This occurred in connection with a notable anniversary celebration in honor of Henry Ward Beecher, in which the entire city of Brooklyn was to participate. It was to mark a mile-stone in Mr. Beecher’s ministry and in his pastorate of Plymouth Church. Bok planned a worldwide tribute to the famed clergyman: he would get the most distinguished men and women of this and other countries to express their esteem for the Plymouth pastor in written congratulations, and he would bind these into a volume for presentation to Mr. Beecher on the occasion. He consulted members of the Beecher family, and, with their acquiescence, began to assemble the material. He was in the midst of the work when Henry Ward Beecher passed away. Bok felt that the tributes already received were too wonderful to be lost to the world, and, after again consulting Mrs. Beecher and her children, he determined to finish the collection and publish it as a memorial for private distribution. After a prodigious correspondence, the work was at last completed; and in June, 1887, the volume was published, in a limited edition of five hundred copies. Bok distributed copies of the volume to the members of Mr. Beecher’s family, he had orders from Mr. Beecher’s friends, one hundred copies were offered to the American public and one hundred copies were issued in an English edition.
With such a figure to whom to do honor, the contributors, of course, included the foremost men and women of the time. Grover Cleveland was then President of the United States, and his tribute was a notable one. Mr. Gladstone, the Duke of Argyll, Pasteur, Canon Farrar, Bartholdi, Salvini, and a score of others represented English and European opinion. Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Greenleaf Whittier, T. De Witt Talmage, Robert G. Ingersoll, Charles Dudley Warner, General Sherman, Julia Ward Howe, Andrew Carnegie, Edwin Booth, Rutherford B. Hayes–there was scarcely a leader of thought and of action of that day unrepresented. The edition was, of course, quickly exhausted; and when to-day a copy occasionally appears at an auction sale, it is sold at a high price.
The newspapers gave very large space to the distinguished memorial, and this fact angered a journalist, Joseph Howard, Junior, a man at one time close to Mr. Beecher, who had befriended him. Howard had planned to be the first in the field with a hastily prepared biography of the great preacher, and he felt that Bok had forestalled him. Forthwith, he launched a vicious attack on the compiler of the memorial, accusing him of “making money out of Henry Ward Beecher’s dead body” and of “seriously offending the family of Mr. Beecher, who had had no say in the memorial, which was therefore without authority, and hence extremely distasteful to all.”
Howard had convinced a number of editors of the justice of his position, and so he secured a wide publication for his attack. For the second time, Edward Bok was under fire, and remembering his action on the previous occasion, he again remained silent, and again the argument was put forth that his silence implied guilt. But Mrs. Beecher and members of the Beecher family did not observe silence, and quickly proved that not only had Bok compiled the memorial as a labor of love and had lost money on it, but that he had the full consent of the family in its preparation.
When, shortly afterward, Howard’s hastily compiled “biography” of Mr. Beecher appeared, a reporter asked Mrs. Beecher whether she and her family had found it accurate.
“Accurate, my child,” said Mrs. Beecher. “Why, it is so accurate in its absolute falsity that neither I nor the boys can find one fact or date given correctly, although we have studied it for two days. Even the year of Mr. Beecher’s birth is wrong, and that is the smallest error!”
Edward Bok little dreamed that these two experiences with public criticism were to serve him as a foretaste of future attacks when he would get the benefit of hundreds of pencils especially sharpened for him.
XIII. Publishing Incidents and Anecdotes
One evening some literary men were dining together previous to going to a private house where a number of authors were to give readings from their books. At the table the talk turned on the carelessness with which the public reads books. Richard Harding Davis, one of the party, contended that the public read more carefully than the others believed. It was just at the time when Du Maurier’s Trilby was in every one’s hands.
“Don’t you believe it,” said one of the diners. “I’ll warrant you could take a portion of some well-known story to-night and palm it off on most of your listeners as new stuff.”
“Done,” said Davis. “Come along, and I’ll prove you wrong.”
The reading was to be at the house of John Kendrick Bangs at Yonkers. When Davis’s “turn” in the programme came, he announced that he would read a portion from an unpublished story written by himself. Immediately there was a flutter in the audience, particularly among the younger element.
Pulling a roll of manuscript out of his pocket, Davis began:
“It was a fine, sunny, showery day in April. The big studio window–“
He got no farther. Almost the entire audience broke into a shout of laughter and applause. Davis had read thirteen of the opening words of Trilby.
All publishing houses employ “readers” outside of those in their own offices for the reading of manuscripts on special subjects. One of these “outside readers” was given a manuscript for criticism. He took it home and began its reading. He had finished only a hundred pages or so when, by a curious coincidence, the card of the author of the manuscript was brought to the “reader.” The men were close friends.
Hastily gathering up the manuscript, the critic shoved the work into a drawer of his desk, and asked that his friend be shown in.
The evening was passed in conversation; as the visitor rose to leave, his host, rising also and seating himself on his desk, asked:
“What have you been doing lately? Haven’t seen much of you.”
“No,” said the friend. “It may interest you to know that I have been turning to literary work, and have just completed what I consider to be an important book.”
“Really?” commented the “reader.”
“Yes,” went on his friend. “I submitted it a few days ago to one of the big publishing houses. But, great Scott, you can never tell what these publishers will do with a thing of that sort. They give their manuscripts to all kinds of fools to read. I suppose, by this time, some idiot, who doesn’t know a thing of the subject about which I have written, is sitting on my manuscript.”
Mechanically, the “reader” looked at the desk upon which he was sitting, thought of the manuscript lying in the drawer directly under him, and said:
“Yes, that may be. Quite likely, in fact.”
Of no novel was the secret of the authorship ever so well kept as was that of The Breadwinners, which, published anonymously in 1883, was the talk of literary circles for a long time, and speculation as to its authorship was renewed in the newspapers for years afterward. Bok wanted very much to find out the author’s name so that he could announce it in his literary letter. He had his suspicions, but they were not well founded until an amusing little incident occurred which curiously revealed the secret to him.
Bok was waiting to see one of the members of a publishing firm when a well-known English publisher, visiting in America, was being escorted out of the office, the conversation continuing as the two gentlemen walked through the outer rooms. “My chief reason,” said the English publisher, as he stopped at the end of the outer office where Bok was sitting, “for hesitating at all about taking an English set of plates of the novel you speak of is because it is of anonymous authorship, a custom of writing which has grown out of all decent proportions in your country since the issue of that stupid book, The Breadwinners.”
As these last words were spoken, a man seated at a desk directly behind the speaker looked up, smiled, and resumed reading a document which he had dropped in to sign. A smile also spread over the countenance of the American publisher as he furtively glanced over the shoulder of the English visitor and caught the eye of the smiling man at the desk.
Bok saw the little comedy, realized at once that he had discovered the author of The Breadwinners, and stated to the publisher that he intended to use the incident in his literary letter. But it proved to be one of those heart-rending instances of a delicious morsel of news that must be withheld from the journalist’s use. The publisher acknowledged that Bok had happened upon the true authorship, but placed him upon his honor to make no use of the incident. And Bok learned again the vital journalistic lesson that there are a great many things in the world that the journalist knows and yet cannot write about. He would have been years in advance of the announcement finally made that John Hay wrote the novel.
At another time, while waiting, Bok had an experience which, while interesting, was saddening instead of amusing. He was sitting in Mark Twain’s sitting-room in his home in Hartford waiting for the humorist to return from a walk. Suddenly sounds of devotional singing came in through the open window from the direction of the outer conservatory. The singing was low, yet the sad tremor in the voice seemed to give it special carrying power.
“You have quite a devotional servant,” Bok said to a maid who was dusting the room.
“Oh, that is not a servant who is singing, sir,” was the answer. “You can step to this window and see for yourself.”
Bok did so, and there, sitting alone on one of the rustic benches in the flower-house, was a small, elderly woman. Keeping time with the first finger of her right hand, as if with a baton, she was slightly swaying her frail body as she sang, softly yet sweetly, Charles Wesley’s hymn, “Jesus, Lover of My Soul,” and Sarah Flower Adams’s “Nearer, My God, to Thee.”
But the singer was not a servant. It was Harriet Beecher Stowe!
On another visit to Hartford, shortly afterward, Bok was just turning into Forrest Street when a little old woman came shambling along toward him, unconscious, apparently, of people or surroundings. In her hand she carried a small tree-switch. Bok did not notice her until just as he had passed her he heard her calling to him: “Young man, young man.” Bok retraced his steps, and then the old lady said: “Young man, you have been leaning against something white,” and taking her tree-switch she whipped some wall dust from the sleeve of Bok’s coat. It was not until that moment that Bok recognized in his self-appointed “brush” no less a personage than Harriet Beecher Stowe.
“This is Mrs. Stowe, is it not?” he asked, after tendering his thanks to her.
Those blue eyes looked strangely into his as she answered:
“That is my name, young man. I live on this street. Are you going to have me arrested for stopping you?” with which she gathered up her skirts and quickly ran away, looking furtively over her shoulder at the amazed young man, sorrowfully watching the running figure!
Speaking of Mrs. Stowe brings to mind an unscrupulous and yet ingenious trick just about this time played by a young man attached to one of the New York publishing houses. One evening at dinner this chap happened to be in a bookish company when the talk turned to the enthusiasm of the Southern negro for an illustrated Bible. The young publishing clerk listened intently, and next day he went to a Bible publishing house in New York which issued a Bible gorgeous with pictures and entered into an arrangement with the proprietors whereby he should have the Southern territory. He resigned his position, and within a week he was in the South. He made arrangements with an artist friend to make a change in each copy of the Bible which he contracted for. The angels pictured therein were white in color. He had these made black, so he could show that there were black angels as well as white ones. The Bibles cost him just eighty cents apiece. He went about the South and offered the Bibles to the astonished and open-mouthed negroes for eight dollars each, two dollars and a half down and the rest in monthly payments. His sales were enormous. Then he went his rounds all over again and offered to close out the remaining five dollars and a half due him by a final payment of two dollars and a half each. In nearly every case the bait was swallowed, and on each Bible he thus cleared four dollars and twenty cents net!
Running the elevator in the building where a prominent publishing firm had its office was a negro of more than ordinary intelligence. The firm had just published a subscription book on mechanical engineering, a chapter of which was devoted to the construction and operation of passenger elevators. One of the agents selling the book thought he might find a customer in Washington.
“Wash,” said the book-agent, “you ought to buy a copy of this book, do you know it?”
“No, boss, don’t want no books. Don’t git no time fo’ readin’ books,” drawled Wash. “It teks all mah time to run dis elevator.”
“But this book will help you to run your elevator. See here: there’s a whole chapter here on elevators,” persisted the canvasser.
“Don’t want no help to run dis elevator,” said the darky. “Dis elevator runs all right now.”
“But,” said the canvasser, “this will help you to run it better. You will know twice as much when you get through.”
“No, boss, no, dat’s just it,” returned Wash. “Don’t want to learn nothing, boss,” he said. “Why, boss, I know more now than I git paid for.”
There was one New York newspaper that prided itself on its huge circulation, and its advertising canvassers were particularly insistent in securing the advertisements of publishers. Of course, the real purpose of the paper was to secure a certain standing for itself, which it lacked, rather than to be of any service to the publishers.
By dint of perseverance, its agents finally secured from one of the ten-cent magazines, then so numerous, a large advertisement of a special number, and in order to test the drawing power of the newspaper as a medium, there was inserted a line in large black type:
“SEND TEN CENTS FOR A NUMBER.”
But the compositor felt that magazine literature should be even cheaper than it was, and to that thought in his mind his fingers responded, so that when the advertisement appeared, this particular bold-type line read:
“SEND TEN CENTS FOR A YEAR.”
This wonderful offer appealed with singular force to the class of readers of this particular paper, and they decided to take advantage of it. The advertisement appeared on Sunday, and Monday’s first mail brought the magazine over eight hundred letters with ten cents enclosed “for a year’s subscription as per your advertisement in yesterday’s –.” The magazine management consulted its lawyer, who advised the publisher to make the newspaper pay the extra ninety cents on each subscription, and, although this demand was at first refused, the proprietors of the daily finally yielded. At the end of the first week eight thousand and fifty-five letters with ten cents enclosed had reached the magazine, and finally the total was a few over twelve thousand!
XIV. Last Years in New York
Edward Bok’s lines were now to follow those of advertising for several years. He was responsible for securing the advertisements for The Book Buyer and The Presbyterian Review. While the former was, frankly, a house-organ, its editorial contents had so broadened as to make the periodical of general interest to book-lovers, and with the subscribers constituting the valuable list of Scribner book-buyers, other publishers were eager to fish in the Scribner pond.
With The Presbyterian Review, the condition was different. A magazine issued quarterly naturally lacks the continuity desired by the advertiser; the scope of the magazine was limited, and so was the circulation. It was a difficult magazine to “sell” to the advertiser, and Bok’s salesmanship was taxed to the utmost. Although all that the publishers asked was that the expense of getting out the periodical be met, with its two hundred and odd pages even this was difficult. It was not an attractive proposition.
The most interesting feature of the magazine to Bok appeared to be the method of editing. It was ostensibly edited by a board, but, practically, by Professor Francis L. Patton, D.D., of Princeton Theological Seminary (afterward president of Princeton University), and Doctor Charles A. Briggs, of Union Theological Seminary. The views of these two theologians differed rather widely, and when, upon several occasions, they met in Bok’s office, on bringing in their different articles to go into the magazine, lively discussions ensued. Bok did not often get the drift of these discussions, but he was intensely interested in listening to the diverse views of the two theologians.
One day the question of heresy came up between the two men, and during a pause in the discussion, Bok, looking for light, turned to Doctor Briggs and asked: “Doctor, what really is heresy?”
Doctor Briggs, taken off his guard for a moment, looked blankly at his young questioner, and repeated: “What is heresy?”
“Yes,” repeated Bok, “just what is heresy, Doctor?”
“That’s right,” interjected Doctor Patton, with a twinkle in his eyes, “what is heresy, Briggs?”
“Would you be willing to write it down for me?” asked Bok, fearful that he should not remember Doctor Briggs’s definition even if he were told.
And Doctor Briggs wrote:
“Heresy is anything in doctrine or practice that departs from the mind of the Church as officially defined.
Charles A. Briggs.
“Let me see,” asked Doctor Patton, and when he read it, he muttered: “Humph, pretty broad, pretty broad.”
“Well,” answered the nettled Doctor Briggs, “perhaps you can give a less broad definition, Patton.”
“No, no,” answered the Princeton theologian, as the slightest wink came from the eye nearest Bok, “I wouldn’t attempt it for a moment. Too much for me.”
On another occasion, as the two were busy in their discussion of some article to be inserted in the magazine, Bok listening with all his might, Doctor Patton, suddenly turning to the young listener, asked, in the midst of the argument: “Whom are the Giants going to play this afternoon, Bok?”
Doctor Briggs’s face was a study. For a moment the drift of the question was an enigma to him: then realizing that an important theological discussion had been interrupted by a trivial baseball question, he gathered up his papers and stamped violently out of the office. Doctor Patton made no comment, but, with a smile, he asked Bok: “Johnnie Ward going to play to-day, do you know? Thought I might ask Mr. Scribner if you could go up to the game this afternoon.”
It is unnecessary to say to which of the two men Bok was the more attracted, and when it came, each quarter, to figuring how many articles could go into the Review without exceeding the cost limit fixed by the house, it was always a puzzle to Doctor Briggs why the majority of the articles left out were invariably those that he had brought in, while many of those which Doctor Patton handed in somehow found their place, upon the final assembling, among the contents.
“Your articles are so long,” Bok would explain.
“Long?” Doctor Briggs would echo. “You don’t measure theological discussions by the yardstick, young man.”
“Perhaps not,” the young assembler would maintain.
But we have to do some measuring here by the composition-stick, just the same.”
And the Union Seminary theologian was never able successfully, to vault that hurdle!
From his boyhood days (up to the present writing) Bok was a pronounced baseball “fan,” and so Doctor Patton appealed to a warm place in the young man’s heart when he asked him the questions about the New York baseball team. There was, too, a baseball team among the Scribner young men of which Bok was a part. This team played, each Saturday afternoon, a team from another publishing house, and for two seasons it was unbeatable. Not only was this baseball aggregation close to the hearts of the Scribner employees, but, in an important game, the junior member of the firm played on it and the senior member was a spectator. Frank N. Doubleday played on first base; William D. Moffat, later of Moffat, Yard & Company, and now editor of The Mentor, was behind the bat; Bok pitched; Ernest Dressel North, the present authority on rare editions of books, was in the field, as were also Ray Safford, now a director in the Scribner corporation, and Owen W. Brewer, at present a prominent figure in Chicago’s book world. It was a happy group, all closely banded together in their business interests and in their human relations as well.
With Scribner’s Magazine now in the periodical field, Bok would be asked on his trips to the publishing houses to have an eye open for advertisements for that periodical as well. Hence his education in the solicitation of advertisements became general, and gave him a sympathetic understanding of the problems of the advertising solicitor which was to stand him in good stead when, in his later experience, he was called upon to view the business problems of a magazine from the editor’s position. His knowledge of the manufacture of the two magazines in his charge was likewise educative, as was the fascinating study of typography which always had, and has today, a wonderful attraction for him.
It was, however, in connection with the advertising of the general books of the house, and in his relations with their authors, that Bok found his greatest interest. It was for him to find the best manner in which to introduce to the public the books issued by the house, and the general study of the psychology of publicity which this called for attracted Bok greatly.
Bok was now asked to advertise a novel published by the Scribners which, when it was issued, and for years afterward, was pointed to as a proof of the notion that a famous name was all that was necessary to ensure the acceptance of a manuscript by even a leading publishing house. The facts in the case were that this manuscript was handed in one morning by a friend of the house with the remark that he submitted it at the suggestion of the author, who did not desire that his identity should be known until after the manuscript had been read and passed upon by the house. It was explained that the writer was not a famous author; in fact, he had never written anything before; this was his first book of any sort; he merely wanted to “try his wings.” The manuscript was read in due time by the Scribner readers, and the mutual friend was advised that the house would be glad to publish the novel, and was ready to execute and send a contract to the author if the firm knew in whose name the agreement should be made. Then came the first intimation of the identity of the author: the friend wrote that if the publishers would look in the right-hand corner of the first page of the manuscript they would find there the author’s name. Search finally revealed an asterisk. The author of the novel (Valentino) was William Waldorf Astor.
Although the Scribners did not publish Mark Twain’s books, the humorist was a frequent visitor to the retail store, and occasionally he would wander back to the publishing department located at the rear of the store, which was then at 743 Broadway.
Smoking was not permitted in the Scribner offices, and, of course, Mark Twain was always smoking. He generally smoked a granulated tobacco which he kept in a long check bag made of silk and rubber. When he sauntered to the back of the Scribner store, he would generally knock the residue from the bowl of the pipe, take out the stem, place it in his vest pocket, like a pencil, and drop the bowl into the bag containing the granulated tobacco. When he wanted to smoke again (which was usually five minutes later) he would fish out the bowl, now automatically filled with tobacco, insert the stem, and strike a light. One afternoon as he wandered into Bok’s office, he was just putting his pipe away. The pipe, of the corncob variety, was very aged and black. Bok asked him whether it was the only pipe he had.
“Oh, no,” Mark answered, “I have several. But they’re all like this. I never smoke a new corncob pipe. A new pipe irritates the throat. No corncob pipe is fit for anything until it has been used at least a fortnight.”
“How do you break in a pipe, then?” asked Bok.
“That’s the trick,” answered Mark Twain. “I get a cheap man–a man who doesn’t amount to much, anyhow: who would be as well, or better, dead–and pay him a dollar to break in the pipe for me. I get him to smoke the pipe for a couple of weeks, then put in a new stem, and continue operations as long as the pipe holds together.”
Bok’s newspaper syndicate work had brought him into contact with Fanny Davenport, then at the zenith of her career as an actress. Miss Davenport, or Mrs. Melbourne McDowell as she was in private life, had never written for print; but Bok, seeing that she had something to say about her art and the ability to say it, induced her to write for the newspapers through his syndicate. The actress was overjoyed to have revealed to her a hitherto unsuspected gift; Bok published her articles successfully, and gave her a publicity that her press agent had never dreamed of. Miss Davenport became interested in the young publisher, and after watching the methods which he employed in successfully publishing her writings, decided to try to obtain his services as her assistant manager. She broached the subject, offered him a five years’ contract for forty weeks’ service, with a minimum of fifteen weeks each year to spend in or near New York, at a salary, for the first year, of three thousand dollars, increasing annually until the fifth year, when he was to receive sixty-four hundred dollars.
Bok was attracted to the work: he had never seen the United States, was anxious to do so, and looked upon the chance as a good opportunity. Miss Davenport had the contract made out, executed it, and then, in high glee, Bok took it home to show it to his mother. He had reckoned without question upon her approval, only to meet with an immediate and decided negative to the proposition as a whole, general and specific. She argued that the theatrical business was not for him; and she saw ahead and pointed out so strongly the mistake he was making that he sought Miss Davenport the next day and told her of his mother’s stand. The actress suggested that she see the mother; she did, that day, and she came away from the interview a wiser if a sadder woman. Miss Davenport frankly told Bok that with such an instinctive objection as his mother seemed to have, he was right to follow her advice and the contract was not to be thought of.
It is difficult to say whether this was or was not for Bok the turning-point which comes in the life of every young man. Where the venture into theatrical life would have led him no one can, of course, say. One thing is certain: Bok’s instinct and reason both failed him in this instance. He believes now that had his venture into the theatrical field been temporary or permanent, the experiment, either way, would have been disastrous.
Looking back and viewing the theatrical profession even as it was in that day (of a much higher order than now), he is convinced he would never have been happy in it. He might have found this out in a year or more, after the novelty of travelling had worn off, and asked release from his contract; in that case he would have broken his line of progress in the publishing business. From whatever viewpoint he has looked back upon this, which he now believes to have been the crisis in his life, he is convinced that his mother’s instinct saved him from a grievous mistake.
The Scribner house, in its foreign-book department, had imported some copies of Bourrienne’s Life of Napoleon, and a set had found its way to Bok’s desk for advertising purposes. He took the books home to glance them over, found himself interested, and sat up half the night to read them. Then he took the set to the editor of the New York Star, and suggested that such a book warranted a special review, and offered to leave the work for the literary editor.
“You have read the books?” asked the editor.
“Every word,” returned Bok.
“Then, why don’t you write the review?” suggested the editor.
This was a new thought to Bok. “Never wrote a review,” he said.
“Try it,” answered the editor. “Write a column.”
“A column wouldn’t scratch the surface of this book,” suggested the embryo reviewer.
“Well, give it what it is worth,” returned the editor.
Bok did. He wrote a page of the paper.
“Too much, too much,” said the editor. “Heavens, man, we’ve got to get some news into this paper.”
“Very well,” returned the reviewer. “Read it, and cut it where you like. That’s the way I see the book.”
And next Sunday the review appeared, word for word, as Bok had written it. His first review had successfully passed!
But Bok was really happiest in that part of his work which concerned itself with the writing of advertisements. The science of advertisement writing, which meant to him the capacity to say much in little space, appealed strongly. He found himself more honestly attracted to this than to the writing of his literary letter, his editorials, or his book reviewing, of which he was now doing a good deal. He determined to follow where his bent led; he studied the mechanics of unusual advertisements wherever he saw them; he eagerly sought a knowledge of typography and its best handling in an advertisement, and of the value and relation of illustrations to text. He perceived that his work along these lines seemed to give satisfaction to his employers, since they placed more of it in his hands to do; and he sought in every way to become proficient in the art.
To publishers whose advertisements he secured for the periodicals in his charge, he made suggestions for the improvement of their announcements, and found his suggestions accepted. He early saw the value of white space as one of the most effective factors in advertising; but this was a difficult argument, he soon found, to convey successfully to others. A white space in an advertisement was to the average publisher something to fill up; Bok saw in it something to cherish for its effectiveness. But he never got very far with his idea: he could not convince (perhaps because he failed to express his ideas convincingly) his advertisers of what he felt and believed so strongly.
An occasion came in which he was permitted to prove his contention. The Scribners had published Andrew Carnegie’s volume, Triumphant Democracy, and the author desired that some special advertising should be done in addition to that allowed by the appropriation made by the house. To Bok’s grateful ears came the injunction from the steel magnate: “Use plenty of white space.” In conjunction with Mr. Doubleday, Bok prepared and issued this extra advertising, and for once, at least, the wisdom of using white space was demonstrated. But it was only a flash in the pan. Publishers were unwilling to pay for “unused space,” as they termed it. Each book was a separate unit, others argued: it was not like advertising one article continuously in which money could be invested; and only a limited amount could be spent on a book which ran its course, even at its best, in a very short time.
And, rightly or wrongly, book advertising has continued much along the same lines until the present day. In fact, in no department of manufacturing or selling activity has there been so little progress during the past fifty years as in bringing books to the notice of the public. In all other lines, the producer has brought his wares to the public, making it easier and still easier for it to obtain his goods, while the public, if it wants a book, must still seek the book instead of being sought by it.
That there is a tremendous unsupplied book demand in this country there is no doubt: the wider distribution and easier access given to periodicals prove this point. Now and then there has been tried an unsupported or not well-thought-out plan for bringing books to a public not now reading them, but there seems little or no understanding of the fact that there lies an uncultivated field of tremendous promise to the publisher who will strike out on a new line and market his books, so that the public will not have to ferret out a book-store or wind through the maze of a department store. The American reading public is not the book-reading public that it should be or could be made to be; but the habit must be made easy for it to acquire. Books must be placed where the public can readily get at them. It will not, of its own volition, seek them. It did not do so with magazines; it will not do so with books.
In the meanwhile, Bok’s literary letter had prospered until it was now published in some forty-five newspapers. One of these was the Philadelphia Times. In that paper, each week, the letter had been read by Mr. Cyrus H. K. Curtis, the owner and publisher of The Ladies’ Home Journal. Mr. Curtis had decided that he needed an editor for his magazine, in order to relieve his wife, who was then editing it, and he fixed upon the writer of Literary Leaves as his man. He came to New York, consulted Will Carleton, the poet, and found that while the letter was signed by William J. Bok, it was actually written by his brother who was with the Scribners. So he sought Bok out there.
The publishing house had been advertising in the Philadelphia magazine, so that the visit of Mr. Curtis was not an occasion for surprise. Mr. Curtis told Bok he had read his literary letter in the Philadelphia Times, and suggested that perhaps he might write a similar department for The Ladies’ Home Journal. Bok saw no reason why he should not, and told Mr. Curtis so, and promised to send over a trial installment. The Philadelphia publisher then deftly went on, explained editorial conditions in his magazine, and, recognizing the ethics of the occasion by not offering Bok another position while he was already occupying one, asked him if he knew the man for the place.
“Are you talking at me or through me?” asked Bok.
“Both,” replied Mr. Curtis.
This was in April of 1889.
Bok promised Mr. Curtis he would look over the field, and meanwhile he sent over to Philadelphia the promised trial “literary gossip” installment. It pleased Mr. Curtis, who suggested a monthly department, to which Bok consented. He also turned over in his mind the wisdom of interrupting his line of progress with the Scribners, and in New York, and began to contemplate the possibilities in Philadelphia and the work there.
He gathered a collection of domestic magazines then published, and looked them over to see what was already in the field. Then he began to study himself, his capacity for the work, and the possibility of finding it congenial. He realized that it was absolutely foreign to his Scribner work: that it meant a radical departure. But his work with his newspaper syndicate naturally occurred to him, and he studied it with a view of its adaptation to the field of the Philadelphia magazine.
His next step was to take into his confidence two or three friends whose judgment he trusted and discuss the possible change. Without an exception, they advised against it. The periodical had no standing, they argued; Bok would be out of sympathy with its general atmosphere after his Scribner environment; he was now in the direct line of progress in New York publishing houses; and, to cap the climax, they each argued in turn, he would be buried in Philadelphia: New York was the centre, etc., etc.
More than any other single argument, this last point destroyed Bok’s faith in the judgment of his friends. He had had experience enough to realize that a man could not be buried in any city, provided he had the ability to stand out from his fellow-men. He knew from his biographical reading that cream will rise to the surface anywhere, in Philadelphia as well as in New York: it all depended on whether the cream was there: it was up to the man. Had he within him that peculiar, subtle something that, for the want of a better phrase, we call the editorial instinct? That was all there was to it, and that decision had to be his and his alone!
A business trip for the Scribners now calling him West, Bok decided to stop at Philadelphia, have a talk with Mr. Curtis, and look over his business plant. He did this, and found Mr. Curtis even more desirous than before to have him consider the position. Bok’s instinct was strongly in favor of an acceptance. A natural impulse moved him, without reasoning, to action. Reasoning led only to a cautious mental state, and caution is a strong factor in the Dutch character. The longer he pursued a conscious process of reasoning, the farther he got from the position. But the instinct remained strong.
On his way back from the West, he stopped in Philadelphia again to consult his friend, George W. Childs; and here he found the only person who was ready to encourage him to make the change.
Bok now laid the matter before his mother, in whose feminine instinct he had supreme confidence. With her, he met with instant discouragement. But in subsequent talks he found that her opposition was based not upon the possibilities inherent in the position, but on a mother’s natural disinclination to be separated from one of her sons. In the case of Fanny Davenport’s offer the mother’s instinct was strong against the proposition itself. But in the present instance it was the mother’s love that was speaking; not her instinct or judgment.
Bok now consulted his business associates, and, to a man, they discouraged the step, but almost invariably upon the argument that it was suicidal to leave New York. He had now a glimpse of the truth that there is no man so provincially narrow as the untravelled New Yorker who believes in his heart that the sun rises in the East River and sets in the North River.
He realized more keenly than ever before that the decision rested with him alone. On September 1, 1889, Bok wrote to Mr. Curtis, accepting the position in Philadelphia; and on October 13 following he left the Scribners, where he had been so fortunate and so happy, and, after a week’s vacation, followed where his instinct so strongly led, but where his reason wavered.
On October 20, 1889, Edward Bok became the editor of The Ladies’ Home Journal.
XV. Successful Editorship
There is a popular notion that the editor of a woman’s magazine should be a woman. At first thought, perhaps, this sounds logical. But it is a curious fact that by far the larger number of periodicals for women, the world over, are edited by men; and where, as in some cases, a woman is the proclaimed editor, the direction of the editorial policy is generally in the hands of a man, or group of men, in the background. Why this is so has never been explained, any more than why the majority of women’s dressmakers are men; why music, with its larger appeal to women, has been and is still being composed, largely, by men, and why its greatest instrumental performers are likewise men; and why the church, with its larger membership of women, still has, as it always has had, men for its greatest preachers.
In fact, we may well ponder whether the full editorial authority and direction of a modern magazine, either essentially feminine in its appeal or not, can safely be entrusted to a woman when one considers how largely executive is the nature of such a position, and how thoroughly sensitive the modern editor must be to the hundred and one practical business matters which today enter into and form so large a part of the editorial duties. We may question whether women have as yet had sufficient experience in the world of business to cope successfully with the material questions of a pivotal editorial position. Then, again, it is absolutely essential in the conduct of a magazine with a feminine or home appeal to have on the editorial staff women who are experts in their line; and the truth is that women will work infinitely better under the direction of a man than of a woman.
It would seem from the present outlook that, for some time, at least, the so-called woman’s magazine of large purpose and wide vision is very likely to be edited by a man. It is a question, however, whether the day of the woman’s magazine, as we have known it, is not passing. Already the day has gone for the woman’s magazine built on the old lines which now seem so grotesque and feeble in the light of modern growth. The interests of women and of men are being brought closer with the years, and it will not be long before they will entirely merge. This means a constantly diminishing necessity for the distinctly feminine magazine.
Naturally, there will always be a field in the essentially feminine pursuits which have no place in the life of a man, but these are rapidly being cared for by books, gratuitously distributed, issued by the manufacturers of distinctly feminine and domestic wares; for such publications the best talent is being employed, and the results are placed within easy access of women, by means of newspaper advertisement, the store-counter, or the mails. These will sooner or later–and much sooner than later–supplant the practical portions of the woman’s magazine, leaving only the general contents, which are equally interesting to men and to women. Hence the field for the magazine with the essentially feminine appeal is contracting rather than broadening, and it is likely to contract much more rapidly in the future.
The field was altogether different when Edward Bok entered it in 1889. It was not only wide open, but fairly crying out to be filled. The day of Godey’s Lady’s Book had passed; Peterson’s Magazine was breathing its last; and the home or women’s magazines that had attempted to take their place were sorry affairs. It was this consciousness of a void ready to be filled that made the Philadelphia experiment so attractive to the embryo editor. He looked over the field and reasoned that if such magazines as did exist could be fairly successful, if women were ready to buy such, how much greater response would there be to a magazine of higher standards, of larger initiative–a magazine that would be an authoritative clearing-house for all the problems confronting women in the home, that brought itself closely into contact with those problems and tried to solve them in an entertaining and efficient way; and yet a magazine of uplift and inspiration: a magazine, in other words, that would give light and leading in the woman’s world.
The method of editorial expression in the magazines of 1889 was also distinctly vague and prohibitively impersonal. The public knew the name of scarcely a single editor of a magazine: there was no personality that stood out in the mind: the accepted editorial expression was the indefinite “we”; no one ventured to use the first person singular and talk intimately to the reader. Edward Bok’s biographical reading had taught him that the American public loved a personality: that it was always ready to recognize and follow a leader, provided, of course, that the qualities of leadership were demonstrated. He felt the time had come–the reference here and elsewhere is always to the realm of popular magazine literature appealing to a very wide audience–for the editor of some magazine to project his personality through the printed page and to convince the public that he was not an oracle removed from the people, but a real human being who could talk and not merely write on paper.
He saw, too, that the average popular magazine of 1889 failed of large success because it wrote down to the public–a grievous mistake that so many editors have made and still make. No one wants to be told, either directly or indirectly, that he knows less than he does, or even that he knows as little as he does: every one is benefited by the opposite implication, and the public will always follow the leader who comprehends this bit of psychology. There is always a happy medium between shooting over the public’s head and shooting too far under it. And it is because of the latter aim that we find the modern popular magazine the worthless thing that, in so many instances, it is to-day.
It is the rare editor who rightly gauges his public psychology. Perhaps that is why, in the enormous growth of the modern magazine, there have been produced so few successful editors. The average editor is obsessed with the idea of “giving the public what it wants,” whereas, in fact, the public, while it knows what it wants when it sees it, cannot clearly express its wants, and never wants the thing that it does ask for, although it thinks it does at the time. But woe to the editor and his periodical if he heeds that siren voice!
The editor has, therefore, no means of finding it out aforehand by putting his ear to the ground. Only by the simplest rules of psychology can he edit rightly so that he may lead, and to the average editor of to-day, it is to be feared, psychology is a closed book. His mind is all too often focussed on the circulation and advertising, and all too little on the intangibles that will bring to his periodical the results essential in these respects.
The editor is the pivot of a magazine. On him everything turns. If his gauge of the public is correct, readers will come: they cannot help coming to the man who has something to say himself, or who presents writers who have. And if the reader comes, the advertiser must come. He must go where his largest market is: where the buyers are. The advertiser, instead of being the most difficult factor in a magazine proposition, as is so often mistakenly thought, is, in reality, the simplest. He has no choice but to advertise in the successful periodical. He must come along. The editor need never worry about him. If the advertiser shuns the periodical’s pages, the fault is rarely that of the advertiser: the editor can generally look for the reason nearer home.
One of Edward Bok’s first acts as editor was to offer a series of prizes for the best answers to three questions he put to his readers: what in the magazine did they like least and why; what did they like best and why; and what omitted feature or department would they like to see installed? Thousands of answers came, and these the editor personally read carefully and classified. Then he gave his readers’ suggestions back to them in articles and departments, but never on the level suggested by them. He gave them the subjects they asked for, but invariably on a slightly higher plane; and each year he raised the standard a notch. He always kept “a huckleberry or two” ahead of his readers. His psychology was simple: come down to the level which the public sets and it will leave you at the moment you do it. It always expects of its leaders that they shall keep a notch above or a step ahead. The American public always wants something a little better than it asks for, and the successful man, in catering to it, is he who follows this golden rule.
XVI. First Years as a Woman’s Editor
Edward Bok has often been referred to as the one “who made The Ladies’ Home Journal out of nothing,” who “built it from the ground up,” or, in similar terms, implying that when he became its editor in 1889 the magazine was practically non-existent. This is far from the fact. The magazine was begun in 1883, and had been edited by Mrs. Cyrus H. K. Curtis, for six years, under her maiden name of Louisa Knapp, before Bok undertook its editorship. Mrs. Curtis had laid a solid foundation of principle and policy for the magazine: it had achieved a circulation of 440,000 copies a month when she transferred the editorship, and it had already acquired such a standing in the periodical world as to attract the advertisements of Charles Scribner’s Sons, which Mr. Doubleday, and later Bok himself, gave to the Philadelphia magazine–advertising which was never given lightly, or without the most careful investigation of the worth of the circulation of a periodical.
What every magazine publisher knows as the most troublous years in the establishment of a periodical, the first half-dozen years of its existence, had already been weathered by the editor and publisher. The wife as editor and the husband as publisher had combined to lay a solid basis upon which Bok had only to build: his task was simply to rear a structure upon the foundation already laid. It is to the vision and to the genius of the first editor of The Ladies’ Home Journal that the unprecedented success of the magazine is primarily due. It was the purpose and the policy of making a magazine of authoritative service for the womanhood of America, a service which would visualize for womanhood its highest domestic estate, that had won success for the periodical from its inception. It is difficult to believe, in the multiplicity of similar magazines to-day, that such a purpose was new; that The Ladies’ Home Journal was a path-finder; but the convincing proof is found in the fact that all the later magazines of this class have followed in the wake of the periodical conceived by Mrs. Curtis, and have ever since been its imitators.
When Edward Bok succeeded Mrs. Curtis, he immediately encountered another popular misconception of a woman’s magazine–the conviction that if a man is the editor of a periodical with a distinctly feminine appeal, he must, as the term goes, “understand women.” If Bok had believed this to be true, he would never have assumed the position. How deeply rooted is this belief was brought home to him on every hand when his decision to accept the Philadelphia position was announced. His mother, knowing her son better than did any one else, looked at him with amazement. She could not believe that he was serious in his decision to cater to women’s needs when he knew so little about them. His friends, too, were intensely amused, and took no pains to hide their amusement from him. They knew him to be the very opposite of “a lady’s man,” and when they were not convulsed with hilarity they were incredulous and marvelled.
No man, perhaps, could have been chosen for the position who had a less intimate knowledge of women. Bok had no sister, no women confidantes: he had lived with and for his mother. She was the only woman he really knew or who really knew him. His boyhood days had been too full of poverty and struggle to permit him to mingle with the opposite sex. And it is a curious fact that Edward Bok’s instinctive attitude toward women was that of avoidance. He did not dislike women, but it could not be said that he liked them. They had never interested him. Of women, therefore, he knew little; of their needs less. Nor had he the slightest desire, even as an editor, to know them better, or to seek to understand them. Even at that age, he knew that, as a man, he could not, no matter what effort he might make, and he let it go at that.
What he saw in the position was not the need to know women; he could employ women for that purpose. He perceived clearly that the editor of a magazine was largely an executive: his was principally the work of direction; of studying currents and movements, watching their formation, their tendency, their efficacy if advocated or translated into actuality; and then selecting from the horizon those that were for the best interests of the home. For a home was something Edward Bok did understand. He had always lived in one; had struggled to keep it together, and he knew every inch of the hard road that makes for domestic permanence amid adverse financial conditions. And at the home he aimed rather than at the woman in it.
It was upon his instinct that he intended to rely rather than upon any knowledge of woman. His first act in the editorial chair of The Ladies’ Home Journal showed him to be right in this diagnosis of himself, for the incident proved not only how correct was his instinct, but how woefully lacking he was in any knowledge of the feminine nature.
He had divined the fact that in thousands of cases the American mother was not the confidante of her daughter, and reasoned if an inviting human personality could be created on the printed page that would supply this lamentable lack of American family life, girls would flock to such a figure. But all depended on the confidence which the written word could inspire. He tried several writers, but in each case the particular touch that he sought for was lacking. It seemed so simple to him, and yet he could not translate it to others. Then, in desperation, he wrote an installment of such a department as he had in mind himself, intending to show it to a writer he had in view, thus giving her a visual demonstration. He took it to the office the next morning, intending to have it copied, but the manuscript accidentally attached itself to another intended for the composing-room, and it was not until the superintendent of the composing-room during the day said to him, “I didn’t know Miss Ashmead wrote,” that Bok knew where his manuscript had gone.
Miss Ashmead?” asked the puzzled editor.
Yes, Miss Ashmead in your department,” was the answer.
The whereabouts of the manuscript was then disclosed, and the editor called for its return. He had called the department “Side Talks with Girls” by Ruth Ashmead.
“My girls all hope this is going into the magazine,” said the superintendent when he returned the manuscript.
“Why?” asked the editor.
“Well, they say it’s the best stuff for girls they have ever read. They’d love to know Miss Ashmead better.”
Here was exactly what the editor wanted, but he was the author! He changed the name to Ruth Ashmore, and decided to let the manuscript go into the magazine. He reasoned that he would then have a month in which to see the writer he had in mind, and he would show her the proof. But a month filled itself with other duties, and before the editor was aware of it, the composition-room wanted “copy” for the second installment of “Side Talks with Girls.” Once more the editor furnished the copy!
Within two weeks after the second article had been written, the magazine containing the first installment of the new department appeared, and the next day two hundred letters were received for “Ruth Ashmore,” with the mail-clerk asking where they should be sent. “Leave them with me, please,” replied the editor. On the following day the mail-clerk handed him five hundred more.
The editor now took two letters from the top and opened them. He never opened the third! That evening he took the bundle home, and told his mother of his predicament. She read the letters and looked at her son. “You have no right to read these,” she said. The son readily agreed.
His instinct had correctly interpreted the need, but he never dreamed how far the feminine nature would reveal itself on paper.
The next morning the editor, with his letters, took the train for New York and sought his friend, Mrs. Isabel A. Mallon, the “Bab” of his popular syndicate letter.
“Have you read this department?” he asked, pointing to the page in the magazine.
“I have,” answered Mrs. Mallon. “Very well done, too, it is. Who is ‘Ruth Ashmore’?’
“You are,” answered Edward Bok. And while it took considerable persuasion, from that time on Mrs. Mallon became Ruth Ashmore, the most ridiculed writer in the magazine world, and yet the most helpful editor that ever conducted a department in periodical literature. For sixteen years she conducted the department, until she passed away, her last act being to dictate a letter to a correspondent. In those sixteen years she had received one hundred and fifty-eight thousand letters: she kept three stenographers busy, and the number of girls who to-day bless the name of Ruth Ashmore is legion.
But the newspaper humorists who insisted that Ruth Ashmore was none other than Edward Bok never knew the partial truth of their joke!
The editor soon supplemented this department with one dealing with the spiritual needs of the mature woman. “The King’s Daughters” was then an organization at the summit of its usefulness, with Margaret Bottome its president. Edward Bok had heard Mrs. Bottome speak, had met her personally, and decided that she was the editor for the department he had in mind.
“I want it written in an intimate way as if there were only two persons in the world, you and the person reading. I want heart to speak to heart. We will make that the title,” said the editor, and unconsciously he thus created the title that has since become familiar wherever English is spoken: “Heart to Heart Talks.” The title gave the department an instantaneous hearing; the material in it carried out its spirit, and soon Mrs. Bottome’s department rivaled, in popularity, the page by Ruth Ashmore.
These two departments more than anything else, and the irresistible picture of a man editing a woman’s magazine, brought forth an era of newspaper paragraphing and a flood of so-called “humorous” references to the magazine and editor. It became the vogue to poke fun at both. The humorous papers took it up, the cartoonists helped it along, and actors introduced the name of the magazine on the stage in plays and skits. Never did a periodical receive such an amount of gratuitous advertising. Much of the wit was absolutely without malice: some of it was written by Edward Bok’s best friends, who volunteered to “let up” would he but raise a finger.
But he did not raise the finger. No one enjoyed the “paragraphs” more heartily when the wit was good, and in that case, if the writer was unknown to him, he sought him out and induced him to write for him. In this way, George Fitch was found on the Peoria, Illinois, Transcript and introduced to his larger public in the magazine and book world through The Ladies’ Home Journal, whose editor he believed he had “most unmercifully roasted”;–but he had done it so cleverly that the editor at once saw his possibilities.
When all his friends begged Bok to begin proceedings against the New York Evening Sun because of the libellous (?) articles written about him by “The Woman About Town,” the editor admired the style rather than the contents, made her acquaintance, and secured her as a regular writer: she contributed to the magazine some of the best things published in its pages. But she did not abate her opinions of Bok and his magazine in her articles in the newspaper, and Bok did not ask it of her: he felt that she had a right to her opinions–those he was not buying; but he was eager to buy her direct style in treating subjects he knew no other woman could so effectively handle.
And with his own limited knowledge of the sex, he needed, and none knew it better than did he, the ablest women he could obtain to help him realize his ideals. Their personal opinions of him did not matter so long as he could command their best work. Sooner or later, when his purposes were better understood, they might alter those opinions. For that he could afford to wait. But he could not wait to get their work.
By this time the editor had come to see that the power of a magazine might lie more securely behind the printed page than in it. He had begun to accustom his readers to writing to his editors upon all conceivable problems.
This he decided to encourage. He employed an expert in each line of feminine endeavor, upon the distinct understanding that the most scrupulous attention should be given to her correspondence: that every letter, no matter how inconsequential, should be answered quickly, fully, and courteously, with the questioner always encouraged to come again if any problem of whatever nature came to her. He told his editors that ignorance on any question was a misfortune, not a crime; and he wished their correspondence treated in the most courteous and helpful spirit.
Step by step, the editor built up this service behind the magazine until he had a staff of thirty-five editors on the monthly pay-roll; in each issue, he proclaimed the willingness of these editors to answer immediately any questions by mail, he encouraged and cajoled his readers to form the habit of looking upon his magazine as a great clearing-house of information. Before long, the letters streamed in by the tens of thousands during a year. The editor still encouraged, and the total ran into the hundreds of thousands, until during the last year, before the service was finally stopped by the Great War of 1917-18, the yearly correspondence totalled nearly a million letters.
The work of some of these editors never reached the printed page, and yet was vastly more important than any published matter could possibly be. Out of the work of Ruth Ashmore, for instance, there grew a class of cases of the most confidential nature. These cases, distributed all over the country, called for special investigation and personal contact. Bok selected Mrs. Lyman Abbott for this piece of delicate work, and, through the wide acquaintance of her husband, she was enabled to reach, personally, every case in every locality, and bring personal help to bear on it. These cases mounted into the hundreds, and the good accomplished through this quiet channel cannot be overestimated.
The lack of opportunity for an education in Bok’s own life led him to cast about for some plan whereby an education might be obtained without expense by any one who desired. He finally hit upon the simple plan of substituting free scholarships for the premiums then so frequently offered by periodicals for subscriptions secured. Free musical education at the leading conservatories was first offered to any girl who would secure a certain number of subscriptions to The Ladies’ Home Journal, the complete offer being a year’s free tuition, with free room, free board, free piano in her own room, and all travelling expenses paid. The plan was an immediate success: the solicitation of a subscription by a girl desirous of educating herself made an irresistible appeal.
This plan was soon extended, so as to include all the girls’ colleges, and finally all the men’s colleges, so that a free education might be possible at any educational institution. So comprehensive it became that to the close of 1919, one thousand four hundred and fifty-five free scholarships had been awarded. The plan has now been in operation long enough to have produced some of the leading singers and instrumental artists of the day, whose names are familiar to all, as well as instructors in colleges and scores of teachers; and to have sent several score of men into conspicuous positions in the business and professional world.
Edward Bok has always felt that but for his own inability to secure an education, and his consequent desire for self-improvement, the realization of the need in others might not have been so strongly felt by him, and that his plan whereby thousands of others were benefited might never have been realized.
The editor’s correspondence was revealing, among other deficiencies, the wide-spread unpreparedness of the average American girl for motherhood, and her desperate ignorance when a new life was given her. On the theory that with the realization of a vital need there is always the person to meet it, Bok consulted the authorities of the Babies’ Hospital of New York, and found Doctor Emmet Holt’s house physician, Doctor Emelyn L. Coolidge. To the authorities in the world of babies, Bok’s discovery was, of course, a known and serious fact.
Doctor Coolidge proposed that the magazine create a department of questions and answers devoted to the problems of young mothers. This was done, and from the publication of the first issue the questions began to come in. Within five years the department had grown to such proportions that Doctor Coolidge proposed a plan whereby mothers might be instructed, by mail, in the rearing of babies–in their general care, their feeding, and the complete hygiene of the nursery.
Bok had already learned, in his editorial experience, carefully to weigh a woman’s instinct against a man’s judgment, but the idea of raising babies by mail floored him. He reasoned, however, that a woman, and more particularly one who had been in a babies’ hospital for years, knew more about babies than he could possibly know. He consulted baby-specialists in New York and Philadelphia, and, with one accord, they declared the plan not only absolutely impracticable but positively dangerous. Bok’s confidence in woman’s instinct, however, persisted, and he asked Doctor Coolidge to map out a plan.
This called for the services of two physicians: Miss Marianna Wheeler, for many years superintendent of the Babies’ Hospital, was to look after the prospective mother before the baby’s birth; and Doctor Coolidge, when the baby was born, would immediately send to the young mother a printed list of comprehensive questions, which, when answered, would be immediately followed by a full set of directions as to the care of the child, including carefully prepared food formule. At the end of the first month, another set of questions was to be forwarded for answer by the mother, and this monthly service was to be continued until the child reached the age of two years. The contact with the mother would then become intermittent, dependent upon the condition of mother and child. All the directions and formule were to be used only under the direction of the mother’s attendant physician, so that the fullest cooperation might be established between the physician on the case and the advisory department of the magazine.
Despite advice to the contrary, Bok decided, after consulting a number of mothers, to establish the system. It was understood that the greatest care was to be exercised: the most expert advice, if needed, was to be sought and given, and the thousands of cases at the Babies’ Hospital were to be laid under contribution.
There was then begun a magazine department which was to be classed among the most clear-cut pieces of successful work achieved by The Ladies’ Home Journal.
Step by step, the new departure won its way, and was welcomed eagerly by thousands of young mothers. It was not long before the warmest commendation from physicians all over the country was received. Promptness of response and thoroughness of diagnosis were, of course, the keynotes of the service: where the cases were urgent, the special delivery post and, later, the night-letter telegraph service were used.
The plan is now in its eleventh year of successful operation. Some idea of the enormous extent of its service can be gathered from the amazing figures that, at the close of the tenth year, show over forty thousand prospective mothers have been advised, while the number of babies actually “raised” by Doctor Coolidge approaches eighty thousand. Fully ninety-five of every hundred of these babies registered have remained under the monthly letter-care of Doctor Coolidge until their first year, when the mothers receive a diet list which has proved so effective for future guidance that many mothers cease to report regularly. Eighty-five out of every hundred babies have remained in the registry until their graduation at the age of two. Over eight large sets of library drawers are required for the records of the babies always under the supervision of the registry.
Scores of physicians who vigorously opposed the work at the start have amended their opinions and now not only give their enthusiastic endorsement, but have adopted Doctor Coolidge’s food formule for their private and hospital cases.
It was this comprehensive personal service, built up back of the magazine from the start, that gave the periodical so firm and unique a hold on its clientele. It was not the printed word that was its chief power: scores of editors who have tried to study and diagnose the appeal of the magazine from the printed page, have remained baffled at the remarkable confidence elicited from its readers. They never looked back of the magazine, and therefore failed to discover its secret. Bok went through three financial panics with the magazine, and while other periodicals severely suffered from diminished circulation at such times, The Ladies’ Home Journal always held its own. Thousands of women had been directly helped by the magazine; it had not remained an inanimate printed thing, but had become a vital need in the personal lives of its readers.
So intimate had become this relation, so efficient was the service rendered, that its readers could not be pried loose from it; where women were willing and ready, when the domestic pinch came, to let go of other reading matter, they explained to their husbands or fathers that The Ladies’ Home Journal was a necessity–they did not feel that they could do without it. The very quality for which the magazine had been held up to ridicule by the unknowing and unthinking had become, with hundreds of thousands of women, its source of power and the bulwark of its success.
Bok was beginning to realize the vision which had lured him from New York: that of putting into the field of American magazines a periodical that should become such a clearing-house as virtually to make it an institution.
He felt that, for the present at least, he had sufficiently established the personal contact with his readers through the more intimate departments, and decided to devote his efforts to the literary features of the magazine.
XVII. Eugene Field’s Practical Jokes
Eugene Field was one of Edward Bok’s close friends and also his despair, as was likely to be the case with those who were intimate with the Western poet. One day Field said to Bok: “I am going to make you the most widely paragraphed man in America.” The editor passed the remark over, but he was to recall it often as his friend set out to make his boast good.
The fact that Bok was unmarried and the editor of a woman’s magazine appealed strongly to Field’s sense of humor. He knew the editor’s opposition to patent medicines, and so he decided to join the two facts in a paragraph, put on the wire at Chicago, to the effect that the editor was engaged to be married to Miss Lavinia Pinkham, the granddaughter of Mrs. Lydia Pinkham, of patent-medicine fame. The paragraph carefully described Miss Pinkham, the school where she had been educated, her talents, her wealth, etc. Field was wise enough to put the paragraph not in his own column in the Chicago News, lest it be considered in the light of one of his practical jokes, but on the news page of the paper, and he had it put on the Associated Press wire.
He followed this up a few days later with a paragraph announcing Bok’s arrival at a Boston hotel. Then came a paragraph saying that Miss Pinkham was sailing for Paris to buy her trousseau. The paragraphs were worded in the most matter-of-fact manner, and completely fooled the newspapers, even those of Boston. Field was delighted at the success of his joke, and the fact that Bok was in despair over the letters that poured in upon him added to Field’s delight.
He now asked Bok to come to Chicago. “I want you to know some of my cronies,” he wrote. “Julia [his wife] is away, so we will shift for ourselves.” Bok arrived in Chicago one Sunday afternoon, and was to dine at Field’s house that evening. He found a jolly company: James Whitcomb Riley, Sol Smith Russell the actor, Opie Read, and a number of Chicago’s literary men.
When seven o’clock came, some one suggested to Field that something to eat might not be amiss.
“Shortly,” answered the poet. “Wife is out; cook is new, and dinner will be a little late. Be patient.” But at eight o’clock there was still no dinner. Riley began to grow suspicious and slipped down-stairs. He found no one in the kitchen and the range cold. He came back and reported. “Nonsense,” said Field. “It can’t be.” All went down-stairs to find out the truth. “Let’s get supper ourselves,” suggested Russell. Then it was discovered that not a morsel of food was to be found in the refrigerator, closet, or cellar. “That’s a joke on us,” said Field. “Julia has left us without a crumb to eat.
It was then nine o’clock. Riley and Bok held a council of war and decided to slip out and buy some food, only to find that the front, basement, and back doors were locked and the keys missing! Field was very sober. “Thorough woman, that wife of mine,” he commented. But his friends knew better.
Finally, the Hoosier poet and the Philadelphia editor crawled through one of the basement windows and started on a foraging expedition. Of course, Field lived in a residential section where there were few stores, and on Sunday these were closed. There was nothing to do but to board a down-town car. Finally they found a delicatessen shop open, and the two hungry men amazed the proprietor by nearly buying out his stock.
It was after ten o’clock when Riley and Bok got back to the house with their load of provisions to find every door locked, every curtain drawn, and the bolt sprung on every window. Only the cellar grating remained, and through this the two dropped their bundles and themselves, and appeared in the dining-room, dirty and dishevelled, to find the party at table enjoying a supper which Field had carefully hidden and brought out when they had left the house.
Riley, cold and hungry, and before this time the victim of Field’s practical jokes, was not in a merry humor and began to recite paraphrases of Field’s poems. Field retorted by paraphrasing Riley’s poems, and mimicking the marked characteristics of Riley’s speech. This started Sol Smith Russell, who mimicked both. The fun grew fast and furious, the entire company now took part, Mrs. Field’s dresses were laid under contribution, and Field, Russell, and Riley gave an impromptu play. And it was upon this scene that Mrs. Field, after a continuous ringing of the door-bell and nearly battering down the door, appeared at seven o’clock the next morning!
It was fortunate that Eugene Field had a patient wife; she needed every ounce of patience that she could command. And no one realized this more keenly than did her husband. He once told of a dream he had which illustrated the endurance of his wife.
“I thought,” said Field, “that I had died and gone to heaven. I had some difficulty in getting past St. Peter, who regarded me with doubt and suspicion, and examined my records closely, but finally permitted me to enter the pearly gates. As I walked up the street of the heavenly city, I saw a venerable old man with long gray hair and flowing beard. His benignant face encouraged me to address him. ‘I have just arrived and I am entirely unacquainted,’ I said. ‘May I ask your name?’
“‘My name,’ he replied, ‘is Job.’
“‘Indeed,’ I exclaimed, ‘are you that Job whom we were taught to revere as the most patient being in the world?’
“‘The same,’ he said, with a shadow of hesitation; ‘I did have quite a reputation for patience once, but I hear that there is a woman now on earth, in Chicago, who has suffered more than I ever did, and she has endured it with great resignation.’
“‘Why,’ said I, ‘that is curious. I am just from earth, and from Chicago, and I do not remember to have heard of her case. What is her name?’
“‘Mrs. Eugene Field,’ was the reply.
“Just then I awoke,” ended Field.
The success of Field’s paragraph engaging Bok to Miss Pinkham stimulated the poet to greater effort. Bok had gone to Europe; Field, having found out the date of his probable return, just about when the steamer was due, printed an interview with the editor “at quarantine” which sounded so plausible that even the men in Bok’s office in Philadelphia were fooled and prepared for his arrival. The interview recounted, in detail, the changes in women’s fashions in Paris, and so plausible had Field made it, based upon information obtained at Marshall Field’s, that even the fashion papers copied it.
All this delighted Field beyond measure. Bok begged him to desist; but Field answered by printing an item to the effect that there was the highest authority for denying “the reports industriously circulated some time ago to the effect that Mr. Bok was engaged to be married to a New England young lady, whereas, as a matter of fact, it is no violation of friendly confidence that makes it possible to announce that the Philadelphia editor is engaged to Mrs. Frank Leslie, of New York.”
It so happened that Field put this new paragraph on the wire just about the time that Bok’s actual engagement was announced. Field was now deeply contrite, and sincerely promised Bok and his fiancee to reform. “I’m through, you mooning, spooning calf, you,” he wrote Bok, and his friend believed him, only to receive a telegram the next day from Mrs. Field warning him that “Gene is planning a series of telephonic conversations with you and Miss Curtis at college that I think should not be printed.” Bok knew it was of no use trying to curb Field’s industry, and so he wired the editor of the Chicago News for his cooperation. Field, now checked, asked Bok and his fiancee and the parents of both to come to Chicago, be his guests for the World’s Fair, and “let me make amends.”
It was a happy visit. Field was all kindness, and, of course, the entire party was charmed by his personality. But the boy in him could not be repressed. He had kept it down all through the visit. “No, not a joke-cross my heart,” he would say, and then he invited the party to lunch with him on their way to the train when they were leaving for home. “But we shall be in our travelling clothes, not dressed for a luncheon,” protested the women. It was an unfortunate protest, for it gave Field an idea! “Oh,” he assured them, “just a goodbye luncheon at the club; just you folks and Julia and me.” They believed him, only to find upon their arrival at the club an assembly of over sixty guests at one of the most elaborate luncheons ever served in Chicago, with each woman guest carefully enjoined by Field, in his invitation, to “put on her prettiest and most elaborate costume in order to dress up the table!”
One day Field came to Philadelphia to give a reading in Camden in conjunction with George W. Cable. It chanced that his friend, Francis Wilson, was opening that same evening in Philadelphia in a new comic opera which Field had not seen. He immediately refused to give his reading, and insisted upon going to the theatre. The combined efforts of his manager, Wilson, Mr. Cable, and his friends finally persuaded him to keep his engagement and join in a double-box party later at the theatre. To make sure that he would keep his lecture appointment, Bok decided to go to Camden with him. Field and Cable were to appear alternately.
Field went on for his first number; and when he came off, he turned to Bok and said: “No use, Bok, I’m a sick man. I must go home. Cable can see this through,” and despite every protestation Field bundled himself into his overcoat and made for his carriage. “Sick, Bok, really sick,” he muttered as they rode along. Then seeing a fruit-stand he said: “Buy me a bag of oranges, like a good fellow. They’ll do me good.
When Philadelphia was reached, he suggested: “Do you know I think it would do me good to go and see Frank in the new play? Tell the driver to go to the theatre like a good boy.” Of course, that had been his intent all along! When the theatre was reached he insisted upon taking the oranges with him. “They’ll steal ’em if you leave ’em there,” he said.
Field lost all traces of his supposed illness the moment he reached the box. Francis Wilson was on the stage with Marie Jansen. “Isn’t it beautiful?” said Field, and directing the attention of the party to the players, he reached under his chair for the bag of oranges, took one out, and was about to throw it at Wilson when Bok caught his arm, took the orange away from him, and grabbed the bag. Field never forgave Bok for this act of watchfulness. “Treason,” he hissed–“going back on a friend.”
The one object of Field’s ambition was to achieve the distinction of so “fussing” Francis Wilson that he would be compelled to ring down the curtain. He had tried every conceivable trick: had walked on the stage in one of Wilson’s scenes; had started a quarrel with an usher in the audience–everything that ingenuity could conceive he had practised on his friend. Bok had known this penchant of Field’s, and when he insisted on taking the bag of oranges into the theatre, Field’s purpose was evident!
One day Bok received a wire from Field: “City of New Orleans purposing give me largest public reception on sixth ever given an author. Event of unusual quality. Mayor and city officials peculiarly desirous of having you introduce me to vast audience they propose to have. Hate to ask you to travel so far, but would be great favor to me. Wire answer.” Bok wired back his willingness to travel to New Orleans and oblige his friend. It occurred to Bok, however, to write to a friend in New Orleans and ask the particulars. Of course, there was never any thought of Field going to New Orleans or of any reception. Bok waited for further advices, and a long letter followed from Field giving him a glowing picture of the reception planned. Bok sent a message to his New Orleans friend to be telegraphed from New Orleans on the sixth: “Find whole thing to be a fake. Nice job to put over on me. Bok.” Field was overjoyed at the apparent success of his joke and gleefully told his Chicago friends all about it–until he found out that the joke had been on him. “Durned dirty, I call it,” he wrote Bok.
It was a lively friendship that Eugene Field gave to Edward Bok, full of anxieties and of continuous forebodings, but it was worth all that it cost in mental perturbation. No rarer friend ever lived: in his serious moments he gave one a quality of unforgetable friendship that remains a precious memory. But his desire for practical jokes was uncontrollable: it meant being constantly on one’s guard, and even then the pranks could not always be thwarted!
XVIII. Building Up a Magazine
The newspaper paragraphers were now having a delightful time with Edward Bok and his woman’s magazine, and he was having a delightful time with them. The editor’s publicity sense made him realize how valuable for his purposes was all this free advertising. The paragraphers believed, in their hearts, that they were annoying the young editor; they tried to draw his fire through their articles. But he kept quiet, put his tongue in his cheek, and determined to give them some choice morsels for their wit.
He conceived the idea of making familiar to the public the women who were back of the successful men of the day. He felt sure that his readers wanted to know about these women. But to attract his newspaper friends he labelled the series, “Unknown Wives of Well-Known Men” and “Clever Daughters of Clever Men.”
The alliterative titles at once attracted the paragraphers; they fell upon them like hungry trout, and a perfect fusillade of paragraphs began. This is exactly what the editor wanted; and he followed these two series immediately by inducing the daughter of Charles Dickens to write of “My Father as I Knew Him,” and Mrs. Henry Ward Beecher, of “Mr. Beecher as I Knew Him.” Bok now felt that he had given the newspapers enough ammunition to last for some time; and he turned his attention to building up a more permanent basis for his magazine.
The two authors of that day who commanded more attention than any others were William Dean Howells and Rudyard Kipling. Bok knew that these two would give to his magazine the literary quality that it needed, and so he laid them both under contribution. He bought Mr. Howells’s new novel, “The Coast of Bohemia,” and arranged that Kipling’s new novelette upon which he was working should come to the magazine. Neither the public nor the magazine editors had expected Bok to break out along these more permanent lines, and magazine publishers began to realize that a new competitor had sprung up in Philadelphia. Bok knew they would feel this; so before he announced Mr. Howells’s new novel, he contracted with the novelist to follow this with his autobiography. This surprised the editors of the older magazines, for they realized that the Philadelphia editor had completely tied up the leading novelist of the day for his next two years’ output.
Meanwhile, in order that the newspapers might be well supplied with barbs for their shafts, he published an entire number of his magazine written by famous daughters of famous men. This unique issue presented contributions by the daughters of Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, President Harrison, Horace Greeley, William M. Thackeray, William Dean Howells, General Sherman, Julia Ward Howe, Jefferson Davis, Mr. Gladstone, and a score of others. This issue simply filled the paragraphers with glee. Then once more Bok turned to material calculated to cement the foundation for a more permanent structure.
He noted, early in its progress, the gathering strength of the drift toward woman suffrage, and realized that the American woman was not prepared, in her knowledge of her country, to exercise the privilege of the ballot. Bok determined to supply the deficiency to his readers, and concluded to put under contract the President of the United States, Benjamin Harrison, the moment he left office, to write a series of articles explaining the United States. No man knew this subject better than the President; none could write better; and none would attract such general attention to his magazine, reasoned Bok. He sought the President, talked it over with him, and found him favorable to the idea. But the President was in doubt at that time whether he would be a candidate for another term, and frankly told Bok that he would be taking too much risk to wait for him. He suggested that the editor try to prevail upon his then secretary of state, James G. Blaine, to undertake the series, and offered to see Mr. Blaine and induce him to a favorable consideration. Bok acquiesced, and a few days afterward received from Mr. Blaine a request to come to Washington.
Bok had had a previous experience with Mr. Blaine which had impressed him to an unusual degree. Many years before, he had called upon him at his hotel in New York, seeking his autograph, had been received, and as the statesman was writing his signature he said: “Your name is a familiar one to me. I have had correspondence with an Edward Bok who is secretary of state for the Transvaal Republic. Are you related to him?”
Bok explained that this was his uncle, and that he was named for him.
Years afterward Bok happened to be at a public meeting where Mr. Blaine was speaking, and the statesman, seeing him, immediately called him by name. Bok knew of the reputed marvels of Mr. Blaine’s memory, but this proof of it amazed him.
“It is simply inconceivable, Mr. Blaine,” said Bok, “that you should remember my name after all these years.”
“Not at all, my boy,” returned Mr. Blaine. “Memorizing is simply association. You associate a fact or an incident with a name and you remember the name. It never leaves you. The moment I saw you I remembered you told me that your uncle was secretary of state for the Transvaal. That at once brought your name to me. You see how simple a trick it is.”
But Bok did not see, since remembering the incident was to him an even greater feat of memory than recalling the name. It was a case of having to remember two things instead of one.
At all events, Bok was no stranger to James G. Blaine when he called upon him at his Lafayette Place home in Washington.
“You’ve gone ahead in the world some since I last saw you,” was the statesman’s greeting. “It seems to go with the name.”
This naturally broke the ice for the editor at once.
“Let’s go to my library where we can talk quietly. What train are you making back to Philadelphia, by the way?”
“The four, if I can,” replied Bok.
“Excuse me a moment,” returned Mr. Blaine, and when he came back to the room, he said: “Now let’s talk over this interesting proposition that the President has told me about.”
The two discussed the matter and completed arrangements whereby Mr. Blaine was to undertake the work. Toward the latter end of the talk, Bok had covertly–as he thought–looked at his watch to keep track of his train.
“It’s all right about that train,” came from Mr. Blaine, with his back toward Bok, writing some data of the talk at his desk. “You’ll make it all right.”
Bok wondered how he should, as it then lacked only seventeen minutes of four. But as Mr. Blaine reached the front door, he said to the editor: “My carriage is waiting at the curb to take you to the station, and the coachman has your seat in the parlor car.”
And with this knightly courtesy, Mr. Blaine shook hands with Bok, who was never again to see him, nor was the contract ever to be fulfilled. For early in 1893 Mr. Blaine passed away without having begun the work.
Again Bok turned to the President, and explained to him that, for some reason or other, the way seemed to point to him to write the articles himself. By that time President Harrison had decided that he would not succeed himself. Accordingly he entered into an agreement with the editor to begin to write the articles immediately upon his retirement from office. And the day after Inauguration Day every newspaper contained an Associated Press despatch announcing the former President’s contract with The Ladies’ Home Journal.
Shortly afterward, Benjamin Harrison’s articles on “This Country of Ours” successfully appeared in the magazine.
During Bok’s negotiations with President Harrison in connection with his series of articles, he was called to the White House for a conference. It was midsummer. Mrs. Harrison was away at the seashore, and the President was taking advantage of her absence by working far into the night.
The President, his secretary, and Bok sat down to dinner.
The Marine Band was giving its weekly concert on the green, and after dinner the President suggested that Bok and he adjourn to the “back lot” and enjoy the music.
“You have a coat?” asked the President.
“No, thank you,” Bok answered. “I don’t need one.”
“Not in other places, perhaps,” he said, “but here you do. The dampness comes up from the Potomac at nightfall, and it’s just as well to be careful. It’s Mrs. Harrison’s dictum,” he added smiling. “Halford, send up for one of my light coats, will you, please?”
Bok remarked, as he put on the President’s coat, that this was probably about as near as he should ever get to the presidency.
“Well, it’s a question whether you want to get nearer to it,” answered the President. He looked very white and tired in the moonlight.
“Still,” Bok said with a smile, “some folks seem to like it well enough to wish to get it a second time.”
“True,” he answered, “but that’s what pride will do for a man. Try one of these cigars.”
A cigar! Bok had been taking his tobacco in smaller doses with paper around them. He had never smoked a cigar. Still, one cannot very well refuse a presidential cigar!
“Thank you,” Bok said as he took one from the President’s case. He looked at the cigar and remembered all he had read of Benjamin Harrison’s black cigars. This one was black–inky black–and big.
“Allow me,” he heard the President suddenly say, as he handed him a blazing match. There was no escape. The aroma was delicious, but–Two or three whiffs of that cigar, and Bok decided the best thing to do was to let it go out. He did.
“I have allowed you to talk so much,” said the President after a while, “that you haven’t had a chance to smoke. Allow me,” and another match crackled into flame.
“Thank you,” the editor said, as once more he lighted the cigar, and the fumes went clear up into the farthest corner of his brain.
“Take a fresh cigar,” said the President after a while. “That doesn’t seem to burn well. You will get one like that once in a while, although I am careful about my cigars.”
“No, thanks, Mr. President,” Bok said hurriedly. “It’s I, not the cigar.”
“Well, prove it to me with another,” was the quick rejoinder, as he held out his case, and in another minute a match again crackled. “There is only one thing worse than a bad smoke, and that is an office-seeker,” chuckled the President.
Bok couldn’t prove that the cigars were bad, naturally. So smoke that cigar he did, to the bitter end, and it was bitter! In fifteen minutes his head and stomach were each whirling around, and no more welcome words had Bok ever heard than when the President said: “Well, suppose we go in. Halford and I have a day’s work ahead of us yet.”
The President went to work.
Bok went to bed. He could not get there quick enough, and he didn’t–that is, not before he had experienced that same sensation of which Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote: he never could understand, he said, why young authors found so much trouble in getting into the magazines, for his first trip to Europe was not a day old before, without even the slightest desire or wish on his part, he became a contributor to the Atlantic!
The next day, and for days after, Bok smelled, tasted, and felt that presidential cigar!
A few weeks afterward, Bok was talking after dinner with the President at a hotel in New York, when once more the cigar-case came out and was handed to Bok.
“No, thank you, Mr. President,” was the instant reply, as visions of his night in the White House came back to him. “I am like the man from the West who was willing to try anything once.”
And he told the President the story of the White House cigar.
The editor decided to follow General Harrison’s discussion of American affairs by giving his readers a glimpse of foreign politics, and he fixed upon Mr. Gladstone as the one figure abroad to write for him. He sailed for England, visited Hawarden Castle, and proposed to Mr. Gladstone that he should write a series of twelve autobiographical articles which later could be expanded into a book.
Bok offered fifteen thousand dollars for the twelve articles–a goodly price in those days–and he saw that the idea and the terms attracted the English statesman. But he also saw that the statesman was not quite ready. He decided, therefore, to leave the matter with him, and keep the avenue of approach favorably open by inducing Mrs. Gladstone to write for him. Bok knew that Mrs. Gladstone had helped her husband in his literary work, that she was a woman who had lived a full-rounded life, and after a day’s visit and persuasion, with Mr. Gladstone as an amused looker-on, the editor closed a contract with Mrs. Gladstone for a series of reminiscent articles “From a Mother’s Life.”
Some time after Bok had sent the check to Mrs. Gladstone, he received a letter from Mr. Gladstone expressing the opinion that his wife must have written with a golden pen, considering the size of the honorarium. “But,” he added, “she is so impressed with this as the first money she has ever earned by her pen that she is reluctant to part with the check. The result is that she has not offered it for deposit, and has decided to frame it. Considering the condition of our exchequer, I have tried to explain to her, and so have my son and daughter, that if she were to present the check for payment and allow it to pass through the bank, the check would come back to you and that I am sure your company would return it to her as a souvenir of the momentous occasion. Our arguments are of no avail, however, and it occurred to me that an assurance from you might make the check more useful than it is at present!”
Bok saw with this disposition that, as he had hoped, the avenue of favorable approach to Mr. Gladstone had been kept open. The next summer Bok again visited Hawarden, where he found the statesman absorbed in writing a life of Bishop Butler, from which it was difficult for him to turn away. He explained that it would take at least a year or two to finish this work. Bok saw, of course, his advantage, and closed a contract with the English statesman whereby he was to write the twelve autobiographical articles immediately upon his completion of the work then under his hand.
Here again, however, as in the case of Mr. Blaine, the contract was never fulfilled, for Mr. Gladstone passed away before he could free his mind and begin on the work.
The vicissitudes of an editor’s life were certainly beginning to demonstrate themselves to Edward Bok.
The material that the editor was publishing and the authors that he was laying under contribution began to have marked effect upon the circulation of the magazine, and it was not long before the original figures were doubled, an edition–enormous for that day–of seven hundred and fifty thousand copies was printed and sold each month, the magical figure of a million was in sight, and the periodical was rapidly taking its place as one of the largest successes of the day.
Mr. Curtis’s single proprietorship of the magazine had been changed into a corporation called The Curtis Publishing Company, with a capital of five hundred thousand dollars, with Mr. Curtis as president, and Bok as vice-president.
The magazine had by no means an easy road to travel financially. The doubling of the subscription price to one dollar per year had materially checked the income for the time being; the huge advertising bills, sometimes exceeding three hundred thousand dollars a year, were difficult to pay; large credit had to be obtained, and the banks were carrying a considerable quantity of Mr. Curtis’s notes. But Mr. Curtis never wavered in his faith in his proposition and his editor. In the first he invested all he had and could borrow, and to the latter he gave his undivided support. The two men worked together rather as father and son–as, curiously enough, they were to be later–than as employer and employee. To Bok, the daily experience of seeing Mr. Curtis finance his proposition in sums that made the publishing world of that day gasp with sceptical astonishment was a wonderful opportunity, of which the editor took full advantage so as to learn the intricacies of a world which up to that time he had known only in a limited way.
What attracted Bok immensely to Mr. Curtis’s methods was their perfect simplicity and directness. He believed absolutely in the final outcome of his proposition: where others saw mist and failure ahead, he saw clear weather and the port of success. Never did he waver: never did he deflect from his course. He knew no path save the direct one that led straight to success, and, through his eyes, he made Bok see it with equal clarity until Bok wondered why others could not see it. But they could not. Cyrus Curtis would never be able, they said, to come out from under the load he had piled up. Where they differed from Mr. Curtis was in their lack of vision: they could not see what he saw!
It has been said that Mr. Curtis banished patent-medicine advertisements from his magazine only when he could afford to do so. That is not true, as a simple incident will show. In the early days, he and Bok were opening the mail one Friday full of anxiety because the pay-roll was due that evening, and there was not enough money in the bank to meet it. From one of the letters dropped a certified check for five figures for a contract equal to five pages in the magazine. It was a welcome sight, for it meant an easy meeting of the pay-roll for that week and two succeeding weeks. But the check was from a manufacturing patent-medicine company. Without a moment’s hesitation, Mr. Curtis slipped it back into the envelope, saying: “Of course, that we can’t take.” He returned the check, never gave the matter a second thought, and went out and borrowed more money to meet his pay-roll!
With all respect to American publishers, there are very few who could have done this–or indeed, would do it to-day, under similar conditions–particularly in that day when it was the custom for all magazines to accept patent-medicine advertising; The Ladies’ Home Journal was practically the only publication of standing in the United States refusing that class of business!
Bok now saw advertising done on a large scale by a man who believed in plenty of white space surrounding the announcement in the advertisement. He paid Mr. Howells $10,000 for his autobiography, and Mr. Curtis spent $50,000 in advertising it. “It is not expense,” he would explain to Bok, “it is investment. We are investing in a trade-mark. It will all come back in time.” And when the first $100,000 did not come back as Mr. Curtis figured, he would send another $100,000 after it, and then both came back.
Bok’s experience in advertisement writing was now to stand him in excellent stead. He wrote all the advertisements and from that day to the day of his retirement, practically every advertisement of the magazine was written by him.
Mr. Curtis believed that the editor should write the advertisements of a magazine’s articles. “You are the one who knows them, what is in them and your purpose,” he said to Bok, who keenly enjoyed this advertisement writing. He put less and less in his advertisements. Mr. Curtis made them larger and larger in the space which they occupied in the media used. In this way The Ladies’ Home Journal advertisements became distinctive for their use of white space, and as the advertising world began to say: “You can’t miss them.” Only one feature was advertised at one time, but the “feature” was always carefully selected for its wide popular appeal, and then Mr. Curtis spared no expense to advertise it abundantly. As much as $400,000 was spent in one year in advertising only a few features–a gigantic sum in those days, approached by no other periodical. But Mr. Curtis believed in showing the advertising world that he was willing to take his own medicine.
Naturally, such a campaign of publicity announcing the most popular attractions offered by any magazine of the day had but one effect: the circulation leaped forward by bounds, and the advertising columns of the magazine rapidly filled up.
The success of The Ladies’ Home Journal began to look like an assured fact, even to the most sceptical.
As a matter of fact, it was only at its beginning, as both publisher and editor knew. But they desired to fill the particular field of the magazine so quickly and fully that there would be small room for competition. The woman’s magazine field was to belong to them!
XIX. Personality Letters
Edward Bok was always interested in the manner in which personality was expressed in letters. For this reason he adopted, as a boy, the method of collecting not mere autographs, but letters characteristic of their writers which should give interesting insight into the most famous men and women of the day. He secured what were really personality letters.
One of these writers was Mark Twain. The humorist was not kindly disposed toward autograph collectors, and the fact that in this case the collector aimed to raise the standard of the hobby did not appease him. Still, it brought forth a characteristic letter:
“I hope I shall not offend you; I shall certainly say nothing with the intention to offend you. I must explain myself, however, and I will do it as kindly as I can. What you ask me to do, I am asked to do as often as one-half dozen times a week. Three hundred letters a year! One’s impulse is to freely consent, but one’s time and necessary occupations will not permit it. There is no way but to decline in all cases, making no exceptions, and I wish to call your attention to a thing which has probably not occurred to you, and that is this: that no man takes pleasure in exercising his trade as a pastime. Writing is my trade, and I exercise it only when I am obliged to. You might make your request of a doctor, or a builder, or a sculptor, and there would be no impropriety in it, but if you asked either of those for a specimen of his trade, his handiwork, he would be justified in rising to a point of order. It would never be fair to ask a doctor for one of his corpses to remember him by.
“MARK TWAIN”.
At another time, after an interesting talk with Mark Twain, Bok wrote an account of the interview, with the humorist’s permission. Desirous that the published account should be in every respect accurate, the manuscript was forwarded to Mark Twain for his approval. This resulted in the following interesting letter:
“MY DEAR MR. BOK:
“No, no–it is like most interviews, pure twaddle, and valueless.
“For several quite plain and simple reasons, an ‘interview’ must, as a rule, be an absurdity. And chiefly for this reason: it is an attempt to use a boat on land, or a wagon on water, to speak figuratively. Spoken speech is one thing, written speech is quite another. Print is a proper vehicle for the latter, but it isn’t for the former. The moment ‘talk’ is put into print you recognize that it is not what it was when you heard it; you perceive that an immense something has disappeared from it. That is its soul. You have nothing but a dead carcass left on your hands. Color, play of feature, the varying modulations of voice, the laugh, the smile, the informing inflections, everything that gave that body warmth, grace, friendliness, and charm, and commended it to your affection, or at least to your tolerance, is gone, and nothing is left, but a pallid, stiff and repulsive cadaver.
“Such is ‘talk,’ almost invariably, as you see it lying in state in an ‘interview.’ The interviewer seldom tries to tell one how a thing was said; he merely puts in the naked remark, and stops there. When one writes for print, his methods are very different. He follows forms which have but little resemblance to conversation, but they make the reader understand what the writer is trying to convey. And when the writer is making a story, and finds it necessary to report some of the talk of his characters, observe how cautiously and anxiously he goes at that risky and difficult thing:
“‘If he had dared to say that thing in my presence,’ said Alfred, taking a mock heroic attitude, and casting an arch glance upon the company, ‘blood would have flowed.’
“‘If he had dared to say that thing in my presence,’ said Hawkwood, with that in his eye which caused more than one heart in that guilty assemblage to quake, ‘blood would have flowed.’
“‘If he had dared to say that thing in my presence,’ said the paltry blusterer, with valor on his tongue and pallor on his lips, ‘blood would have flowed.’
“So painfully aware is the novelist that naked talk in print conveys no meaning, that he loads, and often overloads, almost every utterance of his characters with explanations and interpretations. It is a loud confession that print is a poor vehicle for ‘talk,’ it is a recognition that uninterpreted talk in print would result in confusion to the reader, not instruction.
“Now, in your interview you have certainly been most accurate, you have set down the sentences I uttered as I said them. But you have not a word of explanation; what my manner was at several points is not indicated. Therefore, no reader can possibly know where I was in earnest and where I was joking; or whether I was joking altogether or in earnest altogether. Such a report of a conversation has no value. It can convey many meanings to the reader, but never the right one. To add interpretations which would convey the right meaning is a something which would require–what? An art so high and fine and difficult that no possessor of it would ever be allowed to waste it on interviews.
“No; spare the reader and spare me; leave the whole interview out; it is rubbish. I wouldn’t talk in my sleep if I couldn’t talk better than that.
“If you wish to print anything, print this letter; it may have some value, for it may explain to a reader here and there why it is that in interviews as a rule men seem to talk like anybody but themselves.
“Sincerely yours,
“MARK TWAIN.”
The Harpers had asked Bok to write a book descriptive of his autograph-letter collection, and he had consented. The propitious moment, however, never came in his busy life. One day he mentioned the