Legal profession." The few specialised 
 theological and medical magazines which had a struggling 
 existence before this date had depended on local patron- 
 age ; but doctors in the large cities had more money than 
 lawyers, and the theological magazines appealed of course 
 to laymen also. Even an American Musical magazine 
 had, in New Haven, tried for a year to gain a foothold 
 in 1786. 
 
 The slowness of the mails was shown in the Post 
 Master General's answer to the petitions that snowed him 
 under in 181 1 and continued to pelt him for three years 
 
WILLOWY WILLIS AND PIRATICAL POE 135 
 
 (and, indeed, in a steady though milder fashion until 
 1830) . They were petitions that the opening of the post- 
 offices for the assortment of mail during one hour on 
 Sunday — not during divine service — be stopped. He 
 said that if this v^as done, letters w^ould be delayed five 
 days between Boston and New Orleans, three days be- 
 tween Washington and New Orleans, and two days be- 
 tween Washington and St. Louis; and that since travel- 
 lers would patronise lines which did not carry the mails 
 and were not held up on Sunday, it would end in letters 
 being carried, as formerly, by private hands. Nor were 
 lengthy delays by any means over when coaches went out 
 and railroads came in. In the National Era of Wash- 
 ington in 1850 occurs this item: "The Eastern and 
 Western mails last week failed to reach this place at 
 the proper time, every other day. If this happened on 
 the great routes leading directly to this city, what must 
 be the condition of things in other parts of the country. 
 And when we recollect that a failure to connect at certain 
 points may delay mail matter from three to seven days, 
 certainly some of our subscribers will hardly wonder at 
 the irregularity with which they receive their paper. At 
 some points, we are apprised by correspondents that we 
 have nearly lost all our subscribers in consequence of 
 these inexcusable irregularities." Between proprietors- 
 who found it unprofitable to publish a magazine on ac- 
 count of the postal regulations and subscribers who found 
 it unprofitable to take from a distance weekly periodicals 
 which might also be long staled before delivery, the editor 
 had more foes to face than his chief enemy, the delin- 
 quent, of whom he was always complaining. 
 
 But to return to Willis, the conversion of whose Mirror 
 from a weekly to a daily has occasioned this long digres- 
 sion. When he came back from his first long absence 
 abroad, he took up the editorial function he had not held 
 since he left Boston; and at the same time established 
 the Corsair. This paper he did not intend to compete, 
 except incidentally, wdth the Mirror — it was to exist 
 
13S THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 entirely on foreign plunder, chiefly English. It was 
 meant to share some of the goodly pickings with other 
 weeklies, like Brother Jonathan and the New World, 
 which were gorging a fat crop with English grain. Nor, 
 fume as he might at the absence of the international 
 copyright which allowed and compelled him to do this, 
 was Willis as oblivious as other editors of similar publica- 
 tions to the moral right of English authors to some 
 foreign revenue from their works. For, while in Lon- 
 don, he had engaged Thackeray to write for it at five 
 dollars a close column. The Corsair was scuttled by 
 those land-rats, unpaid subscriptions, during his second 
 trip abroad ; and it was after his return that the Mirror 
 was changed to a daily. The final failure of this seems 
 to have been due to a temporary break-down of its 
 energetic young editor. Willis was in the odd predica- 
 ment of having to balance the demands of his handsome 
 exchequer against those of his paternal pride in the suc- 
 cess of his paper. He could hardly afford to write for 
 himself. Even in 1841 Godey was paying him at the 
 rate of fifty dollars for four close-printed pages, thought 
 by most people to be the largest sum a magazine could 
 ever pay; in 1842 he was writing an article a month 
 for four separate magazines and receiving one hundred 
 dollars for each. To turn from such lucrative business to 
 grinding out material for his own pages, may have weekly 
 caused him a conflict of emotions that would have worn 
 out even a jauntier man. And to bid farewell to such 
 golden harvests for the uncertain destiny of the Home 
 Journal in 1847 (started also by Morris in 1845, ^s the 
 National Press) was the acme of rash self-denial. But 
 the Home Journal rewarded his third adventure in pa- 
 ternity, for it proved a great pecuniary success as well as 
 a literary one. It also set out to be the organ of the 
 " town," and with for editor a Petronius who had eager 
 reception in the most exclusive circles, it resplendently 
 succeeded. Furthermore, it did not as a rule pay any- 
 thing for outside contributions and frankly said so. It 
 
WILLOWY WILLIS AND PIRATICAL POE 137 
 
 paid its own editorial staff, and no one else. Willis 
 had found that it was no use trying to be quixotic under 
 the hard conditions of the pursuit of literature in America. 
 Possibly he did not try very hard, although he was as 
 righteously indignant as any at the law which fostered 
 such conditions. He had surmounted them by the hardest 
 kind of industry, and others must do the same. If 
 youngsters waxed wrathy at his cool appropriation of 
 their wares when they were unknown and his cool dis- 
 missal of them when they were able to claim some com- 
 pensation, he pleasantly reminded them how recently 
 the magazine had reiterated that it did not pay for contri- 
 butions. In 1846 he wrote to a youngster in the first 
 stage : " As to writing for the magazines, that is very 
 nearly done for as a matter of profit. The competition 
 for notoriety alone gives the editors more than they 
 can use. You could not sell a piece of poetry now in 
 America. The literary avenues are all overcrowded, and 
 you cannot live by the pen, except as a drudge to a news- 
 paper." 
 
 More picturesque and almost as assured in physical 
 bearing as was Willis in social dictation, was his brother 
 editor in so many ventures. General Morris. " There 
 was something imposing and impressive in his personal 
 appearance," says Stoddard. " He had a broad-padded 
 chest and a bulky waist whose amplitude of girth was en- 
 circled by a military belt, which supported the long and 
 dangerous weapon that dangled from it." Yet famili- 
 arity breeds contempt even with the girth of a general 
 thus encircled, and Willis had the temerity to quarrel 
 with this gentleman because during an absence, his co- 
 editor had made free with his commas — a righteous rage 
 which Holmes could well sympathise with. And in the 
 quarrel the pen of Willis proved mightier than the sword 
 of Morris. Mr. Charles Taber Congdon has in his 
 Reminiscences an appreciation of the man who for years 
 was our top-notcher as a successful man of letters. 
 " Willis never had anything to do with politics, probably 
 
138 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 he did not know much about them ; but his editorial work 
 did a good deal to correct the somewhat savage and coarse 
 style of the prevailing journalism of the period. [Nor 
 was the savagery confined to style alone. The dashing 
 John Daniel, assistant editor of the Richmond Examiner 
 about 1848, had fought nine pistol duels on account of 
 his brilliant partisan attacks in his paper.] If the matter 
 of his articles had been as good as the manner and if he 
 had not principally confined himself to evanescent topics, 
 he would have made a fame equal to that of Addison or 
 Washington Irving. But he could write about hats and 
 coats, parties and receptions, and all manner of fashion- 
 able tweedledum and tweedledee. He was intensely ego- 
 tistical, but then it was always in a graceful and well-bred 
 way. He was unmistakably foppish in his work; but 
 somehow you could not help feeling there was a degree 
 of manliness under it all, and here and there a great 
 cropping out of common sense. He had in a large 
 measure that best faculty of a journalist ; he knew what 
 people would like to read. He was lied about and 
 libelled, but it never seemed very much to disturb his 
 equanimity." 
 
 As Willis had expended his youthful energies upon his 
 American Monthly in Boston, so young Park Benjamin 
 after vainly endeavouring to keep afloat the New England 
 in that city had come to the metropolis to recoup his for- 
 tunes with the American Monthly of New York. On it 
 he spent what little of his patrimony the Boston maw 
 had not devoured. After its failure, he joined the New 
 Yorker with Greeley. This had appeared in 1834 and 
 planned to combine literature, politics, statistics, and 
 general intelligence. Greeley said in his farewell address 
 in 1 84 1, as he merged the paper into the Weekly Tribune, 
 that at times he had been aided in the literary department 
 by gentlemen of decided talent and eminence — Park 
 Benjamin and Hoffman and Griswold — but at others 
 the entire conduct had rested with him ; and he said also 
 that delinquent subscribers owed him ten thousand dol- 
 
WILLOWY WILLIS AND PIRATICAL POE 139 
 
 lars. Then Benjamin joined Epes Sargent with the 
 New World, begun in 1835. " This was, I think," says 
 Stoddard, *' the first paper of the kind ever published in 
 New York, and was admirable for what it was and what 
 it was intended to be ; namely, the speediest and cheapest 
 reprint of the most popular British authors." It re- 
 published English magazine literature wholesale, it is true, 
 yet Stoddard's statement is by no means fair, as it had 
 also many original departments conducted by prominent 
 writers. It would have to be speedy, indeed, to compete 
 with certain of the publishers. Marcus Butler of Harpers 
 wrote Griswold in 1836: " Bulwer's drama is not in 
 yet ; we expect it every day — we have our cases filled 
 and all the quads and italics in the office collected to- 
 gether, ready for the contest as soon as we receive the 
 copy. We executed the entire work of Lucien Bonaparte 
 and published it in forty hours after wx received the 
 copy, and sold it at three shillings. We did not leave the 
 office from Tuesday noon until Wednesday morning at 
 nine. I am pretty well used up, I assure you." 
 
 The success of the Neiv World led to many cheaper 
 similar enterprises which had for a time a marked effect 
 on the book-trade. The mammoth pages of the paper 
 were a compromise between the largest printing press 
 and the lowest postal rate, which still reckoned by the 
 sheet. " I have written to Park Benjamin to send you 
 his new paper, a monstrous sheet, full of all that is going 
 on here ; by far the best paper I see," wrote Longfellow 
 in 1840 to a foreign correspondent. " I wrote immedi- 
 ately to New York about your letters from Rome, but 
 not to the Knickerbocker, because it has been in trouble 
 and not able to pay anybody. I wrote to Sargent. After 
 some delay, I got an answer showing that nobody pays 
 nowadays. * The fact is that all our publishers, whether 
 of books or periodicals, are desperately poor at present ; 
 money is not to be had.' And this is very true. You 
 have no idea of the state of things. My publisher 
 [Colman] has failed. Most publishers will not look at 
 
140 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 a book. Clark writes me that the Knickerbocker^ that is, 
 the business part of it — will be in new hands. He has 
 not paid me for three years. Poor fellow, he has had 
 a hard time, and been almost desperate, I fear." Stod- 
 dard says that while there was certainly no money in the 
 Knickerbocker for its contributors, its jaunty editor man- 
 aged to live out of it and live well, his enemies said ; for 
 if cash was not abundant with him, credit was — and 
 what could a happy-go-lucky fellow want besides an 
 abundance of credit? In 1840, Park Benjamin wrote to 
 Longfellow : " Your ballad ' The Wreck of the Hes- 
 perus ' is grand. Enclosed are twenty-five dollars, the 
 sum you mentioned for it, paid by the proprietors of the 
 New World, in which glorious paper it will resplendently 
 coruscate on Saturday next. Of all American journals, 
 the New World is alone worthy to contain it." For 
 some time to come, Benjamin and Samuel Ward acted 
 as brokers to the Cambridge poet, who, in his gentle way 
 had all the New England horror of commerce and all the 
 New England desire to benefit thereby, so long as such 
 shocking debasement of the muse had to be. He was a 
 firm believer in the sacred dictum that you may lead 
 Pegasus to water, but you should not make him drink. 
 In 1837 comes this amusing item in his letters. " Willis 
 is writing a tragedy to order for Miss Clifton, who gives 
 him a thousand dollars. I can hardly tell you how sorry 
 I am for this. Why not order a dozen as well as one? " 
 But austere as was the creed of the cult, Longfellow was 
 never unhuman enough to refuse the large prices which 
 his friends had bargained for — even when his poems 
 were printed in the New York Ledger. In 1841 be- 
 tween him and his two friendly brokers the mails were 
 busy. " I had no sooner sealed and sent my last, with 
 Endymion asleep under its leaves," he wrote to Ward 
 iin September, " than who should come in but Park 
 Benjamin himself ! I told him what I had done, whereat 
 he expressed great grief; and to console him, I promised 
 to write you and cry, Stop that poem! If, therefore, 
 
WILLOWY WILLIS AND PIRATICAL POE 141 
 
 it is not already in the paws of Arctiirus or the claws of 
 Old Nick, you may send it to Benjamin." In November, 
 he wrote: "A letter from Park Benjamin to-day. He 
 wants two poems (orders two pair of boots!) and offers 
 twenty dollars each. If you have not disposed of Charles 
 River, send it to him. If you have, send one of the 
 others." Later the same month, comes a little mix-up in 
 the three-handed partnership. " O' Sullivan is to have 
 the God's Acre [for the Democratic Review']. That is 
 right; and now all will doubtless flow on harmoniously. 
 Benjamin has doubtless been in some perplexity between 
 my negotiations with him and yours." Park wrote to 
 the poet, thus ideally poetising within an enchanted garden 
 so near and yet so far from the vulgar mart, that he had 
 sold the Goblet of Life and the River Charles for 
 forty dollars. He had not taken them himself because he 
 did not particularly like them and because the New World 
 had just entered into costly arrangements for a corre- 
 spondence in England. He asked Longfellow to furnish 
 an occasional prose article and poem for Graham's, " of 
 which Poe is one editor. It is by far the best of this 
 class of periodicals and will pay liberally and punctually." 
 Earlier in the year, Poe himself had asked Longfellow 
 for something each month, " length and subject a discre- 
 tion. In respect to terms, we would gladly offer you 
 carte blanche; and the periods of payment should also 
 be made to suit yourself." Longfellow had then de- 
 clined, on account of preoccupation with other work. 
 Constant dripping wears away even crystal, however, 
 and the services of Benjamin coupled with his praise of 
 the Philadelphia magazine seemed to have conquered the 
 poet at last. In 1843 he wrote a letter which throws 
 some light on the cost of those illustrations and " em- 
 bellishments " which were always moving the dignified 
 and unembellished magazines to tears or jeers. " In the 
 next number of Graham's is an unlikeness of me — a 
 ridiculous caricature. As soon as it was sent to me I 
 wrote Graham to have it suppressed, but too late. It 
 
142 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 was printed and had cost him some five hundred dollars 
 and he was not wiUing to lose so much money. You 
 will be amused and perhaps a little vexed afterward, 
 when you see what a picture is distributed over the coun- 
 try, to the number of forty thousand, as my portrait." 
 In 1844 he wrote to an editor, " My engagements with 
 Mr. Graham [to write exclusively for him] prevent me 
 from taking any part in your proposed magazine." 
 
 Griswold said the Democratic Review in 1837 had 
 become the most successful political magazine in the 
 country. It had had a somewhat significant history in 
 its journey toward literature. As long as its material 
 had been all gratuitous, it remained extremely partisan 
 in both contributions and readers; when it paid for 
 articles, it published a better grade of material and was 
 read by both parties alike. Whig writers, noting both 
 of these phenomena, overcame their prejudices and con- 
 tributed. When Brownson merged the Boston Quarterly 
 Review into the Democratic, he told his subscribers that 
 they would obtain as much matter for five dollars as he 
 had furnished them for twelve or fifteen. " Five years' 
 experience has attended the editor, and his brilliant suc- 
 cess justifies our estimation of his worth and ability. In 
 addition to his own essays, it is enriched by contributions 
 from the first literary men in the country. As organ 
 of the Democratic party it has, of course, a decided 
 political character, but it is a magazine and devoted prin- 
 cipally to general literature. In it, we intend publishing 
 our general system of philosophy and metaphysics. It 
 stands already at the head of the monthly magazines in 
 this country. If anything could make us not regret 
 parting with our own Review, it is that we are to aid in 
 a work so respectable and be in some measure also united 
 with a man, scholar, and politician whom we so highly 
 esteem as its accomplished and independent editor." 
 
 The dilution of the fiery liquor of its earlier partisan- 
 ship may not have proceeded from their disappointment 
 in being awarded the government printing in Washing- 
 
WILLOWY WILLIS AND PIRATICAL POE 143 
 
 tori. They had naturally counted on receiving so paltry 
 an amount of it as to cover their risks at least, in accord- 
 ance with the time-honoured practice in Washington of 
 giving it to political friends. But at any rate when they 
 resumed publication in 1840 after their failure, and moved 
 to New York, they had larger journalistic aims. Lowell, 
 that year when he hoped to make his four hundred dol- 
 lars all told, had arranged with O' Sullivan for ten or 
 fifteen dollars a poem. That same year, 1842, O'Sulli- 
 van was writing to Griswold that he had in spite of his 
 large circulation sustained heavy losses " from inexperi- 
 ence, dishonest agents, widely extended credit in the sub- 
 scriptions, and the depreciation and irregularity of the 
 currency in which they received payment, which was 
 often at fifty per cent, discount." And the following 
 year Thoreau said that he had knocked vainly at the 
 door of the magazine. " Were it not for its ultraism in 
 politics," said Poe that year, " we should regard the 
 Democratic Review the most valuable journal of the day. 
 Its editor is a man of fine matter-of-fact talents, and a 
 good political writer though not a brilliant one. The 
 principal contributors are Brownson, the new-light philos- 
 opher, Bancroft, Whittier, Bryant, Hawthorne, and Miss 
 Sedgwick. The department of criticism is conducted in 
 a candid, sensible and upright manner. Besides the no- 
 tices of new books accompanying each number, it 
 generally contains two or three elaborate reviews, which 
 make it an agreeable work for a man of letters. And 
 as to its embellishments ( for everything must be pictured 
 into the world nowadays !) we consider them of the most 
 truly valuable kind, being accurate and well-executed por- 
 traits of eminent men. Most highly, indeed, do we 
 esteem the Democratic Review, and take it all in all, we 
 acknowledge only three as its superiors in any country; 
 namely, Tait's Magazine, Fraser, and Blackwood, and 
 these it will fully equal when it has the advantage of their 
 experience." 
 
 It was not until 1845 that the Whigs had a Review of 
 
144 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 their own. And to the attractions of party loyalty it 
 added substantial payment — more than its finances 
 would bear, it said in the fourth volume, though in their 
 opinion inadequate enough, but still in the aggregate a 
 larger sum than any other periodical had paid for its 
 contributions. Colton's American Review (1845-1850), 
 at least the third New Yorker of that name, was a digni- 
 fied and able journal of the statelier sort, as became a 
 five dollar publication. Its idea of the mission of letters 
 was a high one. " Our literature has never been suffi- 
 ciently in earnest. It has been too much the product of 
 light moments. We confess to an almost total distrust 
 of the judgments of critical work in America; and a 
 sea of trash seems rapidly swallowing up the delicate 
 perception and calm thought both of critics and people." 
 Its idea of nationality in our literature was likewise a 
 high one. " A very considerable class of persons have 
 the same opinion of our own that the German people have 
 of English genius. The English, said Goethe, never 
 think. Now, we hold our own good minds equal to the 
 best of these days. It is a common error to suppose that 
 great advances in arts, letters and philosophy are made 
 by the isolated labour of a few astonishing individuals; 
 it is the people from whom they spring that have made 
 the advance possible. The conduct of the literary de- 
 partment of the Review presents difficulties which will 
 not be overcome until a change takes place in public 
 opinion in regard to the comparative merits of foreign 
 and American intellects." In both of these Reviews the 
 political articles were pronounced enough, but you could 
 not have told from the abundant literary articles and the 
 verse which one of them you were reading. They had 
 not been edited with a purpose, as had been the National 
 Review at the beginning of the century. 
 
 Handsome praise from Poe was his tribute to the 
 Democratic; and, as with every magazine that he praised 
 or blamed, it must be taken with suspicion and at the 
 same time with the knowledge that more than any other 
 
WILLOWY WILLIS AND PIRATICAL POE 145 
 
 magazinist of the period his judgment, if it could be 
 properly disencumbered of its personal prejudice, was of 
 value. Poe's New York dates, in spite of the amount 
 of biographical attention he has received, share the con- 
 fusion of the entire shifty period. He joined the staff 
 of the New York Quarterly in 1837 and continued there 
 the ferocity of his earlier critical work on the Messenger. 
 In 1838 he moved to Philadelphia and returned to New 
 York in 1844. First, he became sub-editor and critic on 
 the Mirror. Here WilHs praised his industry and 
 fidelity. During his time on the Mirror he published 
 The Raven in the American Review, for which he 
 got ten dollars. It was in 1841 that he praised this 
 magazine on Godey's. " It is now commencing its second 
 year; and I can say from my own personal knowledge 
 that its circulation exceeds two thousand — it is probably 
 about two thousand five hundred. So marked and imme- 
 diate a success has never been attained by any of our 
 five dollar magazines with the exception of the Southern 
 Literary Messenger, which in the course of nineteen 
 months (subsequent to the seventh from its commence- 
 ment) attained a circulation of rather more than five 
 thousand.'* These months marked, of course, the dura- 
 tion of Poe's connection with the journal. 
 
 He left the Mirror in 1845 to assist on the just started 
 Broadway Journal. The chief editor of this was C. F. 
 Briggs. " We have chosen the name," ran the first edi- 
 torial, " because it is indicative of the spirit which we 
 intend shall characterise our paper. Broadway is con- 
 fessedly the first street in the first city of the New World. 
 As Paris is France and London, England ; so is Broadway, 
 New York. And New York is fast becoming, if she 
 be not already, America ; in spite of South Carolina and 
 Boston. We shall do what we can to render it in some 
 degree worthy of the name we have given it. We shall 
 endeavour to make it entirely original, and instead of the 
 effete vapours of English magazines, which have here- 
 tofore been the chief filling of our weekly journals, give 
 
146 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 such homely thoughts as may be generated among us.'* 
 Maria Lowell wrote Briggs that James was shocked at 
 the title, and James's feelings may be gathered from a 
 letter he had written Briggs the year before. " New 
 York letters are becoming very fashionable. You 
 Gothamites strain hard to attain a metropolitan character, 
 but I think if you felt very metropolitan you would not 
 be showing it on all occasions. I see that the exponent 
 of your city, the Herald, speaks of the Philadelphia papers 
 as * the provincial press ! ' '' Regarding Brigg's new ven- 
 ture came this letter in 1845. " I received this morning 
 two numbers of your Broadway Journal, and am in haste 
 to tell you how much I like it. As to the arrangement 
 you propose [Briggs had written " Poe writes for me at 
 the rate of one dollar a column. If you will do so, I 
 shall esteem it a capital bargain "], I know not what to 
 say. In spite of your surmise, I am so Httle in the habit 
 of measuring what I do by dollars and cents that nothing 
 is harder for me than to set a value on my wares. I 
 know nothing of your ability, and I should certainly steer 
 by that if I were better informed. For Columbus I 
 should expect more than for prose. But I had a thousand 
 times rather give it to you (as it would be my natural 
 impulse to do) than think you had paid me more for it 
 than you could easily afford. All I ask for is enough for 
 necessaries. Graham will no doubt give me (as he has 
 done) thirty dollars for a poem. The Anti-Slavery 
 Friends pay me five dollars for a leader to their paper, 
 making ten dollars a month while I am here." This was 
 in Philadelphia and the paper was the Freeman. The 
 next month he wrote : " I do not know whether to be 
 glad or sorry that you have associated Poe and Watson 
 with you as editors. I do not know the last; the first 
 certainly is able ; but I think there should never be more 
 than one editor with any proprietary control over the 
 paper. Its individuality is not generally so well pre- 
 served.'' 
 
 In July, the paper went under the sole charge of Poe. 
 
WILLOWY WILLIS AND PIRATICAL POE 147 
 
 He bought it from Briggs for fifty dollars — on a note 
 signed by Greeley, who paid it in the end. In August, 
 Lowell wrote to Briggs : " Poe, I am afraid, is wholly 
 lacking in that element of manhood which, for want of 
 a better name, we call character. As I prognosticated, 
 I have made him my enemy by doing him a service. In 
 the last Broadway Journal he has accused me of plagi- 
 arism, and misquoted Wordsworth to sustain the charge. 
 He wishes to kick down the ladder by which he rose. 
 He is welcome. Now, how can I expect to be understood, 
 much more to have my poetry understood, by such a man 
 as Poe? I cannot understand the meanness of men. 
 They seem to trace everything to selfishness. Why, 
 
 B actually asked Carter how much Poe paid me for 
 
 writing my notice of him in Graham's. Did such base- 
 ness ever enter the head of man?" During his editor- 
 ship, Poe wrote a large portion of the Journal himself, 
 and some of his stories appeared in it, notably the Tell 
 Tale Heart. But he was not able financially to keep 
 the breath of life in it. One of Stoddard's recollections 
 is of this time. Stoddard called upon him at his house, 
 not finding him at the ofBce, and was received with great 
 courtliness and told that the Ode on a Grecian Flute — 
 Stoddard's first poem — would be published next week. 
 Next week's issue had this notice, " To the author of the 
 Lines on the Grecian Flute; we fear that we have mis- 
 laid the poem." A week later came this notice : " We 
 doubt the originality of the Grecian Flute, for the reason 
 that it is too good at some points to be so bad at others. 
 Unless the author can reassure us, we decline it." Stod- 
 dard called to reassure. " Poe started and glared at me 
 and shouted * You lie, damn you ! Get out of here, or I'll 
 throw you out ! ' " " The Bells," says Stoddard, " was 
 sold thrice and paid for every time; Annabel Lee was 
 sold twice, and was printed by Griswold before it could ap- 
 pear either in Sartain's or the Southern Literary Messen- 
 ger.'' Thomas Dunn English wrote that Poe had no 
 sense of right and wrong whenever need or resentment 
 
148 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 provoked him, and could no more be held responsible for 
 many things he did than could a lunatic or an idiot. He 
 adds that the poor fellow rarely received five hundred dol- 
 lars a year for his work — so his need was as constant as 
 his resentment. 
 
 As Poe had lied about or had unfortunate business deal- 
 ings with almost every literary personage in New York 
 and many of its magazines, the uproar that was created by 
 an article of his signed " L '' in the New World March 
 4th, 1843, can be imagined. It set out to survey the maga- 
 zines. The most prominent, he said, were the Demo- 
 cratic Review, the Knickerbocker, Graham's, Lady's Book, 
 Sargents, Pioneer, Lady's Companion, Southern Messen- 
 ger. The first he praised highly, as we have seen; the 
 second he dismissed as a poor ruin of former greatness ; 
 the third and fourth — Philadelphia magazines — he 
 treated with indulgent gentleness and some pity; the 
 Southern Literary Messenger had diffused more valuable 
 information throughout the Union than any other literary 
 work for the past five years, but alas, its honest, worthy, 
 and hard-working originator was no more, and he trusted 
 that an able editor would speedily be employed to secure 
 to it its former high standing. The resuscitation of 
 Knickerbocker and the preservation of the Southern 
 might both have been secured, one conceives, by an editor 
 near at hand whom Poe could name if pressed. The 
 editor of Sargent's came in for almost as much savage 
 derision as Lewis Clark of Knickerbocker. The editor 
 of the Lady's Companion, which Thoreau had just been 
 saying was the only magazine that paid him, had the 
 presumption to be a foreigner, and the journal he edited 
 was a receptacle of nonsense from first to last, of picture 
 nonsense, fashion nonsense, poetical nonsense, and prose 
 nonsense — a work of no beneficial influence whatever, 
 which ought to be annihilated. 
 
 " In speaking of the mass of matter in the above- 
 mentioned periodicals, it can only be designated as senti- 
 mental, love-sick, or fashionable stories and unmeaning 
 
WILLOWY WILLIS AND PIRATICAL POE 149 
 
 rhymes. Who can deny that an exceedingly bad influence 
 is exerted by our magazine literature? Thousands of 
 articles are published which instead of instructing the 
 youthful mind * please with a rattle, tickle with a straw ' ; 
 instead of instilling a sound morality, they inculcate a 
 neglect of everything that is valuable; instead of making 
 the poor contented with their condition, they descant 
 upon the luxury of fashion and wealth, causing a thousand 
 hearts bitterly to ache for an imaginary want. Is not 
 this kind of literature a nuisance? Let every man who 
 believes that the tendency of this literature is bad, refrain 
 from purchasing the magazines which publish it. As to 
 those who tax their brains to produce this literature, let 
 them enjoy their only legitimate reward — the flattery 
 of fools, foolish young men and foolish young women. 
 Let every person who acknowledges such men as Ingra- 
 ham and Willis (Willis we mean as he is now — not as 
 he was formerly) and such women as Helen Berkeley 
 and all their followers — let all such people, we say, be 
 laughed at for their taste. The light literature of our 
 present day, particularly as disseminated in our fashion- 
 able magazines, is almost without a single redeeming 
 quality." 
 
 This general verdict time has confirmed. And though 
 Poe was the last one to throw stones at an editor who 
 himself filled most of his magazine, or reprinted articles 
 that he had used elsewhere, or who was reduced to shifty 
 practices through poverty and greed, or who praised good 
 markets ; or even at authors who turned out meaningless 
 rhymes by the wholesale or were specialists in the style 
 of fiction they had helped to create ; although he was, in 
 short, a rebel consistent in nothing save rebellion — he 
 was the most energetic and achieving protestant of his 
 time in a cause which the next decade set about more 
 wisely and temperately to carry. 
 
 The best summing up of the Willis and Poe period is 
 found in an English magazine article in 1848. It was 
 written by Charles Astor Bristed, a New Yorker and a 
 
150 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 writer for American magazines, who was what few New 
 York writers of the period were, a cosmopolitan with a 
 point of view limited neither to America nor to Broad- 
 way. It was a comment somewhat different from one 
 that had appeared in the Derbyshire Courier in 1835, 
 " One peculiar difference between our periodicals and 
 those of America is this — ours are always dear and 
 sometimes indifferent: across the Atlantic they are al- 
 ways cheap and usually good." From Bristed's lively, 
 forceful, and just article some paragraphs may be quoted 
 as fit pendant for Poe's. 
 
 "Of American reviews and magazines British readers 
 very seldom hear anything. This is certainly not owing 
 to the scarcity of these productions for they are as 
 numerous in comparison as the newspaper, have a very 
 respectable circulation (in many cases forty thousand) 
 and that at the not remarkably low price of four or five 
 dollars. Nor is it due to the fact that their topics are 
 exclusively local, for there is scarcely a subject under 
 heaven which they do not treat; and a European might 
 derive some very startling information from them. The 
 Democratic Review, for example, has a habit of predict- 
 ing twice or thrice a year that England is on the point 
 of exploding utterly and going off into absolute chaos. 
 * Perhaps,' interrupts an impatient non-admirer of things 
 American generally, * they are not worth hearing about ! ' 
 And this suggestion is not so far from truth as it is from 
 politeness. 
 
 " In examining the causes of the inferiority of Amerir- 
 can periodical literature, the most readily assignable and 
 generally applicable is that its contributions are mostly 
 unpaid. It is pretty safe to enunciate as a general rule 
 that when you want a good thing you must pay for it. 
 Now, the reprint of English magazines can be sold for 
 two dollars per annum, whereas a properly supported 
 home magazine cannot be afforded for less than four or 
 five. Hence, no one will embark a large capital in so 
 doubtful an undertaking; and periodical editorship is 
 
WILLOWY WILLIS AND PIRATICAL POE 151 
 
 generally a last resource or a desperate speculation. One 
 of the leading magazines in New York — perhaps on 
 the whole the most respectable and best conducted — was 
 started with a borrowed capital of three hundred dollars. 
 The proprietors of a magazine should have a fair sum in 
 hand to begin with, to secure the services of able and 
 eminent men to make a good start. At the same time, 
 the editor finds at his disposal a most tempting array (so 
 far as quantity and variety are concerned) of gratuitous 
 contributions. For there is in America a mob of men 
 and women who write with ease. The system of compo- 
 sitions and orations at school and college makes them 
 * writers ' before they know how to read and gives them 
 a manner before they can have acquired matter. Most 
 of these people are sufficiently paid by the glory of ap- 
 pearing in print. The specific evils of this system of 
 providing material are that it prevents an editor from 
 standing on a proper footing toward his contributors, 
 who feel that they are doing a charitable, patronising, or 
 at least a very friendly act in contributing ; and it stands 
 in the way of honest criticism, for he who cannot pay 
 in dollars must pay in flattery. Other influences con- 
 spire to pervert and impede criticism. Very few of the 
 American periodical writers, professed or occasional, are 
 liberally educated. The popular education tends to plati- 
 tude and commonplace. Their reading is chiefly of new 
 books, a most uncritical style of reading. The demo- 
 cratic influence moulds all men to think unlike, and Mrs. 
 Grundy is a very important estate in the republic. Then 
 there are very powerful interests all ready to take offence 
 and cry out. The strongest editor is afraid of some of 
 these. One great aim of an American magazine is to 
 tread on nobody's toes, or as their circulars phrase it ' to 
 contain nothing which shall offend the most fastidious.' 
 Accordingly, nearly all the magazines and reviews profess 
 and practice political neutrality; and the two or three 
 exceptions depend almost entirely on their political articles 
 and partisan circulation. We know one editor who 
 
rs2' THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 is continually apologising to his subscribers and one 
 half of his correspondents for what the other half 
 write. 
 
 " Another enemy of true criticism in America is pro- 
 vincialism. The country is parcelled out in small cliques, 
 who settle things in their own way in their own particu- 
 lar districts. Thus, there are shining lights in Boston 
 who are * small potatoes ' in New York, and * most re- 
 markable * men in the West whom no one has remarked in 
 the East. Sometimes, indeed, these cliques contrive to 
 ramify and extend their influence by a regular system 
 of * tickle me and I'll tickle you,' which there is not even 
 an endeavour to conceal. For instance, when the classi- 
 cal lion of a certain clique had been favourably reviewed 
 by a gentleman in another city, whose opinion was sup- 
 posed to be worth something, the periodical organ of the 
 clique publicly expressed its thanks for the favour, and 
 in return dug up a buried novel of the critic's and did 
 its best to resuscitate it by a vigorous puff. The excep- 
 tions to indiscriminate praise in American reviewing 
 usually spring from private misunderstandings. Two 
 literateurs on a magazine quarrel, one of them is kicked 
 out of doors, and then they begin to criticise each other's 
 writings. And the consequence is that it is next to im- 
 possible to pass an unfavourable opinion upon anything 
 without having personal motives attributed to you. 
 When an author is condemned, the first step is to find out 
 the writer of the review and assail him on personal 
 grounds. Also, there are often disputes about unsettled 
 accounts, which have an awkward tendency to influence 
 the subsequent critical and editorial opinions of both 
 parties. 
 
 " Such are some of the causes which militate against 
 the attainment of high standard in American periodical 
 literature. For some years it went on very swimmingly 
 on credit, but it is doubtful if the experiment could be 
 successfully repeated. Since it is plain that the republi- 
 
WILLOWY WILLIS AND PIRATICAL POE 153 
 
 cation of English magazines must interfere with the home 
 article, the passing of an International Copyright law 
 would be the greatest benefit which could be conferred on 
 American periodical literature." 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE WAVES OF THE ATLANTIC 
 
 It is difficult at first glance to see why the Boston literati 
 almost to a man should have despaired of establishing 
 there a first-class all-round literary magazine. What 
 Leland said when he was residing there in 1862, its bril- 
 liant circle at the brightest, could have been said with 
 equal truth at any time in the previous twenty years. 
 Leland had lived in several European capitals and in 
 Philadelphia and New York; and was thus an expert 
 witness for the defence. Moreover, he did not particu- 
 larly care for Boston — which makes his testimony all 
 the stronger. " In the very general respect manifested 
 in all circles in Boston for culture and knowledge in 
 every form, it is certainly equalled by no city on earth." 
 This being the case, why then did the projector of a first- 
 class magazine — publisher or author — invariably fear 
 that such a community would fail to support it ? 
 
 Leland's next sentence may afford a clue. " Every 
 stranger has a verdict or judgment passed on him, he is 
 numbered and labelled at once, and it is really wonderful 
 how in a few days the whole town knows of it." Culti- 
 vated Boston was a village community: it was always 
 foregathering at various meeting-places and swapping 
 opinions. And it had the thrifty village habit of passing 
 its books around also. It distinctly believed in neighbour- 
 hood copies. Emerson — who remembered with chagrin 
 that he couldn't find five hundred buyers for the Dial in 
 spite of all the eager discussion about it — might have 
 been thinking of this when he wrote in 1850 that a New 
 England magazine was an impossible problem. Well 
 might Higginson, on a lecture tour in the West, record 
 
 154 
 
THE WAVES OF THE ATLANTIC 155 
 
 in 1867 his amazement at the support given to the New 
 England magazine which was at last successfully estab- 
 lished. " I have heard of a little town in northern Iowa 
 where there were fifty houses and twenty-five copies of 
 the Atlantic/' That was not the sort of thing he was 
 accustomed to: people were far more neighbourly in 
 Cambridge and Boston. 
 
 Fifteen years before the Atlantic was begun, Lowell 
 had attempted to do much the same sort of thing in the 
 Pioneer; the immediate occasion of its suspension was 
 Lowell's breakdown with eye-strain, but starvation had 
 already set in. Three years before that, in 1839, Haw- 
 thorne had written Longfellow, " I saw Mr. Sparks some 
 time since and he said that you were thinking of a literary 
 paper. Why not? Your name would go a great way 
 toward insuring its success; and it is intolerable that 
 there should not be a single belles-lettres journal in New 
 England." Cultivated New England was too busy mak- 
 ing contributions to every cause in Christendom to sup- 
 port the " embodiment of the national literature " it was 
 always complacently talking about. 
 
 Thus the canny projector of the Atlantic in allowing 
 it to be considered as the organ of the anti-slavery party, 
 sought to enlist not only ready pens but reluctant pennies. 
 He was hitching his star to a wagon. Boston had tried 
 the purely literary " periodical " and failed to float it even 
 when buoyed up with fashion-plates. It would now see 
 what a double-header might do. Says Scudder's Lowell : 
 
 Its founders did not conceal their intention to make it a po- 
 litical magazine. It bore as its sub-head a title it has never re- 
 linquished, " A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics." But 
 the magazine did not become, as it might in lesser hands, a mere 
 propaganda of reform or the organ of a political party; neither 
 did it assume an air of philosophical absenteeism. The space 
 given to the discussion of affairs was not considerable, but the 
 subjects were chosen with deliberation and treated with a good 
 deal more than newspaper care. They were intended to have 
 the incisiveness of brilliant newspaper work and a breadth not 
 to be looked for in a newspaper. 
 
!I56 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 In this age of magazines, wrote J. T. Trowbridge, it is 
 difficult to imagine the interest excited by the advent of 
 the long-expected Atlantic. Colonel Higginson says it 
 was really planned in 1853, t>ut was stayed four years by 
 the business failure of J. P.- Jewett and Company, who 
 were to have been its publishers. 
 
 The present editor of the magazine says that the whole 
 plan of it was originated by the " editor who never was 
 the editor," Francis H. Underwood, and but for the 
 failure of the projected publishers he would have enjoyed 
 the full credit for the enterprise. At the failure and the 
 consequent collapse of the plan, Lowell wrote him, " I 
 think this Mr. Jew-it ought to be — that something ought 
 to be done to him, but for that matter, nearly all book- 
 sellers stand in the same condemnation." Underwood 
 now entered the counting-room of Phillips, Sampson and 
 Company. In the meantime, through all the years of its 
 frustration, the idea had been slowly growing, " Why 
 should not Boston have a Monthly of her own ? " Boston 
 felt — all the more because she showed it in no other way 
 — her inferiority in this respect to her rivals New York 
 and Philadelphia. Each of these barbarian cities had a 
 trinity of graces — Philadelphia with Graham's, Godey's, 
 and Sartain's (although the Boston literati thought them 
 all vapourish and simpering). New York with the hoary 
 Knickerbocker, and the adolescent Harper's and Put- 
 nam's — while Boston, the centre of American literature, 
 did not possess and had really never possessed a magazine 
 of her own which could be agreeable for her best writers 
 and at the same time appeal to popular support. But 
 Underwood began now to develop a surprising social pop- 
 ularity (for a business clerk) among the Cambridge-Bos- 
 ton literary group; and with the idea of his magazine 
 always in mind he set to work to become a mediator be- 
 tween this group and his new firm, which was already 
 identified with some of Boston's best literary interests. 
 Sampson had died about 1852, and the other partner of 
 
THE WAVES OF THE ATLANTIC 157 
 
 Phillips in 1857 was William Lee, who had been for many 
 years the senior partner in Lee and Shepard. 
 Here let Scudder's Lowell take up the story : 
 
 Philh'ps had the practical man's distrust of new enterprises 
 suggested by authors, and a temperament calculated to chill en- 
 thusiasm. Underwood, reader for the firm, had already re- 
 ceived a pledge of support from Lowell, Longfellow, Holmes, 
 and others ; and he represented strongly to Lee the possibility of 
 the magazine which should start out with a staff of such emi- 
 nent writers. Phillips having been won over, plans were rap- 
 idly pushed. Phillips wrote a letter to his niece telling her of 
 the dinner he gave to talk the project over. " We sat down at 
 three p. m. and rose at eight. The time occupied was longer by 
 about four hours and thirty minutes than I am in the habit of 
 consuming in that kind of occupation, but it was the richest 
 time intellectually by all odds that I have ever had. The exact 
 arrangement of the table was as follows : 
 
 Mr. Underwood 
 
 Cabot Lowell 
 
 Motley Holmes 
 
 Longfellow Emerson 
 
 Phillips 
 
 Each one is known alike on both sides of the Atlantic and is 
 
 read beyond the limits of the English language. Though I say 
 
 it as shouldn't, it was the proudest day of my life." 
 
 Nevertheless, the cautious Mr. Phillips would not make 
 up his mind until he had seen Mrs. Stowe, who was at 
 that moment in England. He had unbounded admira- 
 tion for her ; and they had been for some years on exceed- 
 ingly friendly terms. She rarely came to town without 
 calling upon him, although she did not extend her cordial- 
 ity to every one in the house. Though it was Jewett who 
 had taken the risk of publishing Uncle Tom's Cabin — 
 indeed, put the idea into her head while it was running as 
 a serial — and on the other hand Phillips had declined it 
 when she had offered it to him, she had, on receiving an 
 intimation that Phillips would not decline a second book 
 from her (a lady who had sold three thousand copies on 
 the day of publication!), gladly given him in 1854 Sunny 
 Memories, and in 1856 Dred. Now she conferred at once 
 
158 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 upon the project her doubly distinguished support, and 
 promised to write for the magazine. Underwood after- 
 ward told Arthur Oilman that she was the last straw that 
 had broken the back of the camel's prudence — only of 
 course he did not put it so flippantly. It remained to give 
 the magazine a name, now that it had at last a local habita- 
 tion; and the christening was neatly accomplished by 
 Holmes. 
 
 But the first number was after all delayed. For in the 
 great financial panic of 1857 (the worst the country had 
 seen for just twenty years) the firm almost went under; 
 and the narrow escape justified to the band of eager writ- 
 ers what had seemed the excessive caution of Phillips. 
 The first number appeared at last in October, calling itself 
 November. The death of Phillips two years after and 
 the break up of the firm severed the connection of its 
 founder, Underwood, with the magazine. The editorship 
 had been given to Lowell, at a salary of two thousand five 
 hundred dollars with six dollars a page for his own con- 
 tributions. This and the regular rate for other contribu- 
 tions was on a scale more liberal than had ever been heard 
 of before. 
 
 When Scudder became editor of the Atlantic in 1890, 
 Lowell wrote him, " There are now twenty people who 
 can write English where there was one then.'* But there 
 were a great many more than could find a steady market ; 
 and it is no wonder that writers whose only dependence 
 for a livelihood rested upon magazines were always 
 clamouring to found them. " It is safe to say,'* reflects 
 Scudder, " that few prominent writers in America, Long- 
 fellow and Cooper being the chief exceptions, failed to 
 dream of launching a magazine ; and the initiative in al- 
 most all the cases of important magazines has been taken 
 by the author rather than the publisher." The hungry 
 New England authors appropriated the new one with 
 avidity. " I am glad if you like the Atlantic" Emerson 
 wrote Furness in January, 1858. " We hope when it shall 
 be better. One would think it would be easy to find good 
 
THE WAVES OF THE ATLANTIC 159 
 
 criticism, but the department is hard to fill. Then what 
 1 call the Zoroastrian element, which I think essential to a 
 good American journal. Lord Bacon would * note as de- 
 ficient ! ' And I believe further that we have not yet had 
 a single correspondent from Philadelphia. I hope we 
 shall yet supply all these deficiencies." 
 
 The Atlantic Club (though it never actually existed as 
 such) gathered the contributors together under the 
 auspices of the publishers during the first months of strong 
 interest; and Phillips had presumably other red-letter 
 evenings or rather afternoons in his life, now drawing 
 to a close. But gradually some of the contributors felt 
 their feast of pure culture impaired by the presence of 
 mundane persons like publishers, and more exclusive din- 
 ners were given. Colonel Higginson speaks of one amus- 
 ingly in Cheerful Yesterdays. " The most notable of 
 the monthly dinners was held at the Revere House on the 
 occasion of Mrs. Stowe's projected departure for Europe. 
 It was the only one to which ladies were invited, and the 
 invitation was accepted with a good deal of hesitation 
 by Mrs. Stowe, and with a distinct guarantee that no wine 
 should be furnished. Other feminine contributors were 
 invited, but for various reasons none appeared except 
 Mrs. Stowe and Harriet Prescott. The dinner was a 
 very awkward one until wine, surreptitiously ordered, en- 
 livened things a bit. Dr. and Mrs. Stowe told Whittier 
 afterward that while the company was very distinguished 
 the conversation was not what they had been led to ex- 
 pect." This may be readily appreciated when it is known 
 that Lowell discoursed to Mrs. Stowe on the superiority 
 of Tom Jones to all other novels, while Holmes dem- 
 onstrated to Dr. Stowe that profane swearing really 
 originated in the pulpit. Poor Mrs. Stowe ! To sit at a 
 table where wine and Tom Jones were alike dis- 
 cussed! After such faithlessness and such tactlessness, 
 no wonder it took the Atlantic thirty years to summon up 
 its courage to invite women again ! 
 
 A few weeks after the death of Phillips in 1859, the 
 
i6o THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 firm suspended payment. Its enormous stock of books 
 and sheets and plates was sold at auction in the autumn, 
 and Trowbridge says that he was shifted, scrip and scrip- 
 page, to a New York house. Fortunately the Atlantic 
 fell into good hands, he goes on, those of Ticknor and 
 Fields; it is interesting to note that it was a project of 
 the elder and, one would have supposed, more conserva- 
 tive member, while it was opposed by the junior, whose 
 literary tastes and associations with authors would have 
 seemed likely to render him the more earnest of the two 
 in its favour. The price, ten thousand dollars, looked 
 formidably large for those days, and Mr. Fields deemed 
 it too hazardous an undertaking. If he had been on the 
 ground he might have thought differently; but he was 
 abroad. At all events, the senior's courage and sound 
 judgment were abundantly vindicated. So far, Trow- 
 bridge ; and Scudder, too, says that after many plans for 
 the future of the magazine and much competition of the 
 publishers, Ticknor and Fields bought it. But although 
 Scudder made one in the procession of Atlantic editors, 
 still the following story — narrated many years after- 
 ward in the magazine itself — seems too circumstantial to 
 be inaccurate : 
 
 Governor Rice was the assignee of the original publishers of 
 the Atlantic, and he sent letters to a dozen different publishers 
 telling them that he should sell it to the highest bidder, whose 
 offer should be received by noon on a certain day. The day 
 arrived, and not one bid had come. Mr. Rice walked over to 
 the office of Ticknor and Fields and said to Mr. Ticknor, " I 
 have not yet received your bid for the Atlantic." " No," re- 
 plied the publisher, " and you will not, for we don't care to un- 
 dertake the responsibility of the venture." In point of fact, the 
 risk was not great, for the circulation stood at that time at 
 thirty thousand copies. Mr. Rice pointed to the clock on the 
 Old South, and it was after half-past eleven. " I am about to 
 go to my office to open the bids," said he, " and I am sure Ticknor 
 and Fields will be sorry if I find none there from them." Tick- 
 nor was apparently immovable, Fields was in Europe. Mr. 
 Rice continued his appeal, and the hands of the Old South clock 
 their way. At five minutes to twelve Ticknor turned to his 
 desk, wrote a line, sealed it, and handed it to the Governor. Mr. 
 
THE WAVES OF THE ATLANTIC i6i 
 
 Rice carried it to his office and solemnly proceeded to open it. 
 It was the only bid, and the sum mentioned was twelve thousand 
 dollars. Mr. Rice went at once to Mr. Ticknor and said, " The 
 Atlantic is yours." Mr. Ticknor was startled and replied, 
 " Pray let no one know what I bid, for all my friends would 
 think me crazy I " 
 
 " I may say," wrote Lowell to Norton, " that I think 
 it is just the best arrangement possible. Whether T. will 
 want me or not is another question. I suppose he will 
 think that Fields will make a good editor, besides saving 
 the salary [which was now three thousand dollars] ; and 
 F. may think so too. In certain respects he would, as the 
 dining editor for example, to look after authors when they 
 come to Boston and the like. I shall be quite satisfied, 
 anyhow — though the salary is a convenience." Later, 
 he wrote Emerson : " I saw Ticknor yesterday, and he 
 says he wants the magazine to go on as it has gone. I 
 never talked so long with him before, and the impression 
 he gave was that of a man very shrewd in business after 
 it is once in train, but very inert at judgment. I rather 
 think Fields is captain when at home." 
 
 When Fields returned, he took the helm. Times were 
 so threatening that the firm seems to have concluded that 
 the salary was, as Lowell had anticipated, an item. " On 
 the business side of editorship, at least," says Higginson, 
 " it was a great relief when Fields was in the chair, and 
 the junior publisher reglly proved a much better editor 
 in other ways. For one thing, being publisher, he had a 
 free hand in paying for articles; and he raised prices 
 steadily. He first introduced the practice of paying on 
 acceptance, though he always said that it defeated his 
 object. Instead of quieting the impatience of contribu- 
 tors for publication, it increased it. He had a virtue 
 which I have never known in any other editor or pub- 
 lisher, that of volunteering to advance money on pros- 
 pective articles yet to be written. I have also known 
 him to increase the amount paid, on finding that an author 
 particularly needed the money, especially if it were the 
 
i62l THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 case of a woman. He was capable of being influenced 
 by argument, and was really the only editor I have ever 
 encountered I could move for an instant by any cajoling; 
 editors being as a rule a race made of adamant, as they 
 should be." 
 
 " In i860 our literary centre was in Boston," wrote 
 Howells in Literary Friends, " wherever it is or is not 
 at present. The claim of the commercial metropolis to 
 literary primacy had passed with the perishing of inanition 
 of Putnam's magazine, for Knickerbocker's was decrepit 
 and doting, and Harper's was not yet distinctly literary. 
 Philadelphia was now counting for nothing, its publica- 
 tions having become really incredible in their insipidity. 
 In Boston, every ambitious young writer was eager to 
 enter his name with the chosen among the contributors 
 of the Atlantic Monthly, and in the list of Ticknor and 
 Fields, who were literary publishers in a sense such as the 
 business world has known nowhere else before or since. 
 Their imprint was a warrant of quality to the reader and 
 of immortality to the author." With the establishment 
 of her magazine, Boston stood at last in the eyes of New 
 York and Philadelphia as she had long stood — not with- 
 out reason — in her own. She was supreme. 
 
 Aldrich was one of the ambitious young writers 
 Howells speaks about. He might have been content with 
 his success in New York, for at the ripe age of twenty 
 he was sub-editor under Willis of the Home Journal, and 
 was at the same time literary adviser for the publishing 
 house of Perby and Jackson. On first entering Fields's 
 offices in the Corner Bookstore, he says in Ponkapog 
 Papers, he saw the editor's memorandum book open on the 
 table and observed certain items within. (Doubtless he 
 was careful to keep his own memorandum book closed 
 when he became editor!) " Don't forget to mail R. W. 
 
 E. his contract — Don't forget O. W. H.'s proofs " 
 
 Whereupon the cheeky youngster added an item of his 
 own, " Don't forget to accept T. B. A.'s poem," and fled. 
 The poem was accepted, paid for, and never printed, says 
 
THE WAVES OF THE ATLANTIC 163 
 
 Aldrich ; and adds, " It was a real kindness." One won- 
 ders if, when he came to occupy the editorial chair, he was 
 as kind to the author of another poem with the manifest 
 destiny of which another intruder interfered. When he 
 took the editorship upon Mr. Howells's resignation in 
 1881, says Professor Perry, he had the comforts — both 
 before and since his time considered too Capuan for an 
 Atlantic editor in office hours — of a pipe and a red setter. 
 Once the setter ate a sonnet. " How should he know it 
 was doggerel ? " exclaimed Aldrich admiringly. But 
 there was no joke intended when about this time he gaily 
 wrote to Bayard Taylor of his Ponkapog farm, careless 
 of coming slang and quoting the laughter-loving Gail 
 Hamilton, " I am twenty miles from my lemon — the 
 Atlantic Monthly/' 
 
 Mr. Howells thus tells of his first entrance into the 
 sanctum of the Atlantic. 
 
 My business relations at that time were with another house, 
 but all my literary affiliations were with Ticknor and Fields; 
 and it was the Old Corner Bookstore that drew my heart as 
 soon as I had replenished my pocket in Cornhill. It very 
 quickly happened that when I was shown into Mr. Fields's little 
 room at the back of the store, he had just got the magazine 
 sheets of a poem of mine from the Cambridge printers. [The 
 poem, by the way, had been printed with an unfortunate error; 
 and though it meant the wasting of a sheet in the entire edition. 
 Fields recalled it.] He introduced me to Mr. Ticknor, who 
 asked me whether I had been paid for it. I confessed that I 
 had not. And then he got out a chamois-leather bag and took 
 from it five half-eagles in gold and laid them on the green top of 
 the desk in much the shape and of much the size of the Great 
 Bear. I have never since felt myself paid so lavishly for any 
 literary work, though I had more for a single piece than the 
 twenty-five dollars that dazzled me in this constellation. The 
 publisher seemed aware of the poetic nature of the transaction. 
 " I always think it pleasant to have it in gold," he said. 
 
 The success of the Atlantic made the firm amorous of 
 other magazine adventures, and flirtations ensued which, 
 in the end, brought about the departure of their first love 
 to another household. An important one of these was a 
 
i'64 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 few years' dalliance with that venerable spinster, the 
 North American. 
 
 Lowell wrote to Fields in 1864, " It's a great compli- 
 ment you pay me, that whenever I have fairly begun to 
 edit a journal, you should buy it." Lowell and Norton 
 had for a while been attempting to revive the magazine, 
 which, though it had regained its literary distinction un- 
 der Dr. Peabody, had still remained aloof not only from 
 the world but from prosperity. The new editors were 
 bringing it nearer to the former but not to the latter when 
 Osgood decided to lend to the task the machinery of a 
 large publishing house. " Under Lowell and Norton," 
 says Scudder, " its scholarship though equally distinctive 
 was more exact, and its breadth of view much enlarged ; 
 it was a striking example of how a magazine may at once 
 be lifted to a higher level without being compelled to 
 turn a somersault. Norton took the labouring oar in 
 editing, and Lowell yielded, as with the Atlantic, to the 
 temptation to shirk the drudgery of editing." Neither 
 the editors nor the publishers perceived, however, the 
 salient fact — that the day of the quarterly was done. 
 Mr. Howells wrote of the Lowell-Norton administration 
 before the Osgood period : " The Review could have 
 suffered nothing at their hands except that mysterious 
 injury which comes of being made too good ; but it is cer- 
 tain that it did not prosper, and I remember one of its 
 publishers saying Here was the horse and carriage which 
 he could have kept if he had not chosen to keep a Review." 
 In spite of Osgood, it still remained an expensive vehicle. 
 " Though he was a generous spirit," says Mr. Howells, 
 " he was not inclined to more than the sacrifice of a horse 
 and carriage on the shrine of the Review.'' He sold it, 
 and rock-ribbed as she was, the sale shook New England. 
 For the new owner of the maiden haled her from the 
 study to the mart and from Boston to Beelzebub ! 
 
 " The war was nearing its close," says Trowbridge, 
 " when Fields invited my co-operation in establishing a 
 new * illustrated magazine for boys and girls.' " It was 
 
i 
 
 THE WAVES OF THE ATLANTIC 165 
 
 called Oar Young Folks, and was a financial success from 
 the start. Trowbridge, Gail Hamilton, and Lucy Lar- 
 com were the editors. " I became manager in 1870. The 
 firm at that time, under its new name of Fields, Osgood 
 and Company, occupied a spacious store and chambers 
 at 124 Tremont Street. The house had a lunch-room 
 with a generously served table, at which publishers and the 
 various editors met, and such contributors and book- 
 authors as happened to be about were often welcomed." 
 Aldrich had, in 1865, become editor of the third periodical 
 of the house. Every Saturday, and Mr. Howells was now 
 assistant to Fields on the Atlantic. " As I recall those 
 pleasant rooms," wrote a contributor to the Atlantic, " it 
 seems as though they were always full of sunshine. 
 There could not be greyness or dulness with Mr. Fields, 
 Mr. Aldrich, and Mr. Osgood in possession, and the con- 
 stant visitor, who, the chances were, would be wise or 
 witty or both. I think clouds and rain began to come 
 when Mr. Fields retired. From the pleasant quarters in 
 Tremont Street the house moved to Winthrop Square, 
 and never again till it reached Park Street did it know 
 the comforts of home, so to speak — it had only business 
 offices." 
 
 Thus was Mr. Howells installed as assistant to Fields. 
 
 The whole affair was conducted by Fields with his unfailing 
 tact and kindness, but it could not be kept from me that the 
 qualification I had as practical printer for the work was most 
 valued and that as a proof-reader I was expected to make it 
 avail on the side of economy. Our proof-reading was some- 
 thing almost fearfully scrupulous and perfect. It would not 
 do to say how many of the first American writers owed their 
 correctness in print to the zeal of our proof-reading, but I may 
 say that there were very few who did not owe something. As 
 for the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, her syntax was such a 
 snare to her that it sometimes needed the combined skill of all 
 the proof-readers and the assistant editor to extricate her. I 
 look back now with respectful amazement at my proficiency in 
 the detecting the errors of the great as well as the little. 
 
 Mrs. Stowe herself used to say that she left her verbs 
 
i'66 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 and nominatives to be brought together by her publisher ; 
 and it must be owned that it never ruffled her in the least. 
 She would be the last one of all the immortals to regret 
 it, if Mr. Howells had ventured into details. 
 
 When he went to Boston to assist in editing the At- 
 lantic, all its contributors were New Englanders and 
 dwelt in the region roundabout — " except for those New 
 England men and women living in the splendid exile of 
 New York.'* Thus it may be seen that Mr. Howells was 
 already — or thinks he was — casting a wishful eye back 
 to the metropolis ; and when he returned whence he had 
 come he was to utter that famous gibe which still makes 
 Boston snort. But if from the inner shrine of the 
 Atlantic editorial room came treachery, from the same 
 room a little later came atonement. It was in 1865 that 
 Aldrich took up his permanent Boston residence as editor 
 of Every Saturday. Within a short time Aldrich was 
 writing Bayard Taylor, " I miss my few dear friends in 
 New York — but that is all. There is a finer intellectual 
 atmosphere here than in our city. The people of Boston 
 are full-blooded readers, appreciative, trained. The 
 humblest man of letters here has a position which he 
 doesn't have in New York. To be known as an able 
 writer is to have the choicest society opened to you. A 
 knight of the quill here is supposed necessarily to be a 
 gentleman. In New York — he's a Bohemian! Out- 
 side of his personal friends he has no standing." This 
 last Mr. Howells had said also, but still his roue heart 
 perversely sang " Better fifty years of Europe thaaa cycle 
 of Cathay." And the coarser siren kept on beckoning 
 him until he took the cotton from his ears. Not so Al- 
 drich. " Though I am not Boston, I am Boston-plated," 
 he began to say. Later we find him writing to Stedman, 
 echoing (or was it anticipating?) almost the very essence 
 and structure of his predecessor's cavil. " In the six 
 years I have been here I have found seven or eight hearts 
 so full of noble things that there is no room in them for 
 such trifles as envy and conceit and insincerity. I didn't 
 
THE WAVES OF THE ATLANTIC 167 
 
 find more than two or three such hearts in New York, 
 and I lived there fifteen years. It was an excellent school 
 for me — to get out of! I wonder that I got out of it 
 with my English tolerably correct." But the final amends 
 were yet to come. Mr. George Gary Eggleston in his 
 Recollections of a Varied Life says that he made Al- 
 drich the offer for Bryant of the literary editorship of the 
 New York Evening Post. This position the old gentle- 
 man considered the very highest literary crown America 
 had to offer. Aldrich wrote back that he knew it was in 
 every way to be coveted, and added, " But what, my dear 
 Eggleston, can the paper offer to compensate one for hav- 
 ing to live in New York ? " And thus, finally, was Bos- 
 ton avenged! 
 
 But to return to Mr. Howells's account of his un- 
 splendid expatriation in the colder light of the Northern 
 frontier ! " The editors had been eager to discover any 
 outlying literature," he says, " but very little good writ- 
 ing was done beyond the borders of New England. The 
 literary theories we accepted were Boston theories, the 
 criticism we valued was Boston criticism. New England 
 has now ceased to be a nation in itself, but that was some- 
 thing like a national literature and Ticknor and Fields 
 embodied New England literature. James R. Osgood, 
 who became afterward the head of the house, forecast in 
 his bold enterprise the change from a New England to 
 an American literary situation." 
 
 But just about this time Stedman in New York was 
 writing Taylor : " The Boston house, naturally, drive 
 apace every steed that wins a heat. But when a man's 
 pace is slow, though sure, they don't make much of him 
 unless he is * in their midst.' (That phrase is bad Eng- 
 lish.) They never ask me for anything, and have de- 
 clined what little I have sent them. I have this week hit 
 upon a magnificent subject, but when done, I shall not 
 have the courage to send it to the Atlantic. Besides, I 
 don't want it to appear in the late spring, and I do want 
 the money for it ; and Scrihne/s, Harper's or the Galaxy 
 
i68 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 will use it at once and pay me double what Boston would." 
 So there were two sides to this matter. The letter also 
 shows that J. T. F. had not yet begun, in all cases at 
 least, to pay on acceptance — but possibly that was only 
 his little trick to discourage New Yorkers ! 
 
 New Yorkers were, at any rate, beginning to feel that 
 they were not being treated with reciprocity. They had 
 been complaining for years of the Yankeeisation of their 
 own periodicals, and now the chief literary magazine of 
 the country was taking on the aspect of a closed shop. 
 " Nearly the whole Atlantic force are permanent or sum- 
 mer residents," said a Newport newspaper proudly in 
 1866. Yet the elect of the whole country was support- 
 ing the magazine, grumbled New York, or it wouldn't 
 have been able to get along. " It was so strange to dip 
 down in these little Western towns and find an audience 
 all ready and always readers of the Atlantic, so glad to 
 see me," wrote Higginson on his lecture-tour. " I have 
 just realised what a clientele the magazine has." The 
 Atlantic had become a national institution, it is true, but 
 its pillars were all Bostonians. And New Yorkers began 
 gleefully to prognosticate the usual results of inbreeding. 
 But the magazine went serenely on its mission of localis- 
 ing America; it even Bostoned Bret Harte! Its inten- 
 tion was to plant a Bunker Hill monument in every remote 
 hamlet. It became the fashion to smile at the Boston- 
 esqueness of the Atlantic. The city smiled itself, but with 
 fond maternal joy. Twenty years afterward, about 1892, 
 Mr. John Adams Thayer summed up the whole matter. 
 He had an idea (nobody asked him to have it!) of pok- 
 ing up the Atlantic: he tried it and came back to New 
 York feeling as Mrs. Partington must have felt when 
 she tried to sweep it out with a broom. " A great pub- 
 lishing house was behind it, with a list of books of 
 famous old-time authors as well as newer favourites. As 
 a business proposition for the book end, the idea was 
 sound if, as I planned, the magazine could be increased 
 from its small circulation of less than twenty-five thou- 
 
THE WAVES OF THE ATLANTIC 169 
 
 sand copies up into the hundred thousands. [Mr. Thayer 
 had learned to talk thus big in the office of the Ladies' 
 Home Journal in sleepy Philadelphia.] To do this the 
 Atlantic would have to be materially changed and illus- 
 trated. [The italics are the affrighted scribe's.] The 
 delightful gentleman who has been for so many years the 
 head of the old house was interested, but to change the 
 magazine in any way — never ! It was Boston." 
 
 In the long meanwhile, however, some other things had 
 not gone on unchanged. " In 1874," says Trowbridge, 
 " the proverbial thunderbolt out of a clear sky struck 
 the publishing house. The sky was not so clear as it had 
 seemed to many of us who were enjoying the fancied 
 security of that hospitable roof. Mr. Fields retired from 
 the firm in 1871 and Mr. J. R. Osgood (who, like Mr. 
 Fields, had risen from the ranks in business) became head 
 of the house. He was able, honourable, large-hearted but 
 aggressive and self-confident; and under his leadership 
 the concern assumed enterprises involving hazards which 
 the other's more conservative judgment could hardly have 
 sanctioned. Of these, I remember most about Every 
 Saturday, which began and ran some time as a modest 
 reprint of selections from foreign periodicals ; but which 
 the new firm changed to a large illustrated sheet, designed 
 to rival Harper's Weekly in popular favour." 
 
 " Long before this reaches you," Aldrich wrote to 
 Bayard Taylor, " you will have heard of the miserable 
 changes that have taken place in the Corner Bookstore. 
 Scribner and Company have bought and swallowed our 
 Young Folks, and the Atlantic and Every Saturday be- 
 long to Houghton. [This was Hurd and Houghton, 
 which later united with J. R. Osgood and Company.] 
 Howells has gone with the Atlantic permanently, I fancy; 
 and I am to edit Every Saturday for one year, and then 
 I am on the town. After being so closely connected with 
 Osgood for nearly nine years, you may imagine that I 
 feel as if I had been cut adrift." 
 
 Thus was New York avenged and Boston might have 
 
170 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 called to her as Cassius to the spirit of Caesar, " Even by 
 the sword that killed thee." For Stedman says that Os- 
 good told him that if he had followed his suggestion and 
 established an Atlantic Weekly in New York instead of 
 trying to outdo Harper's Weekly by making a pictorial of 
 Every Saturday it would have saved him one hundred 
 and twenty-five thousand dollars. To Bayard Taylor, 
 Stedman wrote as follows : 
 
 You have noticed the remarkable changes in the ownership 
 of the Atlantic and Every Saturday. Probably I was the only 
 writer not surprised by them. You know it has long been one 
 of my theories that the sceptre would come back from Boston 
 to New York after a time, just as it did from Edinburgh to 
 London. The metropolis, many-sided, all-embracing, is the 
 true centre; and the provincial genius of the elder Boston 
 writers has raised up no successors. Two years ago I saw the 
 time was close at hand, cut loose (mostly) from the Atlantic, 
 and have thrown all my advice, influence, work, in favour of 
 the " coming monthly," Scrihner's. This entirely apart for my 
 abiding friendship for my publisher Osgood. The Atlantic has 
 steadily declined, despite the most friendly and extended Trib- 
 une aid, for several years past in authority and circulation. The 
 contrary process has obtained in New York. Literary society 
 here, also, is becoming knit together, rich, catholic — a veritable 
 power. 
 
 Yet of the Atlantic it may still be said, as was once 
 thundered of Massachusetts, " There she stands ! " 
 
 The record of Longfellow's connection with the At- 
 lantic is meagre. On April 29, 1857, he writes: 
 " Lowell was here last evening to interest me in a new 
 magazine. I told him I would write for it if I wrote for 
 any magazine." A week later he notes that he attended 
 the famous dinner of which Phillips speaks, " to talk 
 about the new magazine he wishes to establish. It will 
 no doubt be done ; though I am not so eager about it as the 
 rest." In 1859 he wrote: "The Atlantic flourishes. 
 Holmes is in full blast at his Breakfast-Table. Dined 
 with the Atlantic Club. The Atlantic is not the Saturday, 
 though many members belong to both. They are the 
 writers for the Atlantic Monthly — Dined with the At- 
 
THE WAVES OF THE ATLANTIC 171 
 
 lantic Club at the Revere. Mrs. Stowe was there with 
 a green wreath on her head, which I thought very becom- 
 ing. Also Miss Prescott, who wrote the story In a 
 Cellar. One of the publishers of the magazine is a good 
 teller of funny stories." In 1866: "Here is our good 
 Fields frightened at the length of the Dante letters. I 
 confess it is a quality of food not adapted to the great 
 mass of magazine readers. But I trust the Atlantic has 
 some judicious readers who like to have some timber in 
 the building and not all clapboards." In 1871 he wrote 
 to Fields : " I come back to my old wish and intention 
 of leaving the magazine when you do." 
 
 No American author has ever been more a part of a 
 magazine than Holmes was a part of the Atlantic. Mr. 
 Howells said that Holmes " made the magazine ; " it may 
 be added that, in a certain way, the magazine made him. 
 Underwood wrote years afterward in the old Scrihner's 
 that the literary success of the magazine was due to 
 Holmes more than to any other man ; the Autocrat, said 
 he, was the only entirely new creation in its pages, and 
 readers always turned to it first; excepting the Noctes 
 Ambrosianae of John Wilson, no series of papers on 
 either side of the ocean secured such attention during the 
 entire century. After the Autocrat came the Professor 
 and the Poet and the novels. With two or three unim- 
 portant exceptions. Holmes never afterward wrote for 
 another m^agazine. In 1870 he wrote Fields, " You have 
 now plenty of young blood for the Atlantic, and it is a 
 question with me whether others cannot do better for you 
 than I can. My preference, I do not hesitate to say, is 
 for the Atlantic;'' in 1890 he wrote Mr. Houghton that 
 he did not wish to listen to any outside temptations, 
 " even when they come in so attractive a form as that of 
 the Forum/' But not only did the Atlantic publish most 
 of his work, it had given him his second wind. He had 
 really abandoned writing when Lowell said he would ac- 
 cept the editorship, though it ought to go to Holmes, 
 only on condition that O. W. H. be the first contributor 
 
172 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 engaged. Without the magazine we should have had no 
 Breakfast Table. " I, who felt myself outside of the 
 charmed circle drawn around the scholars and poets of 
 Cambridge and Concord, wondered somewhat when Mr. 
 Lowell insisted upon my becoming a contributor. I 
 looked at the old Portfolio and said to myself, ' Too late ! 
 too late ! ' But Lowell woke me from a kind of literary 
 lethargy in which I was half slumbering, to call me to ac- 
 tive service." In 1879 at the breakfast given him by the 
 Atlantic, he said that Lowell was the cause of his writing 
 the Autocrat and that any pleasure his writings had given 
 could be added to Lowell's own noble contributions to our 
 literature. But the Breakfast Table series gave much be- 
 sides pleasure. Even now one may catch in remote rural 
 communities the ground-swell of the storm they made 
 in conventionally devout minds. Much water has flowed 
 under bridges since the Breakfast Table fluttered the 
 orthodox by the impious food it was serving up and the 
 Guardian Angel cost the Atlantic a wholesale loss 
 of subscribers on account of its atheism. Holmes wrote 
 to Motley in 1861 : "But oh! such a belabouring as I 
 have had from the so-called ' evangelical ' press, for the 
 last two or three years almost without intermission! 
 There must be a great deal of weakness and rottenness, 
 when such extreme bitterness is called out by such a good- 
 natured person as I can claim to be in print." 
 
 Earlier in the same letter he says : " The magazine 
 which you helped to give a start to has prospered, since 
 its transfer to Ticknor and Fields. I suppose they 
 may make something directly by it, and, as an adver- 
 tising medium, it is a source of great indirect benefit 
 to them. No doubt you will like to hear in a few 
 words about its small affairs. I suppose I have made 
 more money and reputation out of it than anybody 
 else, on the whole. I have written more than anybody 
 else, at any rate. Miss Prescott's stories have made her 
 quite a name. Wentworth Higginson's articles have also 
 
THE WAVES OF THE ATLANTIC 173 
 
 been very popular. Lowell's critical articles and political 
 ones are always full of point, but he has been too busy 
 as editor to write a great deal. As for the reputations 
 that were totites faites, I don't know that they have gained 
 or lost a great deal by what their owners have done for 
 the Atlantic.'' In 1879 the magazine gave him a birthday 
 breakfast, on December 3d, " as of August 29th," writes 
 he quaintly ; " and every one of any account came or re- 
 gretted." In a letter to Mr. Howells complimenting him 
 upon his management of this affair, Holmes said : " You 
 have brought us an outside element which Boston needed 
 and have assimilated all that Boston could do for you (if 
 you can be said to have needed anything) so completely 
 that it seems as if you had cheated some native Esau out 
 of his birthright." And finally, in 1885 — the whirligig 
 of time just reversing the earlier situation — he wrote 
 thus to Lowell : " Calling on Mr. Houghton this morn- 
 ing on business of my own, he expressed the strongest 
 wish that you could be induced to write for the Atlantic. 
 I told him that I supposed you had received or would re- 
 ceive liberal offers from the New York periodicals. He 
 does not want to bid against other publishers ; but, to use 
 his own language, it would not be money that would 
 stand in the way of your writing for the Atlantic. How 
 much he or others would pay you I do not know. ["I 
 have just had an offer," Lowell wrote to Gilder in 1890, 
 " of a thousand dollars for a short paper of reminis- 
 cences! " In 1876 he had written to Robert Carter that 
 a newspaper had asked him for his Fourth of July Ode, 
 apparently as a gift. " I can't afford to give it away. 
 The Atlantic — to which I have promised what I may 
 write — will pay me $300 for it." From this it will be 
 seen that Lowell's market-rate, on his return from the 
 Court of St. James, had suffered a sea-change.] But I 
 do know that Mr. Houghton has treated me very liberally, 
 that he is an exact man of business, that he takes a pride 
 in the Atlantic, which I suppose in a literary point of 
 
174 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 view is recognised as the first of the monthHes, and that 
 he is very anxious to see you again in the pages of the 
 old magazine you launched so long ago." 
 
 But if O. W. H. had by his contributions whistled up 
 a storm of protest from his more orthodox readers, Mrs. 
 Stowe in 1869 lashed the whole English-speaking world 
 into a veritable simoon. To the mind of the younger 
 generation the Atlantic may carry no such tempestuous 
 associations — there are, possibly, those who look upon it 
 as a harnessed and fireside force, in comparison with 
 later magazines more avowedly volcanic. Maybe it has 
 simmered down since then or we have simmered up. But, 
 at the time, no one ever caused more world-wide ripples 
 than Mrs. Stowe when she threw a stone into the sedate 
 Atlantic (when it wasn't looking). Here are some of the 
 documents in the case. 
 
 Mrs. Stowe to Holmes: Lady Byron told me, with almost 
 the solemnity of a death-bed confession, the history which I 
 have embodied in an article to appear in the Atlantic Monthly. 
 I have been induced to prepare it by the run which the Guiccioli 
 book is having, which is from first to last an unsparing attack 
 on Lady Byron's memory by Lord Byron's mistress. When 
 you have read my article I want, not your advice as to whether 
 the main facts shall be told, for on this point I am so resolved 
 that I frankly say advice would do me no good. But you might 
 help me with your delicacy and insight; to make the manner 
 of telling more perfect, and I want to do it as wisely and well 
 as such story can be told. — Holmes to Mrs. Stowe: In the 
 midst of all the wild and irrelevant talk about the article, I felt 
 as if there was little to say until the first fury of the storm had 
 blown over. . . . That Lady Byron believed and told you the 
 story will not be questioned by any but fools and malignants. 
 ... It is to be expected that public opinion will be more or 
 less divided as to the expediency of this revelation, — Holmes to 
 Motley: The first thing I naturally recur to is the Byron arti- 
 cle. In your letter of August 4th you say there will be a row 
 about it. Hasn't there been ! Great as I expected the excite- 
 ment to be, it far exceeded anything I had anticipated. The 
 prevailing feeling was that of disbelief of the facts. The gen- 
 eral opinion was strongly adverse to the action of Mrs. Stowe. 
 The poor woman, who, of course, meant to do what she thought 
 an act of supreme justice, has been abused as a hyena, a ghoul, 
 
THE WAVES OF THE ATLANTIC 175 
 
 and by every name and in every form, by the baser sort of 
 papers. The tone of the leading ones has been generally severe, 
 but not brutal. I might have felt very badly about it, if I had 
 had any responsibility in counselling Mrs. S. to publish, but 
 she had made up her mind finally an'd had her article in type 
 before I heard or knew anything of it. 
 
 Holmes says that Mr. Fields was absent in Europe, and 
 his sub-editor, fearing to lose Mrs. Stowe as a contributor 
 altogether, assented to her request to print the Byron 
 paper. This looks as if the subject of Mrs. Stowe's fu- 
 ture contributions had come up in the interview when the 
 propriety of the article was questioned. That Mrs. 
 Stowe was prepared to go any length may be gathered 
 from the facts that Lady Byron's story contained no evi- 
 dence whatever — it was only an inference, and was un- 
 supported except by Lady Byron's word; and that she 
 ventured, without further confirmation, to rest the case 
 upon a story she had heard thirteen years before; and 
 had held in abeyance until the publication of the Guiccioli 
 Memoirs and an article on them in Blackwood's had 
 stung her to action. " At first I thought the world's peo- 
 ple had lost their senses," Mrs. Stowe wrote raptly, of 
 the storm her article made ; but she went serenely on the 
 tenor of her way. " She always spoke and behaved," 
 wrote Mrs. Fields in loving indulgence, "as if she recog- 
 nised herself to be an instrument breathed upon by the 
 Divine Spirit." And this unquestionably simplifies con- 
 duct. 
 
 Considering that Mrs. Stowe's influence more than that 
 of any other person had inaugurated the Atlantic and that 
 its second editor and publisher was so great a champion 
 of the cause of woman, the attitude of the magazine to- 
 ward its female contributors in the matter of dinners was 
 rather remarkable. The Atlantic was always feeding 
 itself, but its ladies were not even allowed in at dessert. 
 Lowell, it is remembered, once declined a poem of Mrs. 
 Howe's with the assertion that no woman could write a 
 poem. He said, however, he would gladly accept a prose 
 
176 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 article; and this would have seemed lamentable to Haw- 
 thorne, to whom " all ink-stained women were detestable." 
 The latter had written to Ticknor in 1854 from abroad : 
 
 America is now wholly given over to a d d mob of scrib- 
 bling women, and I should have no chance of success while the 
 public taste is occupied with their trash. But I have since been 
 reading Ruth Hall and I must say I enjoyed it a good deal. 
 The woman writes as if the Devil were in her; and that is the 
 only condition under which a woman ever writes anything worth 
 reading. Generally women write like emasculated men, and 
 are only to be distinguished from male authors by greater fee- 
 bleness and folly; but when they throw off the restraints of 
 decency and come before the public stark naked, as it were, 
 then their books are sure to possess character and value. Can 
 you tell me anything about this Fanny Fern? If you meet her, 
 I wish you would let her know how much I admire her. 
 
 But times had greatly changed during Hawthorne's 
 day, and were to change still more. Boston, which had 
 been horrified when Mrs. Howe first attended a woman's 
 rights convention, had now so long cradled the Woman's 
 Journal that outlying cynics muttered darkly at the whole- 
 sale conversion of her blue-stockings into bloomers. But 
 though the feminist movement had now manifestly begun, 
 the double standard of morality as to public dinners still 
 existed; and equal suffrage for women at the table was 
 thought to mean the banishment of those twin vices, wine 
 and tobacco. When the magazine was sixteen years old 
 and passed to its present publishers, a very large dinner ^ 
 was given, — but no ladies were invited. The next great \ 
 Atlantic dinner was on the occasion of Whittier's seventi- 
 eth birthday, in 1877; but no ladies were bidden to be 
 present at " the most notable company ever gathered to- 
 gether in this country within four walls." The dinner 
 for this lifelong woman's suffragist was for men only. 
 But there was a slight indication that the embargo was 
 to be lifted — for a few ladies were indulgently admitted 
 after the meal was over, to help applaud the speeches. 
 This proved to be the entering wedge. For it happened 
 that some ultimate outpost and last relay of civilisation, 
 
THE WAVES OF THE ATLANTIC 177 
 
 Michigan or farther, published on the subject a gay article 
 at which Boston smiled but her heart was sad. Mrs. 
 Stowe, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Gail Hamilton, Helen 
 Hunt, Rebecca Harding Davis — brilliant pens that had 
 contributed to make the Atlantic what it was — all figured 
 in the scandalous work of lese majeste as bitterly protest- 
 ing against their exclusion. An admonition from Loch- 
 invar has ever been intolerable to Boston — and Mr. 
 Houghton saw the error of his inherited way. At his 
 next feast there was no sex-line drawn. He had learned 
 the lesson which Boston herself first began to teach 
 awakening America, that a sex-line is a danger line. 
 One-third of the one hundred guests at the Holmes break- 
 fast were ladies; and Mr. Houghton made a sheepish 
 apology. He said that he had always wanted them but 
 had been too bashful to ask them before. And his next 
 feast was in honour of a lady! But this lady, Mrs. 
 Stowe, had to wait until her seventieth birthday for the 
 Atlantic to make the amende honour able for its masculine 
 misbehaviour at its first dinner to which ladies were in- 
 vited. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 SOUTH AND WEST — ATHENSES THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN 
 
 The activity of the little towns in publishing magazines 
 dt the beginning of the nineteenth century was only paral- 
 leled toward its close by the countless imitations of the 
 Chap Book. And for the same reason. Their propri- 
 etors wanted to express themselves and had no other way 
 to do it. In this ^-espect the early crop of editors was 
 not as mistaken as the later, it is true, but the recorders 
 of their aspirations were as brief. Few things are more 
 surprising in the history of our magazines than the num- 
 ber of inconspicuous villages which attempted even am- 
 bitious ones. So it had been in New England, and in the 
 Middle States ; so it was in the Southern States ; and so 
 it was to be in the West. No one guessed, in a new and 
 rapidly growing district, which way the cat was going to 
 jump. Any village courthouse might some morning find 
 itself an Acropolis; and the printer a place side by side 
 with Franklin and Thomas among the achieving pioneers ! 
 The States were full of such visionary villages, and of 
 printers who willingly if not gladly went down into their 
 own pockets for the cost of publication. 
 
 The first magazine in Maryland, in 1798, was such an 
 acorn from which an oak was to have grown. In the 
 course of two months, said the proprietor in closing, we 
 will resume in the form of a monthly if five hundred 
 subscribers can be procured. But where could so many 
 be found in Frederick Town? The editor of The Hive, 
 published in the village of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, might 
 have informed the editor of The Key that their towns 
 were too near together for each to become an Athens, 
 and that Lancaster was clearly marked for the favoured 
 
 178 
 
ATHENSES THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN 179 
 
 one. The Child of Pallas, Devoted mostly to Belles- 
 Lettres, published in Baltimore in 1800, guessed better 
 than either of them as to the future greatness of its 
 dwelling-place, but the growth proved commercial rather 
 than spiritual (as an Athenian might say). Sparks, in 
 his article on Baltimore in the North American, 1825, 
 which practically introduced the city to the North, said 
 that the enterprising spirit of its people was much more 
 energetic in its combined and continued action than that 
 of any other city of the United States. But though the 
 centre of Roman Catholic wealth and culture (so much 
 so that the Metropolitan, a Catholic monthly, styles her 
 in 1830 the Rome of America), Beatrice Ironside thought 
 she cared more for her pocket than her mind and her 
 soul. The editor of The Companion (a mere man !) had 
 given up his hopeless struggle for five hundred subscrib- 
 ers, but Beatrice, who had been his assistant, announced 
 that she would continue the journal herself under the 
 name of The Observer. (Note how the gentle intimacy 
 of the former title gives way to the emotionless alertness 
 of the latter — can this be a forecast of feminism?) 
 Beatrice the energetic thus taps Baltimore over its acqui- 
 line nose with her lively pen : 
 
 Oh, that mine enemy were editor of a Baltimore Miscellany, 
 and were he anything less than iron, how quickly would all my 
 wrongs be avenged. The attempt of a female to promote the 
 cause of taste, literature, and morals would, it should seem, 
 have been cherished with respect and forwarded with assistance 
 and encouragement. But alas ! luckless Dame, not long were 
 the illusions of thy fancy to deceive thee. Do the sheets of the 
 Observer contain only dissertations on morality and selections 
 from the best authors, however judicious, every one exclaims 
 how dull, how insupportable; on the other hand, does Beatrice 
 endeavour to enliven the page by using the arm of ridicule to 
 combat folly, a thousand divinities suppose themselves pointed 
 at. Every illustration of character that Beatrice has used has, 
 by the folly of some and the black malignity of others, been ap- 
 propriated to persons far from her imagination. If Beatrice 
 refuses to embellish the Observer with the sublimities of the 
 sons of the dullest of dull prose who forcibly scramble up Par- 
 
i8o THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 nassus, they become her sworn and inveterate enemies. Thus 
 is poor Beatrice assailed in every quarter; every weapon is 
 raised against her, except wit ; and of that, Heaven be praised, 
 she has no very heavy cause of complaint. Oh, that mine 
 enemy were editor to a miscellany in the liberal, the enlight- 
 ened, the polished city of Baltimore ! ! ! 
 
 Yet, in spite of this delightful Beatrice, Baltimore was 
 for the first quarter of the century the only literary- 
 centre, such as it was, south of Philadelphia. During 
 that period it published at least twelve magazines; and 
 it had a literary club, The Delphian, which issued a 
 periodical, the Red Book, and numbered among its mem- 
 bers Neal, Sparks, John Pierpont, Francis Scott Key, 
 and William Wirt; and, lastly, it made the Athenian 
 attempt which distinguished, at one time or another, all 
 the Northern triplicate of cities — that of capturing 
 every household by an attractive union of politics and 
 fashion-plates. Thus it had decided claims to recogni- 
 tion. Its chief enduring claim, however, was of so 
 pedestrian a nature that it has generally been overlooked. 
 Yet Niks' Weekly Register ^vas an extraordinary achieve- 
 ment. It was published from 1811 to 1849! Once, in 
 the prime of its long life, it migrated to Washington for 
 three years; and it retired to Philadelphia for a nice 
 quiet place to die in (and during its final year there it 
 was only half alive, since its animation was suspended for 
 three months of that period!). "Containing political, 
 historical, geographical, scientifical, statistical^ economi- 
 cal, and biographical documents, essays, and facts, to- 
 gether with notices of the arts and manufactures and a 
 record of the events of the times " — you would scarcely 
 suppose that its editor would have found the spare 
 moments for a series of humorous essays entitled Quill 
 Driving (although you may guess the title was not en- 
 tirely an inspiration) and a book of importance on the 
 Principles and Acts of the Revolution. So important 
 did his generation find the Weekly Register that a General 
 
ATHENSES THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN i8i 
 
 Index to the first twelve volumes was published in t8i8; 
 and so valuable did a succeeding generation find it as a 
 contribution to American history, that it reprinted the 
 first thirty-two volumes. Well might two American 
 towns be named in honour of the father of so monumental 
 a record! Beatrice Ironside ceased to issue a weekly 
 repertory of original and selected essays in verse and 
 prose ere Niles could record her as one of the events of 
 the times, but the year 1806-07 glitters more brightly for 
 the scribe who places this wreath on her unknown brow 
 than all the period covered so painstakingly by his stu- 
 pendous register. Did she make much ado about nothing 
 when she smartly berated Benjamin Bickerstafif, for say- 
 ing that the sun of The Observer had set when he left its 
 pages in a huff — he, the oracle of most of the little misses 
 of the town? Opera-boufTe Boadicea amongst those for- 
 gotten beaux and belles, and first of editresses, hail! 
 Not many stars in your pamphlet era were dancing like 
 that one under which you were born. 
 
 Thirty years after in time, and a whole century in 
 style, another Southern woman followed her example. 
 But Mrs. Anne Royall inaugurated a new kind of 
 paper — the Town Topics of its year — when she estab- 
 lished a weekly devoted to gossip of the sayings and 
 doings of men and women of her day. It was not in- 
 appropriately named The Huntress, and Washington af- 
 forded her an abundance of prey. So relentlessly did she 
 stalk it that John Quincy Adams called her " the virago- 
 errant in enchanted armour," the latter part of the phrase 
 referring doubtless to the immunity which chivalry was 
 fancied to dictate. No fire-eater fought any duels with 
 Mrs. Royall, it is true ; but, on the other hand, while her 
 censure was no more vindictive and personal than was 
 most men's of the time, her praise had a saccharinity 
 which would have stumped even the most grandiloquent 
 masculine pen. 
 
 When you went farther South than Baltimore and 
 
i82 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 Washington, you jumped all at once into another civilisa- 
 tion. It was that of a landed aristocracy, says Professor 
 Baskerville. 
 
 The settlers lived far apart, and the many rivers allowed 
 them even to dispense to a great extent v^ith roads. To the 
 private schools at rich gentlemen's houses the poor seldom 
 had access, and a free school system did not exist. So the 
 newspaper, the next great educating power, found uncongenial 
 soil in the Southern Colonies. Literature was thought to be 
 undertaken only by those who had been a failure in law, poli- 
 tics, or the Church. All over the South, even in the smaller 
 towns, were coteries of men and women who lived in an atmos- 
 phere of wit and learning; but the eighteenth century reigned 
 supreme, and artificially vitiated everything. 
 
 In 1834, an article in the Charleston Southern Review 
 sought to account for Southern literary sterility by the 
 imperfect education of the people. In Colonial times 
 Charleston had been a world by itself, and even now it 
 seemed immeasurably remote. " An awful retribution 
 hangs over the Boston book-sellers," wrote Samuel Gil- 
 man to Sparks in 1824, " for their vile neglect of sending 
 periodical publications to Charleston. We never get them 
 till more than a month after their publication." An- 
 other Charlestonian wrote him : " I will readily under- 
 take to procure for you the works which may appear in 
 this State and Georgia. You are aware that our press 
 is a very sterile one. Of periodical publications we have 
 one, the Southern Christian Register, an Episcopalian 
 magazine." But considering the scantiness of her read- 
 ing public, the Charleston press was only comparatively 
 sterile. Indeed, she had been derisively called by less 
 ambitious neighbours the graveyard of magazines. To 
 this jest she could afford to reply calmly that in order 
 to die one must first have been born. At any rate she 
 had brought forth at least ten first-class magazines, and 
 also the one professional man of letters in the South — 
 even if poverty had obliged him, patriotic as he was, to 
 send most of his goods to the North, where they could 
 afford to pay for them. William Gilmore Simms was 
 
ATHENSES THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN 183 
 
 connected with over half these attempts. The Cosmo- 
 politan, An Occasional proved to deserve its epithet, and 
 the Magnolia or Southern Appalachian struck no roots; 
 but the Southern Reviezv, in 1828, dragged its slow 
 length along for four years. It was perhaps the most 
 perfect example America afforded of that scholarly con- 
 tempt for popular demand which the English reviews 
 had set native classicists to admiring. The men are not 
 living who have read it throughout, but such as have 
 emerged from its covers come up gasping their surprise 
 that an unsettled and isolated district could have been 
 thought capable of producing in sufficient numbers the 
 savants who would have found such fare palatable. 
 Even the stately North American had not ventured to be 
 so exclusively classical or scientific. Nor did the South- 
 ern Review make, apparently, the slightest attempt to 
 secure general attention. Enough for it that able schol- 
 ars all over the South were deeply interested in the 
 subscriptions they received in return for their valuable 
 articles ! But in spite of their thus highly paid services, 
 Legare, its editor for two years, had often to furnish half 
 the contents. Consequently, when he went to represent 
 the country at Brussels, the magazine collapsed. 
 
 In 1845 Simm's Southern and Western Monthly issued 
 twelve numbers, filled for the most part by the proprietor, 
 and was important enough to get itself purchased by the 
 Literary Messenger of Richmond. In 1849 he became 
 editor of the Southern Quarterly Reznew, which, es- 
 tablished in 1842 in New Orleans, had moved to Charles- 
 ton. This magazine was founded " to protect the rights 
 if our Southern soil from invasion and to promote the 
 Luse of learning, arts and literature among us. But 
 iside from its political creed it would have none other — 
 ibove all it would express no theological opinion." 
 Nevertheless, though Charleston held as hotly to this 
 creed as New Orleans, the review had run down; and 
 on account of his great local reputation Simms was en- 
 gaged to revive it at a salary of one thousand a year. 
 
i84 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 Though Simms was not an apostle of its creed, he was 
 for a time successful in floating it. " In two years," 
 says Professor Trent, " he had made a very respectable 
 publication out of a worthless one, comparing not un- 
 favourably with its Boston contemporary. He got almost 
 none of his salary, but from paying nothing to his con- 
 tributors he advanced to the almost unheard of extrava- 
 gance of paying the best of them a dollar a page. It is 
 true that the publishers often dishonoured the drafts 
 drawn on them by eager contributors, but still some pay- 
 ments were made. He himself got part of his salary in 
 the free printing of his books and pamphlets. He used 
 his social acquaintance to enlarge the subscription list." 
 Thus altogether, he was a very valuable editor, espe- 
 cially if he himself wrote for nothing. But as he was 
 writing novels, articles for other magazines, an intermin- 
 able correspondence, and lecturing from city to city like 
 any modern Chautauquan during the seven years of his 
 editorship, it does not seem as if even his very remark- 
 able energy could have found much time for contributing 
 to its pages. In 1854, the year before he relinquished it, 
 he said it had readers in every State and in the three great 
 European capitals. It lasted only one year after his 
 departure, but its demise was assisted by a fever and a 
 fire. 
 
 Long before this, however, a former associate editor 
 had doubled on the tracks of the magazine and founded 
 one of his own in New Orleans. Its literary interest was 
 confessedly secondary to ** defending the rights and de- 
 veloping the resources of the West, the South, and the 
 Southwest.'' The Commercial Review, 1846, had learned 
 from the Quarterly how few were the Southern readers 
 for an exclusively literary periodical ; nevertheless it kept 
 literature always well in sight. After many struggles, 
 De Bow was able to announce in the sixth, volume the 
 largest circulation and the strongest influence in the South. 
 But this did not interfere with a temporary suspension 
 or his tortuous progress through no less than six New 
 
ATHENSES THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN 185 
 
 Series. His experience found an indignant voice in 1855, 
 " Is it not a notorious fact that every Southern author, 
 editor, or compiler who has had the temerity to try the 
 experiment of appealing to that dernier resort, Southern 
 patronage, has been compelled to pay the piper of his 
 patriotism. How generously we continue to patronise 
 Harper and Blackwood, Godey and Graham, and the 
 quarterlies of the North, while the Southern Quarterly 
 is in the very act of breathing its last gasp and De Bow's 
 Monthly reduced to appeal for its just dues." Still 
 De Bozv's, more successful than its neighbour, not only 
 maintained the spark of life by continuous gasping, but 
 actually began to find the process salutary. The year 
 before the war saw it flourishing; but the next year much 
 diminished the advertising it had built up, and the scarcity 
 of paper compelled a smaller type. In 1853 the proprie- 
 tor had been appointed head of the Census Department 
 in Washington, and had for eighteen months edited the 
 periodical from there. He thought he could do the same 
 thing from the Rebel capital when he moved there on 
 service for the new government. But at last the sturdy 
 proprietor was unable to make both ends meet, in a geo- 
 graphical and a pecuniary sense as well, and he yielded 
 to fate. Immediately after the war he bobbed up in- 
 domitably with another New Series, but the old war- 
 horse was now making his last charge ; and his periodical 
 soon gave up the fight for literature and became entirely 
 commercial. 
 
 He, like the other editors of the South, was seeking 
 valorously to do the impossible — to create a sufficient 
 reading public out of an uneducated people. The three 
 magazines described had the largest circle of readers to 
 be reached, they gave a voice to the best writers of the 
 South, and they had great part in moulding the issues 
 that ended in war. There was abundant literary activ- 
 ity, if only there had been some market for it. Even 
 in the decade before the war there were seventeen maga- 
 zines started, and Russell's added another to the long 
 
i86 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 procession in Charleston alone. The editors, however, 
 could scarcely live on each other's patronage ; readers were 
 widely dispersed under the plantation system; and even 
 had the periodicals been readable to others than those 
 stimulated by motives of local patriotism, Northern people 
 were not paying money to hear that the North under the 
 farce of the Union — as even so unimpassioned a periodi- 
 cal as the Southern Quarterly said — " threatens to crush 
 us beneath its unholy power." 
 
 It was largely because the Southern Literary Messenger 
 was less sectional that it became the most successful maga- 
 zine of the South. But, like the others, it got only 
 starvation diet at home. In the fourth number — as we 
 read in Minor's admirable digest of its files — the editor 
 admits some of the contents are not up to the standard, 
 but his aim is to call forth the undeveloped talents of the 
 Southern people; yet he is compelled to announce that 
 he has received more complimentary notice in the North 
 than in the South outside his own State. The number 
 of contributions and contributors from the North is 
 striking. The second proprietor asserted at once that it 
 was not intended to make the work local, but it should 
 never cease to be Southern ; and a home enterprise should 
 have home support. The Messenger in its twenty-first 
 year informed its friends that it had now become the 
 oldest living periodical except the Knickerbocker, which 
 was its senior by but six months; yet for years past it 
 had met with the most meagre patronage, and unless its 
 means were enlarged must perish. It notes in 1858 that 
 Putnam's spiteful Monthly had gone where the woodbine 
 twineth, but the rising Atlantic is decidedly anti-Southern. 
 The next year the editor says that the Messenger has 
 been much less sectional in its literary works than the 
 Northern magazines and that it has been just and im- 
 partial to Northern writers. As Mrs. Sigourney had 
 written for the very first number, so Donald G. Alitchell 
 and Thomas Bailey Aldrich had graced the latest ones. 
 
 The accusation of sectionalism, of course, was rife on 
 
ATHENSES THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN 187 
 
 both sides. It could not have been otherwise in the later 
 years. But Richmond had begun it early. The National 
 Magazine, 1799-1800, had said: " Sixty-six subscribers 
 from Connecticut leads us into the region of wonders. 
 This is the State which sends to Congress seven of the 
 most bullying servile satellites that tremble at the nod 
 of John Adams. It looks as if the people of Connecticut 
 were beginning to think for themselves." Yet " the dis- 
 gusting New England assumption of all the decency and 
 all the talent " which Poe said was rampant in Griswold's 
 Poets and Poetry of America is, at this distance, difficult 
 to perceive. Talent was not abundant in the then ante- 
 bellum literature of the South, but when it was to be dis- 
 cerned by eyes that had no reason to be unduly inquisitive 
 it did not go unrecognised — as Simms and Poe and 
 Augusta Evans could vouch. Not unrepresentative in 
 its temperate tone was this notice in the Boston American 
 Magazine of Useful Knowledge, 1834: 
 
 We were surprised to find the last Southern Literary Messen- 
 ger charging Mr. Bancroft with great mistakes in his History 
 of the United States. The editor, who appears an able writer, 
 even insinuates that they are designed. It cannot be admitted 
 that Mr. Bancroft deliberately misstated facts, but that the 
 editor is more fully acquainted with the history oi Virginia is 
 not improbable. We were sorry to see this disposition and hope 
 it will not be indulged. Errors and mistakes ought, indeed, to 
 be corrected ; but even this should be done in a kind rather than 
 in a harsh manner. Sectional or party feelings among literary 
 men in different parts of the Union would be deeply deplored 
 by every patriot, and we think by every high-minded scholar. 
 We have had enough of this sort of warfare with England for 
 fifty years past. We hope that nothing of the sort will arise be- 
 tween the scholars and writers in different sections here. 
 
 But if the periodical was more readable because less 
 sectional, and being so had some support, however slight, 
 from the North, the chief reason for its success was that 
 Thomas White, its founder, was a thoroughly practical 
 man both in the printing and the business offices. When 
 he inaugurated it in 1834, he announced himself only 
 
i88 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 printer and proprietor, and said that he would engage an 
 editor when he could. His editorial work was done by 
 others, at first gratuitously. R. H. Stoddard wrote : 
 
 The first number consisted of thirty-two double column octavo 
 pages, and its subscription price was five dollars. I am not 
 prepared to say it was worse than the average of its time, but 
 it was pretty bad. Two months passed before the second ap- 
 peared, and it could hardly be said to be superior to its prede- 
 cessor. The third number, which was extended to sixty-four 
 pages, was instructive if not entertaining. By whatever stand- 
 ard it was measured it was a failure. Mr. White had not been 
 sustained by the leading writers of America further than by 
 their good wishes, for not one of them had contributed a line to 
 the luckless periodical. 
 
 It bettered its promise, however, and in another year 
 every one in the North had heard of its existence. White 
 lived to manage it nine years. From 1847 to i860 John 
 R. Thompson conducted it. The next year it began to 
 pull out the Editor's Table in a way long since discovered 
 to be symptomatic, but Augusta Evans kept up interest 
 by her Beulah. The editor formally committed the 
 periodical to secession and urged Virginia to follow suit. 
 That it should have continued at all during the war is 
 testimony to the vitality which had enabled it to starve 
 for so long a period. The growing depreciation of 
 money raised the price to five dollars (Thompson had re- 
 duced it to three), then to eight, ten, and fifteen. Four 
 double numbers were issued to make up for deficiencies ; 
 a monthly record of the war filled many pages, but the 
 magazine was forced to grow more and more eclectic. 
 Finally, in 1865, without notice, it abandoned its magnifi- 
 cent struggle. It had fought a good fight if it had not 
 finished its course. No magazine but the North Ameri- 
 can had yet lived so long as this thirty-year-old veteran, 
 which weathered starvation to fall in actual battle at 
 last. None had struggled with more adverse conditions ; 
 none had so well or so lastingly preserved its tradition. 
 
 It is said that " Horseshoe Robinson '* Kennedy, of j 
 Baltimore, called White's attention to Poe. He had beei 
 
ATHENSES THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN 189 
 
 a most popular contributor to the first volume, and with 
 the second became assistant editor. He got out just 
 twelve numbers. " Before the end of the spring," says 
 Minor, " the Knickerbocker and the Mirror had refused 
 to exchange with the Messenger on account of his crit- 
 iques. Even home papers began to speak of Poe's 
 ' queerities ' and the * regular cutting and slashing ' of 
 his notices; and Poe had well begun his lifelong offen- 
 sive." In January, 1837, there is a notice that " Mr. 
 Poe's attention having been called in another direction, 
 he will decline with the present number the editorial duties 
 of the Messenger, but he will continue to furnish its 
 columns with the effusions of his vigorous and popular 
 pen." One of White's letters to Poe shows that it was 
 his intemperance which severed his connection, but White 
 seems to have been genuinely sorry to part with him and 
 to have conducted the affair with all delicacy. He spoke 
 highly of him in print, and he gave Poe a puff on his 
 becoming editor of Burton's. Poe did not contribute 
 until 1844, and the next year it was announced that he 
 would again write critical articles. 
 
 With his stories and his criticisms during the meagre 
 two years of his connection with the magazine, Poe was 
 certainly able to reflect that, as at no time in her previous 
 literary history, he had put Richmond on the map. But 
 the letter he wrote to Anthon when projecting the Stylus 
 was somewhat flamboyant. " I had joined the Mes- 
 senger, as you know, then in its second year, with seven 
 hundred subscribers; and the general outcry was that 
 because a magazine had never succeeded south of the 
 Potomac, therefore a magazine never could succeed. Yet 
 in spite of this and the wretched taste of the proprietor, 
 which hampered and controlled me at all points, I in- 
 creased the circulation in fifteen months to five thousand 
 five hundred subscribers, paying an annual profit of ten 
 thousand dollars when I left it." White would have 
 been interested to find out where this enormous sum of 
 money was going. In 1840 he was writing Griswold: 
 
I90 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 "If you choose to give me your labours for one dollar 
 and fifty cents a page Bourgeois type and two dollars for 
 Minion, go ahead. And even at these rates, my dear 
 friend, you will have to be most patient with me. In- 
 deed, you will be obliged to suffer me to take my own 
 time to pay this pittance." Had John R. Thompson 
 known of this colossal increase in the subscription list 
 due to the noise Poe was making in the North, perhaps 
 he would not have complained so bitterly in a letter to 
 Griswold that Southern literature could not succeed there. 
 "The Messenger is almost gone," he said in 185 1. 
 " Four years of hard labour find me in debt, my small 
 patrimony exhausted." Yet the periodical had a greater 
 literary reputation under him than under Poe, even if it 
 did not elicit so much lively comment. Apparently, 
 though without him it would not have bulked so large 
 in contemporary mention, Poe neither made nor broke 
 the Literary Messenger, 
 
 In 1835 James Freeman Clarke wrote to Emerson from 
 Cincinnati, " I send you the prospectus of a magazine 
 which we are about getting under way, and which we 
 mean to make the leading Western periodical. We in- 
 tend to combine literature and other matters with religion, 
 and make it generally attractive. We intend that it shall 
 be Western in its character, and as free from merely 
 conventional restrictions as may be." 
 
 This was the Western Messenger, of which he shortly 
 became editor ; and it then moved to Louisville so that he 
 could have an eye on his pulpit and his periodical at the 
 same time. In spite of many misgivings that his eye 
 should be single unto the former, he remained editor until 
 his departure for Boston ; and then the magazine migrated 
 to its new editor, Channing, back in its first home; and 
 travelled no more until it joined the choir invisible in 
 1841. Curiously enough, no paper could have been more 
 Bostonian than this which Clarke intended should be 
 Western. For the conventional restrictions he wished to 
 free it from were the same as those condemned by 
 
ATHENSES THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN 191 
 
 Emerson when contemplating his " organ of spiritual 
 philosophy." Largely supported by Eastern Unitarians, 
 in it the Transcendental movement which hung fire in 
 Cambridge for five years found its first public voice; 
 and, parent of the Dial, it expired soon after it had 
 plucked its best feathers for its offspring. Emerson first 
 appeared in print there ; Elizabeth Peabody and Margaret 
 Fuller contributed , and its editors and assistants and eight 
 others of its writers betook themselves to the Eastern 
 messenger as the Western showed signs of running down. 
 But it is worthy of remark that those transcendentalists 
 that had sojourned in the West thought that some of the 
 Eastern ecstasies were a little too rarefied for intelligi- 
 bility. It is also noteworthy that in spite of its constant 
 struggles with practical demands, the Western Messenger , 
 though a voice crying in the wilderness, lasted about two 
 years longer than the Eastern evangel. As few of the 
 denizens of the Ohio Valley could have fathomed what 
 the Messenger was driving at, it seems likely that most 
 of its readers really bought it — which is more than can 
 be said of the other. Both were distinguished by much 
 original and stimulative writing of rare excellence. 
 Distinctive, also, like everything transcendental, was 
 Dial number two — which took the name (with unshod 
 feet and hushed breath) some six years after Emerson's 
 had ceased to measure the sunshine. It was grandchild 
 of the Western Messenger, and also the extra-mural work 
 of a minister. To it flocked the elder dialists with 
 Emerson and Frothingham, although the editor himself 
 contributed most of the pages. But let Moncure D. 
 Conway tell his own story : 
 
 My theological and philosophical heresies reported in the Ohio 
 journals excited discussion far and near, and a magazine became 
 inevitable. In January, i860, it appeared; the Dial, a monthly 
 magazine for literature, philosophy, and religion. It was well 
 received, had a large subscription list — the Jews especially in- 
 teresting themselves. I was cheered by letters, and one brought 
 me William Dean Howells. He noticed it in the Ohio State 
 
192 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 Journal, and said, "Until now Boston has been the only place 
 in the land where the inalienable right to think what you please 
 has been practised and upheld. If Cincinnati can place herself 
 beside Boston on this serene eminence, she will accomplish a 
 thing nobler than pork, sublimer than Catawba, more magnifi- 
 cent than Pike's Opera House. It numbers among its contribu- 
 tors some of the most distinguished thinkers of New England, 
 and it seeks to bring out all the thinkers of the West." The 
 Dial at the end of the first year was really slain by the Civil 
 War several months in advance of its outbreak. We could not 
 continue literary and philosophical discussions, and the war of 
 pens and words between the anti-slavery people and the Union- 
 ists who proposed pacification. Should the time arrive when 
 the West is interested in its intellectual and religious history, 
 the Dial will be found a fair mirror of the movements of 
 thought in that period of extraordinary generous seeking. 
 
 Period, indeed, of extraordinary generous seeking. 
 It was in the journals of the Middle West that the anti- 
 slavery agitation found its widest public utterance. 
 Clarke in the first number of the Messenger had quoted 
 twelve pages from W. S. Channing's Slavery, and con- 
 demned both that system and the principles of the Aboli- 
 tionists. On the destruction of the printing-press of 
 Lovejoy at Alton, Illinois, and his death at the hands of 
 the mob, he wrote passionately, " Abolitionism, its folly 
 and its mischief, is not now the question. The question 
 is of American freedom, of liberty of thought and speech, 
 of the freedom of the press." That freedom was no- 
 where so maintained as in the Ohio Valley. For reasons 
 of policy the Eastern periodicals were barred to discus- 
 sion of slavery. Even " on the serene eminence " of 
 Boston, Lydia Maria Child and Julia Ward Howe were 
 made to feel chill disapproval. The former had been 
 systematically frozen out of the monthly press because 
 of her views. " Life is growing too earnest with me to 
 admit of my writing pretty stories," she wrote to Gris- 
 wold, " and thus the effect of unpopularity is no incon- 
 venience to me." The North American decidedly dis- 
 couraged articles about slavery; the Knickerbocker 
 printed only such views as were shared by gentlemen 
 
ATHENSES THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN 193 
 
 everywhere; the editor of Graham's wrote Longfellow 
 in 1842 that the word slavery was never allowed to appear 
 in a Philadelphia periodical, and that the publisher ob- 
 jected to have even the name of his new book, Poems 
 on Slavery, appear in the pages. Except in periodicals 
 founded by the Abolitionists, and which were read 
 only by Abolitionists, there was little freedom of the 
 press in the popular sense. Such as existed was cradled 
 in the Ohio Valley, perhaps more than elsewhere. The 
 Richmond Examiner, the most famous Southern journal, 
 was unique — North or South — for printing views 
 which were not its own or might cost it subscribers. It 
 gave extracts from the anti-slavery writers, especially 
 Theodore Parker. Its freedom, by the way, was more 
 praiseworthy than its logic, for it reconciled slavery with 
 the most radical democracy on the ingenious ground that 
 the blacks were not strictly human beings. 
 
 Professor Stowe had written to his wife in 1840: 
 " The little magazine (the Souvenir) goes ahead finely. 
 You have it in your power by means of it to form the 
 mind of the West for the coming generation." The task 
 was peculiarly congenial to Mrs. Stowe, of course, but 
 it was an ideal that actuated all the magazines of the 
 West. In 1850 she wrote to him: "I can earn four 
 hundred dollars a year by writing, but I don't want to 
 feel that I must, and when weary with teaching the 
 children and tending the baby and buying provisions and 
 mending the dresses and darning stockings, sit down and 
 write a piece for some paper." She had met Dr. Gamaliel 
 Bailey when he and James Birney started the earliest anti- 
 slavery paper in the West, the Cincinnati Philanthropist. 
 Three times there his printing office had been sacked by 
 a mob, but he issued the paper regularly. He was selected 
 to direct a new Abolitionist organ in Washington, and 
 he carried to the National Era ( 1847-1860) the spirit of 
 extraordinary generous seeking he had found in Cincin- 
 nati when he moved there from Baltimore. Mrs. Stowe 
 wrote him in 1852 that she was planning a story that 
 
194 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 might run through several numbers. He applied for it 
 at once and she began to send off weekly instalments of 
 Uncle Tom's Cabin. The year's work brought her 
 three hundred dollars. Dr. Bailey issued his periodical 
 to subscribers on, apparently, a strictly cash basis. 
 " Every paper is stopped at the beginning of each year 
 where the subscription is not forwarded in advance," ran 
 the announcement. Such barks had been heard before 
 with no bites behind them, but the National Era seems to 
 have meant what it said. In 1850 they were happy to 
 announce as an occasional contributor, Nathaniel Haw- 
 thorne, lately secured as a writer for Blackwoods. " He 
 has favoured us with an article, which we now hold back 
 for a week or two, only for the sake of those of our sub- 
 scribers who under our terms have been cut off, but will 
 doubtless speedily renew." The article was The Great 
 Stone Face, presumably that for which the author wrote 
 Griswold that Bailey had offered him one hundred dollars. 
 The National Era of course, like every other periodical, 
 got most of its contents for nothing, but to even its head 
 liners it could not afford to pay so much later. Dr. 
 Bailey wrote Gail Hamilton in 1856 that for two years 
 he had been compelled to be rigidly economical. "If 
 you can afford to wait, I will on the first week of next 
 December," he said in February, " send you a remittance 
 of fifty dollars, for which you may send me whatever you 
 please in your best style of prose sketches at any time 
 between this and then." When the time came he paid her, 
 but said that his misfortunes still continued and he would 
 be unable to make any offer for the future. The year 
 after his sudden death Mrs. Bailey conducted the periodi- 
 cal, but was forced to discontinue for lack of money — 
 though none of the receipts, she said, had gone even to 
 the support of her family. De Bow in New Orleans 
 had sunk his private means and lived on twenty cents a 
 day to start his magazine. Mrs. Bailey, delicately nur- 
 tured, suffered privation to continue her husband's. The 
 one was for slavery, the other against; and both were 
 
ATHENSES THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN 195 
 
 passionately desirous of bettering their world. Dr. 
 Bailey was in one respect wiser than his corresponding- 
 editor, Whittier ; at least one cannot imagine his Northern 
 associate planning the astute social campaign which Con- 
 way tells about: 
 
 Dr. and Mrs. Gamaliel Bailey of the National Era had estab- 
 lished in Washington a brilUant salon. At their soirees there 
 were always distinguished guests from abroad, and Grace Green- 
 wood was on these occasions quite equal to any of those French 
 dames whose salons have become historic. The Bailey enter- 
 tainments were of more importance in furthering anti-slavery 
 sentiment in Washington than has been appreciated. The anti- 
 slavery Senators were rarely met there, with the exception of 
 Hale ; but their ladies often came. Nothing in Washington was 
 more brilliant. The serious force and learning characteristic 
 of the National Era could hardly prepare one to find in Dr. 
 Bailey the elegant and polished gentleman that he was. He was 
 the last man that one might imagine facing the mob that de- 
 stroyed his printing press in Cincinnati. I do not wonder that 
 the mob gathered for similar violence in Washington had 
 quailed before his benign countenance and calm good-natured 
 address to them. Mrs. Bailey, a tall, graceful, and intellectual 
 woman, possessed all the nerve necessary to pass through these 
 ordeals, while at the same time her apparent role was that of 
 introducing young ladies into Washington society and shining 
 as the centre of a refined social circle. 
 
 This social quality they had had plenty of opportunity 
 to exhibit in Cincinnati. Conway thought it in 1856, 
 when he went there, the most cultivated of the Western 
 cities. " Thanks to a third of the population being Ger- 
 man, music flourished more than in any other city except 
 Boston; there was a grand opera house which annually 
 gave several weeks of opera or operatic concerts. Soci- 
 ety was gay and its famous masquerade balls were as 
 brilliant as those of Europe. Whitelaw Reid, Don Piatt, 
 and Murat Halstead were writers on its distinguished 
 daily press." By that time, too, it had made good its 
 early-uttered claim to the title of Athens of the West 
 in a longer list of short periodicals than any other city 
 but its three Athenian predecessors. It had begun with 
 the Literary Cadet, which had merged into the Western 
 
 I 
 
196 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 Spy, but both of these young hopefuls died early. They 
 both struck a bugle note, however, which could scarcely 
 have been duplicated in any of the Atlantic magazines 
 of the time; and for the equal of that clear blast of 
 mingled youth fulness and sophistication one would have 
 to go back to the mushroom efforts of the Colonial and 
 Revolutionary periods. It proved to be the Western 
 tone. Crude as it was at its worst, it never lost that 
 clarion ring which is the property of all new movements 
 conscious of their destiny to supersede the old. 
 
 Mr. W. H. Venable has made a specialised survey of 
 the periodicals of the Ohio Valley. The first adventure 
 entirely literary in Cincinnati was the Literary Gazette, 
 1824. " This is the age of magazines, even sceptics must 
 confess it; where is the town of much renown that has 
 not one to bless it?" wrote one of the contributors to 
 the opening number. The editor lamented, however, that 
 his readers must part with the year and the Gazette to- 
 gether; thus was furnished one more instance of the 
 futility of all hopes founded on the anticipated encourage- 
 ment of those intellectual exertions which contribute to 
 soften and adorn life among a people whose highest 
 ambition would seem to be exhausted in acquiring the 
 means of support. The editor, like Clarke and Conway 
 and others of a later harvest, drew on his personal ac- 
 quaintance East, for we find in the magazine three poems 
 of his boyhood's friend, Fitz Greene Halleck. In 1827 
 Flint's Western Monthly Review was more successful, 
 and lasted for three years. " We are a scribbling and a 
 forth-putting people," said the Editor's Address. 
 " Little as they have dreamed the fact in the Atlantic 
 country, we have our thousand orators and poets." Like 
 the other three Athenses, Cincinnati tried to catch with 
 honey those households whose men remained impervious 
 to the attractions of solider fare. The motto of the 
 Western Lady's Book, 1840, was so rash in its blandish- 
 ments that the periodical could not survive the first num- 
 ber — " The Stability of Our Republic and the Virtue 
 
ATHENSES THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN 197 
 
 of Her Institutions is with the Ladies." Another of the 
 same name followed ten years later, and almost rounded 
 out a decade. In the beginning, under the name of the 
 Western, its masculinity was not more diluted than usual ; 
 but caught like all American editors by the golden lure 
 of Godey's, the proprietor announced that because of the 
 liberal patronage of the ladies it would become more 
 exclusively a lady's book by introducing fashion-plates 
 and music. The introduction of the latter was ever the 
 stamp of the ultra refinement of the fair sex. Perhaps 
 it was in this case meant to mollify the weaker of the 
 weaker sex by a possession all their own, since they 
 shared the fashion-plates with their stronger sisters. 
 They might easily have taken umbrage at the attention 
 given the latter — for " by special arrangement with the 
 proprietor," Mrs. E. A. Aldrich, having suspended her 
 woman's rights paper, the Genius of Liberty, wrote eight 
 or ten pages a month advocating her savage views. In 
 the " Fashions " the lion and the lamb could lie down 
 together, but certainly no one who demanded the ballot- 
 box would be expected to dally with the pianoforte. 
 This policy of all things to all women was worthy of a 
 longer shift. By far the most extensive and expensive 
 literary journal was the Ladies' Repository and Gather- 
 ings of the West, says Mr. Venable. (Whither have such 
 titles fled and on what frontier will ever again exist the 
 psychology that brought them forth in pain and heavi- 
 ness?) "Started nine years before the first number 
 of Harper's, it was almost the only Western magazine 
 that was well-backed and supported. It was managed by 
 the Methodist Book Concern but was conducted in a 
 liberal spirit from 1841 to 1876. Designed to furnish 
 reading particularly acceptable to women and the family 
 circle and at first abounding with heavy advice to females, 
 it immeasurably and unceasingly belectured and relegated 
 misses, maids, and matrons to their sphere." Never- 
 theless, it fostered female writing and it often paid in 
 cash — both of them quite surprising in the Methodist 
 
198 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 Book Concern. The Parlour Magadne, which would 
 doubtless have called itself a Lady's Book had not the 
 title been filled at the moment, was also conducted on^ 
 rather austere lines at first. The edita/ had no intention 
 of debauching any parlours by admitting sentimental 
 romances. Alice Gary came back from New York to 
 infuse the slightest touch of worldliness in it, but she soon 
 returned. The Parlour Magazine dragged along wood- 
 enly for two years, its new romances being as edifying 
 as its old articles against them, and finally married in 1855 
 the West American Monthly, of which union it died at j 
 once. Two other Cincinnati periodicals come in for brief ^ 
 mention. Both of them scorned the obvious feminine 
 bid, it is true, but their chief claim to be mentioned here 
 is that they so well typify the Westerness that gave them 
 birth. In 1847 Coates Kinney, the author of that famous 
 lyric, The Rain on the Roof, was assistant editor of 
 The Genius of the West. The other editor had trouble 
 with the proprietor and set up a rival journal. The New 
 Western, the Original Genius of the West. It soon went 
 out, however, and the other Genius burned alone for five 
 volumes. Then, second characteristic of these Western 
 periodicals, all of its good contributors went to the sea- 
 board and left it without any oil in its lamp. These were 
 the Gary girls, Wallace, Whitelaw Reid, and Howells — 
 eastward the course of the Inspired took its way. 
 
 The chief furtherer of the cause of periodical literature 
 in the West was W. D. Gallagher. He did not, it is true, 
 start so many magazines as did L. A. Hine, who set four 
 of them going in six years, but he staved off his creditors 
 longer in each case. Hine had plenty of ideals but never 
 enough cash to last the year out. Gallagher was responsi- 
 ble for but three, and all cut a dash except the first — the 
 Western Minerva, started in 1824. He was sixteen years 
 old when this Minerva sprang forth mature from his 
 head, and he was writing verses for the Literary Gazette 
 signed, not Jove, but " Julia." When he began the Gin- ^ 
 cinnati Mirror in 1832, he was guaranteed a salary. But 
 
ATHENSES THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN 199 
 
 it never paid its way in spite of its extensive circulation 
 (what a pity some of those honest Jews of Swine-sin- 
 naughty — as a famous parody dubbed it — didn't rally 
 to his support as they did to Conway's !) ; and the guaran- 
 tee amounted to what it usually did in such cases. The 
 paper lasted, however, four years. " Many of the Mir- 
 ror's articles have received a circulation unsurpassed by 
 any other contemporaneous literary journal," said he in 
 valedictory, " and yet we have been forced to abdicate 
 the tripod. Simply because of the delinquency of those 
 who have subscribed. There are due to us several thou- 
 sands of dollars. It now remains for our subscribers to 
 say whether we shall sacrifice only our time and labour 
 or whether we shall suffer a pecuniary loss too." The 
 subscribers cheerfully acquiesced in the latter alternative. 
 After its death he received calls to edit, one after the 
 other, two magazines beginning with the inevitable 
 " Western." Three years later he began the Hesperian. 
 He said in his opening speech that his ten years' exer- 
 tions in behalf of Western literature had been fruitless 
 to himself of everything but experience, yet he finds cour- 
 age to make one more attempt, because he is convinced 
 that there is throughout the whole West a great demand 
 and a growing necessity for it. The Hesperian was im- 
 portant and had some important contributors. But Gal- 
 lagher, who had been willing to starve when he had noth- 
 ing, was now tempted to eat when he could, and betook 
 himself to a mere newspaper at a liberal salary for the 
 rest of his days. The paper, like all newspapers, had 
 a somewhat pretentious literary department, but not large 
 enough to endanger his salary. This defection from 
 the cause of pure literature should be forgiven in Gal- 
 lagher. The Hesperian' s publisher exhibited the grossest 
 remissness and most culpable mismanagement, he says; 
 and it is to be remembered in his favour that he was so 
 patriotic that he even refused the requests of Eastern 
 publishers when they came at last. It is amusing to note 
 that when the Southern Literary Messenger reviewed his 
 
 i 
 
20O THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 first book of poems in 1838 it regretted the volume had 
 not been published in one of the Atlantic cities. " How 
 natural it is to condemn a book unread that has the im- 
 print of a country town." This from that arrogant 
 Athenian hamlet of the South to a city which was not 
 only the Athens of the West but a pork-metropolis as 
 well! 
 
 Yet for many years Lexington, Kentucky, had run 
 her a close race as Athens. The seat of the Transylvania 
 University, during the War of 181 2, she had the right 
 long before that to be called a literary centre. As early 
 as 1803 she had maintained for one whole year the 
 Medley or Monthly Miscellany, In 18 19 she ran for 
 two years the Western Review, which chided the mor- 
 als of Don Juan and chortled with delight over Ivanhoe 
 quite in the same way as its Eastern brothers, if a good 
 four months later. The most important part of its con- 
 tents, says Mr. Venable, was a series of authentic narra- 
 tives of conflicts with the Indians. " Gentlemen who 
 are not in the habit of writing for the public, and who are 
 not even accustomed to composition of any sort, are 
 still solicited to communicate, in the plainest manner, the 
 facts within their knowledge," the far-sighted editor had 
 stated in the opening number. This and its predecessor 
 were the first literary magazines west of the Alleghanies, 
 but when Lexington's third came along in 1829 there 
 were competitors. The Literary Messenger and Clarke 
 made Louisville known to the North just as the Southern 
 Messenger and Poe had made Richmond known; and 
 George D. Prentice was almost the first in that brilliant 
 procession of personal editors which made the West 
 famous and of which Colonel Watterson, in the same 
 city, is now the last survivor. 
 
 Other towns which threatened to set up as Athenses 
 but were nipped in the bud were Knoxville and Rogers- 
 ville in Tennessee and New Richmond and Lebanon in 
 Ohio, with one magazine each. Mount Pleasant and 
 Oxford, Ohio, had two; and so had Vandalia, Illinois. 
 
ATHENSES THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN 201 
 
 The activity of the entire region is shown by the fact that 
 out of three hundred and fifty-nine newspapers published 
 in 18 1 3, Kentucky had seventeen, Ohio had fourteen, and 
 Tennessee had six. Of these magazines only the Van- 
 dalia ones can be noticed. The Illinois Magazine, con- 
 ducted by Judge Hall, said that paper shipped from Pitts- 
 burgh in November did not arrive until April. Mr. W. 
 B. Cairns quotes from the Department of Literary Intel- 
 ligence in one of the numbers : " We have not a great 
 deal to say under this head, because new books are not re- 
 markably abundant in Vandalia. Nor do we expect to be 
 able at any time to throw much light upon the passing 
 events of the literary world. But we intend to pick up 
 all we can." The Western Monthly, conducted by the 
 same editor, boasted thirty-seven contributors, all but 
 three from its own side of the mountains. Among its 
 " highly gifted females " was Harriet Beecher. Her first 
 literary work won the prize of fifty dollars which this en- 
 terprising editor offered in 1833. Gallagher's Cincinnati 
 Mirror and Ladies' Parterre said of it, "A New England 
 sketch by Miss Beecher of this city is written with great 
 sprightliness, humour, and pathos." Before i860 at least 
 ninety magazines devoted wholly or in part to general 
 literature had appeared in the region watered by the Ohio 
 and its tributaries. 
 
 As for Chicago, she had had a baker's dozen. Her 
 first newspaper had been set up when the mail was carried 
 on horseback once a week to her five hundred head of 
 population — fit beginning for a city that by the end of 
 the century had achieved at least two hundred and fifty- 
 eight periodicals, about eighty of which were of maga- 
 zine rank. And almost before she outgrew her first 
 picket-fence she was indulging in weekly literature, the 
 Gem of the Prairie — fit forecast of her literary spirit. 
 For this proved even more aggressively Western than 
 the spirit of Charleston had proved Southern; and 
 " prairie " or " Western " or " Chicago " dominated the 
 title of almost every one of its successors. Mr. H. S. 
 
 I 
 
202 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 Fleming in Magazines of a Market Metropolis has re- 
 viewed her career in detail. The sea-board periodicals 
 began to come West about the middle of the century, and 
 it was perhaps sufficient to drive even a more modest 
 town into aggressiveness to behold their utter oblivious- 
 ness to any country not East of the Alleghenies. Like 
 their Charleston brethren, Chicago editors burned to re- 
 port their cause aright to the exclusive East ; and like all 
 the pioneers, both new and old, they strove earnestly 
 to create a literature and disdained the aid of mere com- 
 mercialism and even of common-sense. The Civil War 
 in splitting the country into North and South, somewhat 
 obliterated the frontier between East and West ; and after 
 the war Chicago began a long struggle for metropolitan- 
 ism in literature. But in spite of the newer vision of her 
 editors, the wonder-story of her commercial prosperity 
 intensified her local spirit. The strident note of it, how- 
 ever, appeared more in their tone than in her patronage. 
 The Lakeside Monthly (1869), Mr. Fleming tells us, 
 chided Western writers for looking with unbecoming awe 
 upon Eastern reputations, yet was uneasily anxious to 
 demonstrate that the " Western " in the magazine it had 
 just absorbed would not portend any restriction in aim 
 and scope. The distinctively literary character of this 
 magazine approximated the Atlantic — whose title it had 
 doubtless intended to suggest. It at least succeeded in 
 making Eastern editors for the first time turn some at- 
 tention to Western subjects and seek Western writers. 
 Also, it demonstrated its kinship with the foremost 
 Eastern periodicals by getting itself annexed to a publish- 
 ing house. It lived through the fire, and long enough 
 to receive a proposal of consolidation from Scribner's- 
 Century. But like Cassius, it preferred death to creeping 
 between the legs of a colossus, and found an honourable 
 grave in 1874. 
 
 Though literary attention it had received from the 
 arrogant East, the first Chicago magazine to gain popu- 
 lar subscription, either at home or outside, was the Little 
 
 i 
 
ATHENSES THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN 203 
 
 Corporal, a children's magazine which got such extraor- 
 dinary foothold that it even disquieted that elderly 
 Boston millionaire, the Youths' Companion (still pursuing 
 its career, just as though Harper's Young People and the 
 Argosy had not successively announced that it was im- 
 possible to create a new audience every four years!). 
 Apparently, the reason for the success of the Little 
 Corporal and that of the Chicago Ledger, a family story 
 paper modelled after Bonner's, was that each forgot to 
 be Western. Like the Southern, the Western magazines 
 entirely over-estimated local patriotism. The first Chi- 
 cago author to acquire national reputation did so by his 
 laughter at Chicago's mixture of idealism and crudity; 
 the wreath on the cover of Eugene Field's Culture's 
 Garland was a wreath of sausages, and the sub-title 
 of the book was " Being Memoranda of the Gradual 
 Rise of Literature, Music, and Society in Chicago and 
 Other Western Ganglia." At the beginning of the last 
 decade in the century, Chicago started America, a weekly 
 which paid enormous prices for national reputations ; yet 
 its circulation during its brief career remained chiefly 
 Western. Not until the city step-mothered the Chap 
 Book, did she establish a periodical, says Mr. Fleming, 
 which gave the manager of the Western News Company 
 any reason to change his dictum " Put a New York date 
 line on it or the West will not take it." When the 
 Chap Book ended its unique and international career 
 (during which it had been so lofty about the entire 
 American literary output that all the leading publishers 
 refused to advertise in it) it transferred its good will to 
 the Dial, which since 1880 had reviewed books and 
 literary matters in a dignified and conservative way. 
 
 America had paid Bret Harte five hundred dollars for 
 his dialect poem, Jim. San Francisco achieved the na- 
 tional fame of a literary centre for which Chicago had 
 vainly yearned. This had come about by no means be- 
 cause it was less aggressively Western but rather because 
 it happened to possess, along with the men, more disting- 
 
204 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 tive and picturesque features, and its local colour was not 
 the familiar crimson of the slaughter house but had the 
 aureate glint of which the world knows all too little. 
 San Francisco had not so persistently striven for literary 
 distinction as had Chicago, and her one golden hour of it 
 caught and left her almost unaware. She had begun, 
 however, with the same aesthetic intentions. " San Fran- 
 cisco is only five years old," said Putnam's in April, 1854, 
 " yet it supports two or three theatres, an opera, a 
 monthly magazine, an Academy of Science, thirteen daily 
 papers, and we don't know how many weekly papers." 
 The magazine was the Pioneer or California Monthly, 
 established that month — too soon to say it was " sup- 
 ported," as the sequel proved. But the Calif ornian lived 
 long enough to be heard around the world, for it pub- 
 lished Mark Twain's first hit. The Jumping Frog. 
 In i860, Bret Harte became editor of the newly founded 
 Overland Monthly, and though it has lived ever since, 
 its voice never reached so far again as it did in its second 
 number. In this, despite the protest of the maiden proof- 
 reader, The Luck of Roaring Camp was published. 
 Harte refused to edit the magazine or write for it again 
 unless the proprietor yielded. A like fate had already 
 met the hit of a succeeding number. The Heathen 
 Chinee, which had been rejected by the San Francisco 
 News-Letter as twaddle. The history of both of these 
 record-breakers shows that it pays the author to have a 
 personal pull with the editor. But it did not pay the 
 Overland Monthly to make its editor so famous. For 
 Bret Harte succumbed to Eastern publishers and departed 
 carrying its fame with him; and the Overland got what 
 consolation it could from the fact that the Atlantic paid 
 him ten thousand dollars for his literary output for one : 
 year and in it he wrote almost nothing at all. The hen j 
 that had hatched ducklings saw them all depart to the dis- 
 tant water — which is, alas! the fate of all frontier hens. 
 Promising writers forsake the Athenses that may be for 
 th^ Athenses that are, 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 Putnam's and the new journals of opinion 
 
 The ideal of a magazine which Lowell had attempted to 
 embody in his Pioneer (the life of which was so brief 
 that it might almost have been called the Minute-Man) 
 found another incarnation in New York before returning, 
 in the Atlantic, to its original dwelling-place. Still may- 
 be heard echoes of that joyful choir which hailed the 
 establishment of Putnam's. This was in 1853 — the 
 year of the earliest forecasting ripple of the Atlantic, by 
 the way. It took the Boston literati four years to per- 
 suade their publishers to make the venture, but either 
 Putnam was rasher or the New York writers more elo- 
 quent — for the magazine was only six months incubat- 
 ing. And the month that saw it absorbed into Emerson's 
 [beheld its delayed twin just making an appearance. The 
 race is not always to the swift ! 
 
 All good periodicals go when they die, said Holmes, 
 
 ,into the archives of the deaf, dumb, and blind recording 
 
 |angel whose name is Oblivion. But magazines which 
 
 lave lived ten times as long as Putnam's have been taken 
 
 less frequently from their dusty shelves. " Many of the 
 
 [{writers of the Dial are now connected with that successful 
 
 md independent magazine, Putnam's Monthly," wrote 
 
 ^r. Frank Sanborn in the Harvard Magazine, 1855. 
 
 It is an approximation to the end for which the Dial 
 
 ^as set up. When shall we have in New England a 
 
 lagazine which to the enterprise and briskness of Put- 
 
 im's shall add the high purpose and rare genius of the 
 
 Half " He seems not to have known that " the gnomon 
 
 lat should mark the full noon" (as Alcott pompously 
 
 prophesied) was even then in the second year of its ges- 
 
 205 
 
2o6 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 tation. To that magazine long years afterwards, Holmes 
 wrote in retrospect. " The Atlantic was still an experi- 
 ment. Putnam's, owing its success largely to that very 
 accomplished and delightful writer, Mr. George William 
 Curtis, had so well deserved to live that its death was 
 a surprise and a source of regret. Could another monthly 
 take its place and keep it when that, with all its attractions 
 and excellencies, had died out, and left a blank in our 
 periodical literature which it would be very hard to fill as 
 well as that had filled it?" 
 
 But all unaware has the present writer, as if with the 
 pen of destiny, killed off the meteoric Putnam's ere it has 
 fairly begun. He must return to its inception. This was 
 due to " Harry Franco " Briggs. Like Underwood, he 
 represented to the publisher that the time was ripe for a 
 literary monthly of the highest sort, which should stand 
 for American literature and should at the same time 
 concern itself with public affairs ; but, very different from 
 Underwood, he could not point to an established literary 
 circle on which he could rely. Instead — when Putnam 
 had willingly listened to the voice of the tempter — a 
 round-robin was sent out to American authors asking if 
 they would give their support, and calling attention to 
 the announcement that the magazine would be entirely 
 original. Most of the replies were joyful, and com- 
 mented significantly on the fact that as far as originality 
 went there would be little domestic rivalry. The pub- 
 lisher said that he would pay for everything he used at 
 the highest rate he could afford ; and this he would raise 
 as time went on. He hinted at his expectation that some 
 of the magazine material would be available for books. 
 Sauce for the goose, this had no doubt been sauce for 
 the gander also; and there was also another inducement 
 to the book-publisher to undertake the enterprise. The 
 success of Harper's had shown that such a magazine could 
 be utilised as the most effective advertising machinery to 
 make known a publisher's list. 
 
 " Has not the long and dreary history of magazines 
 
 J 
 
PUTNAM'S AND THE NEW OPINIONS 207 
 
 opened our eyes? " questioned Putnam's of echo in open- 
 ing. " Is there some siren seduction in theatres and 
 periodicals that forever woos managers and publishers 
 to a certain destruction? Why do we propose another 
 twelve-month voyage, in pea-green covers, toward ob- 
 scurity and the chaos of failures? " The answer to these 
 questions was the same as it had been one hundred years 
 before. " Because we believe the time is now ripe," and 
 so forth. But, aside from this perennial ripeness of the 
 time, there were two new bids for survival on the part 
 of the young aspirant. The first was its quixotic deter- 
 mination to be original and to accept no man's goods 
 without payment; the second was its intention to move 
 nearer to life by the discussion of every-day affairs. 
 For the former, the time proved, on account of certain 
 local and foreign conditions, to be greener than it had 
 ever been before. The latter attempt was less premature, 
 yet it brought no fruitage of enduring subscribers to 
 Putnam's. Indeed, for most of them it was an ideal 
 which suffered the fate of the medlar — to become rotten 
 before ripening. Few free-born American citizens had 
 ever been willing to have their opinion criticised, and to 
 pay for the pleasure was quite preposterous. It took 
 them some years to learn to refrain from the inalienable 
 right of cancelling their subscriptions at once. Of the 
 welfare of these two confiding ideals, C. F. Briggs, when 
 he opened the Second Series of Putnam's, had some in- 
 teresting things to say : 
 
 It is just fourteen years since we had the honour to assist in 
 getting out the first number of Putnam's Monthly. We derive 
 considerable satisfaction in remembering the cosy little dinner 
 in a certain cosy house in Sixteenth Street, at which the plan 
 of the work was discussed and the adventure determined upon. 
 The little party consisted of Mrs. Caroline M. Kirkland, Mr. 
 George Sumner, Mr. Parke Godwin, Mr. George W. Curtis, 
 Mr. and Mrs. Putnam, and the present writer. Two of that 
 little party are already gone; the rest remain to assist in the 
 revival. The chief doubt in the minds of many was whether 
 the country could furnish the requisite number of writers to 
 
 i 
 
2o8 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 sustain an original magazine of the better class, but the experi- 
 ment proved there was plenty of latent talent which only re- 
 quired an opportunity for its development. Through certain 
 misadventures the work stopped for a while, but anxious in- 
 quiries have constantly been heard as to when it would reap- 
 pear No one seemed willing to believe it had stopped for 
 good. When the old Putnam furled its sails for a season, the 
 Atlantic Monthly was launched and took the flood of public 
 favour. In its build and trim was much that was most familiar 
 to us. From the numbers of the first monthly seventeen books 
 were printed, including Potiphar Papers and Prue and I. 
 Fourteen years ago it was considered an act of hari-kari for a 
 popular periodical to express a political opinion, particularly if 
 it was adverse to the " peculiar institution " of the South. But 
 we ventured upon it without any particular harm coming of it, 
 and we shall probably try it again. Certainly, we have no de- 
 sire to publish a magazine for readers who are too feeble to 
 endure a candid discussion, now and then, of political subjects. 
 One serial used to be considered sufficient for an English maga- 
 zine ; no magazine ventures now to have less than two. Ameri- 
 can readers are accustomed almost entirely to foreign works of 
 fiction, but we shall publish none but stories of native pro- 
 duction. ■ - ^ 
 
 At the end of the first volume, the editors stated that 
 they had received from voluntary contributors four hun- 
 dred and eighty-nine articles, the greater part from 
 writers wholly unknown before. From them they had 
 selected some of the most valuable papers they had pub- 
 lished. Every article had been paid for at a rate which 
 their writers thought " liberal," all were original, and 
 with one exception all, they believed, had been written 
 for the magazine. For volume two they had as many as 
 nine hundred and eighty articles to choose from, and they 
 had had the good fortune to introduce some young writers 
 of promise. This number was doubled for the fourth 
 volume, and there could be no longer any doubt that 
 abundant native literary support could be found for an 
 American magazine. But literary support was by no 
 means the only thing to be considered. The publishers 
 stated that they were fully aware that in a country where 
 the choicest works of foreign genius are to be had for 
 the taking, to found and sustain a magazine at once uni- 
 
PUTNAM'S AND THE NEW OPINIONS 209 
 
 versal in its sympathies and national in its tone, was not 
 an easy task. But the position of Putnam's, they felt, 
 was now assured. 
 
 No reader of this announcement could have failed to 
 recognise the point of this allusion. '' Harper's had for 
 the two years since it had been started been almost wholly 
 a reprint of English current literature," says Scudder's 
 Lowell, " and even its cover was a copy of Bentleys. 
 It had, however, struck a popular taste, and its success 
 made other publishers jealous, while its easy use of for- 
 eign matter made the men of letters angry." Putnam's 
 had little to say of the " scissors and paste-pot maga- 
 zines " except as they made its own position precarious. 
 It exhibited commendable restraint even when Harper's 
 published three months after its original issue in Putnam's 
 an American story which had been copied without credit 
 in Eli::;a Cook's Journal, of London. Certainly the inci- 
 dent afforded a tempting occasion — as did Littell's Liv- 
 ing Age, when it republished Longfellow's " Two An- 
 gels," appropriated in the same way by Bentley's — to 
 remind the public how the reprint magazines kept their 
 eyes shut to all that was going on in America. But upon 
 the latter subject — having a mind of their own and 
 speaking it — Putnam's prided itself very much ; and here 
 it did venture to proclaim disapproval of its rival. As 
 Curtis was writing for Harper's Monthly sketches and 
 social notes, and had The Lounger in the Weekly when 
 he was associate-editor of Putnam's, it may be guessed 
 that he was ambidextrous; in this instance, at least, he 
 must have kept from his right hand the knowledge of 
 what was going on in the neighbourhood of his left. In 
 March, 1857, appeared this interesting article about the 
 periodicals of the rival house. 
 
 When Harper's Magazine was commenced, it was in pur- 
 suance of a shrewd perception that the time and the country 
 demanded and would readily support a periodical of higher 
 character than what were termed the " Philadelphia magazines," 
 which were, to speak generally, simply repositories of silly love 
 
210 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 stories, rhymes, and fashion-plates, with occasional poems from 
 our best poets, which served as corks to float the rest of the 
 freight to market. Harper's was the rod that consumed all 
 these creeping things. It was compiled with such tact from the 
 stores of current literature furnished monthly by the English 
 periodicals; it was so copious, so various, and so entertaining, 
 and took the field with such an air of confident triumph that a 
 much inferior magazine would have succeeded. The very first 
 numbers were so clean and handsome and prompt and bright 
 that the rivals retired and the " Philadelphia magazines " lost 
 their exclusive prominence. The secret of its popular success 
 is that it just keeps pace with the popular mind; consequently 
 it had no opinions, no politics, no strong expression. The same 
 good sense and shrewd perception also saw that the unprece- 
 dented success of the Illustrated London News showed conclu- 
 sively that the public liked pictures, and that careful illustra- 
 tions gave an increased value to every descriptive article. 
 Instead, therefore, of old fashion-plates and Rosalie and Sweet 
 Seventeen and the Belle of the Ball-room there were two or 
 three elaborately written and capitally illustrated articles. The 
 American people had always taken the anti-British view of 
 Napoleon — and the most illustrious contribution to Harper's 
 has been the literary apotheosis of Napoleon, wherein for scores 
 of successive numbers that eminent saint was delineated in all 
 the details of his humility, piety, and unswerving devotion to 
 the welfare of mankind by the Reverend Mr. Abbott. This 
 combination of piety and military glory coinciding with the 
 prevailing partiality of American readers, confirmed the triumph 
 that was already achieved. Harper's reached a fabulous circu- 
 lation. Probably no periodical in the world was ever so popu- 
 lar or so profitable. It had ably done what it proposed to do. 
 It was a result to be regarded in some degree with national 
 complacency and pride, because it was undoubtedly much supe- 
 rior to the class of periodicals it supplanted. 
 
 But there was a remarkable other side to this phenomenon. 
 It sought to be universally acceptable, and its complaisance in- 
 evitably destroyed its force; it was known to be largely com- 
 piled from foreign literature and consequently it was considered 
 to be no representative of American talent. It was therefore 
 no leader, no friend, no critic, no censor. It was good-humour- 
 edly called the Buccaneer's Bag, Abbott's Magazine, the 
 Monthly Corn Plaster, the Universal Shin-Saver, the Monthly 
 Nurse. But everybody bought it and read it and everybody was 
 sure that nothing decided or impolitic, no laugh at anything 
 that everybody did not laugh at, would be concealed anywhere 
 between its fair yellow covers. It risked no popularity by trying 
 to step ahead and to furnish something a little more marrowy. 
 
PUTNAM'S AND THE NEW OPINIONS 211 
 
 It was still felt that the intellectual independence and move- 
 ment of the country had no organ; and from that conviction in 
 due season sprang Putnam's Monthly. In a retrospective view 
 of our literature of the last three or four years, it seems to us 
 very evident that the first immediate effect of the success of 
 Putnam's was to naturalise Harper's. That magazine ceased to 
 be a second table of the English periodicals and became grad- 
 ually more and more American. But rather in subject than in 
 treatment; its spirit was still timid and hesitating. Every 
 month it made its courtly bow; and with bent head and unim- 
 peachable toilet, whispered smoothly, " No offence, I hope ! " 
 The inevitable penalty was that with the greatest circulation in 
 the world, it could not make the smallest literary reputation. 
 It was managed with profuse generosity — probably literary 
 labour of the kind was never better paid than it has been by 
 Harper — but when the author had pocketed his money, he 
 might as well have pocketed his article. Yet elsewhere it might 
 have made a literary mark. Harper's still flourishes with un- 
 abated vigour. It still bows and avoids. Their new weekly 
 periodical commences with more chances of pecuniary success 
 than any weekly ever undertaken in America. But already the 
 spirit of the paper is manifestly that of the magazine. In the 
 War of the Roses it is sure that a great deal may be said for 
 white, but then it believes there is much to be urged for red. 
 Whenever unanimity of public opinion may be assumed, then 
 Harper's Weekly cordially agrees with the public. 
 
 Nevertheless, Stedman thought that Putnam's, even in 
 the line of " opinions," left much to be desired. He 
 wrote to his step-father in 1857 begging him to come 
 back from Italy and establish a Republican Review, say- 
 ing that nine out of ten of the reading public were re- 
 publicans and had no magazine to represent them. 
 '' Putnam's is Republican, to be sure, in distinction from 
 other journals, but it does not fling out much of a banner 
 and is not sustained in its mental calibre — is alternately 
 sensible and foolish, light and heavy.'' Lowell, on the 
 other hand, thought Briggs was a trifle too disposed to 
 consult the opinions of the majority. " I doubt if your 
 magazine," he wrote, " will become really popular if you 
 edit it for the mob. Nothing is more certain than that 
 popularity goes downward and not up; and it is what 
 the few like now that the many have got to like by and 
 
212 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 by." What called forth this letter was the editorial dis- 
 position to pay attention to the comments of the readers 
 upon the contents of the magazine. 
 
 " In 1853," writes Mr. George Haven Putnam, " no 
 such heavy outlay was required to place a magazine upon 
 the market as has proved to be necessary in these later 
 periods of magazine competition. My father told me 
 he actually made no cash investment other than the pay- 
 ment to the authors for their contributions for the first 
 two months. The receipts from subscriptions and sales 
 proved to be sufficient, before the time came for the set- 
 tlement of the bills of the printers and paper makers, to 
 provide the necessary resources for these. The circula- 
 tion of the magazine during the four years of its existence 
 ranged from twelve to twenty thousand. What was 
 called the normal price for the earlier contributions was 
 $3 a page. The more important men received $5, and 
 contributions of a special character were paid as high as 
 $10. Of poetry not very much was utilised, but such 
 verses as were accepted (mainly for the purpose of filling 
 up any blank half -pages) were paid for at from $10 to 
 $25/; 
 
 Briggs made an able editor, but the success of Put- 
 nam's owed to the personal charm of Curtis almost as 
 much as the Atlantic later owed to Holmes. " He gave," 
 said Scudder, himself a seasoned editor, " that distinction 
 of lightness and flavour which every literary magazine 
 covets but can rarely command." This all the world 
 could see, but its readers did not know that they had him 
 to thank for keeping it, after it passed into other hands, 
 as near to its original high standards as circumstances 
 would permit. Nor did they know that he was furnishing 
 in his own conduct an example of that fine and quixotic 
 endeavour which from the beginning had characterised 
 the magazine. Curtis was a special partner of Dix and 
 Edwards, who bought out Putnam's rights; he took no 
 part in the management and yet had some pecuniary re- 
 sponsibility. When the firm failed in 1857, Curtis sac- 
 
PUTNAM'S AND THE NEW OPINIONS 213 
 
 rificed his private fortune to save the creditors from loss 
 and managed by 1873 to recoup them. 
 
 But the excellence of his v^ritten work and its popular- 
 ity all recognised. And the proof of this v^as the fre- 
 quency with which it was claimed by others. For the plan 
 of printing articles without names landed them in the 
 familiar predicament of having unsuspected authors pop 
 up everywhere. About Potiphar Papers they published 
 quite a correspondence. The gentleman who insisted 
 that a deceased friend had written them must have been 
 somewhat taken aback when he was told that " one of our 
 editors, Mr. Blank, claimed the authorship for himself.*' 
 The exquisite pen of this editor opened the new series 
 with a gay and tender reminiscence. 
 
 One bright day and long ago — it seems to me now that it 
 must have been soon after the War of 1812, but on reflection I 
 discover that it was in 1852 — I was dining with Mr. Harry 
 Franco at Windust's in Park Row. Mr. Franco asked me what 
 I thought of the prospect of a new and wholly American maga- 
 zine, and immediately proceeded to set forth its possible charac- 
 ter and brilliant promises so fully and conclusively that I knew 
 he was prophesying and that before many months a phoenix 
 would appear. Now in the following autumn after the other 
 dinner — for it is a beautiful provision of nature that literary 
 enterprises of great pith and moment should be matured under 
 the benign influences of good eating and drinking — I found 
 myself consulting, in a bare room in a deserted house in Park 
 Place, where nobody could find us out, with Mr. Publisher Put- 
 nam, Mr. Harry Franco, editor-in-chief, and Mr. Parke God- 
 win, associate editor, upon the first number of Putnam's Monthly. 
 Our council chamber was a third story front room in a doomed 
 house near to Mr. Putnam's headquarters. It was a dwelling 
 house, and as fashion had at last flown even from Park Place — 
 the spot below Bleecker Street where it lingered longest — the 
 house was patiently waiting to be demolished and make way for 
 a " store." Every day we met and looked over manuscripts. 
 How many there were ! And how good ! And what piles of 
 poetry ! The country seemed to be an enormous nest of nightin- 
 gales ; or perhaps mocking-birds — certainly cat-birds. I can 
 see the philosophic Godwin tenderly opening a trembling sheet 
 traced with that feminine chirography so familiar to the edi- 
 torial eye, and in a hopeful voice beginning to read. After a 
 very few lines a voice is heard — methinks from Franco's chair : 
 
214 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 " Yes, yes ; guess that's enough "— Walter di Montreal, thy 
 hour has come, and the familiar chirography flutters into the 
 basket. I suppose that Mr. Franco and Godwin and the poor 
 fellow who was snuffed out by Mr. Brown's brief remark (that 
 he didn't know the person who had written about Mrs. Potiphar 
 of " Brown's society") might fill many pages with their recol- 
 lections of the pleasant cradle-and-crib days of the young Put- 
 nam. Those three were the monthly nurses. They saw that 
 infant phenomenon safely through his prodigious childhood, 
 and how rapidly he obtained his growth! There are books in 
 good standing everywhere, which I can never see but with the 
 feeling of the pedagogue toward his pupils. My boys, sir, my 
 boys ! he remarks with complacency as the famous poets or 
 travellers or novelists pass by. . . . How this latest born into 
 the monthly world springs and sparkles ! Ah, Mr. Franco, if it 
 is not our child, let us submit and believe it to be our grand- 
 child. May heaven bless you, young stranger! Forgive an 
 old-fashioned benediction, but may you be a better man than 
 your father! 
 
 The father had gone down, like so many good men and 
 true, in the panic days of 1857. At least, in the euphe- 
 mistic language of magazine announcements, Putnam's 
 espoused Emerson's in October of that year — and it was i 
 never more true that " a young man married is a young 
 man marred." It then came out that Putnam had sold 
 the magazine some time in '55. The Round Table in a 
 series of articles on the publishers in 1866 said that the 
 amount paid to Dix and Edwards, who bought it, on Put- 
 nam's own offer, was eleven thousand dollars. And it 
 had paid him a liberal profit while he published it. Many 
 readers did not know that Putnam had relinquished it at 
 the end of its fifth volume, and consequently were some- 
 what mystified at the absorption, especially when they 
 were editorially assured that the magazine had doubled 
 its circulation in the past three rnonths. '* Emerson's 
 with his honest and manly bearing," ran the announce- 
 ment, " has grown so rapidly, and on several occasions 
 so outgrown his tailoring, that it has been a little difficult 
 to keep up with his length of Hmb." But vital statistics 
 in magazines are always roseate, and though it was true 
 that the youngster had changed his name four times re- 
 
PUTNAM'S AND THE NEW OPINIONS 215 
 
 cently and was to do so once more, the alliance — which 
 many people thought unholy — was not to prosper. The 
 publishers pledged themselves to devote every dollar of 
 profit for three years to improving the magazine — a 
 rash oath, for it lasted but one. Thus Putnam's made, in 
 the eyes of the world at least, a rather inglorious end. 
 Even before it openly became Emerson' s^ it had greatly 
 petered out. But the two and a half years that Putnam 
 had it were illustrious. It not only cut a dash but it 
 made an epoch in our magazine literature. Tentative 
 as its policy may seem now, it was the first popular maga- 
 zine to take so vigorous a stand upon the living questions 
 of the day. Furthermore, it had announced that it was 
 going to be American and original; and it had kept its 
 word. For this we owe it a great debt of gratitude. 
 
 None know better than our own authors what discouraging 
 disadvantages the publisher of an original American magazine 
 must contend against in being obliged to compete with the un- 
 paid British productions, which are reproduced here almost 
 simultaneously with their publication on the other side of the 
 Atlantic. And while this unequal contest between the publisher 
 who filches his matter and the one who pays for it almost pro- 
 hibits the possibility of profit to the latter, the American author 
 gauges his demand for compensation by the standard of his 
 British brother. But we are touching, perhaps, on private 
 rights by these allusions. The commercial value of any article 
 depends on what it will bring in the open market, and by that 
 test we will be governed in the question of pay. 
 
 Thus ran one of the editorials in the first number of 
 the New Series, 1868. " Many excellent friends who 
 have favoured us with their sage advice, have strangely 
 insisted that it will be useless to expect good contributions 
 without good pay. As though a publisher or an editor 
 were likely to have missed this special lesson in his deal- 
 ings with authors! One veteran author by way of en- 
 forcing his views on this subject demanded a retaining 
 fee of five hundred dollars as an earnest of future pay- 
 ments for whatever he might furnish. But there are two 
 sides to this interesting question of pay. In order that a 
 
2i6 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 publisher should pay, he must himself be paid." Authors, 
 indeed, were growing cocky. Mr. George Haven Put- 
 nam in his Life of his father said that on account of the 
 three new magazines started about the same time — Scrib- 
 ne'/s, Lip pine otfs, and the Galaxy — the competition for 
 the most important contributors became more serious than 
 that for subscribers. Authors who in the day of the first 
 Putnam's Monthly had been content with from three to 
 five dollars a page now secured from ten to twenty, and 
 for special contributions much larger sums. His account 
 has many items of interest. 
 
 Among the literary plans which engaged my father's first at- 
 tention in again taking up his publishing business (after the 
 war) was one for the re-establishment of Putnam's Magazine. 
 The conditions seemed to be in certain ways favourable for the 
 experiment, but it proved that the new wealth was very largely 
 in the hands of people not interested in literature. The book- 
 buying conditions of the South had of necessity been destroyed 
 by the war. A very considerable portion of people in the North 
 who had been buyers of books were no longer able to indulge 
 in such luxuries. These were the people who had fixed in- 
 comes; incomes payable in the legal tender of the day were 
 materially curtailed. The nouveaux riches who had made 
 money out of shady contracts or from pork speculations could 
 not easily be reached by the publishers of standard literature. 
 This seemed to give an opening for a magazine. 
 
 The new Putnam's started off as illustriously as the 
 old. The reputation of the former magazine for a time 
 seemed likely to be regained and maintained. E. C. Sted- 
 man and R. H. Stoddard did the department Literature 
 At Home ; and Bayard Taylor covered Foreign Literature. 
 All did their work in a way that occasioned admiration 
 and added prestige. But times had changed very much 
 since Putnam had started his earlier magazine on no 
 cash whatever. Not only were authors demanding more 
 money, the public were demanding illustrations. These 
 in the first Putnam's had been promised as a treat for the 
 second year. They proved, however, to be few in num- 
 ber and mostly architectural ; and the following year, il- 
 
PUTNAM'S AND THE NEW OPINIONS 217 
 
 lustrations other than architectural were entirely confined 
 to the first instalment of the Early Days of George Wash- 
 ington. But what had been a luxury then was a necessity 
 now. The competing magazines were making large out- 
 lays for illustration. The First Series had paid, under 
 Putnam's management, $12,819 to editors knd authors 
 and $3,000 for illustrations ; and thus had proved a prac- 
 ticable undertaking with a circulation ranging from twelve 
 to twenty thousand. The Second never exceeded fifteen 
 thousand, and Putnam considered that with the resources 
 at his disposal it would not be wise to continue. The 
 following " card " marked to the valedictory : 
 
 A few words may be expected from the Publishers in closing 
 this second series of Putnam's Magazine, and in introducing the 
 new periodical which will take its place. This magazine was 
 very generally and very kindly welcomed. We have the right 
 to infer that the new series has, during the last three years, 
 given general satisfaction. It has had a larger circulation than 
 several of its contemporaries at home, and much larger than a 
 dozen of the English magazines whose names have been familiar 
 for many years. Yet it is more and more evident that popular 
 taste calls for something diiferent; it may be higher or lower 
 or better or worse. But those who pay their money have a 
 right to the choice. We have aimed to produce a magazine 
 wholly Original and essentially American. We have avoided 
 all temptations to reprint from foreign magazines, or to cater to 
 anything merely sensational. In this we may have been Quix- 
 otic; but the aim at least was fair. The best material sent us 
 — out of 3,035 mss. in three years — has been printed in the 
 six volumes now completed. Our contributors have all received 
 their pecuniary compensation. We wish it had been a great 
 deal larger ; but we may state our relative reward thus : 
 
 Dr. To Cash paid contributors $30,000 
 
 Cr. By compliments to publishers ? ? ? 
 
 By profits on outlay of $100,000 000 
 
 By Balance — ? 
 
 We now ask those who have expressed a friendly apprecia- 
 tion of the ** pea-green " to permit us to introduce its better- 
 looking successor. Retaining an interest in the sale of the new 
 work (our edition bearing the name of Putnam's as well as 
 Scribner*s) we ask our friends and correspondents to continue 
 
2i8 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 their subscriptions to us, in reasonable confidence that they will 
 receive the full equivalent for their money. In addition to the 
 illustrations afforded by the new magazine, there will be an in- 
 fusion of fresh energy into the editorial management and a 
 large accession of well-known and capable contributors. 
 
 The remainder of Mary Clemmer Ameses serial story 
 was sent free to all paid subscribers. The new editor was 
 to decide as soon as possible in regard to using the ac- 
 cepted manuscripts, and those rejected would be returned 
 (chilling disappointment !) . In the first number of Scrih- 
 ner's was this announcement : " Hours At Home, whose 
 unpretending dress and suggestive title had grown fa- 
 miliar to the eyes of many thousands, died — not of 
 disease, not of old age, not of decay — died simply that 
 Scrihner's Monthly might live. Putnam's, which has em- 
 bodied in its pages the old Knickerbocker culture and pres- 
 tige together with the free spirit of American progress, 
 dies a month later, or rather merges the gathered re- 
 sources of its life in the new magazine. The two have 
 made their way to this change with the conviction that 
 such changes have occurred in the popular demand that a 
 great success is not possible if sought only by the old 
 means and methods." This was very handsome editor- 
 ial language on the part of Dr. Holland; for when he 
 wrote a retrospect of the magazine eleven years after- 
 ward, he said that Hours At Home was both worthless 
 and moribund, and as for Putnam's, " when Mr. Putnam 
 came to us with an offer for it, we acceded to his condi- 
 tions, though I have forgotten what they were, and it was 
 soon quietly left behind with the other." Another sun 
 was rising and already yesterday's magazine was old- 
 fashioned. 
 
 For Putnam's, in spite of its new and progressive idea 
 of handling public questions, had upon it the large shadow 
 of Irving. (It even counselled Melville to read his Ad- 
 dison! Not that Melville didn't need advice, heaven 
 knows ; but it would be difficult to devise for his staccato 
 temper a more ludicrous misfit than the undulating Addi- 
 
PUTNAM'S AND THE NEW OPINIONS 219 
 
 sonian phrase.) And there was much of the cottscious 
 Knickerbocker superiority and deliberate Knickerbocker 
 exclusivness about it. Perhaps if Putnam's had Hved to 
 grow up, we should have seen how one good custom could 
 corrupt the world. As it is, it wears the charming halo 
 of those generous high-souled companions of our youth 
 who were destined to die young — and each year to be- 
 come more admirable thereby. There were those who 
 deemed Putnam's — in spite of the fledgling authors it 
 was so proud of — entrenched in its clique. It is amusing 
 to hear Stedman, who had greatly contributed to maintain 
 a closed shop, bitterly complain of the Atlantic in this re- 
 spect. " Would finish the poem for the Atlantic, did I 
 suppose they would take it from me," he wrote to Bayard 
 Taylor in 1865. *' Sometimes I must get an introduction 
 there, through a kind word from you. What bad poetry 
 they occasionally print. You furnish apparently all their 
 good." The year before he had recorded in his diary: 
 " Finished Holyoke Valley. Here now is a poem which 
 I know to be artistic and full of feeling — equal to any- 
 thing which the Atlantic has published for months. But 
 I cannot send it there, because they have time and again 
 refused the best productions of New York writers. Last 
 summer they sent back the best short poem I ever wrote, 
 The Test, afterwards printed in my book and copied 
 everywhere. So I must send it to the Round Table, 
 where the impersonal rule hides the author's name and 
 where it can reach but a limited audience. An American, 
 New York poet sings against the wind.'* 
 
 These quotations date in the arid stretch between the 
 two oases of Putnam's. During part of that period the 
 only good literary paper in New York was the Round 
 Table, a weekly of distinguished tone and bright, force- 
 ful writing. A literary friend wrote to Stedman in 1864: 
 " The Round Table must not go down. For God's sake, 
 if Boston can support a literary journal, cannot New 
 York ? Your wealthy men must be made to feel that the 
 literary honour of the great city is at stake, and if she 
 
220 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 totters prop her good legs." The Round Table did not 
 starve to death until 1869, but like Putnam's, she suffered, 
 in the optimistic phrase of Briggs, an " interruption " for 
 a little over a year. Its editorial outlook was similar to 
 Putnam's. That magazine was saying in 1870: "Our 
 own box is crammed, but the most of it is not good or 
 good in such an indifferent way as to be quite as bad as 
 bad. Nor is it for want of talent it is not better. But 
 our writers want independence, individuality. They 
 seem to be afraid of something or somebody and do not 
 trust their personality. Then again, there is such a mani- 
 fest absence of care, of study, of labour, of painstaking 
 accuracy in what we do." Four years earlier the Round 
 Table had made the same plea for more conscientious de- 
 votion to thorough work, and some boldness and power. 
 
 What are American writers doing to-day? The vigour and 
 originality that promised a new era at the close of the war are 
 lost already in nerveless twaddle. The leading monthly of the 
 country vainly strives for a new and distinctive series of arti- 
 cles, but is compelled to fall back upon a Biglow paper, Haw- 
 thorne's private note-books, and a story written on the other 
 side of the water. The leading review seeks purchasers by 
 publishing sensational articles upon bar-room dailies, which its 
 editors freely admit they cannot endorse. Two literary month- 
 lies, promised to appear, dare not make the venture, mainly be- 
 cause it is well-nigh impossible to procure worthy literary mat- 
 ter. The literary field was never so barren. Meanwhile Syl- 
 vanus Cobb, Mrs. Southworth, and Mrs. Stephens are having a 
 boundless opportunity. Disgrace to our scholars and authors ! 
 A good writer can make a handsome competence in this country. 
 
 The charge of slovenly authorship by both of these 
 periodicals was well sustained, doubtless; but there was 
 a reason why Putnam's should have found young writers 
 " afraid of something or somebody and afraid to trust 
 their own personality." They were all trying to cram 
 themselves into the Knickerbocker mould which, though 
 judiciously followed, was still Putnam's pattern. And 
 the flowing draperies of the Knickerbocker garment re- 
 sembled the voluminous military cloak of the period — it 
 was a fine thing to pose in if one had a figure for posing. 
 
PUTNAM'S AND THE NEW OPINIONS 221 
 
 What the youngsters of the day were afraid of was not 
 filling it out well enough for Putnam's standard, and so 
 they padded to suit. This editorial in the Round Table 
 was answered very pertinently (however personally) by 
 a correspondent. What new authors have lacked, he 
 said, is editorial sympathy; they have had precious little 
 of it since the days of Graham's and Sar tain's. 
 
 In spite of these publications containing the best efforts of 
 the established authors, the way was not barred to an untrained 
 one and real talent had always a welcome. When Sartain gave 
 up his enterprise and Graham withdrew, a great change came 
 about. No longer having the stimulus of editorial encourage- 
 ment and good pay, some ceased writing altogether. The New 
 England writers went back to write for New England publica- 
 tions. The New York men of letters soon gravitated to sets. 
 A few men of merit formed among themselves a kind of free 
 masonry of authorcraft and seized upon Putnam's Monthly as 
 their special property and kept out all but the brotherhood. 
 Putnam's failed as it ought to have failed; and likewise the 
 weeklies conducted by these other sets. You are almost alone 
 in volunteering editorial encouragement and proper reward to 
 new pens. What chance has an unknown correspondent in 
 Harper's Monthly, Weekly, Independent, Atlantic? A few pens 
 only are used and paid for. If he is bold enough to venture on 
 romance, he is informed by Harper's suave editors that both 
 Monthly and Weekly are more than preoccupied by foreign 
 writers. Where else can he go? To the New York Ledger, 
 the New York Mercury, the New York Weekly, to the Philadel- 
 phia weeklies; just where he will not go if he have any self- 
 respect left, but just where many have to go who are constrained 
 by their wants to find a market. Or if perchance Harper's 
 do accept a brief story from an American pen, the reward is 
 about one-tenth of what is paid the British writer for mere 
 advance sheets. It is, as you know, considered an editorial 
 favour to permit papers of a literary aspirant to go to press, 
 for which he is supposed to be grateful. 
 
 This perennial accusation, never entirely true in the 
 very worst of times, seems to have been truer then than 
 generally. For we hear the complaint echoed, as just 
 now in Stedman's letter, by the most established of writ- 
 ers. It must, however, be remembered that self-respect, 
 especially that of writers, is of variable elasticity. Sted- 
 
22Z THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 man, though he said at this period that a married man 
 could not Hve on magazine work if he wrote night and 
 day, refused to write eleven poems for the Independent 
 at one hundred dollars each — he had too much self-re- 
 spect to make a grist-mill of himself! Yet while he was 
 writing to his mother in 1864 that literature was at a 
 stand-still in America — paralysed by the war, though all 
 other arts and trades were thrifty, the Round Table was 
 saying: "In these days even the small fry of authors 
 who live from hand to mouth find far less difficulty in 
 keeping up a pleasant intercourse between the two." 
 Furthermore, tastes differ as widely as consciences. In 
 1866 Stedman wrote to Lowell: "I need not tell you 
 how much the best readers in New York have been in- 
 terested in the new series of the North American Review. 
 We all feel like the audience of an opera when the gas 
 is suddenly turned up. In New York quite a literary re- 
 vival has followed the happy close of the war — you 
 know we have the Nation and the Round Table, such as 
 they are, well written-for and poorly edited. Then we 
 are to have at least two new magazines this spring, of a 
 respectful cast, and perhaps three. I fear that, as usual 
 here, our publishers and writers will so divide their en- 
 ergies that we shall have three tolerable affairs instead of 
 one first-rate and standard." To say nothing of the fact 
 that there were many people in New York calling them- 
 selves the best readers whose pulses were quite unstirred 
 by the prospect of a new series of the North American, 
 Stedman and Lowell (who might have agreed exactly 
 upon the latter's beneficent ministries for the Boston 
 magazine) differed decidedly about the Nation established 
 by Godkin in 1865. Stedman said the first number was 
 rather heavy, and in 1867 he wrote: "The Nation is 
 cheaper than ever. The magazine man in his complacent 
 stupidity has a laborious genius for saying precisely the 
 wrong thing, as regards poetry." Lowell, on the other 
 hand, wrote thus to Godkin in 1868 : " Its discussions of 
 politics have done more good and influenced more opinion 
 
PUTNAM'S AND THE NEW OPINIONS 223 
 
 than any other agency, or all others combined, in the 
 country. For my own part, I am not only thankful for 
 the Nation, but continually wonder how you are able to 
 make so excellent a paper with your material. I have 
 been an editor and know how hard it is. ... I shall 
 write from time to time till I think we are square. What 
 Fields pays me, I doubt if anybody else would." Three 
 years later he wrote : " You are the only man I know 
 who carries his head perfectly steady, and I find myself 
 so thoroughly agreeing with the Nation always that I am 
 half persuaded I edit it myself." 
 
 Thus we again return to the point of union between 
 these divergent doctors — foj if Lowell thought the man 
 who agreed with him had a steady head, Stedman in 
 1868 was proposing to Ticknor and Fields to scatter the 
 energies of New York writers still further by a literary 
 journal of which he was to be editor. Having gone 
 vainly so often to the Atlantic, he was now trying to get 
 an Atlantic to come to him! It was a neat little irony 
 which the whirligig of time had played upon one of the 
 leading exponents of interurban jealousy. 
 
 He and Bayard Taylor were enthusiastically interested 
 in the welfare of the Galaxy, a monthly established in 
 1866, edited by friends of his " who are doing their 
 bravest to establish a New York magazine, and ought to 
 be helped and encouraged by New York authors." To 
 this, Taylor sold many poems of a new friend of his from 
 the South, Sidney Lanier, and got better prices for his in- 
 tercession. Lanier had brought his first considerable 
 poem, Corn, to New York himself but had gone home 
 unsuccessful, convinced " of the wooden-headedness of 
 many persons who were leaders there in literary matters." 
 The Galaxy lasted a dozen years — a high class magazine 
 which left no particular mark deserving of notice here, 
 but a boon to "self-respecting" authors — and then 
 (cruel fate for any periodical in which Stedman was in- 
 terested!) died and entered into Nirvana, the Atlantic , 
 in 1878. 
 
224 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 The Round Table, 1866, in commenting on the great 
 increase in periodicals since the close of the war, summed 
 up the situation, " Many of these new periodicals were 
 trashy to the last degree; some were simply rehashes of 
 the English weeklies ; a few were honourable attempts to 
 elevate the standard of literary taste. The era of weekly 
 journalism has fairly begun in this country. Of the 
 weeklies started last year three or four appeal to intel- 
 ligent people, and these still have vitality." It is strange 
 that any literary man in New York should have failed to 
 see that the Nation and the Round Table marked the be- 
 ginning of a better era. Each was the exponent — in 
 the words of the latter periodical — of a high-class, high- 
 toned, and well-written weekly, which believed that people 
 were something more than grown-up babies unable to 
 digest anything more solid than Sylvanus Cobb's ro- 
 mances and Fanny Fern's tart paragraphs, but would 
 listen to a serious discussion of serious topics from a 
 purely American point of view and without scissors or 
 pastepot. 
 
 " I used to try hard," wrote Mr. W. C. Brownell in the 
 semi-centennial number of the Nation^ "to think the 
 Round Table a real rival." Nevertheless, both were seek- 
 ing to do the same thing — to cultivate a spirit of rea- 
 sonableness, to express trained and cosmopolitan judg- 
 ments upon American life and literature. The criticism 
 of public men and public movements had always been per- 
 sonal and partisan, in each case provincial and undiscrim- 
 inating. Both were trying to give the educated man a 
 voice in the periodical press. Before their advent, and 
 that of Putnam's and the Atlantic, he had no place to go. 
 Either the audience that he could address was already 
 committed to follow a policy through thick and thin — 
 and demanded that he do likewise; or it barred out any 
 expression of opinion as being likely to disturb the fellow- 
 ship of the gentlemen there assembled. With the decline 
 of the lyceum lecturer just before the war, the old method 
 of shaping popular thought on public matters had disap- 
 
PUTNAM'S AND THE NEW OPINIONS 225 
 
 peared. The growing supremacy in politics of purely 
 material interests made it all the more necessary that pop- 
 ular thought should be directed by independent judgments 
 and in an unpartisan vehicle, particularly as the partisan 
 press was largely given over to glib and gushing writers 
 who rarely imparted their own opinions and never in- 
 spected them in the light of other people's. 
 
 The attitude of independent judgment on the part of a 
 periodical is now frequently encountered, even though its 
 practise far less frequently carries out its promise, but in 
 that day the assertion of such an attitude was cynically 
 revolutionary. As for the admission that national char- 
 acteristics and international prejudices might distort judg- 
 ment, the idea was no less than treasonable ! To this last 
 accusation the nationality of the editor of the Nation sup- 
 plied many a frenzied period. Even in Boston, it was 
 said at a dinner table where mature minds were gathered 
 together, " An Englishman might be fit for the kingdom 
 of Heaven but not to edit an American periodical " ; and 
 British gold was at its favourite occupation of supplying 
 capital to undermine American ideals. This last in spite 
 of the facts that the financial embarrassments of the Na- 
 tion were unfortunately public property and that the paper 
 was constantly experimenting with changes in make-up 
 in the endeavour to keep afloat. It was generally believed 
 that the end was a foregone conclusion. No matter how 
 " uncommon its gift to make serious inquiry attractive '' 
 (in the pat phrase of Mr. Howells), an independent 
 periodical, criticising life and literature from only the 
 highest standards of morality and taste and with no other 
 popular appeal than this, could not long survive. That 
 the Nation should have started ofT with as many as five 
 thousand subscribers is remarkable. On this subscrip- 
 tion list it sustained itself, in spite of bad business man- 
 agement, without profiting by patronage or puffery. 
 Lowell (that unpatriotic person!) said that in this regard 
 it was the solitary American journal worthy of respect; 
 and Charles Eliot Norton ("without whose aid," said 
 
226 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 Godkin, "I could never have been successful") capped 
 the climax by expostulating with America in its seditious 
 columns for being satisfied with half-way men and half- 
 way achievements. Not even in the old lyceum days, 
 when such unpartisan opinions as people heard were ex- 
 pected to wear the fiery garments of oratory, had any 
 one ventured to proclaim the home of the free the paradise 
 of mediocrity ! It raised a rumpus. But the traitors who 
 read its inspection of American ways and institutions 
 somehow took its point of view after the first gasp, and 
 then went forth to make similar nuisances of themselves. 
 At high-water mark there were twelve thousand traitors 
 in all, somewhere about its fifteenth year; but each felt 
 himself commissioned to a high calling and remembered 
 that the success of Saint Paul had largely come about 
 from his talking out of season as well as in. ** To my 
 generation," wrote William James, " Godkin's was cer- 
 tainly the towering influence in all thought concerning 
 public afifairs, and indirectly his influence has certainly 
 been more pervasive than that of any other writer of the 
 generation." 
 
 Now, it is necessary — if .we would estimate the in- 
 fluence of these three New York periodicals and their 
 Boston neighbour — to emphasise the fact that all this 
 expression of independent judgment in crisp and quiet ac- 
 cents was something quite new. The Nation itself pro- 
 vides an amusing illustration of this. Calling attention 
 with unwearied reiteration to the independence of its 
 opinion, it nevertheless had not ventured to put from 
 harbour without a flag. It intended to furnish " earnest 
 and persistent consideration of the labouring class at the 
 South with a view to the removal of all artificial distinc- ; 
 tion between them and the rest of the population." And i 
 if its consideration lacked anything, it was not persistence. 
 Edward Everett Hale somewhere speaks of the old war- 
 horse abolitionists casting anxiously about for another' 
 crusade — most of them polygamously embraced woman's 
 suffrage before the breath was well out of the body of 
 
PUTNAM'S AND THE NEW OPINIONS 227 
 
 the first spouse. Godkin, later in one of his letters, 
 naively indicates the same necessity. " The newspapers 
 all began now to look about for a cause, and in bethinking 
 myself what the United States seemed to need most in 
 this new emergency, I bethought myself of a reform of the 
 civil service." Thus the natural-born free-lance is ever 
 boastful of the freedom which frets him, and ever provok- 
 ing the inevitable yoke. At least, so it was in the glad 
 days when independent opinion first tried its wings — 
 the day of the foot-loose reformer and the migratory 
 muck-rake was still unborn. Putnam's, ere its brief 
 second life was sped, saw popular magazines which once 
 deemed it indiscreet to hold opinions, scramble for some 
 to exploit ; and Godkin chided even George William Cur- 
 tis in his later editorial chair for upholding principles 
 which as a private citizen he did not believe. The era 
 of opinions or nothing was dawning. 
 
 As for literature in the Nation, it did not lag behind 
 life. It insisted on impartial and informed judgment of 
 books. This was as new in the literary world as the 
 other in the political and social. Mr. Henry Holt says 
 he still remembers his surprise and enlightenment at 
 their sending a book for review to a man who was sup- 
 posed to have some special knowledge of the subject. 
 Such a thing, he thinks, had never been done before in 
 American journalism, except spasmodically by the North 
 American or the Atlantic. Furthermore, the publishers 
 had been used to having everything that was not glaringly 
 ignorant or immoral gently treated, if it was not praised. 
 They did not know what to make of the Nation's strange 
 ways, and it educated the publishing trade as well as 
 raised the standard of literary criticism. " Then we used 
 to feel if a book was pitched into it was because of per- 
 sonal feeling against the author or the house. The 
 Nation was the leader in the policy of without fear and 
 without favour." 
 
 Thus, the period of social responsibility had set in for 
 periodicals; and, as was to be hoped and expected, it 
 
228 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 replaced the ideal of moral responsibility — under which 
 they had so long led a pallid and mincing existence, when 
 it was their stupid boast that " everything in the slightest 
 way offensive even to the least fastidious would of course 
 be excluded from these pages.'* Another race had come, 
 it is true, and the war had fortunately killed off many 
 age-worn notions and substituted for them others nearer 
 to actuality and common sense. But it was Putnam's 
 that, along with its quixotic attempt to make a native 
 literature, had paved the way for a magazine which, 
 retaining the urbanity of the Knickerbocker school, should 
 concern itself not only with literature but life. 
 
 And by and by came the recognition of active social 
 forces from a source where it was least to be expected — 
 the North American. This is getting us a little ahead 
 of our chronology, but you have already seen how dis- 
 turbing to classification is the longevity of the North 
 American. It is no respecter of pigeon-holes, or we 
 might say ( in language more applicable to this immediate 
 literature than to her continuous life) she flutters all 
 dove-cotes. 
 
 Osgood sold the magazine to Allen Thorndike Rice 
 for four thousand dollars. Mr. Henry Holt said that he 
 had intended to buy it and thought he had an option 
 on it, and Godkin had agreed to edit it in connection with 
 the machinery of the Nation. But the Nation itself could 
 scarcely have shaken it more to its foundations than did 
 Mr. Rice. He proceeded to make three astounding 
 changes, and in the intervals between the first and second 
 and the second and third, he seems to have paused to 
 recover from the gasps aroused by his impiety and to 
 generate enough courage for another audacity. First, 
 he removed the magazine — just as if it had been any 
 ordinary movable — from Boston to New York. Sec- 
 ond, he made it a bi-monthly ; third, he made it a monthly. 
 The reason for the second and third changes was that the 
 quarterly could not keep in sufficiently close contact with 
 current questions or deal with them thoroughly before 
 
PUTNAM'S AND THE NEW OPINIONS 229 
 
 the special interest in them had departed. Both of these 
 changes New Yorkers modestly owned to be but conse- 
 quent upon its change of residence — nobody in Boston 
 cared for close contact with current questions. But for 
 Boston herself the latter changes were unimportant — the 
 Review might become a weekly and go to Halifax, so 
 long as it had turned its treacherous and massive back 
 upon its native town. It was as if Bunker Hill monu- 
 ment had walked away. On October 30th, 1877, Long- 
 fellow wrote : " Osgood has sold or given or conveyed 
 the North American into the hands of the Appletons. 
 Henceforth it will be edited, printed, and published in 
 New York. Mr. Clark at the printing office said, * It is 
 like parting with the New England Blarney Stone.' 
 He might have said in more classic language * Troy has 
 lost her Palladium.' . . . That ever the old Review should 
 have slipped its moorings in Massachusetts Bay and 
 drifted down to the mouth of the Hudson! It must 
 be towed back again, and safely anchored in our har- 
 bour.'' 
 
 Mr. Howells in his delightful contribution to the cen- 
 tenary number says : 
 
 " The translation of the North American from the 
 intellectual Boston to the commercial metropolis, did make 
 Boston rub her eyes a little, but, as I remember, not much. 
 It would have taken far more than that to make her, long 
 confirmed in her superiority, rub her eyes much. Yet 
 we were not insensible to our incalculable loss ; the North 
 American had been one of our glories, dim at times but 
 lastingly a glory, an honour to our letters and a very 
 strenuous help to such nationality as they had achieved. 
 The removal may not have been the condition of the 
 Review's survival ; it might have lived on in Boston, de- 
 vouring successions of horses and carriages and obliging 
 publishers to get about on foot as if they were no better 
 than so many authors. But the Review passed from its 
 noble adversity to the honourable prosperity which now 
 crowns its century. Mr. Rice gave it the look of a maga- 
 
230 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 zine without and within; and the stately Roman-numer- 
 alled articles with the foot-noted book titles on which 
 they stood, retreated before the brisk onset of light 
 papers of more journalistic cast. I am not sure that it 
 ever sank so low as the symposium, but I believe that Mr. 
 Rice had sometimes the courage to admit two embattled 
 champions to the same number, there to fight out their 
 differing opinions. That was a new thing, and it must 
 have made the older readers of the Review sit up. The 
 North American is now not at all a review of the old 
 pattern. Something is still to be said for the old pattern, 
 but since it is gone perhaps one is apt to over-praise it. 
 If we waited now for a quarterly criticism of new books, 
 the books would have died of old age; younger sellers 
 would be pushing them from their shelves, and it would 
 not be possible to buy or even borrow the authors re- 
 viewed. ... In the new Review literature is given a 
 back seat, but all the seats are good; and literature is 
 treated at least as a living interest. I never saw the 
 reasons for the old adversity but I see the reasons for the 
 new prosperity in the eager immediate potent grapple with 
 topics which advance upon the thinker from the forum 
 and the market rather than from the study." Thus, if 
 the Christian Examiner had come to New York and lost 
 its soul, the North American had come and gained not 
 only its body but its opinions. Boston might grumble 
 as much as she pleased that the magazine had entirely 
 departed from its old critical fastidiousness, but New 
 York knew that she had touched her rival under the 
 fifth rib, where had pulsed the very centre and core of 
 her being. As for critical fastidiousness, what were 
 contemplation and sentiment and ideality so long as one 
 remained only a Saint Simeon Stylites on a pillar ! 
 
 But to return to our pigeon-hole again (after this little 
 forward voyage with that " extravagant and erring 
 spirit," the North American). Only one other aspect 
 in the period may detain us here. We quote from a 
 Round Table of 1867. 
 
PUTNAM'S AND THE NEW OPINIONS 231 
 
 A magazine has long been known as among the useful ad- 
 juncts to the business of a larger publishing house, and it would 
 seem that it is now becoming recognised as an indispensable 
 appliance of any whose operations are on a grand scale. Al- 
 ready there are in our three publishing cities fourteen of the 
 book-publishing firms which among them issue twenty-one pe- 
 riodicals, varying in grade from quarterly and professional or 
 scientific reviews to weekly and juvenile journals, a majority 
 of which have come into life within a very short time. Be- 
 sides these are New York branches of three London houses 
 publishing eight magazines, and rumour says four more of our 
 publishers are to give us new monthlies. The magazine mania 
 — for it is scarcely less — prevailed in England for many 
 months before it appeared here. That Messrs. Putnam and 
 Lippincott will do well with their new monthlies is a matter 
 of course. It is clearly out of the question that a book-publish- 
 ing house of repute and large business connection should find a 
 periodical otherwise than remunerative. That the taste of the 
 pubHc for literature has grown as well as its appetite is attested 
 by recent successes which a few years ago could have found 
 no sustaining clientage. There is one measure of paramount 
 importance that must be hastened by this literary revival. 
 Magazine-writing will become little less than a profession, a 
 new class among us, and its members must be paid. Publishers 
 will thus be forced to secure protection through an international 
 copyright. 
 
 The facts of this editorial are, as usual, more impres- 
 sive than the opinions — which well illustrate the futility 
 of prophecy. Putnam, as we have seen, did not do well 
 with his new monthly; and it was many a weary year 
 before some publishers who were then doing well without 
 an international copyright found the need of one become 
 imperative. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 harper's — THE CONVERTED CORSAIR 
 
 In George W. Child's memoirs there is a story which 
 makes an exclamation point seem but a feeble toy. *' I 
 can recall," says he, " a solemn conversation in the office 
 of the Harpers, then on Cliff Street. The four founders 
 of the great firm were present. I was one of a group 
 of Philadelphians and we were discussing the first number 
 of Harper's new monthly. It seemed so certain to us 
 that the publication would be a failure. * It can't,' said 
 one Philadelphian emphatically, * last very long.' The 
 only successful magazines then published in the United 
 States were in Philadelphia — Graham's, Godey's, Sar- 
 tain's and Peterson's/' 
 
 One can understand under these circumstances (or 
 perhaps under any) the peculiar bias of Philadelphians; 
 but you will look in vain, in authors' letters and reminis- 
 cences, for any of those familiar chirps of satisfaction 
 which heralded the hatching of almost all the other Ameri- 
 can magazines. You will find, instead, curses not loud 
 but deep. Indeed, there was no reason why any one, 
 besides the publishers themselves, should have hailed the 
 advent of Harper's with joy except that notoriously in- 
 articulate person, the Average Reader — and he, as was 
 soon admitted even by the most disgruntled American 
 author, was placed under an everlasting debt of gratitude. 
 The Philadelphia magazines, so shortly to be extinguished 
 or dimmed by the new luminary, might have merited the 
 derision which they later received from those who 
 now mocked the meat they had once gladly fed upon, but 
 there was never any question that they had saved the 
 
 232 
 
THE CONVERTED CORSAIR 233 
 
 life of the struggling American author of professional 
 potentiality — life which the paddles of the first trans- 
 atlantic steamer had well nigh made an end of. For 
 when it became possible to get English magazines once a 
 fortnight, there had sprung up in New York numerous 
 weeklies whose sole purpose was to serve the plunder 
 piping hot ; and had it not been for the Philadelphia maga- 
 zines, the native author would have found no market 
 whatever, so entirely had these weeklies driven out of 
 existence the dealers who paid for home products. 
 Though like all the magazines they were in the habit of 
 printing for nothing what was worth scarcely more, to 
 writers who were in demand Philadelphia paid prices 
 deemed munificent in those days. And the writers, in 
 return, were never weary of testifying that to her they 
 owed creation, preservation, and what temporal blessings 
 they possessed. And of that gratitude Graham's had the 
 lion's share. The United States Gazette cautiously esti- 
 mated that sometimes Graham's must be paying as much 
 as five hundred dollars a number to American authors. 
 But the figure was low, in spite of its being put forward 
 as strapping. 
 
 " Graham says he would have given me one hundred 
 and fifty dollars for the Legend of Brittany without the 
 copyright," wrote Lowell in 1845, ^^^7 three years after 
 he had written jubilantly that he might safely reckon on 
 earning four hundred dollars by his pen the following 
 year. " We have spent as high as fifteen hundred dol- 
 lars on a single number for authorship alone," said Gra- 
 ham's editorially in 1853. " This is more than twice 
 the sum ever paid by any other magazine in America; 
 while for years our minimum rate was eight hundred 
 dollars per number." In its valedictory to Sar tain's, 
 which had made a splendid struggle for three years, there 
 is a note of bitterness : 
 
 It has spent over fifteen thousand dollars for original contri- 
 butions, and now it is hopelessly wrecked. The publishers 
 Spent money with a lavish hand to American writers, but the 
 
234 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 flood of foreign literature overwhelmed the gallant book and 
 she has gone down to rise no more. Will there never be pride 
 enough in the American people to stand by those who support a 
 national literature ! We felt a year ago the demand for Eng- 
 lish magazine articles; the success of the reprint magazines con- 
 firmed what we felt; and we therefore doubled the number of 
 our pages to give our readers, in addition to our former supply 
 of original American articles, such papers from foreign sources 
 as struck us of value or interest. We shall only add — in an- 
 swer to carpers generally — that Graham's for the last ten years 
 has paid over eighty thousand dollars to American writers. 
 
 This was in 1852 — two years after the establishment 
 of a magazine which had helped to re-create and greatly 
 profited by this demand for English magazine articles. 
 Graham's had watched anxiously the growth of its com- 
 petitor. '^ Harper's is a good foreign magazine, but it is 
 not Graham's by a long way," had run an editorial in 
 185 1. "The veriest worshipper of the dust of Europe 
 will tire of the dead level of silly praise of John Bull 
 upon every page. John hasn't quite the brains of all the 
 family. Jonathan is not altogether a dolt in letters. 
 Graham thinks he has a class of young writers now who 
 ask no odds in a fair encounter — Lowell, Read, Legare, 
 Godman, Whipple, Fields, Bayard Taylor, Stoddard, 
 Hosmer, Street, Boker, Tuckerman, Hawthorne, Conrad, 
 Moorhead and others of the young men." Many news- 
 papers of the country were watching the struggle with 
 indignation. '' Graham's great rival now is Harper's," 
 said one of them, "but Graham's equals it in amount 
 and quality of literary contents and far exceeds it in 
 beauty of illustration — and in the fact that its contrib- 
 utors are all honestly paid for their labours." Said 
 another : " Graham's is now what Harper's should have 
 been. Harper's is a grand failure." Upon which re- 
 mark Graham commented grimly : " Our friend is a wag 
 in his way. We have done more for magazine writers 
 than Harper's will ever do, but one hundred and thirty- 
 five thousand copies a month does not seem to us a grand 
 failure." This same year of 1852 Boker was writing 
 to Stoddard : 
 
THE CONVERTED CORSAIR 235 
 
 Graham is our only stand-by in these evil times. He is a 
 man with a big soul and a gentleman, but his liberality, great 
 as it is, cannot support an author. Alas ! alas ! Dick, is it not 
 sad that an American author cannot live by magazine writing? 
 And this is wholly due to the want of an international copy- 
 right law. 
 
 In these documents, then, we find one of the reasons 
 why we encounter so little pleasant mention of Harper's 
 in authors' correspondence in the fifties. Furthermore, 
 there was an indefinable but spacious air of self -righteous- 
 ness about the magazine which, taken with what was 
 considered the unique opulence of its publishers, seems 
 to have greatly annoyed its critics — and not the less, of 
 course, because they were less successful. There was, 
 for instance, none of the ingratiating impudence which 
 Willis had exhibited a few years before when he estab- 
 lished the Corsair. Lest the romance of this title should 
 deceive any one, Willis had proposed to name it the 
 Pirate; and he editorially desired Henry Clay to take it 
 into Congress as a people's exhibit of the results of an 
 iniquitous law. " We shall convey to our columns," said 
 he, '' the cream and spirit of everything that ventures to 
 light, in France, England and Germany. As to original 
 American productions, we shall, as the publishers do, take 
 what we can get for nothing, holding, as the publishers 
 do, that while we can get Boz and Bulwer for a thank-ye 
 or less, it is not pocket-wise to pay much for Halleck and 
 Irving." 
 
 As frankly did Harpers announce their intention, but 
 the implication was different. In their New Monthly 
 Magazine, June, 1850, occurs A Word at the Start: 
 
 The design is to place within the reach of the great mass of 
 the American people the unbounded treasures of the periodical 
 literature of the present day. The leading authors of Great 
 Britain and France, as well as of the United States, are now 
 regular and constant contributors to the periodicals of their 
 several countries. The publishers intend to place everything 
 of permanent value and interest in this literature in the hands 
 of people who up to now have been hopelessly excluded from it. 
 
 I 
 
236 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 The columns of Harper's did not for a long time, 
 however, contain any treasures of the ** leading authors 
 of the United States." In the Contents of volume one 
 appear only a few names, leading or otherwise. They 
 are Ik Marvel, William Howitt, Dr. Moore, Leigh Hunt, 
 Albert Smith, Harriet Martineau, Frederika Bremer, and 
 Robert Southey. Volume three announces that the best 
 talent of the country has been engaged in writing and 
 illustrating original articles, and the magazine now con- 
 tains regularly one or more original articles upon some 
 topic of historical or national interest by some able and 
 popular writer, illustrated by from fifteen to thirty wood- 
 engravings. In the Contents now appear the American 
 names : G. W. Curtis, G. P. Morris, Epes Sargent, Jacob 
 Abbott, John S. C. Abbott, B. J. Lossing. Setting aside 
 Curtis, who w^as one of the editors, and Lossing, whose 
 historical articles were a convenient vehicle for illustra- 
 tions, the leading authors of the country had no reason to 
 regard this list with satisfaction. Volume ten announces 
 that, while they have not neglected the rich stores of 
 foreign literature, they have gradually enlarged the list 
 of their editors and contributors till it includes the names 
 of a large portion of the most popular writers of the 
 country, and nothing has been wanting to induce them to 
 contribute their best productions. But the Contents pre- 
 sents only the names of J. T. Headley, G. P. R. James, 
 J. Abbott, S. I. Prime, Thomas Ewbank, G. W. Greene, 
 Elias Loomis. 
 
 Certainly, no material inducement should have been 
 wanting. " Although but six months have elapsed," said 
 volume one, " we have a monthly issue of fifty thousand." 
 Volume three speaks of the present circulation as enor- 
 mous, saying, and with justice, that it has come about 
 simply because the magazine gives a greater amount of 
 reading matter, of a higher quality, in better style and at 
 a cheaper price, than any other periodical ever published. 
 Volume six proclaims a monthly edition of one hundred 
 and eighteen thousand, and it had to be electrotyped. 
 
THE CONVERTED CORSAIR 237 
 
 Volume seven announced a gain of seventeen thousand 
 over the last. Thus in four short years the magazine 
 was financially able to stimulate the best writers to 
 contribute to its columns. The Atlantic had not yet come 
 to afford the Boston men an outlet; and many New 
 Yorkers were complaining that they could not get a living 
 price for their wares at home; while the Philadelphia 
 magazines, as we have seen, were offering less and less, 
 on account of the shrivelling of their subscription. The 
 best writers of America had either been uncharacteristic- 
 ally deaf to inducement, or Harper^ s considered that they 
 were already included in its columns. In the first decade 
 of its successful existence Harper's had printed, by the 
 standard of contemporary judgment, scarcely a notable 
 name. The home-grown treasures it had contributed 
 came chiefly from the store of the Abbott brothers — 
 Jacob, the father of the immortal Rollo and Lucy, and of 
 many histories which on a somewhat wider canvas pre- 
 sented life in the same spirit of domestic didactics; and 
 John, who piled up during his industrious and exemplary 
 existence more than fifty volumes of a moral, religious 
 and historical nature. In 1870 he wrote : 
 
 I prepare a monthly article of twenty pages for Harper's, 
 and am writing two books, one on the history of Louis XIV 
 and the other the History of the Christian Religion. Last week 
 I wrote the tenth chapter of this history. I have sent the first 
 four chapters of Louis XIV to Harper's and have four other 
 chapters completed. In addition to this, I have full charge of 
 not a small parish, with all its pulpit and parochial labours; 
 it is a rule with me to prepare one new sermon every week. 
 
 It is no wonder that Henry James, senior, complained 
 of the " stupid Methodism "of Harper's, or that here and 
 there among the sturdy middle class it so triumphantly 
 catered to were some who remembered that even in the 
 Scriptures it had been written that man should not live 
 by bread alone. 
 
 In 1859, after almost a decade of Harper's, Godkin 
 could write, from the city which now raised the ancient 
 
238 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 Philadelphia boast of the greatest periodical in the world, 
 to a friend in England, his apprehension about the finan- 
 cial embarrassment of the Atlantic — with never a hint 
 that Harper's was existent : 
 
 Our one, our only, magazine is again in danger. We have 
 been for many years dying for a magazine and have been mak- 
 ing divers unsuccessful attempts to have one of a high order, 
 that would rival your Blackwood or Fraser. Our last attempt 
 was Putnam's Magazine, which, after a brilliant career of a few 
 years, was at last driven into that last haven of all crazy literary 
 craft, " first-class wood-engravings." Boston stepped into the 
 breach, however, and set on foot the Atlantic, which was to be 
 kept up to the highest point of excellence by contributions from 
 both sides of the Atlantic. The British quota, however, was 
 not sent in very long, and it has owed a very remarkable suc- 
 cess almost entirely to native pens. The articles were rarely 
 either so elaborate or so profound, or even so varied in interest, 
 as those of its English contemporaries, since that ripe and 
 careful cultivation of which good magazine literature is the 
 fruit is by no means so general here as with you ; but they were 
 incomparably better than any similar recueil that has yet made 
 its appearance. 
 
 In reviewing the early history of its magazine, the 
 House of Harper, published in 19 12, discloses an uneasy 
 appreciation of the need for an apologist. "If Harper's 
 Magazine had been started upon the plan of exclusive 
 American authorship," it says, " the limitation thus im- 
 posed would have been an obstacle to the development of 
 its present comprehensive and popular scope. Every 
 other American magazine published in 1850 had a definite 
 plan which determined its field, and, as a matter of fact, 
 had filled its field and had attained its full development. 
 As regards literary appeal, the conditions of American 
 literature at that time fixed a narrow limit. In this situa- 
 tion the Harpers did, as magazine publishers, what for 
 many years they had been doing in their book business — 
 they brought to readers the richest treasures of literature 
 wherever they were to be found, which at that time was 
 mostly in periodical publications of Europe." Yet in a 
 moment the apologist hastens to announce that its eclectic 
 
THE CONVERTED CORSAIR 239 
 
 character — in spite of the Hmitations of American 
 Hterary appeal — rapidly disappeared in its very infancy. 
 Now, it does not appear that the work of the chief native 
 authors had undergone any change whatever by the time 
 Harper's decided to give a more national tone to its pages. 
 But even had this been the case, its readers would not 
 have benefited thereby ; for the chief concession the maga- 
 zine had made to native authorship was in articles espe- 
 cially designed as vehicles for the illustrations that had 
 been the other great reason for the financial success of 
 the publication — " popular " scientific and historical and 
 travel articles, which cheered the family circle without 
 any danger of inebriation. These were supplied by 
 American ministers and writers of journalistic calibre, 
 but for the most part all expression of thought or imagin- 
 ation was imported from England. A moment's mar- 
 shalling of the men so limited in literary appeal as to 
 fail entirely to meet the demands of the early Harper's 
 will convince one of the impressiveness of their exclusion. 
 We may find them in Parke Godwin's address upon 
 Curtis : 
 
 When we began Putnam's, among our promised contributors 
 — and nearly all of them made good their promise — were 
 Irving, Bryant, Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Hawthorne, 
 Thoreau, Ripley, Miss Sedgwick, Mrs. Kirkland, J. P. Kennedy, 
 Fred Cozzens, Richard Grant White, Melville, Stoddard, Sted- 
 man, Read, Maria Lowell. 
 
 The secret of the exclusion of these writers is afforded 
 almost in the same paragraph. ** If we were asked why 
 we started a monthly magazine," said Fletcher Harper, 
 " we would have to say frankly that it was as a tender 
 to our business, though it has grown into something quite 
 beyond that." The business of the house, the author 
 states quite as frankly a little later : 
 
 The Harper brothers saw an enormous reading public in a 
 country of cheap literature and an immense store of material 
 at their disposal in England, more various and more attractive 
 than the home supply; and they resolved to bring the two 
 together. 
 
240 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 Harper's Magazine, in short, intended to do on a wider 
 basis only what Harper's Family Library had done — 
 and bring as many kinds of English literary goods as 
 possible to an American market. 
 
 There is no reason why it should not have done so, 
 but in the process of the lucrative enterprise no outsider, 
 except the Average Reader, had any cause for gratitude. 
 Knickerbocker, Putnam's, Graham's and the Philadelphia 
 sisterhood had all likewise fought according to the 
 measure of their intelligence for their place in the sun, yet 
 they had fought for the fatherland also — they had fallen 
 in the combat, it is true, but they had gone down with 
 the sustaining thought of having assisted in furthering 
 the cause of American literature. Although Harper's 
 splendidly atoned for the sins of her youth, her punish- 
 ment endures now when those sins have been forgotten 
 by the present grateful generation. Scarcely, in the lives 
 and letters of our illustrious of fifty years ago, do we 
 come across an appreciative and endearing mention of her 
 name, like that which has so often bejewelled all the 
 others. Putnam's, while the light of her founder still 
 shone in her, contributed generously to the advancement 
 of periodical literature in America, but not the least of 
 her gifts was bestowed in departing from the field it was 
 not given her to win — the nationalisation of Harper's. 
 The Atlantic continued the fight, and when Scrihner's 
 came along in 1870 to make its notable American success, 
 it had become no longer possible for an American maga- 
 zine to be mainly nourished from over seas. The con- 
 verted corsair had metamorphosed into one of our most 
 reliable merchantmen ; and thus we may echo the House 
 of Harper in closing the retrospect of its magazine: 
 " Looking back upon the one hundred and twenty-one 
 volumes, the first impression made upon the mind is their 
 real exposition of human activity and interest in the 
 half-century and " — when it at last made its delayed 
 appearance — " our steady growth in literary and artistic 
 excellence.*' 
 
THE CONVERTED CORSAIR 241 
 
 For a long time after American authors of a higher rank 
 began to appear, the magazine and the other periodicals 
 of the house had but Httle room for them. Three novels 
 of Dickens', four of Thackeray's, with the Four Georges, 
 one of Bulwer's, two of George Eliot's, six of Trollope's 
 rather crowded its earlier years. " In the period i860— 
 1880," says the House of Harper, "not infrequently we 
 would have two and even three foreign serials running 
 at the same time in each one of our three periodicals." 
 As the prominent English novelists did not, in their 
 opinion, often write good short stories, here seemed to 
 offer the American opportunity; indeed, the English se- 
 rials, the account continues, caused special stress to be 
 laid upon short stories of American life. Yet the stories 
 submitted could not have been very satisfactory, for on 
 the occasion of Justin McCarthy's first visit to America 
 they gave him an order for forty-five in a batch. These, 
 with an industry which even John Abbott might have en- 
 vied, he finished and delivered before returning to the 
 smiling shore of Britain. Besides lecturing right and left 
 and acting as the literary editor of the Independent! He 
 must have looked back upon his tidy trip with satisfac- 
 tion. 
 
 All the more because, although he went to America 
 to make money, his immediate literary success came as a 
 surprise to him. " Up to the time of my visiting New 
 York," he says, " I had published nothing bearing my 
 name, but I had published three books anonymously. I 
 found on my arrival one of my novels passing as a serial 
 through Harper's, which became the means of introduc- 
 ing me personally to the house, with which I have had 
 many dealings since of the most cordial and satisfactory 
 kind." McCarthy does not, unfortunately, tell us how 
 it happened that a serial of his could be running in New 
 York without his knowledge. But the confusions aris- 
 ing from the lack of copyright gave room for endless 
 predicaments as well as endless exploitations. William 
 James Stillman throws some light on the magazine phase 
 
242 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 of the situation in the Autobiography of a Journa- 
 Hst: 
 
 In 1871 I became the London literary agent for Scrihner's 
 Magazine, afterward the Century. I was instructed to secure a 
 story from a certain author and contracted for the proof sheets 
 of her next novel, about to be published in England in a certain 
 magazine. On the announcement of Scrihner's of the coming 
 publication, the (American) firm who published her prior works 
 announced that they would not respect the agreement with the 
 author, but would pirate the story. As the result of the quarrel, 
 Scrihner's resigned the story to its rival on payment to the lady 
 of the sum agreed on. But now appeared an utterly unsus- 
 pected state of things: the London magazine had already sold 
 the proof sheets of the story to a third American house, and an 
 expose of the situation showed that English publishers had been 
 in the practice of selling the advance proofs of their most 
 popular works and recouping the half of the price paid the 
 authors. I wrote to the English papers, which were just now 
 indulging in one of their periodical outbreaks against American 
 literary piracy, and dwelt on the hitherto unknown point that 
 the depredations on the author's interests were committed by 
 the English publishers, who sold to the American the wares the 
 latter was accused of stealing, whereas the fact was that he 
 bought and paid equally for the right of publication, while the 
 English publishers continued to reprint American books without 
 the least regard for analogous transatlantic rights. ... I was 
 treated with a torrent of abuse. Only Mr. Trollope came for- 
 ward to sustain me, with the statement that he had received 
 mere from Harpers than from his English publishers. The 
 author whose novel had been the occasion of the trouble de- 
 clared that English authors ought to make me a testimonial, but 
 from no other source did I receive a word of thanks. 
 
 To follow all the implications of this interesting story 
 would lead us far afield. There was, at any rate, no 
 lack of British material, and the success of it in the maga- 
 zine amply justified the admirable business perception 
 which had thus made a market for it. As Charles Nord- 
 hoff said, " Fletcher Harper made few mistakes about 
 his public, because he had created it." And even had he 
 been seeking to force American writers down its captious 
 throat, there was a striking confirmation of the wisdom 
 of his policy. We are told that after the conclusion of 
 the war the edition of the magazine fell off so greatly 
 
THE CONVERTED CORSAIR 243 
 
 that he seriously considered terminating its publication; 
 but Our Mutual Friend and Wilkie Collin's Arma- 
 dale, especially the latter, revived its circulation. After 
 all, even when one has created a public, one is as much 
 at its mercy as if one had not. It is with gratitude that 
 we find that in the mid seventies this infant turned giant 
 had at last come to the appreciation of Longfellow (who 
 had for some years been getting from one hundred to 
 one hundred and fifty dollars a poem in other magazines, 
 and for whose Hanging of the Crane Robert Bonner, 
 catering to the exclusively intellectual readers of the 
 Ledger, had paid three thousand dollars). The poet 
 records in 1877 that he has received one thousand dollars 
 from them for the right of first publication of Kera- 
 mos in their magazine, his earliest mention of any deal- 
 ings with them, although he had, through the kindly 
 services of Fields, sold them Morituri Salutamus in 
 1875. By 1882 Higginson also, having outlived the 
 earlier limitations of his appeal, was publishing there 
 chapters of his Larger History of the United States: 
 and notes, " I have written one of my Harper's papers 
 regularly every month for the last eleven months." And 
 in 1885 — when he engaged to write a weekly article for 
 Harper's Bazar, similar in tone to his Woman's Journal 
 papers, but not entering upon the still delicate question, 
 from a publisher's point of view, of suffrage — he speaks 
 of his great pleasure in an audience of one hundred 
 thousand people listening to his voice in all parts of the 
 civilised world. 
 
 In artistic excellence, however, the record of America's 
 steady growth began from the very beginning. This was 
 for precisely the same reason that the other had not. It 
 was found before the first year was out that the patrons 
 wanted pictorial illustrations; and these, if they were to 
 have any appositeness, were better procured in America. 
 The prejudice of high-class readers against "picture- 
 books " has historically been one of the most amusing of 
 their many affectations; and, like a great many others, 
 
244 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 it had little counterpart in their actual practice. Intel- 
 lectual people liked pictures whenever they were inter- 
 esting; when they were not, it afforded an excellent op- 
 portunity to exhibit a fine chastity of taste. The three 
 portraits of contemporary historians which enlivened the 
 first number of Harper's naturally filled no family circle 
 with clamorous joy, nor did the cautious adventures of 
 the rest of the first volume. The numbers had, apart 
 from fashion-plates, only about half a dozen pictures 
 each, and almost all of them were of the highly uninter- 
 esting kind which have " literary associations." But 
 crude by our standards as are the early wood-cuts, the 
 fact that they bore any immediate and spontaneous rela- 
 tion to the text was very interesting in itself to readers 
 for whom the funeral-baked steel-engravings of Graham's 
 and Godey's had coldly furnished forth the wedding feast 
 for so many years; and Harper's, emboldened by the 
 great success of a new pictorial London paper, tried a 
 flyer with some home-made descriptive articles rather 
 elaborately and freshly illustrated. The experiment dem- 
 onstrated. Until Scribner's was founded in 1870, 
 Harper's had, except for a limited flight or two by the 
 clipped-winged Putnam's, no competition in the new popu- 
 lar specialty. Their rival took a long leap ahead in 
 the discovery and development of a new method of print- 
 ing illustrations — to which perhaps more than to any 
 other one item the success of the American magazine is 
 to be ascribed — and Harper's naturally strained every 
 nerve to come abreast of her once more. " The compe- 
 tition between the two," says the House of Harper, " be- 
 came so keen that at times we paid as high as five hundred 
 dollars for engraving one page. In 1888, when both 
 the Century and Scribner's were in the field, the demand 
 for first-class engravers was very great, and the market 
 value of their work became a serious consideration for 
 the publishers." Thus the competition waxed — to the 
 chagrin and often to the cost of authors, who found 
 their texts become decidedly second-fiddle — until the 
 
THE CONVERTED CORSAIR 245 
 
 invention of process reproduction in half-tone worked 
 another revohition and began to take the place of wood- 
 engraving. But with it the author was in no better case. 
 Indeed, he had all the more reason to feel that by the de- 
 crees of heaven and publishers the artist was a pampered 
 child of fortune. For he was still second-fiddle in prices, 
 and the change allowed the artist to gloat over the en- 
 graver, whom he had accused of tampering constantly 
 with his work; but no revolution of process is yet in sight 
 which will compel the illustrator to stick to the author's 
 text. Lafcadio Hearn broke his contract with Harper's 
 when he found that he was getting less for his Japanese 
 sketches than his illustrator, but his fancied superiority 
 was as unwarrantable as his folly. Now — in the mak- 
 ing of the modem magazine — abideth these three: the 
 advertiser, the artist, and the author, and the least of 
 these is the last. 
 
 The new journals of opinion founded during Harper's 
 first decade and a little later reproached it for having 
 none. But it is to be remembered that this was distinctly 
 a new idea for a magazine which aimed at large popular 
 circulation. Lewis Gaylord Clark, who was in charge 
 of the " Drawer," had been editor of Knickerbocker, and 
 that urbane old party would have thought it as bad 
 taste to divide the company of gentlemen by uttering an 
 opinion which all could not share as to raise his voice 
 in the lurid accents of the Ledger. Another editor of 
 Harper's was H. J. Raymond, who had plenty of opinions 
 (proved by his having helped to found the New York 
 Tinted and his resigning in five years in order to pay 
 exclusive attention to it), but, like Curtis, who also had 
 a mind of his own, he was not encouraged to express 
 them. Indeed, when Curtis was very forcibly expressing 
 his editorial opinion in the Weekly at a later date, Godkin 
 of the Nation felt aggrieved that it ran counter to the 
 personal opinion of the man. But the real editor, 
 Fletcher Harper, kept his eye single unto the prospectus. 
 This announced that the magazine intended to supply to 
 
246 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 the family circle of every intelligent citizen in the United 
 States, at so low a rate as to give it a value much beyond 
 its price, everything of general interest and usefulness. 
 And the family circle must not be disrupted by opinions. 
 " We shall not, I trust," said Mrs. Malaprop, or some 
 other Dogberry, " venture any opinions before ladies." 
 It was many years before the ideal of the magazine — 
 " that it should lie along the great lines of current 
 thought " — was interpreted as other than merely exposi- 
 tory. That it should not risk its great circulation by^ 
 having opinions was naturally resented by those virtuous \ 
 magazines which had thus limited theirs. The obvious/^ 
 safety of this course somewhat discredited, in the minds 
 of its enemies, the obvious sanity of another — the 
 middle path it took between the immoderation of slave- 
 holder and of abolitionist. This was also thought to be 
 dictated by prudence. It was, however, an opinion shared 
 by every property-holder in New York; as was also the 
 advocation, after 1 86 1, of the principles of the Republican 
 party. Not, then, until it espoused Civil Service Re- 
 form, and later the nomination of Grover Cleveland, 
 did its subscription list run any risk by reason of its ideas. 
 And by that time it was beginning to be discovered that 
 nobody gave up reading a magazine which was nine- 
 tenths profitable entertainment merely because he dis- 
 agreed with the other tenth. It was just about this era 
 that Sarah Bernhardt became a great factor in our civili- 
 sation by providing a topic of burning discussion in clubs 
 and debating societies (a subject which agitated many 
 editorial sanctums also) : " Should we go to see an im- 
 moral actress? (Especially if foreign?)" But long be- 
 fore the Magazine ventured to have opinions of its own, 
 it had intrusted them to the Weekly, issued in 1857. 
 This, too, announced itself as " adopted for family read- 
 ing"; but, being nearer a newspaper by three weeks, 
 tradition justified it, family harmony notwithstanding, in 
 speaking its mind. How long ago it seems since literary 
 
THE CONVERTED CORSAIR 247 
 
 magazines, like clergymen, were expected to have plenty 
 of sentiments, but no alienating ideas! 
 
 Almost as long ago was it when publishers trusted it 
 was not necessary for them to reiterate their assurance 
 that nothing should ever be admitted to the pages of the 
 magazine in the slightest degree offensive to delicacy or 
 any moral sentiment. When Harper's added in volume 
 five a department " Pictorial Comicalities " — the matter 
 and manner of which was not very dissimilar to Graham's 
 "Sips of Punch," begun in 185 1 and followed later by 
 " Original Comicalities " — it declared its intention with 
 the utmost solemnity : " The most scrupulous care will 
 be exercised that humour shall not pass into vulgarity or 
 satire degenerate into abuse." 
 
 This whole subject of the sacredness of moral senti- 
 ments, which once so concerned our publishers, is, of 
 course, extremely skittish. Nor is this the place to dwell 
 upon the inevitable absurdities of a censor. It is not so 
 long ago that the law of the English-speaking stage 
 was, " Say anything you like about seduction, but be 
 sure you call it flirtation — except, of course, in a farce " ; 
 and since mothers were writing to school teachers, " Don't 
 teach my girl anything about her insides ; 'taint no use, 
 and besides it's rude." But surely few things are more 
 apt to make us blush than the books we once called im- 
 moral. "^And the influence of our magazine publishers in 
 prolonging our intellectual infancy must have been a 
 powerful one.^ The announcements which bleat so 
 proudly from all of their opening pages would no longer 
 allure subscribers to-day, when the hearth has ceased to 
 be a cloister and fathers have given up fondly conceiving 
 that the family circle suspends its animation until they 
 return with the hour of the evening lamp. The House 
 of Harper provides a delightful illustration of how benefi- 
 cent has been the flight of time. Can you fancy this 
 happening in the sixties, for instance, when the moral 
 sensitiveness of Harper's was appalling? 
 
248 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 The Simpletons, afterward Hearts Insurgent, as it appeared 
 in the magazine, was published by us in its original form as a 
 book, with the title Jude the Obscure. We had said when he 
 wrote us that he must assure us it would be in every respect 
 suitable for a family magazine. He said it would not offend the 
 most fastidious maiden; so we began it. It had not progressed 
 far when he informed us that he was distressed to say the de- 
 velopment of the story was carrying him into unexpected fields, 
 and he proposed that we discontinue it or make any changes 
 we desired. We wrote him that we were properly ashamed of 
 every word of protest we had to write, but our rule was that 
 the magazine should contain nothing which could not be read 
 aloud in any family circle. Hardy, without any irritation, re- 
 wrote one of the chapters, and we made some modifications as 
 the story ran. 
 
 Addisonian in its morality and its sentimentality, it 
 was — in the beginning — following in all other respects 
 the well-beaten and safe path. Unlike Putnam's and the 
 Atlantic, it sought nothing new. The early issues lacked 
 only a meteorological page to duplicate its forbears of a 
 score of years before. The old titles to the old depart- 
 ments are all here, without any effort for individuality 
 or originality — Literary and Scientific Miscellany, Lit- 
 erary Notices, Monthly Review of Current Events, 
 Domestic and Foreign, Fashions. Only in the third 
 volume is an attempt made to be interesting in the titles 
 of the new departments, Editor's Drawer, Easy Chair, 
 and Editor's Table. These headings, like Leaves from 
 Punch, were stereotype, but not flavourless, and made 
 some slight concession to erring humanity. They did 
 not even exhibit any novelty in the type they employed — 
 speaking according to sanctified precedent in the tiny 
 voice of Alice's gnat, as if their time alone were worth 
 a thousand pounds a minute. This third volume, by the 
 way, announces that it cost more than either of its prede- 
 cessors by five to ten thousand dollars ! A lavish use of 
 figures, which becomes all the more convincing when you 
 remember that just at this time Graham mentioned (cer- 
 tainly not conservatively) one- fourth of the lesser amount 
 as a thumping sum for a single number, even when most 
 
THE CONVERTED CORSAIR 249 
 
 of his authors were paid. The Editor's Table purposed 
 to discuss the higher questions of ethics and principles, 
 the Drawer was to serve viands otherwise rejectable, the 
 Easy Chair was for light and pointed social chat. The 
 last was undertaken in 1853 by Curtis, although other 
 men contributed to it for several years. Curtis had be- 
 come a Harper author with Nile Notes in 185 1, and 
 when he became associated with the magazine he was an 
 editor of Putnam's, which a little later spoke its mind so 
 freely on the policy of its editor's other household. As 
 the two publishers were on the most ticklish terms, never 
 could a man have had more trouble with his double life; 
 and he doubtless returned devout thanks when he became 
 monogamous again. In 1863 the Chair was made politi- 
 cal editor of the Weekly. This year Mr. Howells joined 
 the magazine, and Literary Notices reincarnated under 
 the more attractive name of Editor's Study. Here he 
 was succeeded by Charles Dudley Warner. The trio is 
 a gracious and accomplished one, of which any magazine 
 — or era — might be proud. When the Bazar appeared 
 in 1867, Curtis took a department in that also. The 
 Bazar was the same canny compound of old and new 
 which had made the other periodicals so brilliantly suc- 
 cessful. Its sub-title, A Repository of Fashion and In- 
 struction, might have graced many of our eighteenth 
 century magazines; but the ingenious advertising which 
 heralded it and its pictorial policy were an outcome of 
 Harper's specialised experience. The first Easy Chair, 
 so charmingly endeared to later generations by its suc- 
 cession of genial occupants, is of interest. 
 
 After our more severe editorial work is done — the scissors 
 laid in our drawer and the Monthly Record made as full as 
 our pages will bear, of history — we have a way of throwing 
 ourselves back into an old red-backed easy chair that has long 
 been an ornament of our dingy office, and indulging in an easy 
 and careless overlook of the gossiping papers of the day, and in 
 such chit-chat with chance visitors as keeps us informed of the 
 drift of the town-talk. Having made our course good, we mean 
 to catch up in these few additional pages those lighter whiffs 
 
250 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 from the great world of opinion which come floating to us as 
 we sit here in our Easy-Chair. 
 
 Thus it records the fire of December, 1853, which cost 
 the firm a million and a half dollars and destroyed the 
 entire January number of the magazine — and inciden- 
 tally demonstrated most triumphantly the Harper effi- 
 ciency by delaying it no more than ten days : 
 
 It is now just about a year since we rescued our Easy-Chair 
 from the falling timbers and the general wreck of our great 
 fire. This Easy-Chair can never forget how along the wires 
 came thrilling a thousand messages of cheerful encouragement, 
 of prompt offers of aid, and of the most generous sympathy. 
 But not only is our Easy-Chair planted again, but a great part 
 of the building in which it stands is restored. The same old 
 square between Cliff Street and Pearl Street will be occupied 
 by the new structure. 
 
 " Wesley Harper told me," wrote Charles Nordhoff, 
 " that the fire seemed at first a heaven-sent opportunity 
 to give up business. They were abundantly wealthy. 
 * We never dared let our children know how well off we 
 were,' he said, * for fear of spoiling their lives.' " Nord- 
 hoff tells his experience in Some Editors I have Known : 
 
 I came into the firm in the fall of 1856. Mr. Fletcher Harper 
 was then in his prime and planning the establishment of a 
 weekly paper. I was a young man and very much unknown. 
 I had offered them a small book for children and had signed 
 the contract, when he suddenly asked me if I should like to 
 come to them. I was to have no specific duties, but would have 
 to find my place and work. On my first appearance in Franklin 
 Square I felt as uncomfortable as a very young cat in a very 
 strange garret. I found it literally true that for a while I had 
 no regular duties. I wrote some things, of which a few were 
 used; I read foreign papers and made extracts; at the sugges- 
 tion of an editor, whose kindness to a very depressed young 
 man I have never forgotten, I " gutted " a new book of travel 
 and adventure — that is to say, I made out of the most readable 
 parts of it a magazine article, and this, to my delight, was 
 printed ; and of this kind of work I did later a good deal. Then 
 I became one of the readers. . . . Mr. Fletcher Harper had a 
 sound popular judgment. In respect to magazine articles he 
 often stood alone — but his judgment was final. " Whether 
 we ought to publish it" meant with him whether it would be 
 
r 
 
 THE CONVERTED COiRSAIR 251 
 
 intelligible, interesting and useful to the average American 
 reader. Mr. Harper made very few mistakes. He was a most 
 lovely character, unpretentious and considerate to all in his 
 employ. I suppose the other brothers would have freely owned 
 that Mr. Fletcher Harper was the ablest of them all, but they 
 were a united band. 
 
 Like Beecher, he was an editor without a desk. " He 
 was a great editor," wrote Dr. Lyman Abbott. " I do 
 not think Mr. Harper ever wrote a line for publication. 
 I doubt whether he ever read a manuscript but he created 
 the Magadne and the Weekly and the Bazar and per- 
 vaded them with his own informing spirit. He created 
 a new school of journaHsm.'* 
 
 In 1874 Harper's followed the lead of Scrihner^s and 
 the Atlantic in introducing the transformed South and 
 its new writers. This exceedingly great service to the 
 cause of the American reunion, as well as of American 
 letters, had been begun the year before. Its effect upon 
 the Southern attitude toward the North was immediate. 
 " Contrary to the idea which had prevailed in the South 
 after the war," says Mr. Edwin Mims in his Life of 
 Lanier, " that Northern people would refuse to recognise 
 Southern genius, it was the Northern magazines which 
 made possible the success of Southern literature." Har- 
 per's in January, 1874, began a series of articles on the 
 New South, and the next year Constance Fenimore 
 Woolson began to write her Southern articles. In 1887 
 Southern literature, thanks to Scribne/s and the Atlantic, 
 had now become of such bulk and quality as to hold a 
 conspicuous place in periodical output, and Harper's 
 devoted an appreciative article to it, saying that it had 
 introduced a stream of rich warm blood. In opening 
 another new field Harper's was nip and tuck with Scrih- 
 ner's, but, as before, the latter seems to have nipped first. 
 This was the issuing of an English edition. It started 
 off in 1880 with a large circulation, and there was in the 
 beginning a difference in the editorial departments. 
 " The delicacy and beauty of the illustrations," says the 
 House of Harper, " found nothing comparable in Europe ; 
 
252 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 and it was the English edition of Harper's which made 
 Europe acknowledge our superior work in rapid fine art 
 printing." But Scrihner's also rather piqued itself on 
 making Europe sit up and take notice — the inborn crav- 
 ing of every true American heart — and feeling that she 
 was ahead of her rival in illustration, as well as in prior- 
 ity of the invasion of London, she naturally claimed that 
 honour. " The founding of an English edition," said 
 she in 1881, " seemed on the face of it like carrying coals 
 to Newcastle. It was not many years since American 
 monthlies largely lived upon the productions, sometimes 
 bought and sometimes stolen, of English writers. Start- 
 ing with an edition of two thousand, it now issues iij-. 
 England eighteen thousand. The daring of the pub-~7 
 lishers has given an impetus to American literature in ( 
 England, two other magazines having since issued English 
 editions." 
 
 Her rivalry with Scribner's-Century was always a 
 touchy subject with Harper's, Dr. H. M. Field in his 
 paper, The Evangelist, wrote in 1894 a straddling article 
 entitled Is There a Falling Off in Our Magazines, or 
 Are They Better Than Ever? It was difficult to ex- 
 tract his meaning, for what he took away with one hand 
 he gave back with the other. But it was at least appar- 
 ent that he had praised the Century, and condemned some 
 qualities which Harper's shared with the other popular 
 magazines. " The idea of Harper's learning a lesson 
 from the Century is not objectionable," wrote Mr. H. M. 
 Alden in reply, " as I hope we are not above learning a 
 lesson from any quarter. There would have been no 
 competition if the Century had not so entirely adopted 
 the plan of Harper's from beginning to end, even in its 
 editorial department. This was a very comprehensive 
 lesson taught by Harper's to the Century, as, indeed, to 
 every popular illustrated magazine that could hope for 
 wide success." As we have already seen, neither the 
 idea of their editorial departments nor of addressing the 
 average family circle originated with Harper's; what the 
 
THE CONVERTED CORSAIR 253 
 
 magazine chiefly resented was the imputation of " stoop- 
 ing to a lower level of readers." But it was an accusa- 
 tion that once the firm would have gloried in, and did 
 when charged with it by certain unsuccessful magazines. 
 Harper's had grown with the growing age, that is all; 
 and was a little ashamed to recall that its estimate of the 
 average family circle had once been somewhat lower than 
 now could be remembered with any pride. As for the 
 rest of Dr. Field's charge, it ran as follows : 
 
 They have carried illustrations to such an extent that they 
 (the magazines) are becoming more and more picture-books, 
 very beautiful to the eye, but a little wearisome to one who 
 looks for something besides " embellishments," while in their 
 contents there is a little too much of froth and foam for my 
 antiquated taste. Whereas I once felt that life was hardly 
 worth living if I did not have my monthly magazines, I now 
 feel that I could at least endure existence if those stars in the 
 literary firmament should disappear. 
 
 Mr. Alden wrote in somewhat pointed rejoinder to this 
 part of the accusation: 
 
 I will admit that we are not making so prominent the editorial 
 features as we did a generation ago — simply because other 
 agencies meet the popular need. We never treated political or 
 religious questions; but recently, far more than formerly, have 
 we laid open the more hidden phases of European politics and 
 the most important phases of religious development. It is a 
 good thing for you and me (who are growing older) that there 
 are now special periodicals, religious, scientific, artistic and po- 
 litical, to which we can resort for the satisfaction of our schol- 
 arly interests in these several fields, untroubled and undisturbed 
 by the fluctuating and ever-changing moods of a world that in- 
 sists upon living as strongly as we insist upon studying. 
 
 This was a good enough answer, but there were ob- 
 viously three better ones which he was constrained from 
 making. It would perhaps have been impolitic to express 
 his surprise that any one could prefer the didactic and 
 wishy-washy tone of the old Harper's to the tone of the 
 modern magazine; it would perhaps have been impolite 
 to point to the pages of the dull and feeble Evangelist as 
 the sort of thing they had now learned to avoid; and it 
 
254 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 would perhaps have proved embarrassing to inquire what 
 in that year's contents had given Dr. Field the impression 
 of prevailing foam and froth. Merely to open the two 
 bound volumes of that year gives a reminiscent delight. 
 Where could be found a more varied, substantial, and 
 well-seasoned feast? Dr. Field confessed to as much 
 loftiness of spirit about stories as about pictures — but 
 friends who had read them didn't feel repaid for their 
 time. Well, they were by Miss Wilkins, Constance 
 Woolson, Ruth McEnery Stuart, Sarah Orne Jewett, Eg- 
 bert Craddock, Owen Wister, R. H. Davis, and Howard 
 Pyle. As for serials, the year was made remarkable by 
 one of the most exquisite of American romances — A 
 Kentucky Cardinal, by James Lane Allen — and Trilby, 
 by Du Maurier, which if it stooped to a lower level of 
 readers, stooped to conquer the world, since it was by 
 universal admission more popular with more kinds of 
 readers than any other serial ever published. But to turn 
 to something Dr. Field at least would not recoil from 
 unread, since it provided the educational and informa^ 
 tional food he craved, there were, among an opulent list 
 of topics, Charleston in 1861, Egypt and Chaldea 
 in Recent Discoveries, Emperor William's Stud Farm 
 and Hunting Forest, The English Senate, Russia 
 and Her Jews, Tuberculosis and Its Prevention, Relation 
 of Life to Style in Architecture, a series of articles on 
 Great American Industries and some studies of the 
 Comedies of Shakespeare, together with instalments of 
 Mr. Howells's charming literary recollections. Other 
 authors were Frederic Remington, George W. Smalley, 
 Edwin Lord Weeks, Poultney Bigelow, and Arthur 
 T. Hadley — a light and frothy crew! It was a 
 golden year. What volume of Knickerbocker's or Put- 
 nam's or Graham's or Godey's could have made his 
 life more worth living when he was young? Dr. Field 
 confessed that he might be growing old, but what 
 rose-misted reminiscence of youth could so enhalo any 
 periodical in the whole history of America as to entitle 
 
THE CONVERTED CORSAIR 255 
 
 it to stand beside the plain fact of Harper's, 1894! And 
 except for the beatific chance of the two serials, the year 
 was not unrepresentative. Fashions in literature come 
 and go, and the worst as well as the best of magazines 
 must follow them; after a season of grey half -tints and 
 an exasperating cultivation of nuances, swings in a sea- 
 son of splurge and an equally exasperating welter of 
 red blood — with the change the individual liking may 
 expand or contract, but it should admit, if it recognise 
 that a magazine is published for more than one sub- 
 scriber, a steady level of catholic excellence in Harper's 
 which it would be difficult to suggest ways of surpassing. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 RIGHTEOUSNESS AND PEACE HAVE MISSED EACH OTHER 
 
 The first distinctively religious magazine printed in 
 America was the Christian History, 1743-45. The sec- 
 ond came twenty years later and presented two unusual 
 features. It was printed in German and used in its 
 twelfth number the first German types cast in this country. 
 The second feature was not duplicated until the appear- 
 ance over a century later of Sunday School organs. It 
 was not for sale but was distributed without money and 
 without price. In spite of its prodigality, it continued 
 to be published at Germantown from 1764 to 1770. 
 Though most of the subscribers to the other early re- 
 ligious magazines got them for nothing, it was not by the 
 intention of the proprietors. Foreseeing the delinquency 
 of their patrons, some magazines made sure of a fund 
 to keep them going. But this was sometimes perfidiously 
 withdrawn, as in the case of the United States Christian 
 in 1796 ; and the magazine after a hand to mouth existence 
 on subscriptions only, perished. Many of the magazines 
 gravely pledged every cent of their profits to the mis- 
 sionary cause, although they must have known that if 
 they paid expenses they would be succeeding beyond hope. 
 So soon did guile begin in religious periodicals. 
 
 Of the eighteenth century magazines, however, com- 
 paratively few are devoted to religion. A glance at the 
 list of our early publications shows why. Almost the 
 entire publishing output of the period consisted of re- 
 ligious books and tracts. The general magazine, indeed, 
 seems to have reckoned upon elbowing its way into a 
 community where most of the lettered were devout, simply 
 
 256 
 
RIGHTEOUSNESS AND PEACE 257 
 
 because it afforded some variety to the everlasting diet of 
 disquisitions. But it did not, for the most part, venture 
 too boldly. For a long time it was as much religious as 
 literary; just as when the religious magazine began to 
 emerge later, it was for a long time as much literary as 
 religious. Here is a title which sounds edifying in the 
 extreme yet it heralded nothing distinctively religious — 
 the Young Man's Magazine (Philadelphia 1786) "Con- 
 taining the Substance of Moral Philosophy and Divinity, 
 selected from the works of the most eminent for Wisdom, 
 Learning and Virtue Among the Ancients and Moderns." 
 Nevertheless, there is a smack of this-worldliness about 
 it which one does not savour in the title, the Theological 
 Magazine (New York 1796-99) "A Synopsis of Mod- 
 ern Religious Sentiment." But this editor announced 
 that he particularly desired to please. Not only did he 
 hope to have all his pieces original and recently written, 
 but he wanted them short also — sermons thus being in 
 all three particulars disqualified. " Anecdotes, remark- 
 able Providences, and the experiences of Dying Christians 
 preferred." Some religious magazines, however, spread 
 this table with the stern fare of sermons only, as 'was 
 the case with the Royal Spiritual or the Christian's Grand 
 Treasure. By Several Divines (1771). 
 
 It took the Baptist Missionary Messenger, started in 
 1803, five years to complete its first volume; but now, 
 more than a centurion, it can look back indulgently on 
 the intermittent chills and fever of its infancy. Another 
 Baptist magazine, labouring under the singularly unat- 
 tractive title of Analytical Repository, had been attempted 
 in 1 80 1, but could not survive. In the very incomplete 
 list of eighteen magazines which Isaiah Thomas men- 
 tioned in 1 8 10, only four are religious. The Panoplist 
 and the Christian Monitor of Boston, the Evangelist of 
 Hartford, the Churchman's Magazine of New York. To 
 the somewhat sharp dealing on the part of the last named, 
 we owe a fifth religious periodical, the Magazine of Ec- 
 clesiastical History. A printer who had been given the 
 
258 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 contract for the Churchman's had been sent South by the 
 editors to canvass for subscribers, and while on his mis- 
 sion the printing was coolly withdrawn from him and 
 placed elsewhere. To get even he started a religious 
 magazine of his own (to which, let us hope, he was able 
 to shift all the subscribers he had drummed up !). Thus, 
 as might have aptly quoted some na'ive contemporary 
 divine (of another persuasion, of course) doth the Lord 
 make the wrath of man to please Him. 
 
 The early religious periodicals had been for the most 
 part in the interests of Christianity at large, and the few 
 which were denominational were only mildly so. But 
 since sermons were their chief religious provender and 
 they were published by Church societies, it was inevitable 
 that as time went on all the sects should have their own 
 representatives. Of the one hundred and thirty-seven 
 periodicals begun between 1815 and 1833, Mr. W. B. 
 Cairns says that about fifty were religious in character. 
 In the West the emotional element in religion received 
 more attention, but in the East the discussion of theology 
 remained supreme. It was carried on with fierce in- 
 tensity. The entire literary strength of the smaller towns 
 was exhausted in the flowering of one religious organ; 
 and even Boston, at the period of her brightest intellects, 
 diverted most of her intellectual energy to theological 
 controversy. At the close of this period came a great 
 religious awakening through all the States, which for a 
 while sought in varying forms a larger emotional expres- 
 sion, but in the decade 1835-45 ecclesiastical turmoil 
 reached its climax. 
 
 In all of the churches except the Catholic, had arisen 
 controversies which demanded their own special mouth- 
 pieces. Even in the Church of England, which after the 
 Revolution organised into the Protestant Episcopal 
 Church, the retention of old types under new condi- 
 tions gave rise to dissensions. Just as it became the 
 most influential religious body in the country, the Pres- 
 byterian Church was in 1837 sundered by its great schism. 
 
RIGHTEOUSNESS AND PEACE 259 
 
 There were three parties in the society, and there was 
 that year for the first time in seven years an Old-School 
 majority in the Assembly. Whereupon, without notice 
 or specification, it excommunicated four-ninths of its 
 membership. For thirty years almost half of the church 
 
 — under the same name, doctrines, ritual, and discipline 
 
 — existed separately. Naturally, the organs of the ex- 
 Presbyterians, thus conceived by sin and created in wrath, 
 devoted themselves more to light than to sweetness. 
 Such high-handed methods did not bring about absolute 
 rupture in the other bodies, but in all of them internal 
 discord cried aloud for vengeance. " The Churchman 
 and other periodicals," says Archdeacon Tiffany in his 
 history of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America, 
 " evidenced the growth of church interest, but also in- 
 crease of church strife, which they did nothing to allay 
 but everything to inflame." The Congregationalists had 
 early developed a liberal body which was moving towards 
 Unitarianism. The Monthly Anthology which several 
 liberalists had started in 1803 was met by the Panoplist 
 in 1805, founded " by an association of Friends to Evan- 
 gelical Truth," and this began at once to force the Lib- 
 erals to define their position. 
 
 Thus, everywhere there were controversies; and each 
 voiced its righteous indignation in the existing church 
 organs or created others for the same purpose. And 
 each man wrote as if he might never change his mind 
 again. Orestes Brownson, far more temperate than most 
 in his denunciations, passed through Baptist, Presbyterian, 
 and Unitarian churches to become Roman Catholic at 
 last. When no suitable temple could be found for the 
 enlarging soul, one was constructed forthwith. " How 
 can I live," said Dr. Dollinger, " in a country where they 
 found a new church every day ! " Emerson, Ripley, W. 
 H. Channing, Pierpont all began as clergymen and moved 
 into a wider world, but before they went threats of heresy 
 trials were rife. Turn where you might, you heard angry 
 and harsh voices hurtling from the religious arena. An 
 
26o THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 inspection of the religious magazines of the first half of 
 the nineteenth century, recalls the story told of a Scotch 
 minister who, having written a particularly melting tract 
 on the Divine Love, asked a friend to whom he had sub- 
 mitted his previous tract on the Divine Wrath against 
 schismatists, what he should name it. " Why not call 
 it," answered his friend, *' Come to Jesus, by the author 
 of Go to the Devil?" 
 
 Between the unsuccessful early attempts to float reli- 
 gious magazines of a mild sectarianism and the later hectic 
 activity in founding periodicals which flourished on 
 mutual vituperation, had interposed a decided lull. In it, 
 religious magazines grew more and more infrequent in 
 their issues and the subscribers more and more languid in 
 their support. When the Episcopal Church of Vermont 
 began in 1813 the quarterly Theological Magazine and 
 Religious Repository, the editor announced that monthlies 
 calculated to convey religious instruction had most of 
 them been discontinued, and he believed that if the 
 churches could not support a monthly they might support 
 a quarterly. But this same year another editor, basing 
 his reasoning on the same phenomenon, arrived at a dia- 
 metrically different conclusion. Why should not a re- 
 ligious periodical supply the news also, and come out as 
 often as a Gazette? The idea was destined to elevate 
 the religious press of America into first rank, not only 
 at home but among the publications of the entire world. 
 As far as can be seen, it was destined also to have an- 
 other result of perhaps equal importance — namely, to 
 defer for a great many decades the establishment of any 
 .„-^^ermanent literary magazine by largely decreasing the 
 available audience for one. In Philadelphia, which had 
 mothered every other new experiment in literature and 
 was to mother many more, was started the religious 
 weekly newspaper, the Remembrancer. The innovation 
 took root at once. Ten journals in various parts of the 
 country were quickly founded in imitation. The Boston 
 Recorder and Telegraph and Zion's Herald had a circu- 
 
RIGHTEOUSNESS AND PEACE 261 
 
 lation of five thousand each by 1826; and the Watchman, 
 the Christian Register, and the Universalist Magazine 
 printed a thousand copies a week. By 1828 there were 
 thirty-seven of these religious newspapers and one of 
 them, the Christian Advocate, had a weekly circulation 
 of fifteen thousand — the largest, it was claimed, then 
 reached by any newspaper in the world, not excepting the 
 London Times. This paper was published by the Metho- 
 dist Book Concern in New York in 1826. In the two 
 years it had already devoured the Missionary Journal of 
 Charleston, South Carolina, and it leapt to its supreme 
 position by the simple device of finishing off its repast 
 with the Boston Zion's Herald; and for two years more 
 it did not run the risk of losing a single old subscriber 
 by dropping the name of either of its constituents. A 
 man must have felt that he got his money's worth when 
 he took in for one subscription the Christian Advocate and 
 Missionary Journal and Zion's Herald, Dr. Howard 
 Bridgman says that in 1833 the circulation of religious 
 papers in New York City exceeded the circulation of 
 all its secular newspapers, and it was the penny daily 
 started by the New York Sun which first made the news- 
 paper proper a formidable competitor. The Philadel- 
 phia idea of grafting the religious element upon the news 
 journal made its first near approach to literature when it 
 was seized upon by Nathaniel Willis in the Boston Re- 
 corder. This aimed to do slightly more of the same 
 sort of thing that the Christian Science Monitor does to- 
 day — to give the news and an editorial presentation of 
 public affairs uncoloured by partisanship, and to introduce 
 as much religious intelligence as could be made con- 
 sistent with this aim. The paper continued an independ- 
 ent existence until 1867, when it was engulfed in the em- 
 brace of a young and lusty rival, the C ongregationalist 
 begun in 1849. For the Baptists the Watchman begun in 
 18 19 absorbed the Christian Reiiector in 1848 and the 
 Christian Era in 1875, and still sends out its cry. The 
 Examiner is a seven-branched candlestick and shines with 
 
262 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 the light of six other luminaries which it gathered to 
 itself. The Religions Herald, 1828, still continues. Be- 
 fore the religious denominational magazine had time to 
 gain as firm a foothold in America as in Europe, the 
 weekly religious newspaper had established itself and 
 taken all the patronage. Before the religious magazine 
 had discovered that strife was the law of life, the re- 
 ligious weekly, already attractive by reasons of furnishing 
 the secular news, had made its position invulnerable by 
 the superior advantages it offered for immediate retort 
 in controversial discussion. 
 
 In the meantime, the literary element had been grow- 
 ing, and particularly up Boston way. The Monthly 
 Anthology had formed the starting point of the half- 
 religious, half-Hterary impulse which was so marked a 
 characteristic of the first New England Unitarians and 
 of which our New England literature is so largely an 
 embodiment. When the Anthology went to its rest, they 
 continued writing for its reincarnation, the North Ameri- 
 can, and for the various religious papers of Boston. 
 William Ellery Channing, who was minister in Boston 
 from 1803 to 1842, wrote innumerable book reviews for 
 the Christian Examiner; and Theodore Parker's pen was 
 busy not only in his own magazine but elsewhere. Both 
 the Massachusetts Quarterly and the Dial, in their short 
 brilliant lives, were very valuable in bringing to public 
 expression the brainy men who, having passed from 
 Liberal Congregationalism into Unitarianism, now felt 
 compelled to let not even the last mentioned roomy dome 
 shut them from heaven. The Unitarian clergymen, early 
 and late, have always had a literary turn. William 
 W^are, editor of the Christian Examiner, wrote often for 
 Knickerbocker and was author of several novels which 
 in themselves rather summed up the Unitarian blend of 
 literature and religion, being of the type of which Ben 
 Hur proved later the most successful example. 
 
 The Christian Examiner, 1824, was a development of 
 an earlier periodical begun in 18 14 by his brother Henry. 
 
RIGHTEOUSNESS AND PEACE 263 
 
 Its first number announced : " The Christian Disciple 
 being in some numbers exhausted, it became convenient 
 to adopt another title, but we do not propose any con- 
 siderable deviation from the plan of the former v^ork. 
 We trust that the temper in which, as occasion shall re- 
 quire, we shall maintain our disputed sentiments will not 
 be found deficient in gentleness and candour. We shall 
 advocate a liberal theology but give it only its due space." 
 Bryant wrote to Ware in 1842: "I am sorry to hear 
 that the Christian Examiner is not so successful as it 
 should be. The cause to which you ascribe it is doubtless 
 the true one — that of its having taken the review form, 
 which is too solemn and didactic for the public taste." 
 From the year 1842 James Freeman Clarke had been a 
 frequent contributor to the paper and he wrote for it con- 
 stantly until it was absorbed in Old and New, to which 
 journal he also contributed. " When I returned to Bos- 
 ton in 1856," wrote Dr. Hale, " for two or three years 
 I had a certain responsibility in the editing and then was 
 appointed to take charge of Old and New, established 
 under the auspices of the Unitarian Association. It was 
 a monthly magazine which we started under what I still 
 think a well-conceived idea that if we took the acceptable 
 form of a literary and political journal, we could carry 
 to thousands of people intelligent discussions on the sub- 
 ject of religion which they would otherwise never have 
 heard. I venture to say that we attempted to do what the 
 Outlook does so well to-day." 
 
 When the Dial had run its too brief course, Mr. Frank 
 Sanborn, the last of the Emersonian group, says that its 
 readers went back to the North American Review and the 
 Christian Examiner (satisfying as best they might their 
 twin literary and religious impulses), till in 1847 the 
 Massachusetts Quarterly was started, to die in its turn 
 at the end of the third volume. Emerson, a year or so 
 before he began the Dial and while the project was being 
 spaciously discussed by its abstracted progenitors, had 
 been writing for a remarkable journal maintained single- 
 
264 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA | 
 
 handed by that remarkable personality Orestes A, Brown- 
 son. He had begun the dignified Boston Quarterly in 
 1838, and his reasons for doing so were the same as , 
 Emerson's for beginning the Dial. The religious con- j 
 victions he had possessed — and he had possessed sev- ^ 
 eral — no longer held him, and even the most liberal 
 Unitarian periodical he now felt to bind him unduly. 
 
 The Boston Quarterly Review 'occupied part of the 
 interval during which Brownson having pushed his way 
 beyond the furthest frontier of Unitarianism had set up 
 his habitation in No-Man's Land. Said the Christian 
 Examiner in 1844: "The most remarkable occurrence 
 in our literary world is the re-appearance of Mr. Brown- 
 son's review, with even more of his peculiar mental char- 
 acter impressed upon it, since now it is exclusively from 
 his pen alone. Whatever be thought of his opinion and 
 changes of opinion, no one can deny the earnestness and 
 industry of his mind, his power and skill as a writer, or 
 the courageous and almost reckless independence with 
 which he throws his views before the public. His con- 
 nection with the Democratic Review having been found 
 mutually inconvenient, has been dissolved." Brownson's 
 contract with O' Sullivan had been to print what he 
 pleased. But his articles were often opposed to the 
 policy of the party and cost the magazine many sub- 
 scribers. In a few years he was editing a Catholic quar- 
 terly in the same dignified and earnest manner. His 
 inquiring spirit searching freedom had made the circuit 
 of the Theologies, and put in at last at an even tighter 
 port than the one he set out from. And erratic though \ 
 his course had been, the eyes of the pilot still looked out I 
 from the bridge with serene and just eyes. " Aside from : 
 its theology, with which of course we have no sympathy " 
 he wrote in Brownson's Quarterly 1849, " the Christian 
 Examiner is second to no periodical in the country ; and 
 it was in its pages that Channing, Norton, Ware, the 
 Peabodys, Lawson, Walker, Frothingham, Dewey, Rip- 
 ley, and others first became generally known to the read- 
 
RIGHTEOUSNESS AND PEACE 265 
 
 ing public and acquired their literary reputation. We 
 have many pleasant as well as painful recollections con- 
 nected with it, for we were ourselves for several years 
 counted among its contributors." Nevertheless, even 
 the most authoritative institution known to mankind 
 could not entirely muzzle Brownson. Though he re- 
 mained a Catholic for the rest of his life, he collided with 
 the church on several questions. Brownson's last-re- 
 vived Review, in 1873, ^^s the first American periodical 
 reprinted in England, where it had a large circulation. 
 
 In 1849 there were thirteen Catholic journals, eleven 
 once a week, one once a month, one a quarterly — ten in 
 the English language, two in the German, one in the 
 French. " The people on whom these journals have to 
 depend," wrote Brownson, " are for the most part recent 
 emigrants from foreign countries, of limited education 
 and means. That the Catholic press has been able to do 
 no more need not surprise us; that they have been able 
 to do so much and do it so well is the wonder." 
 
 But the civil and dignified tone of the Unitarians, 
 fixed or progressive, and of Brownson when he became 
 a Catholic spokesman, was a solitary phenomenon. It 
 was soon after 1830 that the religious press, already 
 sufficiently strident, began to grow more aggressively 
 denominational and theological. Politeness had always 
 been looked upon with suspicion by the church, and when 
 the words in the mouth were as soft as butter it was 
 because Satan lurked in the heart. By the close of the 
 decade the nation was shaken with grave social and 
 political issues, and it brought to them its fiercely polemi- 
 cal spirit — matched, to be sure, by the fiercely partisan 
 spirit of the secular papers. The church by this time 
 had moved much nearer to general social life. Internal 
 activities like the Sunday School and the Temperance 
 movements had thrown open its doors. Those who had 
 looked upon the Sunday School as an innovation quite as 
 worldly as the earlier introduction of the fiddle and then 
 the organ into the sanctuary, had a firm basis for their 
 
266 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 fears — it was the Sunday School movement, as we 
 shall see, which began the undermining of denominational 
 religion. Total abstinence was another relaxing in- 
 fluence, as the parishioners of Pierpont may have fore- 
 seen when they turned him out of the pulpit of the HolHs 
 Street Society in Boston for preaching it. But as yet 
 neither of these socialising elements had largely entered 
 the religious papers. The Roman Catholic press had 
 remained from policy as aloof from American affairs as 
 the Protestant press had been from self-absorption; but 
 now by reason of the great increase in immigration it 
 was being brought into collision with the public-school 
 system. In the great question of slavery which now 
 began to rock the nation, however, almost the entire re- 
 ligious press stood silent until it was forced to declare 
 itself. 
 
 The Protestant Episcopal papers had never had very 
 much to say on the subject. In both the Methodist and 
 Baptist denominations, the agitation culminated in the 
 deliberate partition of the church between North and 
 South, the Methodists in 1844 and the Baptists in 1845. 
 Yet with the exception of Zion's Herald, Methodist 
 papers of the North condemned abolitionism; and the 
 slave-holding Methodists of course supported slavery as 
 a divine institution. Not until 1842 did the Christian 
 Advocate admit an editorial upon it. " The Christian 
 Advocate and Journal'^ said the Zion's Watchman, es- 
 tablished 1836, " has from time to time during two years 
 past indiscriminately applied to the Abolitionists uncour- 
 teous and unchristian names. It has given an incorrect 
 and mischievous view of their sentiments, by denouncing 
 them in severe and censorious language, and refused them 
 the privilege of explaining their views when they be- 
 lieved themselves misunderstood or defending themselves 
 against the unjust charges which they believed that paper 
 had published against them." The Zion's Herald, an- 
 other Methodist paper, early opened its columns to free 
 discussion of slavery but refused to take a stand. The 
 
RIGHTEOUSNESS AND PEACE 267 
 
 theological professors at Andover agreed with the 
 Southern ministry that slavery had divine sanction, and 
 signed a proclamation saying so. The large body of the 
 clergy of all denominations refused to countenance the 
 Abolitionists, and the American Tract Society cut out 
 all condemnation of slavery from its English reprints. 
 
 It was with the intention of providing an organ for 
 a liberal and anti-slavery Congregationalism that the In- 
 dependent was started in 1848 by H. C. Bowen and three 
 others, yet one of its proprietors withdrew because in 
 course of time it declared itself too vigorously. In 1898 
 the paper published a retrospect of its fifty years of life. 
 Dr. R. S. Storrs, one of its first editors, wrote thus : 
 
 When it began, relations in all the sects externally and in- 
 ternally were very much strained, and at the same time was go- 
 ing on the even fiercer debate, perturbing and exciting beyond 
 comparison, on Slavery. This dangerous disturbance added a 
 new one to religious controversy, only the Episcopal Church 
 being apathetic on the subject. The American Tract Society, 
 vociferous on dancing and novel-reading, was utterly dumb on 
 the subject, to its everlasting disgrace; likewise the American 
 Sunday School Union and the American Board of Missions. 
 The American Anti-Slavery Society had been organised fifteen 
 years before. It was into these times of clashing forces and 
 fermenting excitements, religious and political, that the Inde- 
 pendent entered. Above all, it gave immense assistance to the 
 often buffeted but ever renewed anti-slavery sentiment. But 
 for it, I do not think that three thousand and more New Eng- 
 land ministers would have entered their protest against the 
 Kansas-Nebraska Bill, or even that the Republican party would 
 have been victorious in i860. Senators Chase, Sumner, 
 Seward, and President Lincoln were frankly earnest in spon- 
 taneous acknowledgment of its great service. 
 
 Lincoln said to Theodore Cuyler at their first meeting, 
 " I keep up with you in the Independent." Well might 
 he do so, for amid so much sycophancy and truckling 
 the paper had made good its title. This in itself marked 
 a new epoch. " How well I remember the first num- 
 ber ! " says Edward Everett Hale. " At last we young- 
 sters knew that we had a journal the editors of which 
 were not ashamed to say they were independents. They 
 
268 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 did not mean to have the general drift of the paper dic- 
 tated to them. Even John Cotton and John Winthrop 
 v^ere afraid of the word * independent,' and all the other 
 lights of the new-born Congregationalism." Though it 
 was started as a Congregational paper, its announcement 
 created consternation in many a Congregational pulpit. 
 It did not intend to squabble about internal controversies 
 but to insist upon a fearless application of Puritan doc- 
 trines to social problems, especially slavery. At once it 
 became a social and political force. When Greeley was 
 editor of the Tribune, he wrote for the Independent at 
 twenty-five dollars an article. " Beecher's leaders have 
 never been surpassed in American journalism," thinks 
 Dr. Abbott. " Only the Tribune and the Evening Post 
 exerted so powerful an influence in creating and guiding 
 public opinion during the decade before the war. When 
 Beecher took control in December, 1861, he said that he 
 would assume the liberty of meddling with every ques- 
 tion which agitated the civil or Christian community, and 
 his efforts would be, as heretofore, to promote vital god- 
 liness rather than sectarianism." 
 
 In the first ten years of its existence it lost eighty 
 thousand dollars, wrote Dr. William Hayes Ward, who 
 came to be one of its editors nearly twenty years later. 
 At the outbreak of the war, it was compelled to suspend. 
 When it resumed, it relinquished its thirteen year old 
 policy of three editors for the sole editorship of Henry 
 Ward Beecher, who for three years had been publishing 
 his sermons there. Under Beecher it ceased entirely to 
 champion Congregationalism and became undenomina- 
 tional. As Beecher did not care to give much of his 
 time to editorial work, and indeed was temperamentally 
 unfitted for routine of that sort, he made Theodore Til- 
 ton his assistant editor; and in 1864 Tilton officially took 
 the position he had actually filled since coming into the 
 office. In 1866, says Dr. Abbott, the publication of the 
 weekly Beecher sermon was suspended without explana- 
 tion or notice; and Beecher was deluged with protests 
 
RIGHTEOUSNESS AND PEACE 269 
 
 from subscribers who assumed that he had withdrawn his 
 sermons from the paper because it had criticised him. 
 In a short while he gave notice to Mr. Bowen that he 
 wished to sever his connection with the paper. " I en- 
 tered just after the brilHant but erratic rule of Mr. 
 Tilton," resumes Dr. Ward. " Tilton, like Beecher, 
 wrote little except his article. Differences of policy as 
 to religious faith dictated Tilton's retirement." Dr. 
 Abbott says that his utterances on religious questions 
 had been increasingly distasteful to the orthodox churches 
 and he was thought to promote social heresies as well, and 
 at last Mr. Bowen dismissed him. The proprietor and 
 publisher then assumed editorial control himself, having 
 been kept on the anxious seat long enough by reason of 
 the theological eccentricities of his staff. He made Dr. 
 Edward Eggleston his superintending editor for two 
 years, and then Dr. Ward took his place. Like most 
 anti-slavery ites, after the war it looked around for a 
 new cause and selected woman's suffrage. Up to 1873, 
 says Ward, it had been the largest blanket sheet in the 
 country, and when it wanted more space it cut down the 
 size of its pages and increased their number. Towards 
 the end of the century it repeated this process. In the 
 late sixties it had greatly extended its circulation by a 
 liberal premium system — dictionaries, steel engravings, 
 sewing machines — a method of the day, now almost for- 
 gotten. 
 
 But to return to Dr. Storr's reminiscences. 
 
 The process of starting a newspaper then was about as sim- 
 ple as pitching a summer tent. No vast capital and prolonged 
 preparation were needed. It was a time of vehement discussion 
 on questions engaging public attention, most of which have now 
 ceased to be exciting. The controversy between Old School 
 and New School Presbyterians was as severe as if the union 
 which took place in 1869 were impossible. Among Congrega- 
 tionalists, doctrinal discussion was incessant, and by no means 
 always intelligent or high-toned. Religious controversy is 
 never apt to be conciliatory, and it was then as sharp and spite- 
 ful as I have ever known it. In the Episcopal Communion, the 
 contest between High and Low was as violent as anywhere else. 
 
270 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 and the two parties spoke of each other more contemptuously 
 than they commonly did of others outside of their communion. 
 The fullest liberty of utterance was guaranteed the editors of 
 the new Independent by the backers. It had no particular pro- 
 gramme other than to be a voice for righteousness as it should 
 be discerned, but it sympathised with the characteristic theology 
 of New England and yet was solicitous to make its churches 
 more attractive. So far as I know the only point of positive 
 disagreement among the editors was on the spelling of the word 
 " centre." We expected attacks as a matter of course. They 
 came in abundance from the pronounced old-school papers, the 
 Puritan of Boston, and a monthly called the Observatory ; and 
 also from the pro-slavery papers; and from representatives of 
 religious and philanthropic societies whose financial or other 
 reports we had now and then sharply to criticise. Attacks came 
 from many other quarters and from those we had counted as 
 probable friends. I have no doubt we often retorted with in- 
 considerate speech in a tone sadly wanting in the lovely grace 
 of Christian meekness. But we kept our heads and it came 
 gradually to be recognised that the paper could not be beaten 
 down or sneered down. Meanwhile we had a large number of 
 active friends. Some things now generally accepted were, I 
 think, aided by the paper; and it contributed importantly to 
 securing to fresh thinkers, within the distinct evangelical lines, 
 liberty in thought and expression. The tone of the paper con- 
 tributed to eliminate inert and noxious elements from the gen- 
 eral religious journalism of the day. It was not perfunctory 
 and it was free from cant. 
 
 On one point Dr. Storr feels many regrets — that they 
 did not minister more constantly to the spiritual life of 
 their readers. " The necessary treatment of great semi- 
 secular themes and the controversial attitude into which 
 we were forced prevented us. There was more ground 
 than there ought to have been in the caustic criticism of 
 an adversary that the Independent was a strong paper and 
 might in time become a useful one if it should ever get 
 religion." The secularity of the Independent was natur- 
 ally the subject of much bitter attack on the part of 
 religious papers which devoted their articles exclusively 
 to theological and religious matters. And the innova- 
 tion was looked upon with disapproval by many secular 
 papers which, possibly not entirely without a fear of 
 the formidable rivalry which such a paper might exert, 
 
RIGHTEOUSNESS AND PEACE 271 
 
 deprecated that an intentionally religious journal should 
 afford so much week-day reading. To the Nation it 
 seemed that the Independent was unduly controversial 
 also. Godkin wrote to it in 1868 : " We have endeav- 
 oured and successfully endeavoured, in the interest of 
 reason as well as of decency, to make discussion im- 
 personal. If I were to make your birth or education a 
 means of exciting either a prejudice against you per- 
 sonally or of weakening the effect of your arguments, I 
 should consider myself a very base and malignant per- 
 son. It seems to me that you should be amongst the 
 last to encourage a tendency which is the curse of the 
 press in this country." The Round Table, too, kept re- 
 ferring to another manifestation of worldly spirit on the 
 part of the Independent, in which it deemed that in com- 
 mon with all the children of light this journal showed 
 itself cannier than the children frankly of this world. 
 
 We have never discovered that liberal advertising does not 
 quite as uniformly secure their favourable editorial judgment 
 of books or of inventions as that of the more worldly journals. 
 In fact, the veritable puff abounds much more frequently in 
 their columns than in the first class dailies. A single illustra- 
 tion will suffice. Some years ago a book was published in this 
 city called Hot Corn; Life Scenes in New York. A secular 
 paper of this city pubHshed a most indignant and scathing 
 article against it. Another followed, denouncing it as a vicious 
 and obscene book. The publisher got out an immense adver- 
 tisement embodying unqualified commendation from some ten 
 or twelve of our religious journals. Some of the same religious 
 papers which had praised it then made public recantation. 
 Perhaps this was an uncommonly flagrant case. But in nearly 
 every issue of our religious contemporaries may be found 
 unduly indulgent criticism favouring the interests of adver- 
 tisers. 
 
 The standards of the Round Table were unquestionably 
 almost impossibly idealistic. It was imbued with all the 
 elegant New England tradition of letters and of the ex- 
 clusive function of high-class journalism. Many clergy- 
 men habitually contributed to the Round Table, and it was 
 possibly owing to their influence working in connection 
 
272 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 with its own ideals that the paper was continuous in its 
 condemnation of the secularity of the Independent. 
 " Both the Observer and the Independent/' it said, " ex- 
 hibit a shameless perversion of religious journalism, and 
 the secular and avaricious schemes of the latter are par- 
 ticularly unblushing. Thirty-two flaring columns of ad- 
 vertisements, sixteen columns of articles and items on 
 everything from politics to sewing machines, yet it an- 
 swers an inquiry from a subscriber as to what constitutes 
 a religious paper by referring to itself as an example. 
 Whole columns of filthy advertisements, overflowing with 
 puffs and politics, war-news and business, the Cherokee 
 Remedy, Constitution Water, and a clergyman's puff 
 of Bronchial Trochees! We protest against this degra- 
 dation and pernicious influence for personal profit." 
 The issue of June 30, 1864, had, for instance — out of 
 the whole number of forty-eight columns — twenty-six 
 columns of advertisements, eleven columns of war, poli- 
 tics, finance, one column of market reports, two columns 
 of religious news, five columns of Mr. Beecher's sermon, 
 three columns of religious articles; and there were no 
 religious editorials. " Putting the most secular of 
 papers ! " cried the scandalised Round Table, " into the 
 hands of Sabbath readers under the guise of religion." 
 
 Happily, there is no longer any such thing as Sabbath 
 reading. But in the days when discussion waxed high 
 over this vital subject, thinkers on both sides revealed 
 curious inconsistencies. The Sunday edition of the 
 newspaper, we are told, came during the Civil War in 
 response to the demand of people not be left one day 
 in the week without news at a time when important hap- 
 penings, being no respecter of man's sanctities, were just 
 as liable to occur on Sunday as any other day. The 
 Round Table in spite of its advanced notions on many 
 topics, entertained ideas just as illogical as any when it 
 took its broad stand on the fundamental verities of the 
 question. On December 23, 1865, it had the following 
 editorial on the innovation — in a city where up to 1830 
 
RIGHTEOUSNESS AND PEACE 273 
 
 churches even had the privilege of hanging chains across 
 the street to stop all Sunday travel. 
 
 The publisher of the Philadelphia Press has recently issued 
 a Sunday edition and announces his intention of keeping it up 
 as long as it will pay. This course has evoked much local com- 
 ment and even a formal remonstrance from the Methodist 
 clergy. We have a few words to say to both parties. The ar- 
 guments frequently urged in favour of Sunday issues are not 
 arguments at all. The whole question resolves itself to this: 
 is it morally right? To our minds there is neither right nor 
 reason in it, but the responsibility rests with the public. But 
 were religious papers what they should be, the Sunday issues 
 would be less frequent than they are now. As a class they are 
 unpardonably stupid. The secular newspaper that would be 
 managed as slovenly, as poorly, as unattractively, would die in 
 less than a week. There is little difference between a Sunday 
 issue and a religious weekly except that the latter is more unin- 
 teresting. The Independent is not so stupid as the Observer, 
 but a religious article in its columns is an accident. 
 
 How long ago it seems since the running of street cars 
 on the Sabbath was violently protested by many clergy- 
 men who had come to their pulpits in their own carriages ! 
 Doubtless we ourselves, advanced thinkers as we are, 
 would be quite unaware of some equally laughable in- 
 consistency, were we not told them by radicals who dwell 
 now beyond the frontier of public sanction. Dr. Bush- 
 nell's nice discriminations as to the exact moment in the 
 study of law or medicine when a woman unsexed herself 
 were as hotly derided by the suffragists who bounded 
 him on the north as by the orthodox theologians who 
 bounded him on the south. And while Dr. Bushnell was 
 saying that a certain religious paper was not only behind 
 the times but behind all times, he was being threatened 
 with trial for heresy by the New York Evangelist and 
 by the Princeton Review, which was busily proclaiming 
 that the theory of evolution must not be permitted to 
 creep into intellectual thought because it meant atheism. 
 The recurring painful effort to adjust new ideas to old 
 beliefs, however untenable the conclusions to which 
 straining thinkers may be reduced, commands respect. 
 
274 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 Dr. Hodges' struggles to get around the doctrine of evo- 
 lution are far more worthy of admiration than his at- 
 tacks upon Dr. Bushnell; Dr. Bushnell's struggles to 
 blind himself to his own conclusions in his Reform 
 Against Nature have a quality of bigness about them 
 when one considers how large the authority of St. Paul 
 bulked in all Christian minds ; and humour is mixed with 
 admiration at his independence in declaring that women 
 have a right to make advances toward marriage and to 
 make their own living, but though they may study law 
 they may not speak in court and though they may practise 
 medicine nature itself forbids them to practise surgery. 
 Much in the attitude of the religious papers in America, 
 however, merits the indignation and contempt inspired 
 by a British religious weekly, when it announced that the 
 accident which occurred at the launching of the Great 
 Eastern was a direct manifestation of divine wrath on 
 account of the change of the name of the ship to Levia- 
 than, " which with all deep theologians is a scriptural 
 synonym for the Devil." One expects difficulty in the 
 eternal human quandary of decanting new ferments into 
 old bottles ; but the attempt, not yet abandoned, to justify 
 the ways of God to man is as blasphemous as it is puerile. 
 The rancour of religious zeal has always been a conspicu- 
 ous and interesting phenomenon. Holmes told Motley 
 that for three years he had suffered revilings from the 
 evangelical press because he had opinions of his own. 
 It detected atheism in Dr. Holland and libertinism in 
 Stedman; and Stedman wrote Holmes in 1890: " I find 
 myself reflecting on the change of moral temperature * in 
 these parts ' since the Guardian Angel made all the cleri- 
 cal cats arch their backs and spread their fur." Lowell, 
 when editor of the Atlantic wrote to Higginson about 
 a proposed change in the latter's copy. " I hke your 
 article (Ought Women to learn the Alphabet) so much 
 that it is already in press as leader for the next num- 
 ber. You misunderstand me. I want no change except 
 the insertion of a qualifying ' perhaps,' where you speak 
 
RIGHTEOUSNESS AND PEACE 275 
 
 of the natural equality of the sexes; and that as much on 
 your own account as mine — because I think it is not 
 yet demonstrated. Even in this, if you prefer it, leave 
 it your own way. I only look upon my duty as a vicari- 
 ous one for Phillips and Sampson, that nothing may go 
 in (before we are firm on our feet) that helps the * re- 
 ligious ' press in their warfare on us. Presently we 
 shall be even with them, and have a free magazine in 
 its true sense." 
 
 When Lowell thought of the truckling tactics of the 
 majority of the religious papers on the question of slavery 
 and the decidedly dubious business dealings of many re- 
 ligious organisations of the period, and compared it 
 with his own behaviour, he might well have been par- 
 doned a disdainful smile. While they were polHng their 
 subscribers up to the last minute before venturing to 
 declare themselves, he had, without a backward look, 
 greatly curtailed his market in coming out against Slav- 
 ery. Nor could Lowell be called in any sense of the 
 word a war-horse abolitionist to whom nothing else mat- 
 tered. He had written to Briggs on the Broadway 
 Journal in 1845 : " I do not wish to see the Journal a 
 partisan. I think it would do more good by always 
 speaking of certain reforms and the vileness of certain 
 portions of our present civilisation as matters of course 
 than by attacking them fiercely and individually. I as- 
 sure you that (minister's son and conservative's son as 
 I am) I do not occupy my present position without pain." 
 
 When three years after he left the Independent, 
 Beecher became editor of the Christian Union, he sig- 
 nalised his advent by an unheard of dictation, says Dr. 
 Abbott. He demanded that a paper which preached 
 religion should practise it. " He shut down once and 
 for all," says John Howard, his publisher, " upon a large 
 class of profitable business, in excluding medical adver- 
 tisements and in ordering a strict censorship upon what- 
 ever might offend the taste or impose upon the credulity 
 of readers." " Those who remember the class of adver- 
 
276 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 tising on which religious journals of that period, with few 
 exceptions, largely depended, will perhaps realise what 
 so radical an action involved in this starting of a new 
 journal," continues Dr. Abbott. It is not apparent 
 whether Beecher had attempted the same stand with his 
 former publisher Bowen, but if he had, he failed. The 
 Round Table kept on attacking the Independent for the 
 nature of its advertising. "The vilest of the vile ad- 
 vertisements, which we know secular papers to have 
 refused over and over again, defile its pages. Here the 
 young woman can learn how to ward off the troubles 
 of misconduct, and the young man how to counteract the 
 effects of dissipation. And this almost side by side with 
 Mr. Beechers' sermons ! " Religious periodicals had 
 seemingly gone on the working theory that it was better 
 to have a temple disfigured with money-changers than no 
 temple at all. The point is, on the whole, hardly dispu- 
 table, but it certainly calls for constant discretion in 
 drawing the line. The religious periodicals were for a 
 long time one of the last stands of the objectionable 
 advertiser. When the Round Table resumed publication 
 in 1865, it resumed also its war against indecent adver- 
 tising, and said very frankly that the religious weeklies 
 had largely cleared themselves of this stain. But since 
 its discontinuance it had been amazed to see that the 
 taint of indecent advertising had now begun to appear in 
 the most moral dailies, claiming to be respectable and 
 edited by respectable men. On the front page of both 
 Times and Tribune were as disreputable advertisements 
 as had ever entered decent homes. Consequently, in 
 1869 when Beecher became editor of the Christian Union, 
 the weekly was doing only what secular papers of the 
 first class were doing, and must have been more sure of 
 the justification of its position than the Independent of 
 some years before — if the accusation of the Round 
 Table is correct, that it was admitting advertisements 
 which would not be published in the best secular sheets. 
 Yet Beecher accomplished with Howard what was not 
 
 1 
 
RIGHTEOUSNESS AND PEACE 277 
 
 accomplished with Bowen, and that when the paper was 
 just struggHng into existence. 
 
 " Dr. Bowen," wrote Theodore Cuyler, " was a man 
 who never yielded in any matter that he undertook, great 
 or small." But if Mr. G. P. Rowell is to be believed, a 
 story he relates in Fifty Years an Advertising Agent, 
 shows that this doughty warrior came a cropper at last. 
 The Independent from its early days, says Mr. Rowell, 
 carried more advertising and at a higher price than all 
 the other religious papers of New York. It was in 1869 
 that Mr. Rowell started the first Directory, the indis- 
 pensability of which and its stimulus to advertisers were 
 almost immediately recognised. " Publishers of high 
 character owning papers of high character that appeal 
 to an exclusive constituency are given to being super- 
 sensitive on the subject of circulation. The only time 
 I can recollect having a circulation report from Mr. H. C. 
 Bowen, long owner and publisher of that superlatively 
 excellent and exceptionally successful religious paper, 
 the Independent, he sent a man to me with a piece of 
 white paper about half as large as a postal card upon 
 which was written in pencil the figures 67,000; and the 
 man said that Mr. Bowen said that that was the circula- 
 tion of his paper and that he sent it to me in reply to my 
 application for a statement upon which a circulation 
 rating might be based. It is quite possible I ought to 
 have accepted the pencil slip with confidence; but if I 
 had, I feel certain the reputation of the Directory would 
 fall something short of that it has to-day. In after 
 years, Mr. Bowen once sent for me and expressed an 
 ardent desire to be freed from the annoyance of being 
 called upon annually for a circulation statement, and 
 wished to learn if there did not exist some method 
 whereby he might escape an affliction that had become 
 distasteful to him to a degree he could hardly express." 
 
 The religious papers about i860, says Mr. Rowell, 
 were of vastly more importance than they are now. The 
 prominent New York ones were the Observer, Evangelist, 
 
 I 
 
278 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 Examiner, Christian Advocate, and Independent; in 
 Boston there were Zion's Herald, Watchman and Re- 
 flector, Congregationalist. To these papers the Round 
 Table paid its respects in 1864. From them it may be 
 gathered that the Round Table, at least, thought that the 
 vitaHty of the reHgious Dress depended upon controversy. 
 
 Not many years ago the House of Bishops of the Protestant 
 Episcopal Church issued a pastoral letter specially rebuking 
 the contentious and mischievous spirit of the religious press 
 of their church. The General Association of Connecticut 
 made up of Congregational ministers at one of its annual 
 sessions unanimously passed censure upon the too-common as- 
 perity of religious newspapers, especially in the matter of a 
 controversy. Most of the religious journals of all denomina- 
 tions had truly exposed themselves to such reproofs. Their 
 addictions to controversy and the bad spirit with which they 
 conducted it became a positive scandal to the Christian name. 
 Their general influence instead of being what it ought to 
 have been, particularly liberalising, elevating and refining, was 
 particularly narrowing, embittering and vulgarising. The re- 
 ligious press no longer exhibits that fondness for strife, but 
 strange to say, this relinquishment of controversy has debili- 
 tated them most pitifully. No discerning man who looks upon 
 them can fail to be struck at their want of both moral and 
 intellectual force. Here and there is an exception, but weak- 
 ness is now the prime characteristic of our religious journals 
 in both city and country. Their positive faults it would be 
 still easier to indicate. They are generally of the same kind as 
 attach to the secular press, nor do they vary very much in 
 degree — they puff their patrons and admit questionable ad- 
 vertisements. 
 
 Yet the decrease in the acrimonious tone of controversy 
 which the Round Table noted was only relative. Re- 
 ligious discords reached their climax between the years 
 1840 and i860, it is true, but it continued long after that, 
 and finally was to wane not so much on account of an 
 inward change of heart (in spite of prominent leaders 
 who pled for it) as from outward conditions. There 
 was enough left in 1872 to sadden the Christian Union 
 with what appeared to it to be the striking characteristic 
 of church papers. "As we look over the huge pile of 
 religious exchanges in our office, we are struck with 
 
RIGHTEOUSNESS AND PEACE '279 
 
 some general facts as to the spirit of various church 
 bodies. To one who is sincerely looking in every quarter 
 for some ground of sympathy their perpetual war-whoop 
 is discouraging. The Roman Catholics deal out to all 
 their fellow Christians red-hot shot, vitriol and cayenne 
 pepper. The many newspapers of the great Methodist 
 Church, though they express for the most part only 
 friendship for other Christian bodies, are always throw- 
 ing a stone at Rome. The Episcopalians recognise as 
 little kinship with the other sects as do the Catholics, and 
 assume axiomatic principles unacceptable and unfamiliar 
 to the religious community at large." 
 
 But two years old was the Christian Union at the time 
 of this editorial. It was in January, 1870, that Beecher 
 took the editorship of an impecunious weekly called the 
 Church Union. This was begun under the policy which 
 its name signified — of securing the organic unity of all 
 Protestant Evangelical churches. Beecher said that he 
 insisted on the change of name because he wanted to be 
 as free from sectarian bias as the Sermon on the Mount. 
 " We distinguish between oneness of Church and oneness 
 of Christian sympathy," he wrote in his opening an- 
 nouncement. " Not only shall we not labour for an ex- 
 ternal and ecclesiastical unity but we should regard it as 
 a step backward. The Christian Union will devote no 
 time to inveighing again sects, but will spare no pains to 
 persuade Christians of every sect to treat one another with 
 Christian charity, love and sympathy." Perhaps nothing 
 could better illustrate the spirit of religious journalism 
 than the attacks which the paper received for this sweet 
 and temperate doctrine. Church papers everywhere as- 
 sailed him. It was, to be sure, an entire innovation ; but 
 the suspicion entertained by conservative minds for every- 
 thing novel is not sufficient to excuse their virulent opposi- 
 tion. However the members of church communities may 
 have regarded Beecher's announced intention " to seek 
 to interpret the Bible rather as a religion of life than a 
 book of doctrine," church journals seemed to have scented 
 
28o THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 that their existence was threatened by the newcomerj 
 If people of every creed found the Christian Union at- 
 tractive reading, they might in time cease to consider itj 
 a duty to subscribe to the organ of their own creed. 
 Thus, for the first time in the history of rehgious journal- 
 ism, all the denominational journals found themselves 
 united in a common cause against a common enemy. 
 That their unspoken fear had a substantial basis was 
 demonstrated before the quarter-century had ended. 
 The decrease of denominational rivalries began in fact to 
 undermine the denominational press. When in addition 
 to the great success of an undenominational religious 
 journal arose within the churches social institutions 
 which continued the work of Beecher in emphasising a 
 common religious sentiment rather than a difference of 
 doctrine, the decline of the denominational press became 
 more rapid. The Young Men's Christian Association, 
 the Christian Endeavour, and the Sunday School Con- 
 vention greatly widened the influence which Beecher had 
 begun. The denominational journals had been right in 
 their fear that if people began to slacken their church 
 ties by taking in an undenominational religious paper, 
 they might end in regarding the church more as a social 
 than a religious institution. 
 
 But to return to the Christian Union, which teaching 
 Christian love found itself the universal object of Chris- 
 tian hatred. Dr. Lyman Abbott has paid a glorious 
 tribute to it in his life of its editor: 
 
 In a discussion which arose over the addition of a Farm and 
 Garden Department, he said : " It is the aim of the Christian 
 Union to gospelise all the industrial functions of life." Never 
 in the five years in which we were associated do I recall a single 
 instance in which he manifested an acerb or irritated spirit, a 
 desire to hit back, a wish to get even with an antagonist, or 
 even an ambition for a victory over him. He would not allow 
 the journal to be used in his own personal defence. I think 
 now, as I thought then, that he carried this principle too far. 
 The journal suffered from the silence he imposed upon it dur- 
 ing the time in which he was subjected to vituperation and 
 abuse. The phenomenal success into which the Christian Union 
 
RIGHTEOUSNESS AND PEACE 281 
 
 leaped from its birth, was due to him; and due also to the 
 support of his associate, George Merriam, and the energy and 
 sagacity of the publishers." 
 
 In 1 88 1 he sold his interest and retired. He had come 
 to feel, says Dr. Abbott, that his name must be removed 
 as editor since he furnished almost nothing to the paper. 
 When it changed its name for the second time, it gave 
 us a retrospect. " In 1869 ^ feeble journal bearing the 
 name of Church Union was maintaining a struggling 
 existence. Now a quarter of a century later, denomina- 
 tions still exist but denominational sermons are increas- 
 ingly rare. Polemical theory is banished from the pulpit, 
 where it once reigned supreme, to the ecclesiastical court 
 room. The name Christian Union has identified the 
 paper with the religious press, and as this is with a few 
 exceptions denominational, even its other religious con- 
 temporaries fell into the error of imagining it to be the 
 organ of a denomination. There are in the country 
 more than one hundred weekly journals which bear the 
 title * Christian.' These considerations and the practical 
 results of these circumstances have compelled for some 
 years the consideration of a change of name. The title 
 of this department, which has always occupied the first 
 and most prominent place in the paper and which in some 
 sense characterises the attitude of the paper, naturally 
 suggested an alternative." The sub-title of the Chris- 
 tian Union had been " Undenominational, Evangelical, 
 Protestant, Christian " : the Outlook announced itself as 
 a weekly Family newspaper, a running history of the 
 year. The department of the Religious World, it said, 
 would be but a feature, and its main attempt would be 
 but to trace and record the religious activities of the 
 times, though it would print a weekly sermon and weekly 
 comments on the Sunday School Lesson. 
 
 But even before the Independent had let down the bars 
 to the worldliness which is symbolised finally by a re- 
 ligious paper's classification of itself as merely a Family 
 newspaper, the religious press even of the more rigidly 
 
282 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 denominational type, had sedulously been offering literary 
 fare which tended to decrease any sharp distinction be- 
 tween sectarian and secular journalism. One is struck 
 by the abundant mention in letters and lives of our liter- 
 ary men of their connection with the religious press and 
 how greatly it contributed, though in small doles, to the 
 support of literature at a time when bread was scarce. 
 Many of the religious weeklies had their New York and 
 Washington correspondents. Gail Hamilton wrote in 
 i860 of the Congregationalist to which she had been 
 sending Washington letters for two years : " They will 
 give me a salary of $400 to $600 a year for work which 
 will take only about a day or a day and a half a week." 
 In answer to one of her first literary ventures, the Inde- 
 pendent had written : " You shall be paid at the rate of 
 $3 a column — when we know who you are. For, my 
 dear Mrs. Gail or Girl, we don't pay nobody's, we don't. 
 If you will let me into the secret of your name, I will be 
 very whist about it and send your money promptly." In 
 i860 Mrs. Kinney wrote from Florence to her son, 
 Stedman, " The Independent has offered Mrs. Browning 
 a hundred dollars for any original scrap of her poetry; " 
 and Stedman notes in 1869 that Bowen paid him one 
 hundred dollars for " some trash called The House That 
 Vanderbilt " and had asked him to write twelve more 
 poems at the same price. In the late '6o's the Inde- 
 pendent made Justin McCarthy its literary editor while 
 he was in this country; and the rising fame of Sidney 
 Lanier owed much to this paper's fostering. In 1888 
 Maurice Thompson became its literary editor. When 
 the Christian Union started, Mrs. Stowe was naturally 
 very desirous for the success of her brother's venture and 
 pledged her literary support. " I see," she wrote Mr. 
 Howard, " you have advertised a serial story from me 
 as one of the attractions of the year to come, and I ought 
 therefore to be thinking what to write. A story ought 
 to grow out of one's heart like a flower, not to be meas- 
 
RIGHTEOUSNESS AND PEACE 283 
 
 ured off by the yard. To have eyes fixed on me and 
 people all waiting!" Later she wrote him: "I am 
 very much gratified with the success of My Wife and I. 
 I get a great many more letters about it than I re- 
 ceived about anything except Uncle Tom. When you 
 advertise again, there is no harm in saying how many 
 you have sold. I like people to know it for many 
 reasons." In 1877 Gail Hamilton wrote briskly to the 
 managing editor of the Alliance: "The only reason I 
 cannot form an alliance offensive and defensive with 
 you, is because you are poor, and I am a saint and a 
 martyr to the one fixed principle, never to write except 
 for the highest price. I know nothing of your finances 
 except what may be inferred from the nature of things, 
 but a religious and radical and new newspaper, it stands 
 to reason cannot be rich. When your ship comes home 
 from sea, oh, whistle and I'm come to you, my lad ! But 
 so long as you cultivate literature on a Httle oatmeal, 
 bless you my children, bless you, but leave me my fatted 
 calf!" Lest Gail be thought too mercenary, let it be 
 added quickly that she was earning her own living and 
 that of others by her pen, and as she wrote all her let- 
 ters " between hunting for the soap and the scissors, 
 and treated every principle of politics while going from 
 the baker at the end gate to the plumber at the back 
 door," time for scribbling was limited; and too many 
 religious weeklies were like the paper of which she puts 
 down this note in 1881 : " Wanted me to write 
 Thoughts On Mother's Death, or Mother's Grave, or 
 Mother's House in Heaven, for a book; should receive 
 a copy of book in payment ! " And lest the Alliance 
 itself be sympathised with for its poverty, let it be added 
 that it sneered at Stedman as one who had voluntarily 
 tried to unite the services of God and Mammon — be- 
 cause, unable to support himself by poetry and refusing 
 to become a newspaper drudge, he had gone into Wall 
 Street. Yet the " broker-poet " had refused to write 
 
284 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 eleven more poems at one hundred dollars each like the 
 House That Vanderbilt, for the Independent — he said 
 he could not afford to write such trash. 
 
 Thus the religious press itself in its literary department 
 had contributed to breaking down the bulwark between 
 sacred and secular reading which seems to have chiefly 
 kept it from the flood that finally swept away its authority 
 and prestige. The New York Observer at one time 
 frankly divided itself into two sections, for Sunday and 
 for week-day perusal. One of the earliest religious 
 weeklies went further, and asked its subscribers not to 
 read it on Sunday at all. But as such nice distinctions 
 ceased to be insisted upon and the religious press dallied 
 more and more with the affairs of the world, a similar 
 tendency began to be exhibited by the secular press. Just 
 as the one was extending the week-day into Sunday, the 
 other was coming to extend Sunday into the week-day. 
 Far more matters once considered distinctively religious 
 began to appear in the newspapers — discussions of 
 church affairs and religious events — until nowadays 
 dailies thought by some anxious conservatives to be other- 
 worldly in an opposite sense from the ancient religious 
 organs, publish sermons and have editorial departments 
 conducted by clergymen. The encroachment of the 
 newspaper is particularly felt, writes Rev. William Ells- 
 worth Strong, in the once very successful missionary 
 periodical. " In the beginning the missionary magazine 
 reflected as nowhere else the romance of far-off lands 
 and the life of strange peoples; to-day it competes with 
 the Associated Press and the kodak of every traveller. 
 Missionary news and scenes now make good copy for 
 daily and weekly, just as popular monthlies and scien- 
 tific reviews often include more strictly religious articles." 
 
 Mr. Hamilton Mabie says that there was once a Bos- 
 ton religious weekly so eager to keep up with the times 
 that it changed its name from the Fireside Companion to 
 the Christian Register. But the case (if it ever existed, 
 since as early as 1821 — before furnaces came in — the 
 
RIGHTEOUSNESS AND PEACE 285 
 
 Register was turned on) was by no means representa- 
 tive. Religious papers have been noticeably not only 
 behind the times of the rest of the world but behind their 
 own times. This constant phenomenon, Dr. W. H. Ward 
 noted in 1891 in The Religious Paper and the Ministry. 
 The editor being generally a minister, he says, is likely 
 to edit for ministers rather than for laymen. " The 
 serious danger is his setting up as dictator. Generally, 
 too, it is edited by rather old men who are in serious 
 danger of being behind the thinking of their age. The 
 religious papers were almost unanimously against toler- 
 ance even up to the time when the ministry was ready to 
 decide in favour of liberty of views and of teaching. Lay 
 representatives among the Methodists could not find ex- 
 pression in the Methodist papers and had to establish new 
 papers through which it could speak, just as fifty years 
 before New School Presbyterianism had to create a new 
 press for itself. Now the Presbyterian papers are far 
 behind the seminaries and the ministry in accepting the 
 general results of the Higher Criticism." 
 
 For these reasons internal and external, then, the sig- 
 nificance of the religious press in America has greatly 
 diminished. Within came the gradual cessation, through 
 the development of social institutions in common, of the 
 vigour that unhappily enough seems to have been de- 
 pendent upon sectarian strife; but this latter manifesta- 
 tion of progress was accompanied by a dogged determina- 
 tion to be the last to throw the old forms aside. To this 
 must be added the tendency to develop specialised maga- 
 zines of theology by the various schools, says Dr. Ward ; 
 these have to a great extent absorbed the determinedly 
 denominational reader. Many more of these exist now 
 than when the religious weekly was so formidable a 
 rival. With the decline of the religious weekly came the 
 growth of the religious magazine which, however, makes 
 little bid for general support and is more and more en- 
 dowed. Mr. Bryce could no longer write in his Ameri- 
 can Commonwealth as in 1888 that the religious weekly 
 
^86 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 remained a force of immense influence in the life of the 
 nation and was quite unparalleled in Europe. Instead, 
 he would note the fact that the two most famous week- 
 lies, the Independent and the Outlook, have quite sub- 
 ordinated their religious features in order to survive; 
 and that many others which once had authority and 
 prosperity, having still retained their religious depart- 
 ments as their chief feature, seem moribund. 
 
 In 1897 the advertising agency of George Batten and 
 Company announced to its advertisers the eight repre- 
 sentative religious papers of the United States to be the 
 Christian Advocate (Methodist), the Churchman (Prot- 
 estant Episcopal), the Congregationalist, the Evangelist 
 (Presbyterian), the Examiner (Baptist), the Independ- 
 ent (Undenominational), the New York Observer, 
 (Presbyterian), the Outlook (Undenominational). All 
 of these papers have been long-lived though some have 
 seen many vicissitudes. With the exception of the 
 Outlook and the Independent and the Churchman they 
 date around the first quarter-century mark. Besides 
 these, there were 1,187 religious papers, of which 569 
 are weeklies, 6 semi-weeklies, i thrice a month, and 2 
 dailies. Of the magazine type there were 438 monthlies, 
 71 semi-monthlies, and 8 bi-monthlies, and 91 quarterlies, 
 chiefly Sunday School publications. Thus apparently, 
 though the authority and prestige of the palmy days of 
 religious journalism have departed, never to return since 
 the cessation of distinctively Sunday reading and the en- 
 croachment upon its domain of secular journals, there 
 was plenty of life left at the end of the century even if 
 its manifestation had ceased to be of national importance. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 CENTURY BORN SCRIBNEr's 
 
 New York had no sooner knocked into a cocked hat the 
 Philadelphia brag of the greatest circulation than another 
 heady project for silencing her ancient rival occurred to 
 her. The war, which threatened the security even of 
 Harper's, kept it in cold storage for a decade, but age 
 did not wither it. Philadelphia had been able to keep 
 going at once several magazines of the same rank; the 
 metropolis could never demonstrate her literary suprem- 
 acy until she did the same. The jeers of her sisters were 
 at last beginning to penetrate. New York — they said 
 loftily, hugging their Hobson's choice — may publish 
 literature but she does not read it; better a dinner of 
 herbs where love is than a stalled ox which is eaten only 
 by your neighbours. The only appropriate retort was 
 not for the moment forthcoming and must be relegated 
 to the misty future. But in the meantime why not de- 
 molish Philadelphia's sole remaining brag? 
 
 New York's one great magazine still left some con- 
 spicuous fields of activity untouched. Family circles 
 had been known to take in more than one magazine even 
 in the old days when magazines were all about the same. 
 Perhaps there might be room, even at some of the fire- 
 sides pre-empted by Harper's, for a periodical with dif- 
 ferent aims — more national certainly, and perhaps less 
 preoccupied with finding a common denominator. So 
 thought Charles Scribner, head of a New York publishing 
 house, and so thought the man who became his editor. 
 In two items, they agreed, lay their best chance — finer 
 illustrations and native writers. For the rest they would 
 feel their way. And Scribner's was brought forth. 
 
 287 
 
288 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 The feature of illustrations, ran the editorial announce- 
 ment in the first number, has been adopted to meet a 
 thoroughly pronounced popular demand. In the last 
 number before it became the Century there was another 
 editorial announcement. " Its superb engravings and 
 the era it introduced of improved illustrative art, have 
 been the chief factor in its success. This feature is 
 attributable to Mr. R. W. Gilder and Mr. A. W. Drake. 
 The effects achieved excited great curiosity both in this 
 country and in England. Mr. Smith may legitimately 
 claim to have revolutionised the cut-printing of the world. 
 It took a lawyer turned business man to discover that 
 damp paper is not the best for printing cuts on." In 
 those eleven years they had heard the intellectual protest 
 against " picture-books " grow small by degrees and 
 beautifully less, until save for a few stalwart souls it 
 had ceased altogether to spell that fatty degeneration of 
 culture once so profoundly feared by those who grudged 
 that others should be carried to the skies on flowery beds 
 of ease. One might almost forget that such ideas were 
 ever entertained by sensible people did we not in our own 
 day behold austere persons raise the same objection to 
 their children acquiring knowledge easily (and more 
 lastingly) by means of the "movies." The revolution 
 which Scribner's effected, like every other successful one, 
 owed much to its coming at the right moment. 
 
 It was the good fortune of the magazine to be born with the 
 rise of a new school of American art, and it has probably never 
 happened to any periodical to hold a relation so intimate with 
 the arts of design or to be a means of diffusing correct judg- 
 ments and principles. When it was founded eleven years ago, 
 the art of wood-engraving was almost stationary. The illus- 
 trated periodicals were hardly better than they had been for 
 twenty years. A dozen years ago, one of the leading engravers 
 declared there was not an illustrator on wood in New York 
 who could draw the human figure correctly. It was manifestly 
 impossible to make a really great illustrated magazine under 
 such conditions. Scribner's, therefore, had recourse to a method 
 already in use for certain purposes — that of photographing on 
 wood. This was not then considered the correct way to obtain 
 
CENTURY BORN SCRIBNER'S 289 
 
 an artistic picture. By degrees, the change was wrought, and 
 the individuality of painter and designer retained. Protests 
 were many — the pictures were positively ugly, it was alleged; 
 but by degrees people came to prefer their real beauty to the 
 old conventional properness. Never before by means of any 
 art or device had the excellence of a great picture been carried 
 by multiplied copies. In a country like ours, where galleries 
 are few and worthy paintings rarely to be seen out of the great 
 cities, the educational service of such art-work as Scribner's 
 is incalculable. The London Standard said of the Portfolio of 
 Proof Impressions from Scribner's : " It is impossible for an 
 Englishman to look through this collection of engravings with- 
 out a deep feeling of humiliation. The wood-engraving stands 
 now at the head of all methods of reproduction. A dozen years 
 ago steel prints were thought to be the chief means. To have 
 attained this is to work an ultimate revolution in the world's 
 art-culture." 
 
 In June, 1881, Dr. Holland wrote a retrospect for his 
 magazine just undergoing its second baptism. Mr. 
 Charles Scribner had applied to him thirteen years before 
 to take the editorship of Hours at Home, a periodical 
 the publisher had started some years earlier. Holland, 
 however, believed it to be moribund. Happening some- 
 time later to meet Mr. Roswell Smith in Europe, he spoke 
 of the offer and said he would be glad of the opportunity 
 to undertake a new one of his own. Mr. Smith, who 
 appears never to have considered the subject before, re- 
 plied that he would like to manage the business end of 
 such an enterprise. Together the two went to Scribner 
 and unfolded the project, and they found him favourably 
 inclined. 
 
 Naturally it was his wish to have the new magazine ernanate 
 from his book-house. I refused, however, to have anything to 
 do with a magazine that should be floated as the flag of a book- 
 house, or as a tributary or subordinate to a book-house. It was 
 agreed that a new concern should be formed. Mr. Smith had 
 no knowledge whatever of the publishing business, and I had 
 none save that which I had acquired in the publication of a 
 country newspaper, with the details of which, however, I had 
 little to do. It was deemed desirable by Mr. Scribner that the 
 magazine should bear the name of the book-house. I was glad 
 to have the prestige of the name, he was glad to have the adver- 
 
290 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 tising which the new magazine would thus give. But in an- 
 other respect it was not a selfish matter at all. Through long 
 years of the most brotherly intercourse I had come into very 
 affectionate relations with Mr. Scribner. But we — the two 
 parties — regarded the enterprise and operations of the maga- 
 zine house from radically different standpoints. We, the ma- 
 jority interest, had no interest whatever in the book-house; we 
 were organised to do our own business and neither to do nor to 
 mind any other man's. We felt that if we should desire to pub- 
 lish a book, we ought not to be called upon to consider whether 
 we were affecting the business of any other concern whatsoever. 
 This difference was the inspiring cause of all the recent changes 
 that have taken place in the proprietorship of the concern. 
 
 If Charles Scribner relinquished his pet project, to 
 have a magazine of his own in the same way that the 
 Harper firm had one of its own, it was because he was 
 confident that Dr. Holland was worth the price he un- 
 accountably exacted. Scribner knew more than anybody 
 else but Bowles of the Springfield Republican how much 
 Holland was worth to him as an editor. Holland had 
 gone on Bowles' paper as assistant in 1847 for a salary 
 of $480, which was increased the next year to $700. The 
 Letters he wrote for the paper were so popular that 
 the subscription responded at once. But in spite of their 
 history and of a didactic home-spun quality as dear to 
 the heart as to the head of the American publisher of the 
 period, Holland was unable to find a publisher until 
 Scribner consented to hear them. Their success at once 
 showed Scribner that their author had gauged rightly 
 the widest audience in the country — the practical intelli- 
 gent people who wanted to better themselves. The New 
 York Evening Post said at his death that no literary man 
 in America was so accurately fitted for the precise work 
 of developing a great popular magazine. He had the 
 immense advantage of keeping on a plane of thought 
 just above that of a vast multitude of readers, each one 
 of whom he could touch with his hand and raise a little 
 upward. " No other man in this country," said Robert 
 Collyer, " could have built up Scrihner's as he did, mak- 
 ing it fill a place uniquely adapted to the great mass of 
 
CENTURY BORN SCRIBNER'S 291 
 
 the American people." This was his ideal — to speak 
 to the heart and mind of the average man. His proudest 
 title was " The Great Apostle to the Multitude of Intelli- 
 gent Americans who have Missed a College Education." 
 To them he preached constantly, and in the most neigh- 
 bourly of fashions. One of his great texts was tem- 
 perance, but he had no intention of remaining the stock 
 moralist which so long contented his more prudent rival, 
 Harper's. Not only did he criticise severely the political 
 and social abuses of his time — still a preposterous rash- 
 ness for a popular magazine ; but, bolder still, he did not 
 care how many sects squinted at his theology. That we 
 fail to extract any heretical doctrines from the whole- 
 some but somewhat stodgy Bitter Sweet to-day, does 
 not subtract from the audacity of an editor who dared 
 to risk subscriptions by publishing the poem in a day 
 when he knew it would poke up the pulpits. He knew 
 how to feed the virtuous and yet give them cakes and ale 
 also — a born editor. This Charles Scribner seems to 
 have divined from the start, when he allowed a man to 
 step from a subordinate position on a small city news- 
 paper into his office and dictate the terms on which he 
 would assume control of an old publisher's new maga- 
 zine. " I risked in the business," wrote Holland after- 
 ward, " all the money and all the reputation I had made, 
 and it is a great satisfaction that I did not miscalculate 
 the resources of my business associate or my own. Al- 
 though the Monthly started without a subscriber it never 
 printed or sold less than forty thousand copies a month. 
 The highest task we set ourselves was to reach one 
 hundred thousand, now we are looking forward to one 
 hundred and fifty. That two men utterly unused to 
 the business should succeed from the first in so difficult 
 a field is, in retrospect, a surprise to themselves." 
 
 These two men, though of a progressive cast, were on 
 account of their inexperience the more desirous to make 
 haste slowly. A magazine, too, which had absorbed 
 Hours at Home and Putnam's at the very outset natu- 
 
1292 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 rally owed something to its digestion. Putnam's, as we 
 have seen, prided itself on possessing opinions; and the 
 Riverside Magazine, which was the next candidate for 
 assimilation, was a juvenile which prided itself on form- 
 ing them. In five years another set of readers inured to 
 catholic discussion of ideas came in a body to swell the 
 subscription list. This flock had been shepherded by 
 Edward Everett Hale in Old and New, a magazine begun 
 under the auspices of the Unitarian Association, with 
 an idea then quite radical even for so unorthodox a 
 creed. " We took the ground," says he, " that literature 
 and politics and theology and religion might be discussed 
 within the same covers and read by the same readers. If 
 you please to take the language of the trade, we believed 
 that the stories and the poems in our journal could float 
 the theology and the religion. In eleven volumes I 
 edited the journal. At the end of that time we had more 
 than one competitor in the same path; especially Scrih- 
 ner's. The Unitarian Association had long since tired 
 of us; for it was impossible to make the directors of a 
 denominational society understand that we were doing 
 their work — as we were — better than they could do 
 it themselves. For myself I was tired of the strain of 
 editorial life ; and Old and New was merged into Scrih- 
 ner's. This is the reason why Philip Nolan's Friends 
 was printed in that magazine." The author of such nar- 
 rative poems as Bitter Sweet and Kathrina would of 
 course have been congenial to Unitarian readers any- 
 way, and they would have remained unstirred by the 
 heresies therein ventilated. It is ironic to find that Dr. 
 Holland did not escape the common fate of reformers 
 any more than Scribner himself kept his well-known pro- 
 fessional morality above reproach by publishing him — 
 for when Stedman came to publish in the magazine his 
 series on the American Poets, Dr. Holland very strongly 
 objected on moral grounds to including his paper on 
 Whitman, which proved, indeed, to arouse a great deal 
 of controversy. It has been ever thus in the history of 
 
CENTURY BORN SCRIBNER'S 293 
 
 human thought; always reformers have dreamed them- 
 selves the only sane pioneers, and to adventure beyond 
 their last stake is to pass the frontier of safety. 
 
 Intending to occupy a field which Harper's had not 
 entered — the discussion, as well as the exposition, of 
 ideas — still it w^as many years, said the Century as it 
 made its debut, before Scrihner's thoroughly grasped and 
 adopted the scheme for presenting, as the best of all 
 magazine material, the elaborate discussion of living, 
 practical questions. " Also we made only one attempt 
 in the old series at popular studies, and now we know 
 better how to manage it. There is nothing that opens 
 before us now more attractive than this field of illus- 
 trated historical research and representation." Many 
 years was it, also, before the magazine ventured to depart 
 from the old custom of recapitulating each month the 
 progress of civilisation. Literature, Home and Society, 
 the World's Work were sanctioned summaries of which 
 only the first possessed much claim to be included in a 
 magazine that no longer sought to occupy the place of a 
 newspaper as well. Another slow evolution from the 
 old to the new was the gradual cessation of self-con- 
 sciousness about the names of contributors. More than 
 a decade later than the first Putnam's and the Atlantic, 
 it had begun with printing names in the Contents. In 
 the first number the only name permitted to appear with 
 the text was that of George MacDonald, who was running 
 a serial. Gradual also, although it featured and paid 
 for American material from the outset, was its relinquish- 
 ment of the English reprint. " The system of reprint- 
 ing English serials, which had proven itself the deadly 
 blight of native literature," reminisced the Century, " was 
 tried for a year or two and then wholly given up. One 
 of the things which tended to give Scrihner's a distinc- 
 tive character of its own was its discarding of English 
 serials and its cordial encouragement of every sign of 
 originality and force in the younger American writers." 
 
 It w^as the good fortune of the Century to come into 
 
294 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 existence at the moment when a renascence was prepar- 
 ing in American literature, said that magazine modestly 
 in its fourth volume. But indeed, this renascence seems 
 more due to Scribner's than to any other one force. It 
 is true that it had come in with a new era ; that the war 
 had pushed the old and narrow American life into a pre- 
 mature antiquity, and that many new periodicals and 
 journals sprang out of this mental reaction. But most 
 of them perished; and the new writers, thanks to the 
 unfair competition with English authors, could find for 
 their fermentation no outlet in books. It was because 
 the pages of Scribner's were open to these youngsters 
 that they lived to grow up. Especially was this true of 
 the Southern writers, and the service of Scribner's in 
 this respect and its wider service in helping the wounds 
 of the war to heal — in accordance with the newly dis- 
 covered surgical treatment by drainage — cannot be over- 
 estimated. Their War articles were not only superb 
 journalism, but splendid patriotism also. In the chroni- 
 cle of the war by the leading generals, each side will dis- 
 cover the true mettle of the other, the magazine ventured 
 to hope. It was in 1873 that it sent a special train 
 through the South with the purpose of securing a series 
 of articles. " The discussion now going on in the Cen- 
 tury about the re-organisation of society in the Southern 
 States," they said, " is of the utmost value in putting the 
 North in possession of the facts and the South of a 
 temper, to which inherited views and party spirit have 
 blinded both sides." 
 
 One of the articles in Scribne/s stated the general 
 situation. " A Northern business man who had pub- 
 lished an Army and Navy Journal or something of the 
 sort during the war, when he found his occupation gone, 
 tried to exploit the local patriotism of the South by 
 getting up a series of Southern text-books, with results 
 that will not be forgotten by the investors. Magazine 
 after magazine was started. But the new generation 
 began to recognise it was necessary to seek a wider public. 
 
CENTURY BORN SCRIBNER'S '295 
 
 It was not until Southern men began to write for North- 
 ern magazines that the South became a factor in the liter- 
 ary life of the country." 
 
 The first Northern magazine open to them was Scrib- 
 ners, both in stories which represented their life and 
 articles which stated their point of view. Immediately 
 after the war there was in the South as in the North the 
 usual ebullition of literary energy. But in the South it 
 was much increased by the desire to present their cause 
 aright to the world. The activity in starting new maga- 
 zines as vehicles for the passionate desire for expression 
 was proportionately even greater in the South than in 
 the North, where, as we have seen, it was abundantly 
 fruitful. But these magazines naturally had even greater 
 mortality. The South had never been able to support 
 periodicals, and now that it was impoverished it was 
 far less able to do so. The writers, too, of such a litera- 
 ture as the South felt the need of to represent it aright 
 were far less able than formerly to work for nothing, 
 even had the magazines been able to continue, on their 
 short rations, to afford them a medium for their patriot- 
 ism. To exploit this patriotism had been their publish- 
 ers' frank and commendable object. De Bow's Review 
 began the last of its many series, " devoted to the restora- 
 tion of the Southern States." The Southern Review 
 dedicated itself " to the despised, the disfranchised, and 
 the down-trodden people of the South." In Charlotte, 
 Atlanta, Raleigh, Charleston, and New Orleans other 
 magazines took up the cry — the children of the new 
 generation must be educated in the old ideals and the 
 North must not be allowed to misrepresent their fathers 
 to them. The most successful of these short-lived maga- 
 zines was the Southern of Baltimore, which lasted five 
 years. In addition to its English reprints, it introduced 
 several young Southerners in original work. The chief 
 of these were Margaret Preston, Malcolm Johnston, 
 [Sidney Lanier, Paul Hamilton Hayne, Maurice Thomp- 
 ■son, Professor Gildersleeve, and Professor Price. But 
 
296 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 the Southern in spite of the best intentions could pay 
 nothing — Malcolm Johnston, for instance, gave them his 
 Dukesborough Tales, which afterward reached a wider 
 audience and brought some return to the author. All 
 of these people were shortly publishing in Scribner's at 
 the regular rates. On the trip which the magazine 
 planned in 1873 for the purpose of its articles on the New 
 South, was discovered in New Orleans one of the story- 
 tellers of the New South, George W. Cable; and within 
 six months he appeared in its pages. Within half a 
 dozen years John Esten Cooke, Thomas Nelson Page, 
 and Joel Chandler Harris were coming to the front. Mrs. 
 Burnett was one of Scribner's greatest finds. In 1881 
 the editor in calling attention to the fact that seven ar- 
 ticles by Southerners had appeared in one number, said, 
 ** We are glad to recognise that there is a permanent 
 productive force in literature in the Southern States. 
 We welcome the new writers to the great republic of let- 
 ters." So much was the Century a patron of the new 
 authors that its " dialect '' stories seemed to many readers 
 decidedly overworked; and they longed for pages less 
 hen-tracked. 
 
 The Atlantic and Harpe/s quickly followed Scribner's 
 lead, the former exploiting Maurice Thompson and 
 Charles Egbert Craddock and printing in series George 
 Cary Eggleston's A Rebel's Recollections. Lippincotts, 
 and the Independent made the fame of Sidney Lanier. 
 Of this last periodical Maurice Thompson became literary 
 editor in 1888, though Southerners had long singled it 
 out for special condemnation on account of its bias. In 
 1890 Mr. Walter Hines Page of North Carolina even 
 entered the sanctum of the New England holy of holies, 
 the Atlantic. 
 
 All this change of attitude. North and South, had been 
 brought about by Scribner's. It had not only opened its 
 doors to Southern writers, but it had gone to them and 
 invited them to come in. To the opportunity thus af- 
 forded, the disappearance of the truculent, professional, 
 
CENTURY BORN SCRIBNER'S 297 
 
 and provincial spirit of Southern literature owes its first 
 impetus and its gathering strength. Mr. Mims in his 
 Life of Lanier gives us some interesting details of this, 
 as well as an excellent resume of the situation. 
 
 In the period '75-85 the old order of Southern writers passed 
 away. Paul Hamilton Hayne best represents the transition to 
 the new group. This began to write, not in the attempt to 
 create a distinctively Southern literature, but because the new 
 literature, unlike the old, was related directly to the life of the 
 people. Sentimentalism was superseded by a healthy realism. 
 They were (for the first time) wiUing to be known as men who 
 made their living by literature. They did not want to be sec- 
 tional but national in spirit. Joel Chandler Harris said, " What 
 does it matter whether I am Northerner or Southerner. Litera- 
 ture that can be labelled Northern, Southern, Western, or East- 
 en is not worth labelling at all. Whenever we have a genuinely 
 Southern literature, it will be American and cosmopolitan as 
 well." All of the new writers had little patience with the 
 former literary methods and criticism of the South. As early 
 as 1871 the Southern Magazine in a review of Southern writ- 
 ers had written : " We should be courageous enough to con- 
 demn bad art and bad workmanship no matter whose it be; to 
 say, for instance, to more than half of the writers in these vol- 
 umes, * Ladies, you may be all that is good, noble, and fair ; you 
 may be the pride of society and the lights of your homes; so 
 far as you are Southern women our hearts are at your feet — 
 but you have neither the genius, the learning, nor the judgment 
 to qualify you for literature.' " In 1874 Hayne condemned in 
 the same magazine the provincial literary criticism which had 
 prevailed. " No foreign ridicule, however richly deserved, can 
 stop this growing evil until our own scholars and thinkers have 
 the manliness and the honesty to discourage instead of applaud- 
 ing such manifestations of artistic weakness and artistic plati- 
 tudes as have hitherto been foisted on us by persons uncalled 
 and unchosen by any of the Muses." 
 
 Scrihner's in providing Southern writers with an ap- 
 proved and profitable Northern vehicle created a new na- 
 tional attitude in both North and South; and shaped a 
 literature it had gone far toward creating, by banishing 
 its provinciality. 
 
 But the War articles performed a great service to more 
 than the nation at large. They lifted the circulation of 
 the Century to a high figure and they made much money 
 
298 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 for the book publishing end of the two firms. Told by 
 the actors themselves on both sides and illustrated with 
 an excellence never attained before, they naturally at- 
 tracted enormous attention. Those contributed by Gen- 
 eral Grant were, on account of his prominence and some 
 special circumstances, particularly profitable. Mr. Al- 
 bert Bigelow Paine gives an account of them in his Life 
 of Mark Twain. Mr. Gilder told Twain, he says, that 
 the Century editors had endeavoured to get Grant to con- 
 tribute to their War series, but that not until his financial 
 disaster, as a member of the firm of Grant and Ward, 
 had he been willing to consider the matter; that Grant 
 now welcomed the idea of contributing three papers to 
 the series and that the promised payment of $500 for 
 each had gladdened his heart and relieved him of immedi- 
 ate anxiety. (Somewhat later, adds Paine, the Century 
 Company of their own accord added liberally to this sum.) 
 Twain went to see Grant about book publication and was 
 told that they had made him a proposition for his com- 
 pleted memoirs. Grant had not thought the proposition 
 good enough, but when Twain told the General what 
 offer, in his person, the American Book Company of 
 Hartford would make, he took the General's breath away. 
 Yet Grant demurred, saying that the book ought to go, 
 other things being equal, to the man who had first sug- 
 gested it to him. Then said Twain, " I am the man, and 
 you should place your book with my firm," and recalled 
 to him a conversation to that effect. After much dis- 
 cussion the General agreed, though he felt that Twain 
 was bankrupting himself by the royalty he offered. All 
 this got into the papers, and Mark Twain publishing Gen- 
 eral Grant became the most talked of event in the book 
 world. To increase the advertising the project received, 
 certain newspapers persistently circulated rumours of es- 
 trangements between Grant and the Century and between 
 Mark Twain and the Century as a result of the book de- 
 cision. Nothing but the most cordial relations and un- 
 derstanding prevailed, says Mr, Paine, but all this greatly 
 
CENTURY BORN SCRIBNER'S 299 
 
 fomented public interest in the General's Century papers, 
 which in that respect were already record-breakers. And 
 as if this were not fortunate enough, it was increased by 
 another happening. The public knew that General Grant 
 was dying as he wrote or dictated his story with Mark 
 Twain hovering around to encourage him. It appeared 
 that at one of their sittings they discovered that Mark had 
 cleared out of camp once in Missouri just in time to es- 
 cape capture by the man whose book he was now going 
 to publish. The Century got wind of this extremely pic- 
 turesque anecdote, and at their request Mark wrote for 
 their War series the story of his share in the Rebellion 
 and particularly of his war relations with General Grant. 
 The good fortune and fine editorial sense in all this at- 
 tended the succeeding leaders of the magazine. Ken- 
 nan's Siberian papers proved another enormous sensa- 
 tion, and won the magazine the proud distinction of be- 
 ing forbidden to enter Russia. The next sensation was 
 greater still, although the public had time to moderate 
 its transports in the four years that the articles ran. 
 This was the History of Lincoln by his two secretaries, 
 which had been in cold storage for twenty years await- 
 ing Mr. Smith's sagacity. As early as 1867 Hay and 
 Nicolay had tried to get Harper's interested, but neither 
 it nor any of the book publishers would listen. " We 
 shall have to write it and publish it on our own hook some 
 day," said Hay. When after a score of years, the Cen- 
 tury asked them to set about the work in earnest, they 
 received the largest price any magazine had paid up to 
 that date — fifty thousand dollars. Harpers, interested 
 at last, again had to yield to her rival. During negotia- 
 tions Hay wrote to Nicolay : " I do not believe Gilder 
 will want the stuff for his magazine. It is not adapted 
 for that ; there is too much .truth in it. We will not fall 
 in with the present tone of blubbering sentiment of 
 course." John Hay wrote another record-maker for the 
 Century. The success of The Bread- Winners exceeded 
 that of any previous American novel. Its anonymous au- 
 
300 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 thor set everybody guessing. A Western Doctor of Di- 
 vinity declared that he wrote it and that the publishers 
 never paid him. But this, the customary fate of anony- 
 mous hits, is not so amusing as that the once anonymous 
 Atlantic refused it because the author would not sign it. 
 Before taking the most important step that can happen 
 to a maiden magazine — changing its name for better 
 or for worse — Scribner's in 1881 pubHshed a pamphlet 
 modestly relating her birth, breeding, and expectations. 
 " In the height of prosperity she was about to assume a 
 name of broader significance. The magazine whose ways 
 are not the ways of the present time cannot live on its old 
 reputation, but must stiffen and die with the infirmities of 
 age. (Like a theatrical star, only constant contact with 
 the public can keep her young!) There were those who 
 predicted that she would die by the severe law of natural 
 selection as had died Knickerbocker and Putnam's. The 
 starting of a magazine in face of able and established 
 competitors is always a most venturous and difficult task. 
 So it had been with her. It was fortunate perhaps that 
 her conductors and editors were inexperienced in the con- 
 duct of periodicals. Lack of skill was more than made 
 up by their freedom from bondage to old ways of doing. 
 It did not take them long to discover that the methods 
 and men then in vogue were not sufficient. A new maga- 
 zine must find new men. It was thought necessary to 
 make it cheap in the beginning, but before the close of the 
 year it was found that a three dollar magazine could not 
 afford the highest excellence, and the second year began 
 with a most perilous change for a new periodical. It was 
 enlarged and the price raised to four dollars, at a moment 
 of great popular excitement and no little financial strin- 
 gency. But after a temporary check it was soon again 
 on the high road to prosperity. New methods of engrav- 
 ings were ventured upon in the face of a shower of ad- 
 verse criticism. The steady increase in circulation of 
 from ten to twenty per cent, a year made it possible to 
 augment its facilities in every direction." 
 
CENTURY BORN SCRIBNER'S 301 
 
 In short, the young woman was putting herself on 
 record before taking a decisive step. In spite of her ef- 
 forts to have it all understood, people had got the idea 
 that she was married to a book-publishing house, and she 
 didn't propose to stand it any longer. She was a maiden 
 bright and free, no guile seduced, no force could violate, 
 and she didn't propose to take unto lierself a mate unless 
 it were Father Time itself, the everlasting. And so, to 
 the confusion of library-boys until time itself shall have 
 an end, Scrihner's was going to become the Century. 
 For her scorned and reputed spouse, some while after- 
 ward, having caught the habit from his long quasi-rela- 
 tion, married a maiden of the name he had grown used 
 to; and generations yet unborn will complain therefore 
 of mistaken identity. [_The history of this noble young 
 woman, Scrihner's Nimiber Two, belongs rather to the 
 twentieth century than to the nineteenth. Having 
 bounded into immediate maturity like Minerva from the 
 head of Jove — fully dowered and with gifts in her hands 
 and armoured with the welded experience of the parent 
 brain — she had no gro wing-up days. On the night of 
 publication her first edition, of one hundred thousand 
 copies, had been sold out. As Stevenson might have 
 paraphrased himself (in the rich and genial Vailima Let- 
 ters, with which she continued, in 1888, her second year 
 of appeal to the ripest culture in America), she hopefully 
 arrived without any journey whatever, which is the best 
 of all ways to get there. 
 
 Here is Dr. Holland's last announcement in the old 
 Scrihner's: 
 
 The present Mr. Charles Scribner and I have ceased to be 
 proprietors, and Mr. Roswell Smith has acquired about nine- 
 tenths of the stock. The remainder has been divided among 
 the young men who have done so much and worked so faith- 
 fully to make the magazine what it has been and what it is. I 
 am glad they own it, and that it is Mr. Smith's design that they 
 shall have more as they win the ability to purchase it. I owe 
 so much to these men that I shall greatly rejoice in any sub- 
 stantial rewards that they may reap for their long and faithful 
 service in building up the interests of the concern. 
 
302 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 And here is the first announcement of the new Century: 
 
 Names do not make magazines but magazines give signifi- 
 cance to names. We wholly sympathise with readers in their 
 sentimental regard for our old name and wish it were never 
 to be dropped, for it means more to us than it ever could mean 
 to a subscriber and reader; but the reasons for the change are 
 imperative. Scribner's Monthly started eleven years ago with- 
 out a subscriber; the Century starts with virtually one hundred 
 and twenty-five thousand subscribers. The former was begun 
 without experience and with everything to learn ; the latter lifts 
 its fresh ensign upon a field of conquest. The former was 
 obliged to go out among the men and women of letters and ask 
 for contributions, which, in many instances, were doubtfully 
 or questioningly rendered; the latter is overwhelmed with 
 voluntary offerings of the best material from the best pens. 
 The former sought in vain among artists and" engravers for 
 such illustrations as would satisfy its wants and reaHse its 
 ideals ; the latter begins with all the talent at its command which 
 Scribner's Monthly helped to discover and develop. The same 
 business manager is at the front, and the same editorial force 
 controls and directs the pages, the same man directs the art 
 department who made Scribner's Monthly famous as a reformer 
 in the arts of designing and wood-engraving. 
 
 But it is destiny which disposes. Almost the last word 
 Dr. Holland had written for the magazine he founded 
 was, " With the burden of business responsibility lifted 
 from my shoulders, I hope to find my hand more easily 
 at work with my pen.'' Before the Far West saw the new 
 fawn-coloured dress of the Century, replacing the too 
 prosaic blue of the old Scribner's, the pen had dropped 
 from his hand forever; and the issue which announced 
 that its life was likely to continue, with unchanged name, 
 perhaps for centuries, announced that the life of the editor 
 was concluded. 
 
 The service the magazine rendered for Southern 
 writers and for the reunion of the whole country sinks, 
 however, almost to insignificance (if one may say so with- 
 out being accused of cynicism!) beside the beneficence of 
 another achievement, the end of which is not yet. It 
 began the modern system of magazine advertising. 
 
 The history of periodical advertising in America pre- 
 
CENTURY BORN SCRIBNER'S 303 
 
 sents three stages, that of the newspaper, of the weekly, 
 and of the monthly. The stupendous development of 
 American journalism, in which it has outstripped the 
 world, would have been impossible without advertising 
 patronage. The growth of newspapers, we are told, has 
 been about a thousand per cent, in each half of the cen- 
 tury. Newspaper advertising began as a habit with the 
 last decade of the eighteenth century, but it cannot be said 
 to have increased even proportionately until the third 
 decade of the nineteenth, when it suddenly leaped for- 
 ward with giant strides. This was by reason of the 
 establishment of the New York Sim in 1833, the Herald 
 in 1835, the Philadelphia Public Ledger in 1836, and the 
 New York 7 rihiine in 1841. Even for a long time after 
 advertising space was regularly set aside in newspapers, 
 however, the majority of them did not have any regular 
 rates for advertising. Newspapers depended mainly 
 upon subscriptions or graft (the latter the more de- 
 pendable part of their income) and they got what they 
 could for advertisements as extra revenue. " In the 
 seventies," says Mr. George P. Rowell of Printer's Ink, 
 " advertising had in the ordinary run of papers little 
 standard of value. Conditions now are in every way 
 almost inconceivably different. John Wanamaker spends 
 more money for advertising every week in the dailies than 
 A. T. Stewart did in a year." 
 
 It was Robert Bonner who first made the newspapers 
 and the public appreciate what could be done with ad- 
 vertising. He would take a whole page of a paper, and 
 say in it over and over again, " Fanny Fern Writes Only 
 For the Ledger." My success, he cried aloud frankly 
 and reverberatingly from every housetop, is owing to my 
 liberality in advertising. " I get all the money I can lay 
 my hands on and throw it out to the newspapers," he said, 
 " and before I can get back to my office, there it all is 
 again and a lot more with it." But his returns for this 
 sort of advertising were due merely to the novelty of 
 advertising in bulk and with display — when the novelty 
 
304 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 wore away, as it happened in book advertising fifty years 
 later, the method was no longer effective. Other adver- 
 tising of his, however, was far more subtle and ingenious ; 
 and each new device for attracting attention to his weekly 
 hit the bull's eye. They were legion. Godkin mentions 
 one in a letter to a friend in 1858. 
 
 The great topic of the quidnuncs for the past few days has 
 been Edward Everett's extraordinary undertaking to write for 
 the New York Ledger, a two-penny weekly magazine circu- 
 lating nearly three hundred thousand copies. It is filled with 
 tales of the Demon Cabman, the Maiden's Revenge, the Tyrant's 
 Vault, and a great variety of " mysteries " and " revelations," 
 and, in short, barring its general decency of language, belongs 
 to as low and coarse an order of literature as any publication 
 in the world. By the lavish use of puffery a la Barnum, the 
 proprietor, a journeyman printer four or five years ago, has 
 amassed a large fortune. He offered to pay over to the Ladies 
 Mount Vernon Association — a project in which Mr. Everett 
 is greatly interested — the sum of $10,000 in case the latter 
 would undertake to write one article every week for one year. 
 To the astonishment of the whole Union the ex-ambassador, 
 ex-secretary, ex-president of Harvard University, ex-editor of 
 the Greek Reader, the scholar, the exquisite, the one aristocrat 
 of " the universal Yankee nation " has accepted the proposal. 
 Bonner will no doubt shortly fill whole sides of the newspapers 
 with announcements of the fact. 
 
 But whether it was because Bonner heroically main- 
 tained at home an idealism he could not exercise abroad 
 (amazing figure!) or whether advertising in weeklies had 
 not yet in his estimation become profitable, or whether his 
 ingenious advertising mind had determined that the 
 money lost in not accepting advertising in his own paper 
 was money well spent for the most unique advertising he 
 could get under the circumstances — the surprising fact is 
 that he never even in the day of the Ledger's colossal 
 success inserted a single advertisement. The. paradox — 
 as Gonoril might say — makes speech poor and breath 
 unable! Certainly some weeklies had already begun to 
 make fortunes out of advertising, under that pleasantest 
 of systems which allowed them to get all of their text for 
 nothing. Nor was the English reprint their only gratui- 
 
CENTURY BORN SCRIBNER'S 305 
 
 tous fodder. Mr. Rowell remembers the Waverly of 
 Boston, which lived entirely upon the effusions of roman- 
 tic misses and young men at college, and never paid one 
 cent for its contributions. It was a weekly, sold for ten 
 cents, and it charged one dollar a line for its abundant 
 advertisements. This admirable plan is by no means 
 archaic, even if the international copyright law cuts off 
 one source of free material and the vanity of young per- 
 sons is now less easily appeased. A great many weeklies 
 and monthlies exist solely for advertising purposes, espe- 
 cially in States where public opinion is not exacting in 
 the matter of patent medicine and other questionable ad- 
 vertisements. Mr. Rowell raises a humorous eyebrow 
 over the dozens of papers published in Augusta, Maine, 
 the capital of the State, for prices ranging around twenty- 
 five cents a year, and queries why the Post Office law 
 should be so flouted. It is interesting to recall, as an ex- 
 ample of how difficult it is to draw the line, that the 
 Delineator was established, says he, for the purpose of 
 advertising the Butterick Paper Patterns and with no 
 other purpose. Yet bare as it was of other features, it 
 early found more than a hundred thousand women glad 
 to pay the subscription price in advance for it. The 
 question of admitting it to the mails puzzled the clerks 
 in the Post Office Department, but if they ever excluded 
 it, the time of its exclusion was brief. Of so little ac- 
 count was considered the advertising it printed that the 
 man who supplied the printing-ink took his pay in ad- 
 vertising space: at last accounting, the magazine was 
 charging six dollars a line for advertising. 
 
 All this is quoted not to show the guile of the advertis- 
 ing man from the very start (where, oh, where is the 
 need?) or the continuous performance of his growing im- 
 portance (humiliating task for the scribe!), but to em- 
 phasise the fact that magazines did not once conceive 
 advertising worth their attention nor did advertisers con- 
 sider magazines worth their consideration. Mr. Rowell, 
 who founded one of the earliest advertising agencies and 
 
go6 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 made in 1869 the first permanent lists of newspapers and 
 periodicals for agency purposes, says that circumstances 
 led him to buy a space on the outside cover page of Our 
 Young Folks for the period of a year, hoping to sell it at 
 a profit. But no one wanted to buy it and he had to use 
 it himself. His advertisement after lying dormant for 
 some time brought him in the end an advertiser, and he 
 doubtless made the experience of assistance in furthering 
 the as yet undeveloped work of the agency. This, then, 
 was the condition of magazine advertising. To account 
 for it, in face of the successful demonstration which ad- 
 vertising had already made in newspapers and some semi- 
 literary periodicals, is not easy. It may have been be- 
 cause of the scorn of or indifference to the business end 
 of the enterprise which had so often characterised even 
 those magazines which tried to keep their feet on the 
 ground and their heads out of the high air of idealism. 
 From the very beginning most of them had genuinely dis- 
 claimed motives of commercial success — they had striven 
 to mould minds and create a literature. To many such, 
 advertising seemed sordid; and, indeed, they held them- 
 selves above all the details of the commercial side. One 
 might have expected, perhaps, the most extreme cases of 
 idealism in the pioneer publishers, as they appeared in 
 State after State ; and it is noticeable that everywhere the 
 pioneer sentiment on advertising was contemptuous. The 
 cruder the country the loftier the aspirations of its volun- 
 teer editors. But to Chicago in 1850 (though certainly 
 crude and new enough) one would not have looked for 
 juvenile ideaHsms — she already knew herself the capital 
 of the northwestern Empire and had no illusions as to the 
 foundation of her greatness. Consequently it is a strik- 
 ing illustration of the current literary attitude which was 
 afforded by a miscellany called Garden City. This was 
 founded by Sloan, the patent-medicine man, who had so 
 profitably advertised his patent medicines in the Gem of 
 the Prairie that he desired a magazine of his own. Mr. 
 Fleming tells us that for the first few numbers he even 
 
CENTURY BORN SCRIBNER'S 307 
 
 printed in his literary pages a " Sloan's Column." But 
 although the magazine had its origin as an advertising 
 medium, it gradually curtailed these notices of the pro- 
 prietor's wares and throughout its last years admitted 
 very little advertising of any kind. One is perhaps not 
 surprised to hear that in 1854 it was merged into a Boston 
 periodical, seeing how long it had been heading for the 
 heights of sublimity. And even in Chicago there ap- 
 peared something peculiarly base about advertising which 
 made other schemes for self-support the less of two evils. 
 The Chicago Magazine frankly announced that it ex- 
 pected to get revenue " daguerreotyping leading citizens 
 and near-by towns," yet it said magnificently at the same 
 time, " We respond to the wish of a contemporary that 
 we might be able to dispense with advertising as an ave- 
 nue of public patronage ; but at present the law of neces- 
 sity must overrule the law of taste." 
 
 What then demolished this elegant delusion? Both 
 Mr. F. W. Ayer and Mr. Rowell, heads of our oldest and 
 best advertising agencies, unite in saying it was Scrib- 
 ner's. The new order of things began in 1870 with the 
 success and policy of this magazine. Yet like most new 
 orders, it made its way slowly and in the face of opposi- 
 tion. The early Harper's was as conservative and as 
 tentative in its attitude toward the innovation as it had 
 been about introducing opinions into its pages. Mr. 
 Rowell narrates an experience in Forty Years An Ad- 
 vertising Agent: 
 
 Harper's in 1868 not only did not seek advertisements but 
 actually refused to take them. The writer remembers listening 
 with staring eyes while Fletcher Harper the younger related 
 that he had in the early seventies refused an offer of $18,000 
 for the use of the last page for a year for an advertisement of 
 the Howe Sewing Machine. I have stated that Harper's was 
 established for the deliberate purpose of advertising the books 
 published by the firm. In the early days the reading matter 
 was largely made up of what might be called advance notices 
 of forthcoming publications. Advertisements from outsiders 
 were declined. The tempting proposition of the Howe people 
 would have removed from the last page the prospectus that 
 
3o8 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 told on what terms the Magazine, the Weekly, the Basar, and 
 the Round Table could be had either together or separately. 
 
 It is not clear why advertisers were so long content to 
 let the magazine field go unessayed. If magazines had a 
 way of failing, so had the weeklies and the dailies; and 
 readers who paid a quarter and more for their periodical 
 were perhaps more likely to patronise the local firms and 
 the railroads that were the first advertisements to venture 
 into the monthlies. The reason is probably to be found 
 in that unprogressiveness of American business which 
 seems to us to-day so antediluvian. That advertisers con- 
 quered their inertia at all appears to have been due to the 
 industry of Scrihnefs in approaching them and the new 
 Advertising Agent in corralling them. It was the latter 
 \vho made possible the enormous growth of advertising. 
 [How enormous, Mr. Ayer figured out in 1894. That 
 year the December issue of the Century had one hundred 
 and thirty- four pages of advertising. Harper's in 1882, 
 after thirty-two successful years without them, yielded to 
 the inevitable and began to insert them : in December of 
 1894 it carried one hundred and forty-four pages. At 
 the page rate of $250, the advertising income of such an 
 issue would be $36,000. Putting the average amount at 
 ninety-two pages a month, the advertising receipts of this 
 one magazine would reach $276,000. It is estimated that 
 the December, 1894, issue of the six leading monthlies 
 represented $180,000. 
 
 Yet indispensable as the work of the agency had been 
 in building this volume of business, the slowness of some 
 magazines to appreciate the value of the service more than 
 matched their early reluctance to advertise at all. Mr. 
 Rowell gives an instance of this: 
 
 We were paying Harper's Weekly as much as five thousand 
 a month, but as circulation statements from the office fell short 
 of being definite, there came a time when the rating accorded 
 by our directory failed to be satisfactory, and I went to Frank- 
 lin Square to talk the matter over. I explained that we had to 
 have the same sort of statement from one paper as another, 
 what we asked from the Bungtown Banner we were obliged to 
 
CENTURY BORN SCRIBNER'S 309 
 
 require from Harper's Weekly. There was a pause. The gen- 
 tlemen looked at each other, and one quietly said to the others: 
 *' It seems to me if Mr. Rowell talks that way, we don't want 
 to continue to do business with him " ; and the others in a rather 
 indifferent way appeared to coincide with that view. There 
 was nothing more to be said and I came away. And the next 
 advertising order sent out from the Rowell Agency was refused. 
 By and by the rule was rescinded but in the meantime we had 
 gotten out of the habit of recommending the paper, and a time 
 came when instead of sending advertising to it to the amount 
 of five thousand a month, I doubt if so much as that went to it, 
 upon orders from our agency, in some periods of five years. 
 When, a long time after, the old house of Harper and Brothers 
 failed, I could but wonder whether the firm had been as suc- 
 cessful in shutting off streams of revenue from numerous other 
 sources. 
 
 By the end of the century the advertiser had become en- 
 throned. There were agents who humorously suggested 
 that the magazine of the twentieth century would contain 
 just enough literary stuff to float the advertisements, and 
 who recalled that friends of theirs resembled Gladstone in 
 finding the latter more interesting than the former. Per- 
 haps a prophetic eye or two had even discerned a distant 
 day when an established magazine might change its 
 make-up entirely for the sake of exploiting its advertising. 
 The new Scrihner's and Lippincotfs had long since lured 
 the readers to adventure hopefully in the vast hinterland 
 of their advertising section by spreading artfully the dis- 
 jected members of an illustrated comic throughout its 
 length. Possibly this was the germ of an idea that was 
 to scandalise the high brow and pucker the low in the 
 early years of the twentieth century. Wiser than most, 
 Harper's may, in resisting the advertisement for so long 
 a time, have recognised the little rift that by and by would 
 make all the music mute. Who knows ? " The securing 
 of contracts for advertising," blandly remarks a recent 
 book on the subject, *' is the main objective in a modern 
 magazine. The receipts from purchasers at news stands 
 and from subscribers cover only a small percentage of the 
 total expenses of the production. The kind of goods 
 most advertised are staples of home consumption. Hence 
 
3IO THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 the people who must be reached by a magazine whose pub- 
 Hshers wish to make it a medium for a large volume of 
 advertising, are the home-maintainers. To get this ad- 
 vertising, you must have in the literary pages the stuff 
 that will appeal to the people interested in those * ads ' ! " 
 This leads us to one of the most interesting back-ac- 
 tions in the history of our periodicals. Godkin suggests 
 it in an article in the Atlantic January, 1898. 
 
 The idea that the newspapers utter the opinions of which their 
 readers approve is being made less tenable every year by the 
 fact that more and more newspapers rely on advertising rather 
 than on subscriptions for their support and profits; and agree- 
 ment with their readers is thus less and less important to them. 
 The old threat of " stopping my paper " if a subscriber came 
 across unpalatable views in the editorial columns is therefore 
 not so formidable as it used to be. The advertiser rather than 
 the subscriber is now the newspaper bogie. He is the person 
 before whom the publisher cowers and whom he tries to please; 
 and the advertiser is very indifferent about the opinions of a 
 newspaper. He wants to know how many persons see it rather 
 than how many agree with it. 
 
 All this seems at first very encouraging. We have, 
 then, the advertiser to thank that we may hear, as often 
 as we do, what is being thought by people whose minds 
 are more enlightened or unfettered than ours. Blessed 
 be the Century that in helping itself so helped us all, when 
 it founded modern magazine advertising. But Godkin's 
 next sentence plunges us into despair again. " The con- 
 sequence is that newspapers of largest circulation are less 
 and less organs of opinion. In fact, in some cases, ad- 
 vertisers use their influence to prevent the expression of 
 opinions. There are not many papers which can afford 
 to defy a large advertiser.'* 
 
 If for " newspapers " you may read " magazines '' (and 
 possibly etiquette might even have caused the Atlantic to 
 substitute the former for the latter word, had it been 
 written), how drunk is now the hope wherein a moment 
 ago we dressed ourselves! There is something quite 
 dizzying about this transfer of moral sensitiveness from 
 
CENTURY BORN SCRIBNER'S 311 
 
 the family-circle to the factory. What are we coming 
 to? Oh Century, Century (as Sir Isaac said to his dog 
 Diamond), if only you had known what you were doing! 
 What avails the most beautiful temple to the Muses when 
 you have unlocked the gates to the Barbarians ? 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 SOME MAGAZINE NOTIONS DEAD AND DYING 
 
 The nineteenth century in the magazines presented a long 
 and amusing struggle with the theory of anonymity of 
 authorship. It was part of the inherited attitudinising of 
 literature, greatly reinforced in America by the gestures 
 of Puritanism. Most periodicals and even some writers 
 were eager to demonstrate that art should be its own re- 
 ward ; and having industriously sown the pretty idea 
 throughout the land, it was hardly fair of them to com- 
 plain so bitterly when coarser-fibred United States Con- 
 gressmen ate the wheat that grew from it later. Authors, 
 especially New England ones, liked to think of their call- 
 ing as a thing remote from the market — particularly 
 since, but for the soft word, their parsnips would have 
 gone unbuttered anyway. And it was not to the interest 
 of magazines to uproot the illusion — -particularly since 
 they themselves, having invested actual money in a losing 
 enterprise, constantly found it the sole consolation for 
 their expenditure. Thus each of the parties, gladly or 
 otherwise, fanned the flame of their divinity. Some 
 writers, too, seemed to have thought that magazine work 
 was beneath them. Longfellow, for instance, more than 
 once wrote to a periodical that he would contribute if he 
 could do so anonymously. Some, too, seem genuinely to 
 have felt that a tree should be known to the public only 
 by its fruits. But whatever the reason, the lame show- 
 ing that editors and authors made when they attempted 
 to find a rational basis for anonymity as a policy, demon- 
 strates that it was part of the sacrosanct pose of letters. 
 In the prospectus which Charles Brockden Brown 
 wrote for his Philadelphia magazine in 1803 he said: 
 
 312 
 
 / 
 
MAGAZINE NOTIONS DEAD AND DYING 313 
 
 " I shall take no pains to conceal my name. Anybody 
 may know it who chooses to ask me or my publisher, but 
 diffidence or discretion hinders me from calling it out 
 in a crowd ; and I have an insuperable aversion to naming 
 myself to my readers. But an author or editor who takes 
 no pains to conceal himself cannot fail of being known 
 to as many as desire to know him. ... To accomplish 
 his ends, the editor is secure of the liberal aid of many 
 most respectable persons in this city and in New York. 
 He regrets the necessity he is under of concealing these 
 names since they would furnish the public with irresistible 
 inducements to read what, when they had read, they 
 would find sufficiently recommended by its own merits." 
 It is easier to sympathise with Brown's temperamental 
 objection than to understand the devious reasoning of 
 his last remark. But the idea — firm-set, as we shall see, 
 in the editorial mind — was certainly more explicable 
 then than fifty years later when it was still flourishing. 
 Ephemeral writing, although almost entirely confined to 
 the professional classes, was still a business for vagabonds 
 when it was not the pastime of gentlemen in mask. It 
 was not a respectable occupation for any member of the 
 middle class. Even forty years later. Holmes said 
 that to be known as a writer would damage him as a 
 doctor. But Brown's na'ive statement that to mention 
 the names of his contributors would destroy the initiative 
 of the public, was to bob up again many times in the 
 course of the century. 
 
 The Boston American Monthly, a third of a century 
 later, achieved a more substantial reason for anonymity. 
 As those who entered its portals must abandon individu- 
 ality, why preserve their identity ? " We still believe the 
 use of names to be incompatible with the character of a 
 periodical which aims to represent views, tastes, and opin- 
 ions of its own and not to be an arena for desultory dis- 
 cussion; and which prefers the vigorous mental effort 
 of the most obscure contributor to the use of a popular 
 name however inspiring." Its contemporary the Pearl, 
 
314 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 being of a contrary persuasion, did not fail to note the 
 fact that in this very editorial the American Monthly had 
 allowed itself to mention the name of its most valuable 
 contributor. " Now we believe the use of names," it 
 said, " to be quite compatible with the character of every 
 respectable periodical. First, because if an article be 
 worthy of publication, it is worth acknowledging; and 
 second, because every particle of fame or notoriety is so 
 much stock-in-trade or capital. Certainly, it is no com- 
 pliment to a subscriber to say that he will esteem an article 
 with a name superior to that without one which is of 
 more worth. It may require more philosophy to judge 
 impartially, but how much greater is the compliment 
 to the reader." So little was the Pearl obsessed by the 
 genteel tradition of letters and so convinced of the prac- 
 tical advantages accruing from the publication of names, 
 that her conduct was scandalously commercial. Not only 
 did she affix to articles the names of writers (that is, the 
 important ones ! ) but she shamelessly blazoned them upon 
 the cover and followed each with a list of his best-known 
 works. 
 
 This practice was later continued by Graham's and 
 others. The devotee party scornfully though hotly con- 
 tested every step of the way — those who entered the 
 convent of letters should drop their worldly names at the 
 door. So much had both editors and authors parted with 
 their carefully exploited sanctities under the compulsion 
 of crude human nature and of cruder commercialism, 
 that by 1844 Godey's called attention to the growing 
 fashion of magazines' featuring authors as writing for 
 them only. " We have had several applications lately 
 to write for us exclusively. We now say to one and all, 
 we do not wish to make any such arrangements. It is 
 impossible for a writer to vary from month to month 
 enough to please the patrons of a particular magazine." 
 Nevertheless, Godey's yielded to the fashion in the case 
 of the extraordinarily popular Miss Leslie, and at a later 
 date similarly advertised Marion Harland as writing for 
 
MAGAZINE NOTIONS DEAD AND DYING 315 
 
 no other publication. Ever powerless were the Vestal 
 Virgins to turn back the steady sweep of the invading 
 barbarian! By 1848 a New York magazinist of English 
 training was writing thus of American magazines to an 
 English periodical : 
 
 Their editors make a considerable figure in the literary 
 world and their coniributors are sufficiently vain of themselves, 
 as their practice of signing or heading articles with their names 
 in full alone would show. One of the superficial peculiarities 
 of American magazines, is that the names of all the contribu- 
 tors are generally paraded conspicuously on the cover, very 
 few seeking even the disguise of a pseudonym. The number 
 of most " remarkable " men and women who thus display them- 
 selves in print is really surprising. Willis's idea, so ridiculed 
 by the Edinburgh, of a magazine writer becoming a great lion 
 in society, is not there so great an absurdity. 
 
 But Still the really elegant magazines, sustained by the 
 consciousness of high literary purpose, clung to the purer 
 view of the ministry of letters. The Atlantic toward 
 the end of the next decade and Putnam's about the middle 
 of it, held their torches high. Said the latter in opening : 
 
 We pray the reader to enter, and pardon this delay at the 
 door. Within he will find poets, wits, philosophers, critics, 
 artists, travellers, men of erudition and science — all strictly 
 masked, as becomes worshippers of that invisible Truth which 
 all our efforts and aims will seek to serve. And as he turns 
 from us to accost those masks, we remind the reader of the 
 young worshipper of Isis. For in her temple at Sais upon the 
 Nile, stood her image forever veiled. And when an ardent 
 Neophyte passionately besought that he might see her and 
 Vvould take no refusal, his prayer was granted. The veil was 
 lifted and the exceeding splendour of her beauty dazzled him 
 to death. Let it content you, dear reader, to know that be- 
 hind those masks are those whom you much delight to honour 
 — those whose names, like the fame of Isis, have gone into 
 other lands. 
 
 At the close of the first volume, this lyric nonsense was 
 somewhat elucidated. Behind it lay a policy diplomatic 
 and, alas ! commercial. The editors announced that their 
 conviction had been that their best aid would come from 
 younger writers with names yet unknown, and they had 
 
3i6 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 determined to present these on a perfect equality with 
 iUustrious contributors whose names alone would grant 
 an audience — for in literature the newcomer is always 
 treated as an intruder. This illa^iical rhapsody, then, had 
 been only literary hocuspocus to conceal the fact that the 
 major part of their contributions were to come from new 
 and hence not high-priced writers. Alike equivocal was 
 the position of the other aristocratic magazines. Says 
 Scudders' Lowell: 
 
 Articles in the Atlantic as in the North American were un- 
 signed, but the authorship was for the most part an open secret. 
 The North American used to print a little slip with the author- 
 ship of the separate articles set against the successive numbers 
 of the articles; and this slip although not inserted in all the 
 copies sold or sent to subscribers, was at the service of news- 
 papers and the inner circle. The authorship of the principal 
 articles of the Atlantic always leaked out. The authors them- 
 selves sometimes were glad of the privacy, as they thought it 
 secured them more independence and possibility of frankness. 
 "For myself," wrote Lowell in 1859 [from the editorial chair], 
 " I have always been opposed to the publication of authors' 
 names at all." The practice of withholding names publicly con- 
 tinued till 1862, when the index at the end of the volume dis- 
 closed the authorship, and in 1870 the practice was begun of 
 signing contributions. 
 
 Nevertheless, Lowell knew perfectly well that the 
 authorship of his principal articles always came out ; and 
 he not only counted upon its doing so but recognised it 
 as an asset. Pleasant is it also to observe that his busi- 
 ness dealings were squarer than his mental processes. 
 " You must be content," he wrote to a contributor. " Six 
 dollars a page is more than can be got elsewhere, and 
 w^e only pay ten to folks whose names are worth the other 
 four dollars." The contributor might indeed have been 
 content, for in those times many writers were both name- 
 less and penniless too. This was Lucy Larcom's experi- 
 ence with her most famous poem. " The little song 
 Hannah Binding Shoes was brought into notice in a 
 peculiar way — by me being accused of stealing it, by 
 the editor of the magazine to which I had sent it with a 
 
MAGAZINE NOTIONS DEAD AND DYING 317 
 
 request for the usual remuneration if accepted. Acci- 
 dentally or otherwise, this editor lost my note and signa- 
 ture, and then denounced me by name in a newspaper as 
 a * literary thief ess ' ; having printed the verses with a 
 nom de plume in his magazine without my knowledge. 
 So far as successful publication goes, perhaps the first 
 I considered so came when a poem of mine was accepted 
 by the Atlantic Monthly, and as the poet Lowell was at 
 that time editing the magazine I felt especially gratified. 
 That and another poem were each attributed to a different 
 person among our prominent poets, the Atlantic at that 
 time not giving authors' signatures." The anonymity 
 of the articles, remarked Higginson somewhat wryly, 
 caused many amusing mistakes, " although in time the 
 errors might be cleared up if people cared enough to find 
 out." It would seem, then, that for all its high-sounding 
 justifications anonymity was merely a means of advertise- 
 ment, a way to get the contributions talked about. Here 
 was a most subtle method of serving the high gods and 
 the low gods at once. 
 
 The uncomplimentary notion that a reader's attention 
 must be constantly stimulated by the thought that per- 
 haps the article he was reading had been written by some 
 important personage, was held by the Nation also. It 
 said in 1866: " An article of which the author is known 
 is hardly ever judged on its merits. If he is still obscure 
 most people will not take the trouble to read what he 
 says; if he is famous, they will devour the veriest twaddle 
 that comes from his pen and insist on fresh supplies 
 every day." The latter seems permanently true, although 
 there exists of course no compulsion upon a magazine 
 to publish even signed twaddle unless it desires to do 
 so, and the Nation was far from proposing to publish 
 twaddle of any kind. But if it were ever true that 
 obscure magazine writers were skipped without being 
 read, it would not have been possible for any authors to 
 become famous by reason of their magazine work — and 
 owing to the extreme limitation of the book market 
 
3i8 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 through the lack of international copyright, most Ameri- 
 can authors in the nineteenth century won their repu- 
 tations in the magazines. It is apparent that they re- 
 fused to blush unseen by their praisers, even if, by the 
 policy of some high-class editors, they were at times 
 compelled to waste their sweetness in the air of the most 
 cultivated regions. No journal would contend for 
 anonymity now on precisely the old basis. But for the 
 larger part of the century, no editor saw that this was 
 as absurd as if a theatrical manager should insist that 
 his actors all go nameless, since some had to play the 
 small parts. 
 
 The Nation's canon of unsigned contributions went 
 hand in hand with that of absolute editorial control. 
 " All expression of opinion," said Mr. A. J. Sedgwick in 
 retrospect, " were avowed as those of the paper itself ; and 
 all articles and reviews were paid for to be published by 
 the paper and to be revised and amended both for style 
 and occasionally for matter. This rule used to be re- 
 garded as the secret of good and responsible journalism, 
 as it was once of quarterly reviewing.'' And this quo- 
 tation brings us to the history of that vexed and delicate 
 question, the '* editorial privilege " of magazines. 
 
 Historically, editorial' policy is the child of editoral 
 partisanship. The earlier magazines were constantly as- 
 serting that all political and religious controversy would 
 be rigorously avoided. It is a pity that editors ever 
 deemed themselves compelled to forget that the title 
 selected for their particular literary product was meant 
 to signify a general storehouse of literary commodities, 
 whose reason for existence was its unrestricted variety. 
 That a magazine should seek to occupy a particular field 
 and appeal for subscribers by reason of doing so, is only 
 common sense; but it does not appear why any further 
 editorial policy is desirable. Unfortunate is it for litera- 
 ture and for American civilisation that the magazines 
 of the nineteenth century, could not, and afterwards 
 would not, hold to the position stated in the American 
 
MAGAZINE NOTIONS DEAD AND DYING 319 
 
 Magazine and Historical Chronicle (Boston, 1743-46), 
 whose motto was Jucunda Varietas. ** The encourage- 
 ments that compositions of this nature have met with in 
 Great Britain from people of all ranks and different 
 sentiments in religion, politicks, etc., has induced us to 
 begin the Publication. Our readers will do us the justice 
 neither to applaud nor blame us for the right or wrong 
 opinions, sentiments, or doctrines that may from time 
 to time occur in these pages, because we are to be con- 
 sidered as meer reporters of facts. All our praise, if 
 we deserve any, wdll be that of collecting carefully, 
 abridging with judgment and preserving the most perfect 
 impartiality." 
 
 But such an Arcadian state of simplicity was not long 
 allowed to exist. By the opening of the century, editors 
 of magazines were beginning to feel, in the growing 
 competition of newspapers, that they must identify them- 
 selves with political parties or forfeit support. The 
 National Magazine (Richmond, 1 799-1800) gave one of 
 the earliest indications of the tendency. " The American 
 people have long enough been imposed upon by pretended 
 impartiahty — it is all a delusion. It is as incongruous 
 for a publication to be alternately breathing the spirit 
 of two parties as for a parson to preach to his audience 
 Christianity in the morning and Paganism in the even- 
 ing. Every editor who is capable of soaring above the 
 flattery of villainy and the adulation of power has too 
 much at stake to admit of neutrality. Animated by a 
 zeal for the Republican cause and stimulated to exertion 
 by a perfect abhorrence for governmental fraud and 
 usurpation, I shall in the subsequent, like the preceding 
 numbers, select and introduce such facts and arguments as 
 will tend more directly to break the talisman and remove 
 the mask of federal delusion and imposture.'' 
 
 In the record of this magazine, the historian of the 
 nineteenth century may read the entire history of "edi- 
 torial privilege." Its stated object was to transmit to 
 posterity the most valuable productions of the American 
 
320 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 pen already published, and it at once began editorially 
 to winnow them! So lofty was its ideal that in the be- 
 ginning it even refused original effusions, and it turned 
 an obdurate shoulder to " a selection from trifling 
 amusements." When it discovered that it could not sur- 
 vive on so stern a regimen, it began to introduce lighter 
 essays but it retained, in the wider field, its rigid edi- 
 torial policy of partisanship. It edited everything, to the 
 top of its bent, and nothing was permitted to intrude into 
 even so frankly frivolous a subject as Feminine Garrulity 
 (on which both political parties might supposedly unite) 
 that could possibly be interpreted as supporting the 
 " Federal Delusion.'' 
 
 The idea that it was necessary for a magazine to main- 
 tain a rigid policy and subject all its contributors to cen- 
 sorship, once started, gained momentum rapidly. Edi- 
 tors, even when they avowed themselves free from party 
 bias, as rigorously maintained a personal one. Our mag- 
 azine history is full of abortive attempts to establish pub- 
 lications where vigorous writers denied admission to the 
 current press might have some place to go; and the new 
 magazines had no sooner sprouted than the radicals turned 
 conservative and the ex-excommunicates began to excom- 
 municate on their own account. Even Poe, Ishmael as 
 he was and with, also, his larger vision of the destiny 
 of the magazine than any of his contemporaries, de- 
 manded to be literary dictator in the periodical he pro- 
 jected. The Stylus should present an aristocracy of 
 brains alone without regard to political or religious creed, 
 yet continuity and marked certainty of purpose were the 
 prime requisites of a magazine stamped with that indi- 
 viduality essential to its success. This was attainable 
 only where one mind alone had, at least general, control ; 
 "and experience had shown him that in founding a journal 
 of his own lay his sole chance of carrying out his peculiar 
 intentions. Lowell, also, beHeved that a magazine should 
 have but one editor. He wrote to Briggs that bitter ex- 
 perience on the Pioneer had shown him that only thus 
 
MAGAZINE NOTIONS DEAD AND DYING 321 
 
 could individuality be preserved — and we shall see that 
 when he became authoritative editor of one, he, like Poe, 
 made purely personal exactions, petty and large, upon 
 his contributors in the name of general good taste and 
 judgment. By the middle of the century, so fixed had 
 become the idea that it was necessary for a literary maga- 
 zine to maintain a rigid policy, that Bristed made it the 
 chief basis of his complaint against the habit of gratui- 
 tous contributions upon which most of our magazines 
 were compelled to exist. " The gratuitous contribution 
 destroys all homogeneousness and unity of tone in the 
 periodicals of America by preventing them from having 
 any permanent corps of writers. The editor must now 
 and then be under the disagreeable necessity of paying 
 for an article if only to carry off their ordinary vapid 
 matter, but not often enough to make it an object to a 
 good writer to attach himself to the concern. The unpaid 
 writers, since the editors want variety and the writers 
 the justification of their vanity, are migratory and appear 
 in the greatest number of periodicals possible. Accord- 
 ingly, it is not uncommon for a periodical to change 
 its opinion on men and things three or four times a year.'* 
 Out of all the benefits of an international copyright which 
 would enable editors to pay every contributor, he thought 
 that the greater homogeneousness which they could then 
 maintain was the chief. Considerations of common hon- 
 esty and of permitting a literature to be self-supporting 
 were less important than preserving the artistic and in- 
 tellectual integrity of a periodical! 
 
 A high-class magazine as the repository of opinions 
 to which it was not committed and for which the editor 
 assumed no responsibility was still far in the future. 
 Knick, as we have seen, had stoutly maintained but the 
 one opinion that it should express no opinions whatever; 
 and Harper's had followed suit. Putnam's did not long 
 exist to demonstrate its, at best, only partial adherence 
 to the doctrine that a magazine of high and national 
 tone might venture to voice ideas not held by the popular 
 
322 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 majority; other journals of free opinion and owning no 
 special allegiance, did not live long enough to disturb 
 the conviction that Knickerbocker had followed the only 
 safe path open to a literary magazine of general circu- 
 lation. Bulwarks of civilisation, like the North Ameri- 
 can, could shelter no poisonous or radical growths ; they 
 were supposed to endorse every doctrine they dissemi- 
 nated. Norton wrote to a friend when he and Lowell 
 took control of the magazine that they intended to secure 
 expression for the nation's clearest thought; but both of 
 them were thoroughly imbued with the prevalent editorial 
 notion that no thought was clear which they w^ere un- 
 willing to follow. Henry Adams and Henry Cabot 
 Lodge terminated their brief careers as editors of the 
 Review because the owners would not sponsor an incendi- 
 ary article in 1876 in favour of voting independently. 
 Yet Mr. Howells says that Adams imparted such amazing 
 life and go to the magazine that his predecessor Lowell 
 generously declared that the new editor was making the 
 old tea-kettle realise that it was of the same race as the 
 steam-engine. The vigour was entirely owing to the 
 occasional novelty of a radical opinion in the North 
 American. It was, indeed, because the magazine had 
 been made a monthly and could discuss questions while 
 they were still debatable and thereby provoke a clash of 
 opinion, that it became a live issue. Many subscribers 
 thought the pillars of society w^ere crumbling when the 
 rash Mr. Rice harboured the ravening Ingersoll in a tri- 
 angle discussion with Gladstone and Cardinal Manning, 
 upon the evidence for Christian belief. Perhaps it was 
 the spectacle of the North American being purchased 
 upon the news-stands by thousands of non-subscribers, 
 just as if it had been some casual and ordinary journal, 
 which made the first large dent in the editorial convic- 
 tion that a magazine was under the necessity of fathering 
 its children. Yet the Asylum idea, promulgated by the 
 American in 1743 and so long discarded, was by no means 
 resumed even in the newer journals. Some which an- 
 
MAGAZINE NOTIONS DEAD AND DYING 323 
 
 nounced that they intended to discuss ideas ran the nor- 
 mal course from radical to conservative as they became 
 established, the process being decidedly hastened by the 
 increasing shift of editorial concern from the subscriber 
 to the advertiser. The protestants often ended by being 
 as thoroughly " edited " as the partisans. Toward the 
 end of the century the great outbreak of the little maga- 
 zines came as a protest against the suppression on the 
 part of the established ones of all convictions which 
 were new. And, in general, protestant or partisan, if the 
 editor did not agree with the author, or did not care 
 to seem to do so, the latter might take his wares else- 
 where. Holmes in one of his later prefaces to the Auto- 
 crat comments upon the great change in the expressibility 
 of new opinions since the Atlantic articles first appeared: 
 " One may express his doubts upon anything now," he 
 says, " so long as one does it civilly." To this it should 
 be added, " and so long as one was a Holmes." The 
 condition was summed up by a member of The Contribu- 
 tors' Club in an Atlantic for 1900. 
 
 I know a periodical which counts its subscribers by hun- 
 dreds of thousands which will not risk the loss of a hundred by 
 printing an article, otherwise pronounced to be wholly satis- 
 factory, in which the doctrine of Evolution is assumed as true. 
 The editors, the directors, the very office-boys admit that doc- 
 trine; but there is a haunting fear of some shadowy subscriber 
 in the Middle West who might be offended. " The policy of 
 the office" is to be colourless. But to have literature or art, 
 you must have a basis of belief (whether the belief is right 
 or wrong) and belief has colour. It has been found — we have 
 brilliant instances of it among our great magazines — that 
 astonishingly useful work may be done inside of the most re- 
 stricted limits. When so much can be done and has been done 
 within these safe walls, why risk influence and power, says the 
 editor — for mere circulation is an immense power — by going 
 beyond them? The "safe" view is not calculated to foster 
 literature in its widest or in its best sense. 
 
 The Contributor's complaint is abundantly confirmed 
 in the lives and letters of authors. It had been the prac- 
 tice of both editors and publishers to preserve the ortho- 
 
324 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 doxy of their writers. Possibly no editor had ever gone 
 the length Holmes pictures in one of his Autocrat poems: 
 
 scowl howl scoflF sneer 
 
 Then a s mile, and a glass and a teast and a eheer 
 
 strychnine and whiskey, and ratsbane and beer 
 For all the good wine, and we've s omo of it here, 
 In cellar, in pantry, in attic, in hall, 
 Down, down, with the tyrant that masters us all! J 
 Lon g live the g^y servant that laugh s fop ^ ao qIH , 
 
 But with the editor's habit of allowing the author to 
 discover only in print the alterations which his conscience 
 or his policy or his preference demanded, there is no 
 reason why he should not have done so. In ante-bellum 
 days, editors had gone quite as far as in one direction 
 at least. Parke Godwin says it was the common practice 
 of publishers in the thirties and forties to mutilate im- 
 portant passages concerning slavery in the foreign works 
 they had appropriated. Even the Atlantic, then flying 
 the anti-slavery banner, walked a tight-rope. Lowell 
 wrote to Higginson in 1859, ^' Editorially I am a little 
 afraid of John Brown and Ticknor would be more so." 
 If the adults of Philadelphia were never allowed to come 
 upon the word " slavery " in their periodicals, the young- 
 sters of Boston were similarly shielded from mention of 
 another evil — it is said that one could never speak of 
 death in the pages of that phenomenally successful peri- 
 odical, the Youth's Companion. All the magazines in our 
 Victorian era had their forbidden topics in common and 
 each had its own in particular. Not only must the Young 
 Person be kept uncorrupted from the world but the sensi- 
 bilities of the old must not be shocked. Even the re- 
 formers, as we have so frequently seen, had rigorous 
 limitations of their own; or those who were not editors 
 encountered, in the periodicals which admitted them, a 
 definite dictum of So far shalt thou go and no farther. 
 Lowell, having so often refused to toe the mark as 
 contributor, insisted that Stedman do so; and Holland 
 himself anathematised for creating a confusion in the 
 
MAGAZINE NOTIONS DEAD AND DYING 325 
 
 realm of morals, sought in the Century to make Stedman 
 voice his own idea of the immorality of Whitman. In 
 1882 Curtis wrote to Norton: "I have resigned the 
 editorship of Harper's Weekly. My article upon Folger's 
 nomination, despite my request, was perverted and made 
 to misrepresent my views and to make me absolutely 
 ridiculous. The blow to me and to the good cause is 
 very great and not exactly retrievable. To-day I am 
 thought by every reader of the paper to be a futile fool. 
 The thing is so atrocious as to be comical.'* The Weekly 
 promptly confessed the mistake whereby the editorial 
 had been edited, and Curtis withdrew his resignation. 
 Gail Hamilton had often to defend her contributions to 
 preserve them from verbal alterations which she thought 
 damaged the integrity of her ideas. " I always lay out 
 my work by reducing my editors to subjection," she 
 wrote in 1887, having been on the crest of success long 
 enough to conduct aggressive warfare. " It is impossible 
 to accomplish anything so long as an editor is liable to 
 pop up at the critical moment with a will of his own; 
 when he is properly subjected, the rest is easy! " With 
 the " policy of the office " and the natural conservatism 
 of the periodicals of the nineteenth century, such an inde- 
 pendent and vigorous thinker as she must have frequently 
 collided. It is not improbable that every voicing of a 
 new idea in the entire century of magazines, represents 
 a compromise between author and editor. 
 
 That an author should be made to say other than he 
 believed or say it in a fashion other than he intended, is 
 a survival of the pontifical past of print. Charles Reade 
 in his Memoirs suggested the main reason for this when 
 he was polishing off the editor of Once a Week (London) 
 for tampering with his text. ** I have been obliged to 
 tell him that he must distinguish between anonymous 
 contributions and those in which an approved author 
 takes the responsibility of signing his own name. An- 
 swer — That with every wish to obhge me, he cannot 
 resign his editorial functions. Answer — That if he 
 
326 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 alters my text I will publicly disown his alteration in an 
 advertisement and send no more manuscript to the office. 
 On this he seems to be down on his luck a little. For he 
 confines himself to ending my last number on the feeblest 
 sentence he can find out, and begging me to end the tale 
 as soon as possible, which, of course, I shall not do to 
 oblige him. But all this makes me feel that I am a very 
 quarrelsome man or that some other authors must be 
 very spiritless ones. Is it not monstrous that a person 
 whose name does not appear should assume to alter the : 
 text of an approved author who signs his name?" i 
 
 Here is the situation all stated. Authors as a class 
 have been willing to make all concessions to editors to 
 get into print. Some of these concessions were in defer- 
 ence to what the editors thought the public would de- 
 mand, and some to what they themselves demanded. The 
 editor's fight for subscribers compelled him to preserve 
 the orthodoxy of his authors, but the author's desire for 
 publication need not have compelled him to yield to the 
 editor's exactions in matters of taste. In America, he j 
 did so in the earlier magazines because he knew the editor | 
 to be his superior; and when the time arrived that this j 
 was no longer the case, the editorial hab^it had been con- 
 tracted. But aside from this, the American editor seems 
 to have felt from the beginning that he belonged to a 
 more responsible class than the author, and continued, 
 perhaps unaware, the habit of treating him as " a rogue 
 and a vagabond " who should be grateful for slipping into 
 good society, even when the position had become some- 
 what reversed and the author was the more socially re- 
 sponsible person of the two. 
 
 In the history of our magazines one is struck with the 
 continuous arrogance of the editorial attitude, not only 
 in matters of opinion and taste but in property rights. 
 It was not merely that even the most scrupulous editors 
 made changes and asked permission after the articles had 
 appeared in print. But it seems to have been taken for 
 granted that the author voluntarily severed all connection 
 
MAGAZINE NOTIONS DEAD AND DYING 327 
 
 with his manuscript when he sent it to the office. If re- 
 jected, it was not returned or it was carved up for the 
 Editor's Table in anonymous sHces; if accepted, the 
 author need not be notified or paid or thanked, unless he 
 were important enough to deserve the unusual recogni- 
 tion. He had committed his offspring to a Charity 
 School, and should be thankful if it received lodging and 
 was clad in the uniform of the concern ; or he had handed 
 it over to a Finishing Institution where its deportment 
 was so corrected or its features so remoulded that " to 
 recognise one's own child again " on its reappearance 
 was considered flattering to the father. " The coolness 
 with which an editor would graciously accept an article 
 and print it without a word of thanks or a cent of pay- 
 ment," writes Congdon, " was even then irritating, though 
 we did not expect anything else. Now it would be re- 
 garded as a piece of swindHng." Congdon was writing 
 his reminiscences in 1880, yet at that time there were 
 plenty of lesser magazines still pursuing the tradition of 
 an editor's right to a submitted manuscript. Even now 
 there is no law against arbitrary editorial changes, and 
 some authors who have recognised their offspring with 
 indignation have appealed to the courts in vain. Notions 
 of literary property have now, it is true, become less con- 
 fused, and in some magazines even alteration in copy has 
 come to be regarded the dishonesty and impertinence it 
 really is. But this last seignorial right is dying hard. 
 And chiefly it would seem to be on account of the spirit- 
 lessness of authors of which Reade speaks. Sufferance 
 had too long been the badge of all their tribe and they had 
 too often informed the editor that it would be considered 
 a favour to print. " The favour of giving room and 
 circulation to a man's ideas," said the Mirror in 1844, '* is 
 growing now into a salable commodity — the editor even 
 charges rent for his columns instead of hiring a tenant." 
 The custom of editorial alterations in America is a 
 heritage from the days when an editor's chief business 
 was to provide his own material, other material being. 
 
328 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 entirely lacking or being furnished by writers frankly 
 inexperienced. To prune and patch whatever manu- 
 scripts came in at that unplentiful period was a step 
 necessary to the generally anonymous publication, quite 
 aside from the editor's own particular tastes and whimsies 
 or the policy of the magazine. But apparently editors 
 became fastidious just as soon as they could afford to 
 be, and began to impose their own notions of perfection 
 upon the material of their contributors. Theophilus 
 Parsons of the United States Literary Gazette wrote to 
 Longfellow in 1824: " I think you will not be offended 
 by my sincerity in saying that while all the pieces you 
 have sent me would be creditable to any journal, they 
 are susceptible of improvement, from alterations calcu- 
 lated not to supply deficiencies but to remove imperfec- 
 tions." The next month he is writing, obviously in re- 
 sponse to a remonstrance, " Some of my alterations please 
 me now no better than they please you." Theophilus 
 Parsons never demonstrated his right to give directions 
 to Longfellow; but Bryant, editor of the New York 
 Review, was in a more assured position when he altered 
 the poems of R. H. Dana. Yet perhaps the length to 
 which he felt himself entitled to go and the fact that he 
 published first and then asked permission, may both indi- 
 cate how much remained of the editor's notion of his 
 prerogative when his earlier necessities no longer existed. 
 " You will see in a copy of our magazine which I send 
 you that I have changed your crow to a raven. I do 
 not know that you will like the metamorphosis but it is 
 a change only in the title." Here, because of a pseudo- 
 poetic preference for an English word of hallowed usage 
 and without even being able to plead metrical considera- 
 tions, he converted some homely and accurate observa- 
 tions about a crow into a pointless misfit. A little later, 
 he Bryantised another of Dana's poems. "As you 
 seemed to give me leave to make alterations, I have taken 
 the liberty. But I found it impossible to alter two lines 
 which would not agree in measure without altering several 
 
MAGAZINE NOTIONS DEAD AND DYING 329 
 
 of the neighbouring lines. I have also ventured to make 
 some changes where the sentences were continued from 
 one couplet to another ; and in other cases where I thought 
 the idea not sufficiently brought out, I have taken the 
 liberty to simplify it a little. But you will see all the 
 mutilations I have made when you receive the journal." 
 Many letters of the same nature he wrote to Dana; and 
 what was going on in the case of Dana was the fate of all 
 the poems he admitted to the New York Review. They 
 were all less or more adapted by Bryant from the authors 
 who had written them. 
 
 Holmes, who filed his poetry to the last degree before 
 it left the workshop and who could not have failed to 
 know himself the most careful artisan in America, felt 
 particularly aggrieved by the editorial function. He 
 wrote to James Freeman Clarke in 1836: "The four 
 things were all published in the American Monthly, and 
 when I found one of my offspring alterated and mutilated 
 in the magazine, I determined not to write any more at 
 present. 
 
 What care I though the dust is spread 
 
 Around these yellow leaves, 
 Or o'er them his sarcastic thread 
 
 Oblivion's insect weaves. 
 
 My pet expression in the two last-quoted lines was 
 changed by the New York editor on his own responsi- 
 bility into * Or o'er them his corroding thread,' which 
 occasioned much indignation on my part and a refusal 
 to write until he would promise to keep hands off." He 
 was sending a poem to Clarke for his Western magazine, 
 and added, " if you print, print correctly." He says he 
 was as much harassed by the carelessness of printers and 
 proof-readers as he was by the pains of the editorial staff 
 to improve his work. On one occasion when he sent a 
 poem in his neat precise handwriting, he wrote to the 
 editor : " Poems are rarely printed correctly in news- 
 papers. This is the reason why so many poets die young. 
 Please correct carefully." To Griswold on Graham's he 
 
330 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 wrote with the manuscript : " Do you want my poem ? 
 If so, what will you give me for it? And can it be pub- 
 lished in your magazine word for word, letter for letter, 
 comma for comma?" In later hfe he had no occasion 
 to complain of unauthorised alterations, yet he had ap- 
 parently no illusions as to the reason for his immunity. 
 *' My Dear Young Lady," runs a letter in 1892, " As 
 to your literary questions, I do not see how you can help 
 yourself if an editor alters your papers, except by be- 
 coming so important to him that you make it a condition 
 of publishing your articles that they shall not in any 
 way be tampered with. I remember writing an article 
 for the North American Review many years ago in which 
 the editor claimed his editorial right to change things to 
 suit himself, and altered just one word, — for the worse. 
 I submitted. Long afterwards, when the article was re- 
 printed, I altered it back again as it was at first. I be- 
 Heve editors do claim that right until their contributors 
 get too important to be interfered with, and I think all 
 you would get by complaining would be to find the door 
 of that particular periodical closed against you." 
 
 It is amusing to recall that Willis, doubtless the mutila- 
 ter of a million manuscripts ( for most of which he paid 
 nothing), violently quarrelled with his co-editor Morris 
 because the latter had altered his punctuation. Willis, 
 who thought that he had emancipated notions of that 
 inexact science, wrote once to a printer, " If I insert a 
 comma in the middle of a word, do you place it there 
 and ask no questions." Both Leland and Lowell took 
 themselves very seriously as arbiters of taste. Said 
 Leland in 1857 in a letter to Griswold, the former occu- 
 pant of his editorial chair on Graham's: " I have found 
 out that by editing such an affair conscientiously and 
 properly, one can do a great deal toward improving the 
 tone and quality of popular writing — that a literary 
 editor can in fact do as much as several school masters, 
 so far as teaching the art of writing is concerned. It is 
 really a matter of regret to see that so many editors seem 
 
MAGAZINE NOTIONS DEAD AND DYING 331' 
 
 to care so little for this, or in fact for anything but them- 
 selves." In 1858, Lowell wrote to Norton about editing 
 the Atlantic: " I cannot stand the worry of it much 
 longer without a lieutenant. To have questions of style, 
 grammar, and punctuation in other people's articles to 
 decide, while I want all my concentration for what I am 
 writing myself — to have added to this, personal appeals 
 from ill-mannered correspondents whose articles have 
 been declined, to attend to — to sit at work sometimes 
 fifteen hours a day, as I have done lately — makes me 
 very nervous, takes away my pluck, compels my neglect- 
 ing my friends, and induces the old fits of blues. To be 
 editor is almost as bad as being President." He had 
 written to Higginson concerning the insertion of one 
 word, an insertion which he thought would be more 
 diplomatic, " I never allow any personal notions of mine 
 to interfere, except in cases of obvious obscurity, bad 
 taste, or bad grammar." He thought he was adhering 
 to the same ideals when he came to edit the North Ameri- 
 can, but in 1866 he was writing to Stedman: " We do 
 not ask that our contributors should always agree with us 
 — except in politics ; of course, there, the Review must be 
 consistent. But otherwise anybody who has ideas is 
 thrice welcome." Stedman must have been amused when 
 some months later he wrote about this same article : " I 
 shall take the liberty to make a verbal change here and 
 there, such as I am sure you would agree to could we 
 talk the matter over. I think, for example, you speak 
 rather too well of young Lytton, whom I regard both as 
 an impostor and as an antinomian heretic. Swinburne 
 I must modify a little, as you will see, to make the Rcviezv 
 consistent with itself. But you need not be afraid of not 
 knowing your own child again." Lowell would have 
 been genuinely surprised to hear that a later generation 
 would regard such alterations, " to make the Review con- 
 sistent with itself " and with Lowell, not only as de- 
 priving personal opinions of all value and interest, but as 
 dishonest. 
 
332 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 The Atlantic sanctum in its authoritative days always 
 wielded a busy blue pencil. Higginson says that at a 
 period when he used to spend days and weeks on single 
 sentences, he would find his careful composition hashed 
 by the editor. " I wish to be understood as giving a 
 suppressed but audible growl/' he wrote to Underwood, 
 " at the chopping knife which made minced meat of my 
 sentences. It is something new. I don't think I tend 
 to such very long sentences ; and it isn't pleasant to think 
 that they belong to such a low order of organisation that 
 they can be chopped in the middle and each half wriggle 
 away independently." Higginson polished his prose as 
 assiduously as Holmes did his verse ; and the corrections 
 made in his manuscript were prescribed merely by a dif- 
 ference of taste and not by any considerations of nicety 
 and clarity, as was the case with the shaggy and crude 
 sentences of Mrs. Stowe. These, Mr. Howells said, had 
 almost an appalling correctness by the time he had finished 
 with them. And, too, Mrs. Stowe was quite conscious 
 of the raw chunks in which her careless writing was pro- 
 jected and never minded any amount of carving to make 
 them presentable, being anxious only about the ideas and 
 the emotion which she felt herself to be merely a mouth- 
 piece for. Fields emphatically believed that an editor 
 should be a refining force. Some correspondence with 
 Stedman on the subject of the latter' s most famous poem 
 is interesting. Fields wrote to Stedman : " Bravo ! Pan 
 in Wall Street couldn't be better. In the line, * Though 
 pants he wore of mongrel hue,' I hope you will substitute 
 the word trousers — pants being a word below the rank 
 of so excellent a piece." Stedman answered Fields: 
 " Pants is an American vulgarism and no mistake — but 
 you are a poet yourself, and if you'll just try to alter 
 that stanza with anything else to preserve the effect, 
 you'll appreciate the exigencies of the case. Pants may 
 be tolerated when you recollect that Pan is in a Yankee 
 street and guise, and observed by a Yankee — but choose 
 according to your judgment (which I most sincerely re- 
 
MAGAZINE NOTIONS DEAD AND DYING 333 
 
 spect)." Fields had his way. Stedman may well have 
 remembered the episode when he wrote in 1874 to 
 Howells, then the editor of the Atlantic: " You know 
 I can write correct, finished, aesthetic sonnets and qua- 
 trains — can do it every day, but am tired of such work. 
 Don't you think we bookmen, as editors, might profit by 
 Browning's line, * He o'er-refines — the scholar's fault ' ? 
 I don't believe that either you or I would have printed 
 The Heathen Chinee, coming from an unknown author; 
 it is so very different from the polished level of Miss 
 Hunt, Mrs. Thaxter etc. Yet it would have been a 
 good thing to print." 
 
 If Stedman's employment of " pants " in a poem grated 
 on the fastidiousness of Fields, one may imagine the long 
 row-royal of the robust Mark Twain with his editors. 
 To escape explosion he once let off steam in a letter which 
 he wrote but did not send. Through the corrections, 
 paragraph by paragraph, he went. " Do you think that 
 you have added just the right smear of polish to the 
 closing clause of the sentence? Plain clarity is better 
 than ornate obscurity. I have not concerned myself 
 about feelings, but only about stating the facts. Else- 
 where I have said several uncourteous things, but you 
 have been so busy editing commas and semi-colons that 
 you overlooked them and failed to get scared at them. 
 It is discouraging to try to penetrate a mind like yours. 
 You ought to get it out and dance on it. That would 
 take some of the rigidity out of it. And you ought to 
 use it sometimes ; that would help. If you had done this 
 every now and then along through life, it would not have 
 petrified. You really must get your mind out and have 
 it repaired; you see for yourself that it is all caked to- 
 gether. * Breaking a lance ' is a knightly and sumptuous 
 phrase, and I honour it for its hoary age and for the 
 faithful service it has done in the prize composition of the 
 school-girl, but I have ceased from employing it since I 
 got my puberty, and must solemnly object to fathering 
 it here." Some time afterwards Mr. S. S. McClure had 
 
334 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 a project to start a magazine with Mark Twain as editor. 
 In a letter setting forth his determination that he would 
 not have anything to do with a magazine that intended 
 to be comic, he added : " I shall write for this magazine 
 every time the spirit moves me ; but I look for my largest 
 entertainment in editing. I have been edited by all kinds 
 of people for more than thirty-eight years; there has 
 always been somebody in authority over my manuscript 
 and privileged to improve it; this has fatigued me a 
 good deal, and I have often longed to move up from the 
 dock to the bench and rest myself and fatigue others. My 
 opportunity has come, but I hope I shall not abuse it 
 overmuch. I mean to do my best to make a good maga- 
 zine; I mean to do my whole duty and not shirk any 
 part of it. There are plenty of distinguished artists, 
 novelists, poets, story-tellers, philosophers, scientists, ex- 
 plorers, fighters, hunters, followers of the sea and seekers 
 of adventure; and with these to do the hard and valuable 
 part of the work with the pen and the pencil, it will be a 
 comfort and joy to me to walk the quarter-deck and 
 superintend." 
 
 Mark's enthusiasm fizzled out entirely when he found 
 that as well as sitting in judgment upon the work of 
 others he was expected to sit at an editorial desk and 
 superintend all the practical details of getting out a 
 magazine. And this brings us to another reason for 
 editorial alterations. 
 
 The architectural exactions of magazines, with their 
 practical problem of space, have necessarily made editors 
 pragmatists. The last-moment requirements of make-up 
 have often been less flexible than the conscience called 
 upon to meet them. Into the Procrustes bed of the 
 available inches all articles must be fitted. Doubtless 
 they have been lopped oftener than lengthened, but 
 authors have complained of filling as well as of filing. 
 A contemporary magazine which eschews verse has an 
 inalterable law that an article must be made to end at 
 the bottom of the page. The serviceability of verse to 
 
MAGAZINE NOTIONS DEAD AND DYING 335 
 
 patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw was early recog- 
 nised. Possibly that was the reason, as much as the 
 equally prudent humanitarian one, why the early maga- 
 zines so soon gave up the habit of printing all their verse 
 in a department at the end. In the matter of stanzas 
 The Lord High Executioner appears often to have made 
 the punishment fit the crime, even to the extent of boiling 
 in oil. Not all poets were treated with the consideration 
 given to Stedman when Fields wrote him, " I will print 
 your poem so soon as I find a niche for it." The eternal 
 predicament which makes the editor a space-server found 
 a unique remonstrant in the person of John Hay ; yet novel 
 as the situation was, the author's accusation of unintelli- 
 gent condensation was the customary one. For four 
 years the Century had been printing the Hay-Nicolay 
 Lincoln. Most people thought the magazine had been 
 more than generous in allotting space for the series of 
 forty articles; and Hay heartily agreed with them, al- 
 though it utilised only a third of the mammoth work. 
 " I see," he wrote, " the Century folks have whacked 
 about all the life out of the November instalment. But I 
 approve every excision large or small that brings us nearer 
 the end. My complaint is that they are printing too 
 much. As it is, they cut out about every third para- 
 graph, • destroying the significance of a chapter without 
 gaining materially in space. I avoid calling there when 
 I go to New York, as our interviews are invariably dis- 
 agreeable." 
 
 In his autobiography Mr. S. S. McClure, while he 
 takes on the one hand a very temperate position about 
 editorial infallibility, shows on the other an unshaken 
 confidence in the editor's right to insist upon changes. 
 Professional readers for magazines, he says, become in 
 time the victims of their own taste and successes, and the 
 absolutely open mind is rare with them. Yet he appar- 
 ently refused to allow other editors to consult the exigen- 
 cies of space — admittedly an impersonal necessity con- 
 fronting an editor — while he himself was exercising his 
 
S36 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 editorial function in a matter of opinion. " I told Steven- 
 son I would publish The Black Arrow (for the News- 
 paper Syndicate) if he would let me omit the first five 
 chapters. He readily consented to this. Like all writers 
 of the first rank, he was perfectly amiable about changes, 
 and was not handicapped by the superstition that his 
 words were sacrosanct. I never knew a really great 
 writer who cherished his phrases or was afraid of losing 
 a few of them. First-rate men always have plenty more. 
 Only writers of inferior talent and meagre equipment feel 
 they are lowering the flag if they consent to any changes 
 in their manuscript." Thus does Mr. McClure astutely 
 muzzle all barkers. Object to my changes, says he, and 
 confess yourself second-rate. Yet it is interesting to 
 note that if the editors accepting his syndicate service 
 had had their way, every one of the first twelve Sherlock 
 Holmes stories would have been trimmed — especially 
 as it was not until the entire series had been published 
 that the stories really caught on with the public. 
 
 As the century drew to a close, entered another disturb- 
 ing element. With the exploitation of advertising, the 
 magazine author's path grew more straightened still. 
 This phase of the editorial function is ticklish in the ex- 
 treme and one may not rashly venture upon it, either 
 with wise saws or with modern instances. Of these lat- 
 ter they are plenty, and some that are more amazing than 
 fiction; but the prudent historian does not walk into a 
 beehive. 
 
 Even theoretically, the problem is acutely complicated. 
 Certainly, it is too much to ask of breakable bones that 
 an editor deliberately saw off the bough he is sitting on. 
 His once haunting fear of the man in the Middle West 
 has been largely supplanted by his fear of the man in the 
 back-districts of his own periodical. As long as editor 
 and advertiser are agreed on basic principles, it is plain 
 sailing. There shall be no free advertising in the literary 
 pages, and nothing paid for at space rates in the advertis- 
 ing columns ought to be attacked in the literary ones, 
 
MAGAZINE NOTIONS DEAD AND DYING 337 
 
 either explicitly or by implication. These two would 
 seem to constitute a simple and definite rule of thumb; 
 but unfortunately the thumbs are all fingers. The rub 
 lies in the implications and here is infinite room for mis- 
 chief. And here the scribe resolutely shuts up his 
 drawer of facts and launches boldly upon frank extrava- 
 ganza. 
 
 Let us imagine that Dr. X. has discovered that tuber- 
 culosis is spread by insanitary handkerchiefs and longs 
 to inform an afflicted world of his incalculable discovery 
 by means of its periodical of widest circulation. The 
 editor agrees with him and scents a double edition. 
 " Publish ! " cry the handkerchief-makers elate. " It 
 means more handkerchiefs ! " But hold, the doctor wishes 
 to substitute thin sheets of sulphuretted asbestos. " Pub- 
 lish and we withdraw our advertisement ! " they chorus 
 as one man. Meanwhile, all the advertising sanatoria 
 have prepared a protest. *' The linen handkerchief is the 
 symbol of civilisation itself! What will become of the 
 laundresses? How dare the editor gratuitously exploit 
 the asbestos industry? Let him recollect that there are 
 a hundred advertising sanatoria to one asbestos plant, 
 and he will see that even a quadrupled edition will not 
 repay him for the loss of their insertions year in and 
 year out ! " Meanwhile, too, a council is instantly called 
 by the Cotton Planters Association. A silly doctor, it 
 seems, thinks he has discovered that handkerchiefs are 
 responsible for the spread of tuberculosis and the nosey 
 magazines will soon be wanting to feature him.. If there 
 are to be no linen handkerchiefs, what will become of 
 the broad cotton-fields of the South! He must be kept 
 from disseminating his perfectly fallacious theories. 
 But now the Asbestos Trust, formed over night at the 
 prospect of a limitless market, waits upon the editor — 
 reinforced by the Sulphur Trust, which has also grasped 
 the fact that sulphur will now enter a million homes 
 denied to it before. Together they demand that the edi- 
 tor give widest publicity to a discovery so priceless to 
 
338 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 humanity, or they will back a competing periodical on a 
 larger scale than ever before attempted and run him out 
 of business. Even Mark Twain might be moved to pity 
 by the predicament of the poor editor. 
 
 But positive implications are not the only sources of 
 trouble; there are negative implications also. The sensi- 
 tiveness of advertisers to all literature but their own is 
 daily increasing. It has occasioned many delicate dis- 
 criminations, and will occasion many more. (Here, too, 
 the prudent historian must discard his facts and resort to 
 extravaganza.) Paste-um (Please observe, this is a fic- 
 titious name — there really is no such article ! ) may pro- 
 claim in the most pointed terms the injuriousness of 
 coffee, yet no writer may confess to one heart-beat the 
 less through indulgence in the cup that cheers but ener- 
 vates, without protest from coffee firms. No heroine 
 may proudly voice the superiority of hot-water heating 
 over steam, as do the ladies in the advertising pages, or 
 shyly confide to her future lord that she will fry with 
 clean cotton-seed oil instead of that nasty lard. This 
 is all a part of that mysterious moral discrimination ex- 
 hibited in wider realms, — by which, for instance, ob- 
 scenities in prose become sanctities in verse, or things 
 winked at in musical shows become blinked at in prob- 
 lem plays, or the ubiquitous union-suits of Commerce 
 become Comstocked in art. But the discrimination 
 though inexplicable is at least definite, and if one may 
 not know what is what, he may at least memorise the 
 where and when. Since psychology has become the hand- 
 maiden of business, however, advertisers are ceasing to 
 be content to move in the old rut of simple prohibitions 
 in the literary pages of magazines. An ounce of free 
 suggestion is now seen to outweigh a pound of precept 
 at space rates. Judged from a broad viewpoint, the re- 
 fusal of heroines of high-class fiction to chew gum is 
 damaging to the vested interests of some of our most 
 prodigal advertisers ; and authors must not be allowed to 
 restrict the healthful habit to sales-ladies and office-boys. 
 
MAGAZINE NOTIONS DEAD AND DYING 339 
 
 Why should not the thousand cereal-foods unite in a 
 common demand that no hero eat eggs for breakfast? — 
 the hen does not advertise. All this is only a fancy pic- 
 ture — but if it be not now, yet it will come ; the readiness 
 is all. 
 
 This may, however, be for the best in the long run. 
 As advertisers have made our numerous magazines pos- 
 sible, it may perhaps yet be owing to their sensitiveness 
 and their widening vision that we shall reach final edi- 
 torial emancipation from the fetich of editorial responsi- 
 bility. Editors will find it physically impossible to figure 
 out for themselves the manifold chances in each manu- 
 script for possible disturbance to the hair-trigger mecha- 
 nism of commerce, and after a time they will find it equally 
 impossible to have each manuscript viseed by their entire 
 advertising constituency and decide between the con- 
 flicting claims. Perhaps advertising, a Moses unaware, 
 will yet lead out of the land of bondage the magazine 
 which has done so much to promote. It is well to take 
 a hopeful view. For this retrospect into the history of 
 editorial responsibility must have demonstrated how 
 firmly fixed is the notion in the editorial mind. Not 
 until the editor is rigidly edited by the advertiser does 
 it seem that it can be uprooted. 
 
 What with alterations of editors for aesthetic reasons, 
 for moral reasons, for their own commercial reasons, and 
 for the commercial reasons of advertisers, the periodical 
 writers of the nineteenth century have continuously quav- 
 ered one song, " Change and decay in all around I see," 
 and unanimously longed for the editor that changed not. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE END OF THE CENTURY 
 
 The end of a century is undoubtedly society's most self- 
 conscious period. (Just watch next time and see if there 
 is not something about it that goes to the head!) It is 
 to movements what New Year's Day preceded by Watch 
 Night used to be to good Methodists — a time for retro- 
 spect, for self-searching, and for good resolutions. One 
 looks before and after and pines for what is not. 
 Whether a new broom sweeps clean or not depends upon 
 the sweeper, but certainly it will always whisk up more 
 dust. Then, too, the periodic discussion arising at this 
 date as to just when the century ends only prolongs the 
 crisis; it does not dissipate the excitement it produces. 
 Just as some little boys take a month in getting ready for 
 Christmas and a month in recovering from it, so society 
 has a period of shake-up and shake-down in the closing 
 decade of the old and the opening decade of the new 
 century. It is perhaps fortunate that it comes no oftener 
 than once in a hundred years. 
 
 So it proved in the history of American magazines. 
 In this period two hundred and fifty thousand regular 
 monthly buyers of periodicals became two millions, and 
 the reader of one magazine became the devoted devourer 
 of half a dozen and more. We are not, however, so 
 much concerned with his New Year resolutions as with the 
 various factors which caused him to make them. Chief 
 of all (how horrid to find it was nothing more spiritual !) 
 was their new cheapness. The honour for bringing this 
 about was afterwards hotly contested, and Mr. Walker 
 of the Cosmopolitan always maintained that his plans 
 
 340 
 
THE END OF THE CENTURY 341 
 
 were betrayed by a printer (as Benjamin Franklin claimed 
 his had been with the first magazine) to Mr. McClure 
 and to Mr. Munsey. Thus the record reads at any rate : 
 McCltire's Magazine appeared May 28, 1893, at fifteen 
 cents a copy; the Cosmopolitan in July at twelve and a 
 half; Munsey's in September at ten cents. As of these 
 three, Mr. Frank A. Munsey was first in the publishing 
 field, let us take his story up first. Here is an abstract 
 of it, as he delivered it in a speech at a dinner given to 
 his staff in 1907, the twenty-fifth anniversary of his 
 entrance into the magazine world. 
 
 The Argosy, a juvenile weekly, began life in December, 1S82. 
 I had four thousand dollars in prospect and forty dollars in 
 cash; one room for an office, an eight-dollar table, two wooden 
 chairs, and an ink-bottle. My plans had all gone wrong, and I 
 was lucky to find, at last, a publisher who agreed to bring it out 
 and retain me as editor and manager. It failed in five months. 
 I borrowed three hundred dollars; and as editor, advertising 
 manager, office-boy, and chief contributor, I began to try to 
 pump life into it. It had made its regular appearance for some 
 years before I could procure any credit with which to advertise. 
 Then I spent in five months ninety-five thousand dollars in ad- 
 vertising it. All the while writing at midnight my six thou- 
 sand words a week. Success came, or rather what I thought 
 was success until I found out my mistake ; but beyond a certain 
 point I could not lift the circulation. I assumed that the trou- 
 ble was with a juvenile publication ; and decided to demonstrate 
 it by getting into the adult class. Consequently I started, early 
 in 1889, Mimsey's Weekly, the predecessor of the magazine. It 
 lasted two and a half years and lost over one hundred thousand 
 dollars. I made up my mind that a weekly was " a dead cock 
 in the pit." There are a few successes to-day, but I think they 
 are accounted for by the activity and fertility of the business 
 office rather than by a genuine and spontaneous circulation. 
 The weekly paper, once so great a feature in American publish- 
 ing business, began to decline with the incoming of the big 
 Sunday newspaper; where there is no Sunday newspaper in 
 Europe, the weekly still thrives. After many experiments with 
 the make-up of the Argosy, I had concluded that nothing would 
 save it and that it must be moulded on other lines. I have 
 never thought it terrible to change a publication as often as con- 
 ditions warranted, or to make the change as radical as I pleased. 
 I did not know yet what to do with the Argosy, but in 1891 
 I changed Munsey's Weekly into Munsey's Magazine. The 
 
342 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 < ■/ / \ 
 
 change of a worthless weekly into a monthly may not seem 
 much, but it was this change which made the magazine the 
 leading factor in modern publishing. I launched it at twenty- 
 five cents and at this price ran it for two years, while I studied 
 the problem why out of eighty millions of people there were 
 not over two hundred and fifty thousand magazine buyers. Was 
 the Sunday paper crushing the life out of the monthlies as well 
 as the weeklies? I began to analyse the magazines. They 
 seemed made for ansemics and their editors editing fdr them- 
 selves and not for their subscribers. Living in an artificial 
 literary world, they got out publications which wofuUy lacked 
 human interest. On the other hand, the Sunday newspapers 
 appealed to everybody; and their price was five cents against 
 five and seven times that for the magazines. The several at- 
 tempts to float cheaper ones had been only weak copies of the 
 old kind. I became convinced that both the price and the 
 magazines were wrong for a wide circulation. If a magazine 
 should be published at tein cents, and made light, bright, and 
 timely, it might be a different story. I worked out my idea 
 and took it to the American News Company. They did not 
 relish it, said the scheme did not leave them a sufficient margin 
 of profit for handling it. The price they finally offered was so 
 low it would have throttled me. No one had ever succeeded in 
 circulating a magazine over their heads, but I decided to try it. 
 I would deal directly with the newsdealers of the country. No 
 human being except myself believed I could win out. I had no 
 money and men with plenty of it had failed. But I thought 
 that it wasn't money "which would win the fight, but the idea 
 of giving the people what they wanted and giving it to them 
 at the right price. God only knows how I managed it ; I don't. 
 I sent out ten thousand circulars to newsdealers telling them of 
 the change to ten cents and telling them that they could not get 
 the magazine through the News Company. I asked them to 
 send their orders direct to me. I hoped and expected there 
 would be orders. None came. Then the American News Com- 
 pany called on me and held out the olive branch. When I had 
 been negotiating with them, I had told them they could have 
 the magazine at six and a half cents; but when they had kept 
 silence for three weeks, I advanced the price to seven. What 
 had caused them to call upon me was this new price and some- 
 thing I never suspected. They had received orders from the 
 whole ten thousand dealers ! I had an edition of twenty thou- 
 sand and no visible means of distributing it, but I refused the 
 price they now offered. They must come to my terms. As the 
 day of issue swept nearer, my tension increased to the break- 
 ing-point. But that issue was distributed in ten days, and I 
 doubled it before the month was up ! In the issue I had begun 
 
THE END OF THE CENTURY 343 
 
 those "plain talks to the people," now so customary; and I 
 had something to talk about. Six months afterwards, I changed 
 the Argosy to an adult magazine — its fifth change in eleven 
 years. But it had one more change to undergo. In 1896 it 
 became an all-fiction magazine, a type which it created and 
 which has since become one of the most successful in the field. 
 It became the second largest magazine in the world in point of 
 circulation and of earning power. Munsey's is the first (1907). 
 My six magazines — or rather seven, as one is issued in two 
 sections — are all the result of my analysis of the situation in 
 1893. If there has been any luck about it, I do not know where 
 it comes in. It was a fight all along the line. 
 
 Fortunate, too, is the historian in having, to fall back 
 upon, Mr. S. S. McClure's own account of his activities. 
 These summarise a period of expansion and revolution 
 which makes, by contrast, the mild innovation of the 
 journals of Opinion seem but the first faint stirrings of 
 life and all previous circulations but premonitory ripples 
 of a great flood. 
 
 For three summers, Mr. McClure says in his auto- 
 biography, he peddled coffee-pots in the Middle West, 
 and gained thereby a very close acquaintance with the 
 people of the small towns and the farming communi- 
 ties — the people who afterwards bought McClure's 
 Magazine. All these people, he found, were interested 
 in exactly the same things or the same kind of things 
 that interested him. Thus, in after years, he had little 
 sympathy with the distinction made by some editors — 
 " This or that was very good, but it wouldn't interest 
 the people of the Middle West or of the small towns." 
 These, like the people of New York or Boston, were in- 
 terested in whatever was interesting; and as he felt him- 
 self to be a fairly representative Middle-Westerner, they 
 would be interested in whatever interested him. His 
 associate-editor, Mr. John Phillips, and his business- 
 manager had both been on a college paper with him in 
 Illinois ; and thus it may be admitted that the Ohio Valley 
 would not regard the new magazine as an exotic. 
 
 The Century he thought was typographically far and 
 away the best American periodical, and when he came to 
 
344 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 get out the Wheelman for the Pope Manufacturing Com- 
 pany, it much resembled a thinner edition of his ideal. 
 After a while Colonel Pope decided to buy the Outing 
 and merge his periodical into it, and Mr. McClure thought 
 the combination wouldn't work very well for him. He 
 left and went into the Century office, then the uttermost 
 limit of his ambition. But here one day he had a higher 
 vision. A newspaper syndicate service was in the air 
 at the time — indeed, the New York Sun had already 
 made a tentative experiment in that direction — and Mr. 
 McClure worked out a plan for one. When he started 
 to put it into operation, he found the editors as cool about 
 the project as the authors had been warm. Finally, 
 however, he persuaded several important newspapers to 
 take the service, of stories and articles^ at eight dollars 
 a week. For a long time after he inaugurated it, his 
 actual capital was the money he owed authors. The older 
 editors regarded the project with some anxiety — they 
 all believed that there would never be any new magazines 
 in the world, that Harper's and Century and the Atlantic 
 would consume all the stories that would ever be written 
 in America, and consequently there would not be enough 
 to go around if he went on using them up in his syndicate. 
 It was about eight years after he had founded the busi- 
 ness that he began seriously to consider founding a maga- 
 zine. The success of the Ladies' Home Journal at ten 
 cents made him think a cheap popular magazine might 
 thrive ; and the new development of photo-engraving had 
 *^just made such a scheme feasible. The impregnability 
 of the older magazines was largely due to the costliness 
 of wood-engraving. Only an established publication with 
 a large working capital could afford illustrations made 
 by that process. The Century, when he was working 
 for it, used to spend something like five thousand dollars 
 a month on its engraving alone. Not only was the new 
 process vastly cheaper but it enabled a publisher to make 
 pictures directly from photographs which were cheap, 
 instead of drawings which were expensive. 
 
THE END OF THE CENTURY 345 
 
 Early in 1892, Mr. McClure continues, he and Mr. 
 Phillips began active plans to launch a new fifteen cent 
 monthly. After eight years of the hardest kind of work 
 in the syndicate business, he was only $2,800 ahead; 
 important rivals had appeared, and the only practical 
 expansion v^as in the direction of a magazine. Their en- 
 tire capital was $7,300. But in place of capital, they 
 had a great fund of material to draw from. The maga- 
 zine at first was to be made entirely of reprints of the 
 most successful stories and articles that had been used in 
 the Syndicate, and for a year or two it would have to live 
 on what profits the Syndicate afforded. 
 
 The outlook was not promising, but it proved worse 
 than he feared. For just before the first number came 
 the great panic. They could collect no money from the 
 newspapers for their service ; and in the general cut-down 
 of running expenses everywhere, a luxury like stories and 
 articles was one of the first things the newspapers dis- 
 pensed with. Of the twenty thousand copies printed for 
 the first number, twelve thousand were returned to them. 
 The eight thousand they sold netted them only $600, 
 and the paper and printing had cost thousands. Then the 
 next month another woe trod upon" the heels of the first. 
 The Cosmopolitan cut to twelve and a half cents, two and 
 a half under McC I lire's. They had reckoned that it 
 might be a year before another cheap magazine came into 
 the field. Nevertheless, though always on the edge of 
 failure, they got through the hard winter somehow. The 
 next summer they were losing a thousand a month. By 
 cutting the text from niney-six to eighty-eight pages and 
 reducing the size of the illustrations, they reduced the loss 
 somewhat ; but all the while they were slipping back. 
 
 In this crisis Conan Doyle, Miss Ida Tarbell, and Na- 
 poleon tided them over. The first volunteered to lend 
 them some money, and the second wrote a life of the third. 
 The year 1894 was a Napoleon year; the Century had 
 announced Professor Sloan's Life of Napoleon; the 
 Cosmopolitan soon joined the combat; and Mr. McClure 
 
346 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 commissioned Miss Tarbell overnight to run down to 
 Washington and whip up a biography to go with a re- 
 markable collection of portraits he had found there. Miss 
 Tarbell had just written, in Paris, her careful studies of 
 the life of Madame Roland, and knew the period. The 
 Middle West proved more interested in the stop-gap than 
 in the Century's Life which had been some years in mak- 
 ing ; and it doubled the circulation of McClnre's within a 
 few months. But Miss Tarbell as a circulation-maker 
 was only just flexing her capable fingers. Quite as 
 casually and quickly, Mr. McClure decided that some new 
 portraits she had found of Lincoln needed a frame- 
 work, and she winnowed the interested Middle West for 
 anecdotal material. Napoleon had brought their sub- 
 scribers from forty to eighty thousand ; Lincoln increased 
 them from one hundred and twenty in August, 1895, 
 to two hundred and fifty in December. Thus in thirty 
 months they reached a circulation in excess of the Cen- 
 tury, Harper's, and Scrihner's; and soon they were to be 
 greater than all three combined. The only fly in their 
 ointment was the old advertising rate. With their in- 
 creased circulation, they were losing four thousand dollars 
 a month. Peace hath its defeats the same as war ! But 
 in 1896 they had changed all that, and were clearing five 
 thousand a month. 
 
 Reviewing the earlier history of the magazine, Mr. 
 
 r McClure thinks that the intimate and human note which 
 
 / - went straight to the Middle West heart was struck in the 
 
 / very first number. The Real Conversations — in which 
 
 j distinguished persons interviewed distinguished persons 
 
 — and the Human Documents — in which the portraits of 
 
 V the (same proceeded by consecutive stages from the cradle 
 
 ^--to the grave — converted, for the Middle West, mere 
 
 names into near neighbours. Their popular science 
 
 articles, he thinks, were of a more serious nature than 
 
 those in any preceding magazine. The wide acquaintance 
 
 with writers and their possibilities which the Syndicate 
 
 had given him seemed to him his chief asset and his real 
 
THE END OF THE CENTURY 347 
 
 capital ; furthermore, he could, with syndicate and maga- 
 zine combined, tempt them with a wider pubHcity than 
 they had ever received before. His industry was untir- 
 ing; for a series of portraits of Bismarck he ran over to 
 Germany. As boundless was his fertility in devising new 
 schemes to conduct personally to Middle Western farm- 
 yards remote aristocrats. (Holmes wrote to Mrs. Stuart 
 Phelps Ward in 1893 that he would be delighted to dis- 
 cuss " Time and Eternity " with her and her husband as 
 suggested, but as to saying anything on those subjects 
 to be reported, he would as soon send a piece of his spinal 
 marrow to those omnivorous editors. *' So you see, I 
 am quite obstinate — not to be lured or Mac-lured.") 
 As for stories, he had, in addition to Conan Doyle, cap- 
 tured Kipling and Anthony Hope also. To discover the 
 value of all three, one might not, perhaps, need to go so 
 far as to sell coffee-pots in the Middle West, yet Mr. 
 McClure says that Harper's had refused every tale in the 
 four early books of Kipling, that it took him a year in 
 the Syndicate to gain recognition for Conan Doyle, and 
 that no American editor had thought enough of Hope to 
 bring him across the \vater. 
 
 The special character of the American cheap magazine 
 as we now know it — wrote that keen and reflective Eng- 
 lish observer, Mr. William Archer, in 1910 — is mainly 
 due to one man, Mr. S. S. McClure. He invented and 
 developed the particular type. The style of article which 
 has made its fame is a richly documented, soberly worded 
 study in contemporary history, concentrating into ten or 
 twelve pages matter which could much more easily be ex- 
 panded into a book ten or twelve times as long. Its 
 method is to present, without sensationalism or exaggera- 
 tion, facts skilfully marshalled and sternly compressed, 
 and let them speak for themselves. Here is Mr. Mc- 
 Clure's account of the inception and evolution of the type 
 
 About 1897 the talk about trusts had become important and 
 the common people took a threatening attitude toward them — 
 and without much knowledge. We decided that the way to 
 
348 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 handle the trust question was not by taking the matter up ab- 
 stractly, but to take one trust and to give its history, its effects, 
 and its tendencies. The mother of trusts was the Standard Oil. 
 Miss Tarbell had lived for yeaj;s in the heart of the oil region, 
 and she undertook to prepare some articles on its history. 
 When they heard of our project, Mr. H. H. Rogers of the 
 Standard Oil sent us word through his friend Mark Twain that 
 they would gladly help us in securing material. Miss Tarbell 
 spent nearly three years on the work before the first chapter 
 of it was printed. The first important result of the articles was 
 the nation-wide realisation that the railroad rebate was the 
 great weapon of the Standard Oil. Simultaneously began the 
 articles of Mr. Steffens on municipal misgovernment. We gave 
 him a roving commission, and he visited the cities. What he 
 found made me begin an investigation which proved that life 
 and property in the United States were less secure than in 
 other countries. I went on trying to arouse public opinion. 
 StefTens's work dealing with the corruption of State and city 
 politics was a feature of the magazine for three or four years. 
 His articles were the first accurate studies of this nature that 
 had then appeared in an American magazine. To secure the 
 accuracy which alone makes such studies of value, I had to 
 invent a new method in magazine journalism. The fundamen- 
 tal weakness of modern journalism was that the highly spe- 
 cialised activities of civilisation were very generally reported 
 by uninformed men, and what experts had to say was seldom 
 interesting. I decided to pay my writers for their study rather 
 than for their copy — to put them on a salary and let them 
 master their subjects before they wrote about them. The prepa- 
 ration of the fifteen articles of the Standard Oil series took five 
 years ; they were produced at the rate of three a year, and each 
 one cost us two thousand dollars. Of course, the subjects that 
 will repay an editor for so expensive a method are few and 
 important. 
 
 Thus the origin of what was later called the muck-raking 
 movement came from no formulated plan to attack existing in- 
 stitutions, but from wishing to take up with accuracy and thor- 
 oughness some of the problem.s that were beginning to interest 
 people. The method of dealing with public questions which 
 distinguished McClure's was developed gradually. My desire 
 to handle such questions came largely, I think, from my frequent 
 trips abroad. In my many rapid trips for material of all kinds, 
 I had noticed certain differences in the attitude of people here 
 and abroad regarding public service and the connection between 
 business interests and government. I was desirous of finding 
 out why, in American cities as distinguished from American 
 States, the debasing and debased part of the population should 
 
THE END OF THE CENTURY 349 
 
 have a predominating influence in nominating and electing offi- 
 cials. A study of the methods of organising governments in 
 England and Germany made me understand the basic causes of 
 the inefficiency and corruption of governments in American 
 cities. It was the indifference of the average American citizen 
 to public questions. 
 
 The spirit which actuated all this may be illustrated by 
 a McCliire editorial, January, 1903. *' We did not plan 
 it so; it is a coincidence that this number contains three 
 arraignments of American character such as should make 
 every one of us stop and think. The Shame of Min- 
 neapolis, the current chapter of the Standard Oil, Mr. 
 Ray Stannard Baker's The Right to Work, it might all 
 have been called The American Contempt of Law. Capi- 
 talists, workingmen, politicians, citizens — all breaking 
 the law or letting it be broken. Who is there left to up- 
 hold it? The lawyers? Some of the best are hired for 
 that very purpose. The judges? Too many of them so 
 respect it that for some error or quibble they restore to 
 office or liberty men convicted on evidence overwhelm- 
 ingly convincing to common sense. The churches ? We 
 know of one, an ancient and wealthy establishment, which 
 had to be compelled by a Tammany hold-over health- 
 officer to put its tenements in sanitary condition. The 
 colleges ? They do not understand. There is no one left 
 — none but all of us." Where could one find more mean- 
 ing, more control, more passion packed in so few words ! 
 It was not to be expected that the novelty of a magazine 
 campaign on corruption, both contemporary and specified, 
 could intrude itself into a jolted community without op- 
 position. As frequently happens in- this amusing world, 
 a proposed reform makes strange bed- fellows. The out- 
 cry against McClure's delightfully anticipated the pretty 
 spectacle, a decade later, of the well-supported matron and 
 the well-supported cadet uniting against woman's suf- 
 frage. Alike the matronly New York Evening Post and 
 Tammany denounced the articles as altogether commer- 
 cial. The latter called the campaign a mercenary defama- 
 tion of the fair name of our glorious land; the former 
 
350 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 (equally, though more wittily, reminiscent of time-worn 
 oratory) called it a fight for God, for country, and for 
 circulation. Godkin and Curtis and Dr. Holland in their 
 long and admirable agitation in their magazines for Civil 
 Service Reform, had really gone the limit of safe and 
 well-bred magazine interference with public affairs — 
 to attack specific institutions and mention names was to 
 drag in the dust the white samite of literary journaHsm! J 
 And from the White House came ringing the customary ! 
 picturesque epithet, with which its occupant, agog like 
 Kipling for the galvanizing word, was in the habit of 
 branding all mavericks. McClure's wore proudly its new 
 and sanctioned title of Muck Raker, and doubtless joined 
 in the chuckle which went up from many earnest-minded 
 Americans and observing Englishmen after their first 
 gasp of indignation. For the accusation, ungracious as 
 it was from one professional reformer to another, was 
 conspicuously ungrateful also. It was the public con- 
 cience which McChire's had striven so earnestly to arouse 
 with an army of shocking facts that eagerly seized upon^ 
 the President for leadership. " The historian of the fu- 
 ture," wrote Mr. Archer, " may determine how much of 
 the ' uplift ' that distinguished the Roosevelt administra- 
 tion was due to the influence of the McClure type of 
 magazine. It seems to me certain that Mr. McClure 
 paved the way for President Roosevelt and potently ^ 
 furthered the movements with which his name will al- 
 ways be identified." 
 
 Not the least of the services of the McClure type of 
 article was its contribution to the final demise of the j 
 Young Person. More and more ailing as the old century 
 drew to its close, this fragile and exquisite illusion ap- 
 parently entered her last stage at the commencement of 
 the new. For the family-circle was to be startled with 
 ruder accents than the McClure Shame of the Cities or 
 the Cosmopolitan Treason of the Senate. Young ladies 
 had no sooner heard that politicians and policemen slipped 
 into the saloon on the next block than they were ac- 
 
THE END OF THE CENTURY 351 
 
 quainted with the hitherto unsuspected tidings that it had 
 a Family Entrance into which other beings shpped. And 
 such revolutionary disclosures came not only from the 
 militant magazines of which no fine sense of the sanctity 
 of the Young Person could be expected, but even from the 
 Ladies' Home Journal (Shades of Ruth Ashmore!). 
 Made deaf at last by all this noise to the elegant reticence 
 becoming a daughter of Mrs. Hale and Godey's Ladies' 
 Book, this periodical actually began to give parents in- 
 struction upon certain aspects of the education of their 
 children! What would dear old Knickerbocker have 
 said? He would probably have said that he could have 
 told you so ; that he knew what was coming the moment 
 a gentlemanly magazine so far forgot itself as to ven- 
 tilate opinions. The next step in the inevitable degenera- 
 tion would, of course, be the ventilation of vices! No 
 opinions at table and no ugly facts before the Young Per- 
 son were the cornerstones of Society-as-it-Should-be. 
 An amusing anecdote or so with the wine and cigars, and 
 later a farce from the French dexterously diluted of 
 course for female companions but patent to the cognos- 
 centi — you could banish her from the one and as for the 
 other, why every Young Person, thank heaven, had an 
 innate purity! Indeed, in a sense and with all humility, 
 the Young Person, one might say, was the noblest work of 
 God and man alike! Man had been His co-worker in 
 this perfected being which had eyes but saw not and ears 
 but heard not. — So might Knick have said, shaking his 
 silvery locks over the departure of all civility from a de- 
 generate world. Well, thanks to McClure's, there are no 
 longer any Young Persons. Nor will it console any one 
 who grieves to reflect that there never were any. It was 
 all so charming. Nor will it console them to hear the 
 opinion of that obsessed Mr. Archer, admiring Ameri- 
 can magazines for a frankness of speech which the Eng- 
 lish ones do not possess. '* It is one of the striking fea- 
 tures of the magazine of the McChire type that that 
 though distinctly * family ' productions so far as fiction 
 
352 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 is concerned, they deal freely with social topics of the 
 utmost delicacy, without either frightening their subscrib- 
 ers off or achieving any ' success of scandal.' I have 
 never seen an article in McClure's or in any magazine of 
 its class that was not perfectly fit to be read by any one 
 who could conceivably wish to read it." 
 
 There is a reason economic and a reason temperamental, 
 Mr. Archer thinks, why there are no such articles in Eng- 
 lish magazines. They have neither the circulation nor 
 the advertisements which would enable them to pay for 
 such social investigation. But the main reason is the 
 English law of libel. An American editor said to him 
 quite simply, " We carry libels in every number " ; but the 
 mildest of the progressive American cheap magazines 
 would beget in England a crop of libel-suits. For the 
 McClure type eschewed the generalities which preceding 
 moralists had exclusively engaged in, and mentioned 
 names and cases. The difference between a moralist and 
 a muck-raker is a simple but significant one — a muck- 
 raker is a moralist who specifies. Mr. Archer remarks 
 that the law of libel seems to be as inefficient in America 
 as it is over-efficient in England; but the contrast is not 
 so much legal as spiritual — an American shrugs his shoul- 
 ders at an accusation which in England would blast a 
 man's whole career. " We do not wish to spend our 
 energy," said Collier's Weekly j " in exploiting facts which 
 cannot personally offend a human being " ; yet if you do 
 offend and the person has money enough to go to court 
 in England, a libel-suit follows. It is not because Ameri- 
 cans are more afraid of libel-suits, for judges here as in 
 England could exclude the damaging evidence if that were 
 our attitude. Partly it is an un-British indifference to our 
 reputation and partly it is an equally un-British sense of 
 humour. Where everybody is illegally libelling every- 
 body else, 'tis folly to be squeamish. For the same rea- 
 son, Americans are not even exacting of their pound of 
 flesh; what's the sense of being a Shylock when the next 
 time the other party may have you on the hip? Mr. 
 
THE END OF THE CENTURY 353 
 
 John Adams Thayer says that once when Everybody's 
 made a plate of J. P. Morgan from a steel-engraving, they 
 found the copyright law allowed the original publisher to 
 claim one dollar a copy for every impression they had 
 made. The publisher pranced over to see them, and they 
 had a most interesting afternoon. They were liable for 
 seven hundred thousand dollars ! 
 
 ;x^^he new process of photo-engraving made possible the 
 cheap illustrated magazine; but as in a short time many 
 cheap magazines were in the market, it by no means ac- 
 counted for the enormous circulation of a magazine like 
 McClure's. Illustrations that cost one hundred dollars 
 
 ^^ud required a month's time could now be had by all of 
 them for ten dollars and in one day. " The revolution in 
 the art of engraving, not to say its destruction," said the 
 Independent editorially in 1895, " is threatening a change 
 in the conduct of monthly magazines as well as of news- 
 papers. It seems probable, however, that the higher- 
 priced magazines will not find it wise to reduce their price 
 to the figure of Cosmopolitan and McCliire's. They will 
 wish to maintain that higher, purer literary standard 
 which succeeds in securing the best but not the most nu- 
 merous readers. They cannot change their constituency 
 beyond the comparatively cultivated class that appreciates 
 them. They cannot therefore enormously increase their 
 circulation and so their advertising income by reducing 
 their price." To which McClure's replied : *' Less than 
 one-seventh of the illustrations in last month's Harper's, 
 Century, Scribner's are engraved on wood. There must 
 be some merit besides cheapness in a method that is em- 
 ployed for more than six-sevenths of the high-priced 
 monthlies. On the other hand, we must seek elsewhere 
 for a reason for the cheap magazine. Will the editor of 
 the Independent tell us where any editor can secure a 
 higher, purer literary standard than is maintained by our 
 list of writers?" The list that followed included most 
 of the names before the English-speaking public. Thus 
 it was apparent that the difference in standards was not 
 
354 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 one of height but of kind. Anybody who wished might 
 call it purer, anybody who wished might call it less con- 
 ventional. It was not a difference of so-called appeal to 
 pure culture, for McClure's and Cosmopolitan each had 
 a notable art series. It was not even a difference in edi- 
 torial enterprise or in careful and costly research. The 
 Century, some while before the era of cheap magazines, 
 had sent George Kennan and an artist on a two years' 
 tour of Siberia to secure the articles on Russian prisons 
 and the treatment of political exiles which caused the 
 proscription of that magazine from the Czar's dominions. 
 The travel articles of Harper's, for which it had long 
 been famous, had despatched observers with pen and pen- 
 cil to the outposts of the world. The difference between 
 the two sets of magazines simply consisted in the fact that 
 the majority of the American people thought the McClure( 
 type moved closer to contemporary life and was seeking 
 not only to illumine but to raise and support. The cheapl 
 magazine in itself was no new idea. In 1872 and in con- 
 servative Boston a ten cent periodical, American Homes, 
 was started and was making a national success when the 
 Boston Fire destroyed it utterly. The new tone of in- 
 timacy and neighbourly helpfulness which became the 
 special characteristic of the cheap magazines and to which i 
 even some of the older high-priced periodicals " lowered / 
 their dignity " as time went on, seems to have been in-/ 
 troduced by that mighty mother of magazines, the City of/ 
 Brotherly Love, as she got her third wind. Mrs. Hale ofl 
 Godey's had whispered cosily in the female ear, Graham's^ 
 had chucked a continent under the chin; but it remained 
 for the Ladies* Home Journal to embrace warmly the uni- 
 versal world. 
 
 Established in 1883 by Cyrus Curtis, it was edited io\ 
 half a dozen years by his wife under the name of Mrs. 
 Louisa Knapp. But its astounding success began about 
 1890 with the advent of Mr. E. W. Bok. Before this 
 time the occupation of an editorial chair had been accom- 
 plished without shaking the earth. But the Himalayas 
 
THE END OF THE CENTURY 355 
 
 heard at once that he was the youngest and highest-paid 
 editor in America. He immediately began that series of 
 novel series which effected the introduction of everybody 
 to everybody else and placed the two hemispheres on a 
 family basis. He did not go forth to the family-circle 
 as the mid-century Harper's had done; he inscribed the 
 circle around himself like Richelieu holding the maiden 
 Julie. Nobody could step outside of it unless he stepped 
 off the planet. Unknown Wives of Well-Known Men, 
 Unknown Husbands, Famous Daughters of Famous Men, 
 How I Wrote This and Did That — everybody who was 
 somebody and everybody who was nobody were soon en- 
 gaged in counting his or her pulse-beats to a breathless 
 world and to the tune of the periodical's increasing circu- 
 lation. One touch of Mr. E. W. Bok had made the whole 
 world kin. It seemed as if the possibilities of the genre 
 might never be exhausted, and the public might go on 
 clamouring forever, or until the Nieces of Absconding 
 Bank-Presidents and the Cousins of Royal Governesses 
 had satisfied the last urgency for world-fellowship in the 
 latest Bok-awakened Madagascar metropolis. The fever 
 for fellowship spent itself in time, of course; but the two- 
 fold result upon the conduct of magazines seems likely 
 to be permanent. Readers expect buttonholing if not 
 manhandling, and editors have come out of their cloistered 
 retirement. Even editors of some of the older magazines 
 which prided themselves on being far from the madding 
 crowd no longer desire to remain violets by their mossy 
 stones. As for the editors of the new cheap magazines, 
 they looked upon Mr. Bok and at once did likewise. Per- 
 sonal publicity became the proof of aggressiveness and 
 enterprise. It was part of the advertising age. About 
 the time when " Charles Frohman Presents " and " Henry 
 Savage Proffers " became household phrases conned by 
 lisping children from the billboards of America, Mr. 
 Munsey was publishing in his own handwriting his own 
 opinion of his magazine as a cover-design. A few years 
 later even Mr. Alden of Harper's was protesting in the 
 
356 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 North American that the wise editor never sought to 
 suppress originality and that if the Middle West wanted 
 to call him a matron he didn't mind. As for the militant 
 magazines, they vibrated with an electric current sped 
 from editor to reader, wherein dynamo called to dynamo 
 in no uncertain tones. 
 
 All this was much increased by the vogue of the cult 
 magazine, which by its very nature was a personal utter- 
 ance. The cult magazines were all slender things, merely 
 embodied voices like that pocket prima-donna who was 
 once heralded as " Little but Oh My ! '' The run of these 
 was a measles with which the face of the whole country 
 broke out. The germ-carrier was the project of two 
 Harvard youths who published while at Cambridge a slim, 
 artistically printed semi-monthly called the Chap Book. 
 It was a side-product of the Celtic Revival in England, and 
 purposed extending to Victorianised America the new 
 wine of the Yellow Book, of Aubrey Beardsley, George 
 Moore, and Yeats. In a short while all the early num- 
 bers were exhausted, and its deserved success was so great 
 that it moved to Chicago where it would have freer air 
 and no time-stained institutions standing in the way of its 
 sunlight. There it flourished for four years; and as it 
 remained a substantial and literary rarity until the last, its 
 fortuitous death was universally regretted. So was the 
 death of its first joyous offspring, the Lark, which twit- 
 tered gleefully at San Francisco from 1895 to 1897. 
 This stopped, apparently, because its editors — Les Jeunes 
 — wanted to grow up. Some of them afterward did 
 grave and valuable things in periodical literature, but 
 many of the carols of their light-hearted infancy were 
 such melodious madness that the world gladly stopped to 
 listen. The Chap Book had numerous progeny, however, 
 that would have scorned to be brother to the Lark as 
 much as to own so conventional a parentage as the new 
 Irish movement in an effete literature. All over the 
 country they sprang up, by preference on rocky soil and 
 where weeds might choke them. The intention of the 
 
THE END OF THE CENTURY 357 
 
 cult magazine was to be a voice crying in the wilderness. 
 There were at least one hundred and sixty-two of them, 
 crying to the flinty echoes " Repent ! Repent ! " and liv- 
 ing on locusts until their lungs gave out, though from 
 want of proper food only. Chief of them was the Philis- 
 tine, Printed Every Little While for the Society of the 
 Philistines. This was an association of Book Lovers 
 and Folks Who Write and Paint. Their object was to 
 destroy the phantom of a false dawn, and their settling 
 at East Aurora, New York, was thought by many to have 
 been the result of exploring the map for a village of 
 symbolic name. " In literature he is a Philistine who 
 seeks to express his personality in his own way," ran an 
 early announcement. " We ask for the widest, freest, 
 and fullest liberty for Individuality — that's all." This 
 proved both wide and full, and it made free with every 
 established Thing. Begun among the earliest of the 
 fadazines, it alone continued its voice well into the next 
 century. Its voice was robust. Its sub-title was A 
 Periodical of Protest, and it is admitted that one can- 
 not protest in a whisper. Its editor, Elbert Hubbard, did 
 more, though in a field less wide, than Mr. Bok or Mr. 
 McClure or Mr. Munsey to deal the editorial tradition of 
 reticence a body blow; to develop that arrestingly and 
 grippingly personal tone which was becoming character- 
 istic of the American sanctum, and to demolish the last 
 vestige of the pose which Boston culture had bequeathed 
 American letters. The only one of the four who had any 
 literary gift, who went on lecture tours, and was the 
 fortunate possessor of a disputed personality, his voice 
 naturally carried the furthest. A cult is like a protoplasm 
 — it subdivides while you are looking at it ; and the Philis' 
 tine, like all the other little magazines, died because its 
 offspring ate up the available audience. But their earnest 
 iconoclasm made many people do some thinking of their 
 own, and they were yeasty affairs which leavened a vast 
 deal of our inherited stodginess ; they had their day and 
 went their way and left some thoughts behind them. In 
 
^58 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 / the history of American thought they are consequently 
 
 / of considerable importance, but to the history of the 
 
 / American magazine they contributed chiefly one more 
 
 / factor in the growth of the personal note at the end of the 
 
 \,^^^entury. 
 
 A case very much in point is the gradual emergence of 
 Mr. John Brisben Walker of the Cosmopolitan, from a 
 private citizen conducting a business enterprise into the 
 fierce light that beats upon a throne. Born in Rochester, 
 New York, in 1886, a clergyman's child, the Cosmopoli- 
 tan, as befitted its parent, was conservative and domestic. 
 Consisting largely of translations and with full page re- 
 productions of paintings, it had a Children's and a House- 
 hold Department which often gave recipes. (Can you 
 picture the contemporary Cosmopolitan thus parentally 
 engaged, even if fathers of families are not what they 
 were ?) In the beginning, it threw in as an extra induce- 
 ment to those impervious to the seductions of a home 
 missionary at two dollars and a half a year, a Letter and 
 Bill File, the cost price of which was only twenty-five 
 cents less. But its Cincinnatus days departed in its second 
 year when it moved to the metropolis, and its sea-change 
 was complete when Mr. Walker coming from the West 
 stumbled over it in 1889. Somewhat later it made an 
 attempt to recapture its rurality by moving out of town 
 again, but dalliance with the great city had forever al- 
 tered its ancient Rochestrian ideals. Having put its hand 
 to the plough, it turned back to the sidewalk. But this 
 was later still, and under the convoy of Mr. Hearst — 
 whose energetic and sophisticated personality is, geo- 
 graphically considered, perhaps even more remote from 
 the magazine's first parent than was that of its second. 
 As a matter of statistics, however, it may not be generally 
 known that Mr. Hearst is a clergyman twice removed; 
 or that the Cosmopolitan once dispensed recipes on the 
 best methods of keeping the household sweet and clean. 
 
 But to return to Mr. Walker and the far side of the 
 century mile-stone, when the worldly career of the future 
 
THE END OF THE CENTURY 359 
 
 magazine was as yet undreamed. The new editor made 
 haste discreetly. He replaced the Household Department 
 with one on Social Problems conducted by Edward 
 Everett Hale (ominous forecast of the Suffrage move- 
 ment!) and the Children's Department with Book Re- 
 views by Professor Brander Matthews (fitting symbol 
 of the discarded parochial past!); and added the de- 
 partments In the World of Arts and Letters, and The 
 Progress of Science, conducted by many hands. These 
 were all admirably administered, and the last-mentioned 
 was particularly serviceable in bringing the readers closer 
 to contemporary activities. Contenting itself for a while, 
 too, with articles illustrated by portraits and other docu- 
 mentary records — like the Lady Riders of Washington 
 or The Woman's Press Club of New York — it little by 
 little branched out into other illustrative fields. Its early 
 reproduction of famous masterpieces happily metamor- 
 phosed into richly illustrated articles on Recent Art. 
 About the year 1897, the magazine reviewed its ten years 
 of life. At its birth, the total number of magazines did 
 not greatly exceed the figures of the present edition. The 
 rapid increase in circulation had proceeded in equal steps 
 with the manifestation of a new attitude of a magazine 
 toward its readers. It considered itself a co-operative 
 affair in which the chief party was the public. Mr. 
 Howells and A. S. Hardy were associate-editors and 
 Professor Boyesen and Dr. Hale were regular contribu- 
 tors and advisers, but the best associate and adviser was 
 the reader himself. As with the other magazines which 
 in the last decade of the century reduced their price, this 
 endowment of the public with a personality it had never 
 before possessed was found to have its editorial exactions. 
 Whether the flattered reader required reciprocity or felt 
 that at least propriety demanded that he demand it, or 
 whether the necessities of the new appeal to social and 
 civic consciousness dictated greater directness (for how 
 can one receive an actual punch from an invisible shoul- 
 der?), or whether it be that heartier fellowship is inherent 
 
36o THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 in lowered prices and in the poorer class in general, or 
 whether it was all a part of that new world-note of genial 
 camaraderie inaugurated by the Ladies' Home Journal 
 which caused the public to clamour for the countenances 
 of the makers of its shoes and its talcum powders — let 
 it be for psychologists to decide. At any rate Mr. 
 Walker, like the rest, w^as no longer satisfied to be seen 
 through a glass darkly; and, as with the rest, the new 
 face-to-faceness was startling to conservatives. The 
 vestibule of his magazine became his inner holy of holies 
 — whence heart-to-heart confessions of the policies and 
 material within doors issued in crisp sermonettes in large 
 print. It had become the fashion. But those who had 
 followed Mr. Walker's widening vision were not sur- 
 prised to see him identify himself with an attempt to 
 construct an international language. The founder of the 
 magazine had not projected an all-world parish. Mr. 
 Walker offered the President of the United States twelve 
 thousand dollars to cover the expenses of a commission 
 to report on the idea ; and when President Harrison finally 
 decided that it did not come within the limits of his juris- 
 diction, the Cosmopolitan undertook it single-handed. 
 
 The new attitude of social obligation, taken by Mc- 
 Clure's and the Cosmopolitan toward the end of the cen- 
 tury, may perhaps be best illustrated by the magnificent 
 though abortive attempt of the latter to found a national 
 university. In August, 1897, this announcement ap- 
 eared : 
 
 For five years we have published the magazine at a reduced 
 price, which the publishing world regarded as a step certain to 
 result in failure. It was an educational movement of far- 
 reaching importance. We have now arrived at another stage 
 in the evolution of the magazine. We enlarge our sphere, and 
 take in hand the organisation to provide for the intellectual ne- 
 cessities of those who seek enlightenment and growth, and yet 
 have not had the means for entering the universities. The Cos- 
 mopolitan University vail provide a course of studies worked 
 out with reference to the real needs of men and women in the 
 various walks of life; designed to produce broader minds, and 
 give greater fitness for special lines of work, and also to make 
 
THE END OF THE CENTURY 361 
 
 better citizens, better neighbours, and happier men and women. 
 At the head of the organisation will be placed an educational 
 mind of the first ability. All instruction blanks, examination 
 papers, official circulars free. No charge of any kind will be 
 made to the student, all expenses will be borne for the present 
 by the Cosmopolitan. No conditions, except a pledge of a given 
 number of hours of study. Work is to be formally begun in 
 October. 
 
 It proved an electrifying announcement. A month 
 and a half after this statement — necessarily indefinite, 
 the editor admitted, since plans had not yet been formu- 
 lated — almost four thousand students had enrolled. In 
 two weeks more, the number was almost six thousand; 
 in another eight it had doubled. What was to be done 
 with this vast horde of day-workers who desired to burn 
 the midnight lamp! In the meantime had arisen other 
 troubles beside that of feeding the multitude with limited 
 loaves and fishes. President Andrews had just left 
 Brown University on account of some differences of opin- 
 ion between himself and the trustees, and Mr. Walker an- 
 nounced that the magazine had secured him to direct the 
 Cosmopolitan University with a Board of Advisors. 
 But now President Andrews had been requested by the 
 trustees to withdraw his resignation, and he in turn felt 
 himself compelled to ask Mr. Walker to release him. 
 The change completely disarranged all their plans for 
 organisation, and others must be worked out as speedily 
 as possible. Meanwhile the students kept on mounting^ 
 prodigiously ; applications from all over the country swept 
 toward Irvington-on-the-Hudson like a white tidal wave. 
 The magazine had felt that the appropriation of one hun- 
 dred and fifty thousand dollars which it was able to make, 
 should be divided into annual instalments of thirty thou- 
 sand each. They had regarded the sum as ample to sup- 
 port the institution for five years. But the number of ap- 
 plicants had made it entirely inadequate, and they were 
 forced to ask that all students who were able to do so 
 should pay a fee of five dollars per quarter. This did not 
 daunt or even diminish the recruits, who cried aloud from 
 
2^02 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 every remote hamlet for a college education by corre- 
 spondence. By May the ambitious band had become nine- 
 teen thousand. Swamped, the magazine still floundered 
 with the flood. Another thousand in August compelled 
 the discarding of all former plans and the formation of 
 new ones. But such emergencies had become normal by 
 this time, and the magazine hoped that the experience of 
 the first year — so unsatisfactory to their educational 
 staff — would be of service in the second which it now 
 undismayed began. At the end of that period, however, 
 it threw up its hands. It would do what it could, but 
 its means did not allow it to take care of the twentieth 
 part of the applicants. The Government should establish 
 a National Correspondence University, and it would pre- 
 sent a bill to Congress to that effect. 
 
 It had been a magnificent and generous undertaking. 
 Of course, the usual number of sedate periodicals whose 
 cooler projects allowed no opportunity for failure, and 
 that large body of persons who cannot believe in the sin- 
 cerity of a philanthropist until he has bankrupted himself, 
 saw in it only ingenious advertising. Elderly people 
 found it but another manifestation of the deplorable 
 stridency of cheap literature — one could not imagine the 
 Knickerbocker doing such a thing. It was all a part 
 of this end of the century chaos which had hurtled ma- 
 trons and letters into the market-place! Perhaps more 
 than anything else, even more than the articles of ex- 
 posure inaugurated by McClure's, the Cosmopolitan Uni- 
 versity marked that the old ideal of a literary magazine 
 was as dead as a dodo. It was an ideal derived from 
 England and was embodied by the early Knickerbocker 
 better than by any other successful American magazine 
 not mainly of the review type, although possibly it might 
 be found at its best in the short-lived Arctxirus. Polite 
 comment on polite affairs. Moncure Conway summed 
 it up once in the early eighties, " An English magazine 
 is a circular letter addressed by a scholarly man to a few 
 hundred friends." 
 
THE END OF THE CENTURY 363 
 
 As this modest history of the magazines but aims to 
 round off the century conveniently, it may not mention 
 some of later birth. Nor may it follow the fortunes of 
 Everybody's — born in 1899 under other auspices — ex- 
 cept incidentally and as indicative of the new advertis- 
 ing movement. Some account of this is found in Mr. 
 John Adams Thayer's life-story, Astir. 
 
 With a few notable exceptions editors do not make magazines 
 financially successful. It is far more difficult to secure a capa- 
 ble advertising manager, and he will demand and probably re- 
 ceive twice the editor's salary. The business of my depart- 
 ment, which had totalled a quarter of a million at my coming, 
 had now a yearly volume of twice that amount. It was the 
 hey-day of advertising. One day in the president's office I saw 
 the architect's drawing of a massive stone edifice fourteen 
 stories high, to be built for and devoted solely to the business 
 of the Butterick Company. Facetiously the treasurer remafked, 
 " Look at your new building ! " As treasurer, he knew that 
 my department had made it possible. When we bought the 
 magazine property, the price of the advertising was $150 a page 
 — one dollar per page per thousand circulation being the recog- 
 nised rate among general magazines, though an extra twenty or 
 even fifty thousand is often given for good measure. With a 
 showing of three hundred thousand now, we could ask $300 a 
 page, as we had doubled our circulation in a year. We stood 
 upon this healthy footing when Frenzied Finance began to 
 increase our circulation to the merry tune of fifty thousand 
 copies a month. 
 
 To the innocent bystander, the adjective " healthy " 
 may seem here to carry a peculiar implication. Does not 
 health, he may query, increase as circulation increases? 
 But the fact is, Everybody's was mortally threatened with 
 a rush of blood to the stomach. The reader who resents 
 his present serfdom to the advertiser will grimly appre- 
 ciate the predicament. The magazine had fed itself up 
 so, with its vital nourishment, that apoplexy threatened. 
 (If that is a mixed figure, make the best of it!) The 
 curious situation was startling in its modernity — to be 
 dying of good health. But it was not absolutely novel 
 for all that. Even before the old Scribner's had in- 
 augurated the reign of the advertiser, the phenomenon 
 
364 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 had been forecast. It was as early as 1865 and the place 
 was Chicago, which at that period scorned advertising, 
 in the most elegant and approved literary fashion. There, 
 Mr. Fleming tells us, the Little Corporal, a juvenile, had 
 made an unexpected hit. It proved the first Chicago 
 periodical to attract national attention and the first 
 juvenile in the country to be read by children everywhere. 
 Its circulation grew to be enormous (its twelve numbers 
 cost one dollar — almost the first genuine instance of low 
 prices), but it came a cropper with its advertising. The 
 advertisers, who at that early date were nearly always con- 
 fined to local firms, refused to allow the rate to be in- 
 creased; an out-of-town circulation, however large, is of 
 no benefit to us, they said. With a small circulation there 
 had been a profit at this low rate, but after a certain point 
 every additional copy was printed at a loss. It was this 
 same condition which threatened Everybody's when Law- 
 son jumped the circulation; and it was met by increasing 
 the selling price until the advertising contracts should ex- 
 pire and a higher rate could be arranged. The reader 
 who resents the power of the advertiser will again grimly 
 appreciate the symbolic nature of the solution. It is al- 
 ways the Ultimate Consumer that pays, he may mutter 
 wearily — as at present he picks his vexed way from gob- 
 bet to gobbet of text through the welter of advertising 
 matter ; and as, from page nineteen to page thirty-two to 
 page forty-seven to page sixty-three the moving finger 
 turns and, having read, turns on. 
 
 " In less than a year," says Mr. Thayer, " we an- 
 nounced on one occasion an edition of one million. The 
 demand for back numbers was incessant ; and we printed 
 a little pamphlet called The Chapters That Went Before. 
 Mr. Lawson had worked a miracle in the circulation, and 
 we beheld the wonderful vision of becoming a great maga- 
 zine property without the long hard preparatory struggle 
 of a Mitnsey or a McClnre. But so enormous an increase 
 in copies without a corresponding increase in advertising 
 rates meant ruin. We finally decided, contrary to cus- 
 
THE END OF THE CENTURY 365 
 
 torn, to announce an immediate increase without notice to 
 $400 a page, and later we established a $500 rate. Then 
 we decided if we would meet the circulation we must raise 
 the price to fifteen cents a copy. To raise the subscrip- 
 tion price of a magazine is an important step, and when 
 to make the change was the problem. The attorney for 
 H. H. Rogers of Standard Oil fame suddenly wrote the 
 American News Company, that if they distributed our 
 magazines and put them on sale, he would begin an action 
 at law. I saw this was the moment, and the free adver- 
 tising given us by the Standard Oil was so immense that 
 the edition though large was swept from the news-stands 
 on the day of publication." 
 
 Unique in every way was Mr. Lawson's series of 
 articles. Twice blessed is he who, getting all, gives noth- 
 ing. When Mr. Lawson finally made up his mind to at- 
 tack the evils of high finance (much assisted to his deci- 
 sion by the perseverance of the editor), he announced 
 that it was his intention to do it for nothing and further- 
 more to advertise his articles in the newspapers at his own 
 expense. What magazine could help but admire so 
 thorough and so canny a reformer, who felt his motive 
 must be as far above suspicion as gay -bird Caesar thought 
 his wife ought to be? He demanded only that Every- 
 body's offer a prize of fifty thousand dollars for the best 
 essay on Frenzied Finance at the end of its run; but, 
 says Mr. Thayer naively, " we eventually persuaded him 
 there were more effective ways of advertising." The 
 end of the run found them normally issuing from five to 
 six hundred thousand copies a month, and after it finished 
 they retained the bulk of this circulation. 
 
 ** While our first cover was not particularly artistic, it 
 was different from all other magazine covers and caused 
 comment by reason of its sentiment and novelty — it 
 represented two hearts cut in a birch tree. The cover 
 designs cost us much effort but they assisted the impres- 
 sion which promptly got abroad that Everybody's was 
 different from the common run." Thus light-heartedly 
 
366 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 does Mr. Thayer mention the inception of the stupidest 
 feature of the cheap magazine — the candy-box cover. 
 It is a picture in Httle of the fate that awaits all display- 
 advertising. Fired by the example of Everybody's all 
 the cheap magazines hastened to be " different " and 
 ended in all becoming just alike — their old distinctive 
 cover forgotten and their trademark destroyed. In this 
 mad work of self-obhteration the high-priced magazines 
 followed — only Scrihner's being wise enough, in keep- 
 ing her complexion through all changes of her adornment, 
 to preserve her individuality. The cover-design Mr. 
 Thayer refers to was attractive; and had they and the 
 rest of the magazines contended themselves with the story- 
 telling picture or one which had reference to some chief 
 feature of the contents within, there would have been 
 no objection — although not to be eternally confronted 
 in the old magazines even with such covers is a welcome 
 relief. The fancy cover had appeared timidly about 
 1896. The Cosmopolitan sported one of the earliest, but 
 the novelty was apparently regarded with disfavour and 
 soon disappeared. McC lure's printed several of their 
 Lincoln portraits during the run of the Lincoln articles, 
 and also had printed portraits of several of their authors. 
 This innovation was followed, conservatively, by symbolic 
 female figures representing the months. Thus slowly 
 the virus began until it had developed complete and rabid 
 feminisation. In the meantime, within the covers of the 
 cheap magazines a process of auto-intoxication was going 
 on. The theatrical departments had become permanent 
 fixtures, and the unending procession of actresses' por- 
 traits had got well under way. Then arrived the lament- 
 able hour when no home was thought complete without a 
 Christie or a Gibson girl. And then the deluge! The 
 chorus-isation of the cheap magazine was complete, and 
 the day of the artist model had dawned. With no other 
 variety than that afforded by seasonable costume, char- 
 acterless as wax dummies in store-windows, telling no 
 other story than their own insipid prettiness, they sim- 
 
THE END OF THE CENTURY 367 
 
 perea incessantly and incongruously from the covers of 
 magazines all sense and entertainment and serious en- 
 deavour within. Even the railroad and news-stand 
 trade, whose jaded eye this eternal exploitation of cherry 
 cheeks and rosy lips is doubtless meant to ensnare, must 
 have shortly familiarised itself with all possible combina- 
 tions of the female features. Few things in the publish- 
 ing world are more depressing than those books for the 
 Christmas trade wherein favourite artists gather together 
 their magazine covers for the year in one awful record of 
 smirking fatuity. We shall look back upon this exhibi- 
 tion of American taste with as much humiliation, diluted 
 with humour, as upon our " lambrequin and drape " 
 period. Here, if you please, is the magazine's one fin de 
 Steele feature of the end of the century! 
 
 For the rest, what a record is that which American 
 magazine literature presents to the twentieth century! 
 Magazines have now become so numerous as to defy any 
 account of them beyond mere classified enumeration. 
 To this stage of easy support has America advanced 
 through a century of short-lived attempts. There are 
 nearly two thousand titles of incomplete and unfinished 
 magazines which perished of starvation — and the list 
 itself is incomplete, for the names of many gallant young- 
 sters have been lost forever. The splendid endeavour 
 is as significant of our intellectual and social vitality as 
 is the splendid achievement. How they have broadened 
 and enriched American life! What incalculable contri- 
 bution have they made to the growth of human sym- 
 pathy and companionship ! Thanks to them, history will 
 for the first time possess a complete record of human 
 thought and activity. Thanks to them, men and women 
 are enabled to live wiser and happier lives. 
 
 Nor does this tell the entire story. " I desire to con- 
 fess frankly,'* writes Mr. H. M. Alden of Harper's, " that 
 in literature the book and not the magazine is the supreme 
 thing; but the first encouragement of the greatest writers 
 has come from the magazine ever since the time of Poe, 
 
3'68 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA 
 
 and the magazine has been participant of such glory as 
 literature has shown." That the magazine has a hundred 
 times multiplied the audience of authors is apparent to 
 everybody. Not so well understood is it that they have 
 been of as great social as monetary value. They lifted 
 the author to a recognised place in society which in spite 
 of prominent exceptions he did not occupy in America 
 until the day of their success. When I was young, wrote 
 Edmund Clarence S.tedman, New York looked with dis- 
 trust if not with contempt upon working writers. News- 
 paper salaries were very low, and a man who got his 
 living by writing was in the same class as a man who 
 got his living by acting. He was almost forced into 
 Bohemia. And speaking of the brilliant and erratic 
 company at P faffs, he concludes: "If there had been 
 a Century, a Cosmopolitan, and a score of other paying 
 magazines, I suppose they would have been as conserva- 
 tive as our modern authors and would have dined above 
 stairs and not under the pavement." And, finally, one 
 cannot reiterate too often the material debt of American 
 literature to the magazine. The lives and letters of 
 authors cry it in and between all the lines — but for the 
 magazine very few could have lived to tell the tale. " It 
 is only with the modern development of the newspaper 
 and the magazine," says the House of Harper, " that 
 authorship may be said to have become a lucrative pro- 
 fession." We are apt to think of our literary hand-to- 
 mouth period as long ago — so radical and immediate 
 was the change wrought by the International Copyright 
 Act. But that past is not so shadowy as shady. So 
 late as 1881 the Century was saying, " Not many promi- 
 nent American novels have of late years reached the 
 reader in the first instance between book-covers." And 
 if this might be said of novels, what of the rest of books? 
 Before the Committee of Congress appointed to inquire 
 whether any real need existed for the proposed copyright, 
 Mr. Dana Estes said in 1886: "For two years past, 
 though I belong to a publishing house (Estes and 
 
THE END OF THE CENTURY 369 
 
 Lauriat) which emits nearly one million dollars' worth 
 of books per year, I have absolutely refused to entertain 
 the idea of publishing an American manuscript. It is 
 impossible to make the books of most American authors 
 pay unless they are first published and acquire recogni- 
 tion through the columns of the magazines. Were it 
 not for that one saving opportunity of the great American 
 magazines, w^hich are now the leading ones of the world 
 and have an international reputation and circulation, 
 American authorship would be at a still lower ebb than 
 at present." 
 
PERIODICALS MENTIONED 
 
 Alliance, 283 
 
 America, 203 
 
 American, i 
 
 American Homes, 354 
 
 American Mag. and Histori- 
 cal Chronicle 319, 322 
 
 American Mag. of Useful and 
 Entertaining Knowledge, 
 72, 187 
 
 American Monthly, Boston, 
 72-74, 138, 313 
 
 American Monthly, New 
 York, 48, 119, 123, 125, 329 
 
 American Monthly, Phila., 65, 
 98 
 
 American Moral and Senti- 
 mental, 6 
 
 American Museum, i, 21, 24, 
 26, 133 
 
 American Musical, 134 
 
 American Review, 144-145 
 
 American Review and Liter- 
 ary Journal, 109 
 
 Analytical Repository, 257 
 
 Anglo-American, 71 
 
 Arcturus, 127, 129, 141, 362 
 
 Argosy, 203, 341 
 
 Atheneum or Spirit of the 
 English Magazines, 71 
 
 Atlantic, 126, 127 
 
 Atlantic, 46, 69, 71, 154-177, 
 t86, 205, 206, 212, 219, 221, 
 237, 240, 251, 274, 296, 300, 
 310, 316-17, 323-24, 331, 
 332, 333 
 
 B 
 
 Ballou's Pictorial, 83 
 
 Banished Briton and Nep- 
 tunian, 71 
 
 Baptist Missionary Messen- 
 ger, 257 
 
 Barnum's Illustrated News, 
 124 
 
 Bibliotheque Portraitive, 63 
 
 Boston, 4, 5 
 
 Boston Quarterly, 264 
 
 Broadway Journal, 96, 106, 
 126, 145-147, 275 
 
 Brother Jonathan, 136 
 
 Brownson's Quarterly, 264 
 
 Burton's Gentlemen's, 89-91, 
 189 
 
 Cabinet, 42, 63 
 
 Californian, 204 
 
 Casket, 91 
 
 Century, 71, 167, 171, 202, 216, 
 
 217-18, 240, 242, 244, 251-2, 
 
 287-311, 325, 335, 343, 344 
 Chap Book, 178, 203, 356 
 Chicago, 307 
 Child of Pallas, 179 
 Christian Advocate, 261, 266, 
 
 278, 286 
 Christian Disciple, 129, 263 
 Christian Era, 261 
 Christian Examiner, 129, 230, 
 
 263, 264, 278 
 Christian History, 256 
 
 370 
 
PERIODICALS MENTIONED 
 
 371 
 
 Christian Monitor, 257 
 Christian Observer, 2.^7, 284, 
 
 286 
 Christian Reflector, 261 
 Christian Register, 261, 284 
 Christian's, Scholar's and 
 
 Farmer's, 8, 9 
 Christian Science Monitor, 
 
 261 
 Christian Union, 275-281, 282 
 Churchman, 259, 286 
 Churchman's, 257 
 Club-Room, 64-65 
 Collier's Weekly, 352 
 Columbian, ia-15, 133 
 Columbian Phenix, 60 
 Commercial Review, 184 
 Companion, 179 
 Congregationalist, 261, 278, 
 
 282, 286 
 Corsair, 135, 136, 235 
 Cosmopolitan, 340, 350, 354, 
 
 358-62, 366 
 Cosmopolitan, An Occasional, 
 
 183 
 Critic, 114 
 
 De Bow's Monthly, 185, 295 
 
 Delineator, 305 
 
 Democratic Review, 141, 142- 
 
 43, 148, 150, 264 
 Dial, 50-54, 80, 125, 154, 192, 
 
 205, 263 
 Dial, Chicago, 203 
 Dollar Magazine, 93 
 Dwight's Journal of Music, 80 
 
 Emerald, 30, 42, 62 
 Emerson's, 206, 214-15 
 Evangelist, Hartford, 257 
 Evangelist, 253, 273, 277, 286 
 Everybody's, 3^53, 363-366 
 Every Saturday, 165, 166, 169 
 
 Examiner, Richmond, 138, 
 193 
 
 Farmers' Weekly Museum 
 and Lay Preachers' Gazette, 
 56-58 
 
 Forum, 171 
 
 Frank Leslie's Popular 
 Monthly, 83 
 
 Freeman, 146 
 
 Galaxy, 167, 216, 223 
 
 Garden City, 306 
 
 Gem of the Prairie, 201, 306 
 
 General or Historical Chron- 
 icle, I, 15 
 
 Genius of Liberty, 197 
 
 Genius of the West, 198 
 
 Gentlemen's, Burton's, 89-91, 
 189 
 
 Gentleman and Lady's Town 
 and County, 17, 18 
 
 Gleason's, 83 
 
 Godey's, 75, 92, 95, 97, 103- 
 108, 145, 156, 197, 232, 244, 
 
 314 
 Graham's, 91-103, 122, 141, 
 148, 156, 221, 232-234, 241, 
 244, 247, 314, 329, 330 
 
 H 
 
 Halcyon Luminary, 131 
 
 Harbinger, 80 '""-> 
 
 Harper's, 71, 156, 162, 167, 
 
 206, 209-211, 221, 232-255,1 
 
 287, 289, 296, 299, 307, 308, 
 
 310, 321, 354 y 
 
 Harper's Bazar, 243, 249 
 
 Harper's Weekly, 169, 170, 
 
 209, 245, 249, 325 
 Harper's Young People, 203 
 Harvard, 205 
 
Z1^ 
 
 PERIODICALS MENTIONED 
 
 Hesperian, 199 
 
 Hive, 178 
 
 Home Journal, 136-138, 162 
 
 Hours at Home, 218, 289 
 
 Huntress, 181 
 
 Illinois, 201 
 
 Independent, 221, 267-27J 
 281, 282, 284, 286, 296, 353 
 Instructor, 5 
 
 Journal of Philosophy and the 
 Arts, 67 
 
 Journal of Speculative Philos- 
 ophy, 50 
 
 K 
 
 Key 178 
 
 Knickerbocker, 91, 96, iii, 
 1 14-123, 129, 139, 140, 162, 
 186, 189, 192, 240, 245, 322, 
 351, 362 
 
 Ladies, 75, 103 _ 
 
 Ladies' Companion, 92, 94, 148 
 
 Lady and Gentlemen's Pocket 
 Magazine of Literary and 
 Polite Amusement, 42 
 
 Ladies' Home Journal, 169, 
 344, 355 
 
 Ladies'' Magazine and Reposi- 
 tory of Entertaining Knowl- 
 edge, 19-21 
 
 Ladies' Repository and Gath- 
 erings of the West, 197 
 
 Lakeside Monthly, 202 
 
 Lark, 356 
 
 Ledger, Chicago, 203 
 
 Ledger, New York, 83, 140, 
 221, 243, 245, 303 
 
 Lippincott's, 216, 296, 309 
 
 Literary Cadet, 19s 
 
 Literary and Philosophical 
 Repertory, 55 
 
 Literary and Theological Re- 
 view, 129 
 
 Literary Gazette, Cincinnati, 
 196, 198 
 
 Literary Gazette, New York, 
 70 
 
 Literary Magazine and Am- 
 erican Register, no 
 
 Literary Review, 126 
 
 Literary World, 128 
 
 Littell's Living Age, 71, 209 
 
 Little Corporal, 203, 364 
 
 Lowell Offering, 81-82 
 
 M 
 
 McClure's, 341, 343-354, 366 
 
 Magazine of Ecclesiastical 
 History, 257 
 
 Magnolia or Southern Appa- 
 lachian, 183 
 
 Massachaisetts, 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 21, 
 
 Massachusetts Quarterly, 263 
 
 Medley, 200 
 
 Mercury, New York, 221 
 
 Metropolitan, 179 
 
 Mirror, Boston, 63 
 
 Mirror, Cincinnati, 198-199, 
 
 201 
 Mirror, New York, 74, 106, 
 
 119, 131, 132, 136, 145, 189, 
 
 327 
 Miscellany, Boston, 75-77 
 Missionary Journal, South 
 
 Carolina, 261 
 Monthly, Boston, (ij 
 Monthly, Philadelphia, 8, 23 
 Monthly Anthology and Bos- 
 ton Review, 28-32, ()2, 63, 
 
 259 
 Monthly Chronicle, 75 
 Monthly Magazine and Am- 
 
 merican. Review, 109 
 
PERIODICALS MENTIONED 
 
 373 
 
 Monthly View, i. 
 iMunsey's, 341-43 
 Munsey's Weekly, 341 
 
 N 
 
 Nation, 221-228, 271, 317-318 
 National, Richmond, 134, 187, 
 
 319-320 
 National Era, 78, 135, 193-195 
 National Press, 136 
 New American, 23 
 New Englander, 53 
 New England Galaxy and 
 
 Masonic, 45 
 New England, 2 
 New England, 46-49, 69, 70, 
 
 ^ 79 
 
 New England Quarterly, 61 
 
 New Jersey Repository, 26 
 
 New Western, 198 
 
 New York, 24-25 
 
 New York Monthly, 23 
 
 New World, 91, 121, 136, 139, 
 
 140 
 Nightingale, 3, 26 
 Niles' Weekly Register, 180 
 North American Review, 28- 
 41, 62, 65, 67, 70, 71, 75, 78, 
 81, 125, 164, 179, 183, 188, 
 192, 222, 228-30, 263, 322, 
 
 330, 331 
 Nova Scotia, 26 
 
 Observatory, 270 
 
 Observer, Baltimore, 114, 
 
 I 79-1 8 I 
 Observer, 271 
 Old and New, 263, 292 
 Omnium Gatherum, 63 
 Ordeal, 43-45 
 Our Young Folks, 165, 169, 
 
 306 
 Outlook, 263, 281, 286 
 
 Panoplist, 257, 259 
 Parlour, 198 
 Pearl, 79, 314 
 Pennsylvania, 9 
 Peterson's, 94, 232 
 Philadelphia Magazine and 
 
 Review, 6 
 Philistine, 114, 357 
 Philanthropist, 193 
 Pioneer, 77-78, 148, 155, 205, 
 
 320 
 Pioneer, San Francisco, 204 
 Polyanthos, 41-45 
 Port-Folio, 86-89 
 Princeton Review, 273 
 Printers' Ink, 303 
 Puritan, 270 
 Putnam's, 156, 162, 186, 205, 
 
 221, 228, 231, 240, 249, 291, 
 
 3IS» 321 
 
 Q 
 
 Quarterly, Boston, 54, 142 
 Quarterly, New York, 145 
 
 R 
 
 Recorder and Telegraph, 260 
 
 261 
 Red Book, 180 
 Remembrancer, 260 
 Review, New York, 129, 328 
 Review and Athenaeum, 116, 
 
 117, 126, 127 
 Riverside, 292 
 Round Table, 40, 214, 219, 221, 
 
 224, 230, 271-72, 276, 278 
 Royal American, 16, 32 
 Royal Spiritual, 257 
 
 Salmagundi, 89, 1 12-14 
 Sargent's, 148 
 
374 
 
 PERIODICALS MENTIONED 
 
 Sartain's, 78, 147, 156, 221, 
 232, 233 
 
 Scribner's-Century. See Cen- 
 tury 
 
 Scribner's, 301, 309, 366* 
 
 Simm's Southern and West- 
 ern Monthly, 183 
 
 Something, 63 
 
 Southern, 295-96, 97 
 
 Southern Christian Register, 
 182 
 
 Southern Literary Messenger, 
 145, 147, 148, 183, 186-190, 
 199 
 
 Southern Quarterly Review, 
 183, 185, 186 
 
 Southern Review, 182, 183, 
 
 295 
 Souvenir, 193 
 Stylus, 189, 320 
 
 Theological, 2^7 
 Theological Magazine and Re- 
 ligious Repository, 260 
 Town, 114 
 Town Topics, 181 
 
 United States Literary G 
 zette, 65-66, 70, 328 
 
 U 
 
 United States, 10, 25 
 United States Christian, 256 
 United States Gazette, 95, 123, 
 233 
 
 Visitor, 96 
 
 y 
 
 w 
 
 Watchman, 261, 278 
 Waverly, 305 
 Weekly, Boston, (i2 
 Weekly, New York, 221 
 Weekly, Philadelphia, 10 
 Weekly Museum, 22 
 West American Monthly, ic 
 Western Lady's Book, 196 
 Western Messenger, 190-93 
 Western Minerva, 198 
 Western Monthly, 201 
 Western Monthly Review, ic 
 Western Review, 200 
 Western Spy, 196 
 Woman's Journal, 176, 243 
 Worcester, 22 
 
 Young Man's, 257 
 
 Youth's Companion, 73, 20, 
 
 324 
 
 Z 
 
 Zion's Herald, 261, 266, 278 
 Zion's Watchman, 266 
 
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