THE DAWN OF THE JOHNSONIAN PERIOD.
When the good Dr. Holland passed away, his mantle descended upon the
shoulders of Mr. R. U. Johnson, the foremost of his disciples, and one
who had literally sat at the feet of the great master of the eighth
decade of the present century, and learned from his lips the deathless
principles of modern magazine editing. Since then Mr. Johnson has,
in his capacity of associate editor of the _Century Magazine_, so
skillfully blended the methods of the canny Scotch _Ledger_ editor
with those of Dr. Holland that he has not only kept his own periodical
well in the lead, but has also set the pace for American literature
and compelled his rivals to watch his movements at all times with the
closest care, and frequently to imitate him.
I first heard of the existence of Mr. Johnson, who is unquestionably
the one dominant figure in American literature of to-day, about
fourteen years ago, just as I was beginning to learn something
about the trade of writing. I had placed in the hands of a literary
friend--now well known as one of the most successful of the modern
school of story-writers--the manuscript of a story which dealt with the
criminal life of the lower east side of the town, and was wondering
how soon I was to awake and find myself famous when my manuscript was
returned to me with a brief note from my friend, in which he said:
“I read your story through yesterday, and was so much pleased with it
that my first impulse was to take it to the _Century Magazine_. Indeed,
I would have done so had I not remembered at that moment that Johnson
does not like low life; so you had better try one of the daily papers.”
“_Johnson does not like low life!_”
That was encouraging news for a young man who believed that literary
methods had not materially altered since the days when Oliver Goldsmith
wrote _The Vicar of Wakefield_.
The pen fell from my hand--it happened to be employed just then on a
story dealing with life in a Pell Street opium-joint--and I said to
myself: “Merciful heavens! must I devote my life to the delineation of
what are called society types, simply because Johnson--whoever he may
be--does not like low life?”
I think that if I had known then that low life was only one of a
thousand things that could not meet the approval of Johnson, and
that, moreover, Bonner was down on fast horses, stepmothers, sisters,
matrimonial cousins, and brindle-pups, I would have thrown down my pen
and endeavored to support myself in some other way.
But I did not know anything about the practical side of literature
then, so I blundered on, wasting a great deal of time over forbidden
topics, until I made the acquaintance of Jack Moran and others of his
school, who welcomed me to Bohemia, and generously bade me share their
treasure-house of accrued knowledge of editorial likes and dislikes. My
low-life story--in my sublime faith I had written it on the flimsiest
sort of paper--traveled from one office to another until it had eaten
up $1.28 in postage and looked like Prince Lorenzo in the last act of
_The Mascot_. Then, held together by copper rivets, it sank into its
grave in the old daily _Truth_, unwept and unsigned.
I came across this forgotten offspring of my literary youth not long
ago, and candor compels me to say that if Mr. Johnson had read that
story and printed it in the _Century Magazine_ he would not be to-day
the dominant figure in the literature of our country that he is. My
romance was not nearly as good as a great many that I have read in
daily papers from the pens of clever newspaper men who know what they
are writing about. In point of intense dramatic interest it was not
within a thousand miles of the _Sun’s_ masterly history of the career
of George Howard, the bank burglar, who was murdered in the Westchester
woods about fifteen years ago. The story of Howard’s life and crimes
was told in a page of the _Sun_, I think by Mr. Amos Cummings, and if
I could find any fiction equal to it in one of our magazines I would
gladly sound the praises of the editor who was courageous enough to
publish it.
I can afford to smile now as I recall the bitterness of spirit in
which I used to chafe under the restrictions imposed upon us by the
all-powerful barons of literature. I used to console my wounded vanity
then by picturing to myself a bright future, when Johnson would stretch
out his hands to me and beg me to place on the tip of his parched
tongue a few pages of my cooling and invigorating manuscript. And with
what derision would I have laughed then had any one told me that in the
years to come I would be the one to accord to Mr. Johnson the honor
which is his just due, and to recognize the wisdom which he showed in
rejecting my story of low life!
A truthful portrayal of life among the criminal and vicious classes
would be as much out of place in the _Century Magazine_ as one
depicting the love of a widower for his own cousin, whom he took out
to ride behind a horse with a record of 2.53, would have been in the
old _Ledger_; and I am positive that such a thing will not occur until
after the close of the present literary dynasty.
There is an excellent reason for this prohibition, too. There are no
people in the world who have a greater horror of what they consider
“low” or “vulgar” than those who are steeped in mediocrity, and who, in
this country, form a large part of the reading public. In England they
are known as the “lower middle classes,” and they exist in countless
thousands; but they have a literature of their own--Ouida, the _Family
Herald_, _Ally Sloper’s ’Alf ’Oliday_,--and writers like George
Meredith and Mrs. Humphry Ward and George Du Maurier pay no attention
to them or to their prejudices. Nor does it seem to me that these
writers are as grievously hampered by consideration for the peachy
cheek of the British young person as they claim to be.
The fact that Johnson was down on low life made a deep impression on
me, not so much because of what, I must admit, is a most reasonable
and proper prejudice, but because I soon found that every literary
man of my acquaintance was fully aware of his feelings in the matter,
and therefore took pains not to introduce into a story any scenes or
characters which might serve to render the manuscript unsalable in the
eyes of the _Century_ editors; and as years rolled on I could not help
noticing the effect which this and other likes and dislikes of this
literary Gessler had in moulding the fiction of our day and generation.
And it is because of this _Century_ taboo, which had its origin in the
_Ledger_ office, by the way, that I know of hardly a single magazine
writer of to-day who has made himself familiar with the great wealth of
varied material which may be found in that section of New York which it
is the custom to refer to vaguely as “the great east side.”
It was not very long after the receipt of the letter which thrust
upon my bewildered senses a nebulous comprehension of Mr. Johnson’s
influence and importance in the domain of letters that a fuller
recognition of his omniscience was wrung from me, all-admiring, yet
loath to believe. Mr. H. C. Bunner had written a story called “The Red
Silk Handkerchief” and sent it to the _Century_ office for approval.
The story contained a graphic description of the flagging of a train to
avert a disaster, in which occurred the following passage:
“... and he stood by the platform of the last car as the express
stopped.
“There was a crowd around Horace in an instant. His head was whirling;
but, in a dull way, he said what he had to say. An officious passenger,
who would have explained it all to the conductor if the conductor
had waited, took the deliverer in his arms--for the boy was near
fainting--and enlightened the passengers who flocked around.
“Horace hung in his embrace, too deadly weak even to accept the offer
of one of dozen flasks that were thrust at him.”
Now an ignorant layman will, I am bound, find nothing in the quoted
sentences that could possibly give offence to the most sensitive
reader; but it was precisely at the point where the quotation ends that
the finely trained and ever-alert editorial sense of Mr. Johnson told
him of the danger that lurked in the author’s apparently innocuous
phrase.
“Hold on!” he cried; “can’t you make it two or three flasks instead of
a dozen?”
Well did the keen-witted Johnson know that to many a serious minded
gas-fitter or hay-maker the spectacle of a dozen evil-minded and
evil-living men riding roughshod through the pages of a family
periodical and over the feelings of its readers would be distasteful in
the extreme, if not absolutely shocking. Two or three flasks would lend
to the scene a delicate suggestion of the iniquity of the world, just
enough to make them thank God that they were not as other men are; but
a dozen was altogether too much for them, and Johnson was the man who
knew it.
It is only fair to add that the author very properly refused to alter
his manuscript, and the story stands, to-day, as it was originally
written.
It was the flask episode that really opened my eyes to the peculiar
conditions which encompassed the modern trade of letters, clogging the
feet of the laborers thereof, and while making the easy declivities
about Parnassus accessible to every one who could hold a pen, rendering
its upper heights more difficult to reach than they ever were before.
And it was the same episode which finally proved to me Mr. Johnson’s
leadership in contemporaneous literature--a leadership which he has
held from that day to this by sheer force of his intimate knowledge of
the tastes, prejudices, and peculiarities of the vast army of readers
which the _Century Magazine_ has gathered unto itself, and still holds
by the closest of ties, and will hold, in my opinion, so long as Mr.
Johnson remains at the helm, with his pruning-hook in his hand, and
reading, with clear, searching eyes, the innermost thoughts of his
subscribers.
The present literary era has given us many things to be thankful for,
chief among which should be mentioned the enormous advance in the art
of illustration--a blessing which is shadowed only by the regretful
knowledge that literature has not kept pace with her sister art.
Indeed, too high praise cannot be given to the proprietors of the great
monthlies for the liberality and good taste which they have shown in
raising the pictorial standard of their publications to its present
high plane, from which it commands the admiration of all right-minded
people. And if we are living in the Johnsonian age of letters we are
also living in the Frazeresque period of art, for I doubt if any one
man has exercised a wider influence in the field of modern illustration
than Mr. W. L. Fraser, the maker of the art department of the
_Century_. Nor should we forget his associate, Mr. Drake.
To the present literary era, we are indebted, also, for the higher
development of that peculiar form of fiction called the short story,
the popularity of which has at least served to give employment to a
large number of worthy people who would otherwise have been compelled
to eke out an existence by humbler and more exhausting forms of labor.
No sooner had the short-story fever taken possession of the magazine
offices than there appeared from various corners of the earth men,
women, and children, many of whom had never written anything before
in their lives, but who now besieged the Franklin and Union Square
strongholds, bearing in their inky hands manuscript which in many
instances they were fortunate enough to dispose of, to the rage and
wonder of those old-timers who, having learned their trade under Mr.
Bonner and Dr. Holland, now found themselves too old to readily fall in
with the new order of things.
Of this new brood a few were chosen, and among them were the writers of
dialect stories, which enjoyed an astonishing vogue for several years,
and are now, happily enough, losing ground. I think the banner writer
of dialect stories of this period was a certain Mr. William McLellan,
who contributed a number of unique specimens of his wares to _Harper’s
Monthly_. He could spell more words wrong than any other writer I ever
heard of and I have often wished that I could read one of his stories.
Some of these short-story marvels have been extremely successful,
and now take rank as first-class writers of fiction. I would have a
much higher regard for them, though, if they could write novels--not
serials, but novels.
Among other notable products of the fecund Johnsonian age the future
historian of American literature will dwell upon the _Century_
war-papers, well calculated to extend the circulation of the magazine
over vast areas in the South as well as the North where it had been
almost unknown before; the Siberian experiences of Mr. George Kennan;
autobiographies of celebrated men and women; and idyllic phases of New
England life from the pen of the inimitable Mr. Gladden.
The Kennan articles were of enormous value, apart from their own
intrinsic merit, because their purpose was the reform of certain
abuses. We Americans are so fond of reform that we are always getting
it in one shape or another, and the more we get of it the more we
want; and these papers were aimed only at the Czar of Russia and his
advisers--men who neither subscribe for nor advertise in American
monthlies. I doubt if a proposition to undertake a crusade against
plumbers and compel them to lower their prices would awaken a tidal
wave of enthusiasm in the _Century_ office.