more conscientious worker, or one who more faithfully attended to every
detail. When his "copy" was laid on my desk I knew perfectly that every
sentence was as he had intended it to be, that every paragraph break
was made at the point he desired it to be, and that every comma was
marked in its proper place. While engaged in doing his work he gave his
undivided attention to it, but when he went with me to the Crooked Stoop
house in Trinity Alley for his luncheon, he gave equal attention to the
mutton and potatoes, while his conversation was of things light, airy,
and not strenuous.
I spoke of this to him one day many years after the time of our
editorial association, and for answer he said:
"I suppose there are men who can part their hair and polish their boots
at the same time, but I am not gifted in that way."
I never saw Stockton angry. I doubt that he ever was so. I never knew
him to be in the least degree hurried, or to manifest impatience in any
way. On the other hand, I never knew him to manifest enthusiasm of any
kind or to indulge in any but the most moderate and placid rejoicing
over anything. Good or ill fortune seemed to have no effect whatever
upon his spirits or his manner, so far as those who were intimately
acquainted with him were able to discover. Perhaps it was only that
his philosophy taught him the injustice of asking others to share his
sorrows or his rejoicings over events that were indifferent to them.
[Sidenote: Frank R. Stockton]
He was always frail in health, but during all the years of my acquaintance
with him I never once heard him mention the fact, or discovered any
complaint of it in his tone or manner. At one time his weakness and
emaciation were so great that he walked with two crutches, not because
of lameness for he had none, but because of sheer physical weakness.
Yet even at that time his face was a smiling one and in answer to all
inquiries concerning his health he declared himself perfectly well.
His self-possessed repression of enthusiasm is clearly manifest in his
writings. In none of his stories is there a suggestion of anything but
philosophic calm on the part of the man who wrote them. There is humor,
a fascinating fancy, and an abounding tenderness of human sympathy of a
placidly impersonal character, but there is no passion, no strenuosity,
nothing to suggest that the author is anywhere stirred to enthusiasm by
the events related or the situations in which his imaginary personages
are placed.
He one day said to me that he had never regarded what is called "love
interest" as necessary to a novel, and in fact he never made any very
earnest use of that interest. In "The Late Mrs. Null" he presented the
love story with more of amusement than of warmth in his manner, while in
"Kate Bonnet" the love affair is scarcely more than a casual adjunct to
the pirate story. In "The Hundredth Man" he manifested somewhat greater
sympathy, but even there his tone is gently humorous rather than
passionate.
Many of the whimsical conceits that Stockton afterward made the
foundations of his books were first used in the more ephemeral writings
of the _Hearth and Home_ period. It has often interested me in reading
the later books to recall my first acquaintance with their germinal
ideas. It has been like meeting interesting men and women whom one
remembers as uncouth boys or as girls in pantalettes. For _Hearth and
Home_ he wrote several playful articles about the character of eating
houses as revealed in what I may call their physiognomies. The subject
seemed to interest and amuse him, as it certainly interested and amused
his readers, but at that time he probably did not dream of making it a
considerable part of the structure of a novel, as he afterwards did in
"The Hundredth Man."
In the same way in a series of half serious, half humorous articles for
the paper, he wrote of the picturesque features of piracy on the Spanish
Main and along our own Atlantic coast. He gave humor to the historical
facts by looking at them askance--with an intellectual squint as it
were--and attributing to Blackbeard and the rest emotions and sentiments
that would not have been out of place in a Sunday School. These things
he justified in his humorously solemn way, by challenging anybody to
show that the freebooters were not so inspired in fact, and insisting
that men's occupations in life constitute no safe index to their
characters.
"We do not denounce the novelists and story writers," he one day said,
"and call them untruthful persons merely because they gain their living
by writing things that are not so. In their private lives many of the
fiction writers are really estimable persons who go to church, wear
clean linen, and pay their debts if they succeed in borrowing money
enough for that purpose."
Here clearly was the thought that afterward grew into the novel of
"Kate Bonnet."
About that time he wrote a little manual for Putnam's Handy Book Series,
in which he undertook to show how to furnish a home at very small cost.
All his readers remember what fun he made of that performance when he
came to write "Rudder Grange."
[Sidenote: A Whimsical View of Plagiary]
I do not think this sort of thing is peculiar to Stockton's work. I find
traces of it in the writings of others, especially of those humorous
writers who have the gift of inventing amusingly whimsical conceits.
It seems easily possible, for example, to find in "The Bab Ballads" the
essential whimsicalities which afterward made the fortunes of Mr. W. S.
Gilbert's most famous comic operas.
Stockton's whimsical logic was brought to bear upon everything; so much
so that I have often wondered how he would have regarded a "hold up" of
his person for the sake of his purse if such a thing had happened to
him.
One day a man submitted a manuscript to me for sale. It was an
article on Alice and Phoebe Cary. The subject was interesting and
the article was pleasingly brief, so that I thought it promising. When
I began to read it, the sentences seemed strangely familiar. As I read
on I recognized the thing as an editorial I had myself written for
the _Evening Post_ on the day of Phoebe Cary's funeral. To verify my
impression I went at once to the office of the _Evening Post_, compared
the manuscript with the printed article, and found it to be a verbatim
copy.
I was perhaps a little severe in my judgments of such things in those
days, and when the plagiarist came back to learn the fate of his
manuscript my language was of a kind that might have been regarded as
severe. After the fellow had left, breathing threats of dire legal
things that he meant to do to me for keeping his manuscript without
paying for it, Stockton remonstrated with me for having lost my temper.
"It seems to me," he said, "that you do not sufficiently consider the
circumstances of the case. That man has his living to make as a writer,
and nature has denied him the ability to create literature that he
can sell. What is more reasonable, then, than that he should select
marketable things that other people have written and sell them? His
creative ability failing him, what can he do but use his critical
ability in its stead? If he is not equal to the task of producing
salable stuff, he at least knows such stuff when he sees it, and in
the utilization of that knowledge he finds a means of earning an honest
living.
"Besides in selecting an article of yours to 'convey,' he has paid you
a distinct compliment. He might have taken one of mine instead, but that
his critical judgment saw the superiority of yours. You should recognize
the tribute he has paid you as a writer.
"Still again what harm would have been done if he had succeeded
in selling the article? It had completely served its purpose as an
editorial in the _Evening Post_, why should it not serve a larger
purpose and entertain a greater company of readers?
"Finally I am impressed with the illustration the case affords of the
vagaries of chance as a factor in human happenings. There are thousands
of editors in this country to whom that man might have offered the
article. You were the only one of them who could by any possibility have
recognized it as a plagiarism. According to the doctrine of chances he
was perfectly safe in offering the manuscript for sale. The chances
were thousands to one against its recognition. It was his ill-luck to
encounter the one evil chance in the thousands. The moral of that is
that it is unsafe to gamble. Still, now that he knows the one editor who
can recognize it, he will no doubt make another copy of the article and
sell it in safety to some one else."
This prediction was fulfilled. The article appeared not long afterward
as a contribution to another periodical. In the meanwhile Stockton's
whimsical view of the matter had so amused me as to smooth my temper,
and I did not think it necessary to expose the petty theft.
XLI
[Sidenote: Some Plagiarists I Have Known]
The view taken by Stockton's perverse humor was much the same as that
entertained by Benjamin Franklin with greater seriousness. He tells us
in his Autobiography that at one time he regularly attended a certain
church whose minister preached able sermons that interested him. When it
was discovered that the sermons were borrowed, without credit, from some
one else, the church dismissed the preacher and put in his place another
whose sermons, all his own, did not interest Franklin, who thereupon
ceased to attend the church, protesting that he preferred good sermons,
plagiarized, to poor ones of the preacher's own.
I have since learned what I did not know at the time of the incident
related, that there is a considerable company of minor writers hanging
as it were on the skirts of literature and journalism, who make the
better part of their meager incomes by copying the writings of others
and selling them at opportune times. Sometimes these clever pilferers
copy matter as they find it, particularly when its source is one not
likely to be discovered. Sometimes they make slight alterations in it
for the sake of disguise, and sometimes they borrow the substance of
what they want and change its form somewhat by rewriting it. Their
technical name for this last performance is "skinning" an article.
I have since had a good deal of experience with persons of this sort.
When Horace Greeley died one of them--a woman--sold me a copy of the
text of a very interesting letter from him which she assured me had
never been seen by any one outside the little group that cherished the
original. I learned later that she had simply copied the thing from
the _Home Journal_, where it had been printed many months before.
One day some years later I had a revelation made to me of the ethics
of plagiarism accepted by a certain class of writers for the minor
periodicals. I found in an obscure magazine a signed article on the
heroism of women, or something of that sort, the first paragraphs of
which were copied verbatim from a book of my own, in which I had written
it as a personal recollection. When the writer of the article was
questioned as to his trespass upon my copyright, he wrote me an
exceedingly gracious letter of apology, saying, by way of explanation,
that he had found the passage in an old scrapbook of his own, with no
memorandum of its authorship attached. He had thought it no harm, he
said, to make the thing his own, a thing, he assured me, he would not
have done had he known whose the passage was. This explanation seemed to
satisfy his conscience completely. I wonder what he would have thought
himself privileged to do with a horse or a cow found wandering along a
lane without the escort of its owner.
[Sidenote: A Peculiar Case of Plagiary]
Sometimes the plagiarist is far more daring in his thefts, taking as his
own much greater things and more easily recognized ones than scrapbooks
are apt to hold. The boldest thing of the sort with which I ever came
into personal contact happened in this wise. As literary editor of the
_Evening Post_ during the late seventies it was a part of my duty to
look out for interesting correspondence. One day there came to me a
particularly good thing of the kind--two or three columns of fascinating
description of certain phases of life in the Canadian Northwest. The
writer proposed to furnish us a series of letters of like kind, dealing
with the trading posts of the Hudson Bay Company, life among the
trappers, Indians, and half-breeds, and the like. The letter submitted
was so unusually good, both in its substance and in its literary
quality, that I agreed to take the series on the terms proposed. A
number of the letters followed, and the series attracted the pleased
attention of readers. Presently, in addition to his usual letter our
correspondent sent us a paper relating to the interesting career of
a quaint personage who flourished in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois in
their territorial days. He was known as "Johnny Appleseed," because
of his habit of carrying a bag of apple seeds in his wanderings and
distributing them among the pioneers by way of inducing them to plant
orchards.
Unfortunately that article had been written by some one other than
our correspondent and published long before in _Harper's Magazine_.
When my suspicion was thus aroused with regard to the integrity of the
correspondent, I instituted an inquiry which revealed the fact that the
letters we had so highly valued were plagiarized from a book which had
been published in England but not reprinted here.
The daring of the man appalled me, but the limit of his assurance had
not yet been revealed. When I wrote to him telling him of my discovery
of the fraud and declining to send a check for such of the letters as
had been printed and not yet paid for, he responded by sending me a
number of testimonials to the excellence of his character, furnished by
the clergymen, bankers, and leading men generally of the town in which
he lived. Having thus rehabilitated his character, he argued that as
the letters had proved interesting to the readers of the paper, we had
got our money's worth, and that it made no difference in the quality
of the literature furnished whether he had written it himself or had
transcribed it from a book written by another person. Curiously enough
there was a tone of assured sincerity in all this which was baffling to
the understanding. I can explain it only by thinking that he plagiarized
that tone also.
It was about that time that my work as literary editor of the _Evening
Post_ brought to my attention two cases of what I may call more
distinguished plagiarism. Mrs. Wister, a gifted scholar and writer, was
at that time rendering a marked service to literature by her exceedingly
judicious adaptations of German fiction to the use of American readers.
She took German novels that were utterly too long and in other ways
unfit for American publication, translated them freely, shortened them,
and otherwise saved to American readers all that was attractive in
novels which, if directly translated, would have had no acceptability at
all in this country. The results were quite as much her own as those of
the German authors of the books thus treated.
I had recently read and reviewed one of the cleverest of these books of
hers, when there came to me for review an English translation of the
same German novel, under another title. That translation was presented
as the work of an English clergyman, well known as one of the most
prolific writers of his time. As I looked over the book I discovered
that with the exception of a few initiatory chapters, it was simply a
copy of Mrs. Wister's work. In answer to the charge of plagiarism the
reverend gentleman explained that he had set out to translate the book,
but that when he had rendered a few chapters of it into English Mrs.
Wister's work fell into his hands and he found her version so good that
he thought it best to adopt it instead of making one of his own. He
omitted, however, to explain the ethical conceptions that had restrained
him from practising common honesty in a matter involving both reputation
and revenue. That was at a time when English complaints of "American
piracy" were loudest.
[Sidenote: A Borrower from Stedman]
The other case was a more subtle one, and incidentally more interesting
to me. As literary editor of the _Evening Post_, under the editorship
of Mr. Bryant, who held the literary side of the paper's work to be of
more consequence than all the rest of it put together, I had to read
everything of literary significance that appeared either in England
or in America. One day I found in an English magazine an elaborate
article which in effect charged Tennyson with wholesale plagiary from
Theocritus. The magazinist was disposed to exploit himself as a literary
discoverer, and he presented his discoveries with very little of that
delicacy and moderation which a considerate critic would regard as the
due of so distinguished a poet as Tennyson. I confess that his tone
aroused something like antagonism in my mind, and I rather rejoiced
when, upon a careful reading of his article, I found that he was no
discoverer at all. Practically all that he had to say had been much
better said already by Edmund C. Stedman first in a magazine essay and
afterwards in a chapter of the "Victorian Poets." The chief difference
was that Stedman had written with the impulse and in the tone and manner
of a scholarly gentleman, while the other had exploited himself like a
prosecuting attorney.
The obvious thing to do was to get Stedman, if that were possible, to
write a signed article on the subject for the _Evening Post_. With that
end in view I went at once to his office in Broad Street.
I knew him well, in literary and social ways, but I had never before
trespassed upon his banker existence, and the visit mightily interested
me, as one which furnished a view of an unfamiliar side of the
"manyest-sided man"--that phrase I had learned from Mr. Whitelaw
Reid--whom I ever knew.
It was during Stock Exchange hours that I made my call, and I intended
to remain only long enough to secure an appointment for some other and
less occupied time. But the moment I indicated the matter I wished to
consult with him about, Stedman linked his arm in mine and led me to
his "den," a little room off the banking offices, and utterly unlike
them in every detail. Here were books--not ledgers; here were all the
furnishings of the haunt of a man of letters, without a thing to suggest
that the man of letters knew or cared for anything relating to stocks,
bonds, securities, loans, discounts, dividends, margins, or any other
of the things that are alone considered of any account in Wall Street.
"This is the daytime home of the literary side of me," he explained.
"When I'm out there"--pointing, "I think of financial things; when I
enter here I forget what a dollar mark looks like."
"I see," I said. "Minerva in Wall Street--Athene, if you prefer the
older Greek name."
"Say Apollo instead--for if there is anything I pride myself upon it is
my masculinity. 'Male and female created he them, and God saw that it
was good,' but the garments of one sex do not become the other, and
neither do the qualities and attributes."
He had a copy of "The Victorian Poets" in the den and together we made a
minute comparison of his study of Tennyson's indebtedness to Theocritus,
Bion, and Moschus with the magazinist's article. For result we found
that beyond a doubt the magazinist had "skinned" his article out of
Stedman's chapter--in other words, that he had in effect plagiarized his
charge of plagiary and the proofs of it.
Stedman refused to write anything on the subject, deeming it not worth
while, a judgment which I am bound to say was sound, though I did not
like to accept it because my news instinct scented game and I wanted
that article from Stedman's pen. His scholarly criticism was literature
of lasting importance and interest. The magazine assault upon Tennyson's
fame is utterly forgotten of those who read it.
XLII
[Sidenote: "The Hoosier Schoolmaster's" Influence]
It was early in our effort to achieve a circulation for _Hearth and
Home_ that my brother decided to write for it his novel, "The Hoosier
Schoolmaster." I have elsewhere related the story of the genesis of that
work, and I shall not repeat it here. Its success was immediate and
astonishing. It quickly multiplied the circulation of _Hearth and Home_
many times over. It was reprinted serially in a dozen or more weekly
newspapers in the West and elsewhere, and yet when it was published in a
peculiarly unworthy and unattractive book form, its sales exceeded fifty
thousand copies during the first month, at a time when the sale of ten
thousand copies all told of any novel was deemed an unusual success.
The popularity of the story did not end even there. Year after year it
continued to sell better than most new novels, and now nearly forty
years later, the demand for it amounts to several thousand copies per
annum. It was translated into several foreign languages--in spite of the
difficulty the translators must have encountered in rendering an uncouth
dialect into languages having no such dialect. It was republished in
England, and the French version of it appeared in the _Revue des Deux
Mondes_.
But great as its popularity was and still is, I am disposed to regard
that as a matter of less significance and less consequence than the
influence it exercised in stimulating and guiding the literary endeavors
of others. If I may quote a sentence from a book of my own, "The First
of the Hoosiers," Edward Eggleston was "the very first to perceive
and utilize in literature the picturesqueness of the Hoosier life and
character, the first to appreciate the poetic and romantic possibilities
of that life and to invite others to share with him his enjoyment of its
humor and his admiration for its sturdy manliness."
While Edward was absorbed in the writing of "The Hoosier Schoolmaster"
and its quickly following successor, "The End of the World," he more and
more left the editorial conduct of the paper to me, and presently he
resigned his editorial place, leaving me as his successor.
The work was of a kind that awakened all my enthusiasm. My tastes were
literary rather than journalistic, whatever may have been the case as to
my capacities, and in the conduct of _Hearth and Home_ my work was far
more literary in character than any that had fallen to me up to that
time in my service on daily newspapers. More important still, it brought
me into contact, both personally and by correspondence, with practically
all the active literary men and women of that time, with many of whom I
formed friendships that have endured to this time in the case of those
who still live, and that ended only with the death of those who are
gone. The experiences and the associations of that time were both
delightful and educative, and I look back upon them after all these
years with a joy that few memories can give me. I was a mere apprentice
to the literary craft, of course, but I was young enough to enjoy and,
I think, not too conceited to feel the need of learning all that such
associations could teach.
It was during this _Hearth and Home_ period that my first books were
written and published. They were the results of suggestions from others
rather than of my own self-confidence, as indeed most of the thirty-odd
books I have written have been.
Mr. George P. Putnam, the Nestor of American book publishing, the friend
of Washington Irving and the discoverer of his quality, returned to the
work of publishing about that time. In partnership with his son, George
Haven Putnam, then a young man and now the head of a great house, he
had set up a publishing firm with a meager "list" but with ambition to
increase it to a larger one.
[Sidenote: My First Book]
In that behalf the younger member of the firm planned a series of useful
manuals to be called "Putnam's Handy Book Series," and to be sold at
seventy-five cents each. With more of hopefulness than of discretion,
perhaps, he came to me asking if I could not and would not write one or
two of the little volumes. The immediate result was a little book
entitled "How to Educate Yourself."
In writing it I had the advantage of comparative youth and of that
self-confident omniscience which only youth can have. I knew everything
then better than I know anything now, so much better indeed that for a
score of years past I have not dared open the little book, lest it
rebuke my present ignorance beyond my capacity to endure.