THE “LEDGER” PERIOD OF LETTERS.
A quarter of a century hence, perhaps, one of those arbiters of taste
to whom poetastry owes its very existence will lecture before the
intellectual and artistic circles of that period on “The Literary
Remains of the Bonnerian Period”; and the _Ledger_ school of poetry,
long neglected by our critics, will become a fashionable cult. I hope,
too, that the names of those writers who, as disciples of that school,
gave an impetus to those great principles which live to-day in the
beautifully printed pages of our leading periodicals will be rescued
from the shades of obscurity and accorded the tardy credit that they
have fairly won.
These principles have lived because they were founded on good, sound,
logical common sense, for Mr. Bonner possesses one of the most logical
minds in the world. In the days when he was--unconsciously, I am
sure--moulding the literature of future generations of Americans, he
was always able to give a reason for every one of his official acts;
and I doubt if as much can be said of all the magazine editors of the
present day. It was this faculty that enabled his contributors to learn
so much of his likes and dislikes, for if he rejected a manuscript
he was always ready to tell the author exactly why the work was not
suitable for the _Ledger_.
For instance: One day a maker of prose and verse received from the
hands of the great editor a story which he had submitted to him the
week before.
“If you please,” said the poet, politely, “I should like to know why
you cannot use my story, so that I may be guided in the future by your
preferences.”
“Certainly,” replied Mr. Bonner. “This story will not do for me because
you have in it the marriage of a man with his cousin.”
“But,” protested the young author, “cousins do marry in real life very
often.”
“In real life, yes,” cried the canny Scotchman; “but not in the _New
York Ledger_!”
And it is related of this talented young maker of prose and verse,
that he changed his hero and heroine from cousins to neighbors, and
the very same night was seen in Pfaff’s quaffing, smoking, and jesting
with his fellow-poets, and making merry over the defeat that was turned
into a victory. And in the generous fashion of Bohemia he told all his
comrades that “Bonner was down on cousins marrying”; and thereafter
neither in song nor story did a _Ledger_ hero ever look with anything
but the eye of brotherly affection on any woman of even the most remote
consanguinity.
“In real life, yes; but not in the _New York Ledger_!”
That gives us a taste of the milk in the cocoanut, although it does not
account for the hair on the outside of the shell.
As a matter of fact, Mr. Bonner knew that a great many of his
subscribers did not approve of a man marrying his own cousin when there
were plenty of other folks’ cousins to be had for the asking; and so,
rather than cause a moment’s annoyance to a single one of these, he
forbade the practice in the columns of his paper.
I knew a number of these _Ledger_ writers in my salad days, and
have often heard them discussing their trade and the condition of
the market in a way that would have lifted the hair of some of the
_littérateurs_ of the modern “delightfully-Bohemian-studio-tea” and
kettledrum school.
Years ago one of them confided to me his recipe for a _Ledger_ poem.
“Whatever you do,” he said, “be careful not to use up a whole idea on
a single poem, for if you do you’ll never be able to make a cent. I
usually cut an idea into eight pieces, like a pie, and write a poem for
each piece, though once or twice I have made sixteen pieces out of one.
My ‘Two Brothers’ idea yielded me just sixteen poems, all accepted, for
which I received $160. What do I mean by cutting up an idea? Well, I’ll
tell you. I took for a whole idea two brothers brought up on a farm in
the country, one of whom goes down to the city, while the other stays
at home on the farm. Well, I wrote eight poems about those brothers,
giving them such names as Homespun Bill and Fancy Jake, and the city
man always went broke, and was glad to get back to the country again
and find that Homespun Bill had either paid the mortgage on the place
or saved the house from burning, or done something else calculated
to commend him to the haymakers who subscribed for the paper. Then
I wrote eight more, and in every one of those it was the yokel who
got left; that is to say, Fancy Jake or Dashing Tom, or whatever I
might choose to call him, would go to the city and either get rich in
Wall Street--always Wall, never Broad or Nassau Street or Broadway,
remember--and come back just in time to stop the sheriff’s sale and
bid in the old homestead for some unheard-of figure, or else he would
become a great physician and return to save his native village at a
time of pestilence, or maybe I’d have him a great preacher and come
back and save all their souls; anyway, I got eight more poems out of
the pair, to say nothing of some stories that I used in another paper.”
I pondered for several moments over the words of the poet and then I
said to him, “But if you were so successful with the ‘Two Brothers’ why
didn’t you try to do as well with two sisters?”
“I did,” he replied. “I started a ‘Two Sisters’ series as soon as the
brothers were all harvested, but I got them back on my hands again. You
know Bonner is down on sisters.”
“Bonner is down on sisters!”
What stumbling-blocks there were in the path to literary fame which the
poets of the early _Ledger_ period sought to tread!
Fancy the feelings of one who has poured out his whole soul in a
poem descriptive of sisterly love and learns that his labor has been
in vain, not because of any fault on his part, not because his
poem is not good, but simply and solely because “Bonner is down on
sisters”! And then I hear the carping critic ask if I call that good
editing. I say that it was the very best of editing. At any rate, it
was good enough to make the _Ledger_ fiction popular from one end of
this country to the other; and it is because of that editing that we
still find the old dusty files in the country garrets, along with the
pop-corn ears and the wreaths of dried apples. I wonder how much of
the ephemeral literature of to-day will be found sacredly guarded in
anybody’s garret a quarter of a century hence?
But there were other folks besides sisters and matrimonial cousins who
were regarded with disfavor by the great editor and thinker who long
ago set the pace for modern American fiction.
Well do I remember Jack Moran coming upon us one bright morning, a
dozen years ago, with bitter invective on his lips because his poem,
“The Stepmother’s Prayer,” had been returned to him from the _Ledger_
office. He read it aloud to us, and then inquired, pathetically, “Isn’t
that poem all right?”
It was more than “all right.” It was a delicate, imaginative bit of
verse, descriptive of the young bride kneeling reverently in the
nursery of her new home and praying that God would make her a good
mother to the sleeping stepchildren. It was a real poem--such a poem as
poor, gifted Irish Jack Moran could write, but only when the mood was
upon him, for he was not one of those makers of verse who go to work at
six in the morning with their dinner-pails.
“Ah, Jack!” exclaimed a sympathizing poet, “you never should have
taken it to the _Ledger_. Didn’t you know that Bonner was down on
stepmothers? Change it round so as to make the stepmother a beast, and
he’ll give you ten for it.”
“By the way, Jack, do you remember the time there was a death in the
old man’s family, and we all got in on him with poems about meeting on
the further shore and crossing the dark river?”
“I do,” replied Jack, briefly. “It was worth just twenty to me.”
And why was Bonner “down” on stepmothers? Simply because he wished to
avoid giving offense to those who disapproved of second marriages, and
who formed a very large part of his constituency.
I hope that I have thrown sufficient pathos into my description of the
condition of the poor rhymester of a dozen or fifteen years ago to
touch the hearts of my sympathetic readers. How much better off, you
say, is the literary man of to-day, who makes steady wages in Franklin
Square, or occupies one of the neat white cottages erected for the
employees of the McClure Steam Syndicate Mills in Paterson!
Better off in some respects, perhaps, dear reader, but in others his
state is none the more gracious than it was in the days when Jack
Moran’s “Stepmother’s Prayer” was rejected because Bonner was down on
stepmothers. The great _Ledger_ editor has retired to his stock-farm,
but the principles which have enabled him to possess a stock-farm
still live in every magazine office in the land, and the writer of
to-day must be just as careful in regard to forbidden topics as his
predecessor was, and, moreover, must keep his eye on three or four
editors, with their likes and their dislikes.
But these remarks are not made in a carping spirit. There is some good
reason for every one of these likes and dislikes. If Mr. Gilder prefers
oatmeal to wheaten grits as a breakfast-table dish for the hero of
the new _Century_ serial, it is because he has an eye on his Scotch
subscribers; and if the manuscript of _Robinson Crusoe_ is returned to
Mr. De Foe with the remark that “Burlingame is down on goats,” it is
simply because _Scribner’s Magazine_ is not pushing its sale in Harlem
and Williamsburg.
In regard to the practice of cutting an idea into eight pieces and
serving up each piece as a separate poem or story, can any one familiar
with current literature deny that ideas are just as much cut up now as
they ever were? More than that, have not some of our writers solved
the old problem of making bricks without straw? Why, then, you ask,
is their manuscript printed in preference to matter that is more
virile and fresh and readable? For the same reason that Jack Moran’s
“Stepmother’s Prayer” was returned to him by the very hand that was
stretched forth in glad eagerness to grasp the sixteen poems that had
sprung from the solitary idea of the two country brothers. Why, I know
of one or two poets whose verses enjoy the widest sort of publicity,
and who, I am sure, cut an idea into thirty-two pieces instead of
sixteen.