Mr. Grady’s editorial methods were as unique as all his other methods.
They can be described, but they cannot be explained. He had an
instinctive knowledge of news in its embryonic state; he seemed to know
just where and when a sensation or a startling piece of information
would develop itself, and he was always ready for it. Sometimes it
seemed to grow and develop under his hands, and his insight and
information were such that what appeared to be an ordinary news item
would suddenly become, under his manipulation and interpretation, of the
first importance. It was this faculty that enabled him to make the
_Constitution_ one of the leading journals of the country in its method
of gathering and treating the news.
Mr. Grady was not as fond of the editorial page as might be supposed.
Editorials were very well in their way—capital in an emergency—admirable
when a nail was to be clinched, so to speak—but most important of all to
his mind was the news and the treatment of it. The whirl of events was
never too rapid for him. The most startling developments, the most
unexpected happenings, always found him ready to deal with them
instantly and in just the right way.
He magnified the office of reporting, and he had a great fancy for it
himself. There are hundreds of instances where he voluntarily assumed
the duties of a reporter after he became managing editor. A case in
point is the work he did on the occasion of the Charleston earthquake.
The morning after that catastrophe he was on his way to Charleston. He
took a reporter with him, but he preferred to do most of the work. His
graphic descriptions of the disaster in all its phases—his picturesque
grouping of all the details—were the perfection of reporting, and were
copied all over the country. The reporter who accompanied Mr. Grady had
a wonderful tale to tell on his return. To the people of that desolate
town, the young Georgian seemed to carry light and hope. Hundreds of
citizens were encamped on the streets. Mr. Grady visited these camps,
and his sympathetic humor brought a smile to many a sad face. He went
from house to house, and from encampment to encampment, wrote two or
three columns of telegraphic matter on his knee, went to his room in the
hotel in the early hours of morning, fell on the bed with his clothes
on, and in a moment was sound asleep. The reporter never knew the amount
of work Mr. Grady had done until he saw it spread out in the columns of
the _Constitution_. Working at high-pressure there was hardly a limit to
the amount of copy Mr. Grady could produce in a given time, and it
sometimes happened that he dictated an editorial to his stenographer
while writing a news article.
He did a good deal of his more leisurely newspaper work at home, with
his wife and children around him. He never wrote on a table or desk, but
used a lapboard or a pad, leaning back in his chair with his feet as
high as his head. His house was always a centre of attraction, and when
visitors came in Mrs. Grady used to tell them that they needn’t mind
Henry. The only thing that disturbed him on such occasions was when the
people in the room conversed in a tone so low that he failed to hear
what they were saying. When this happened he would look up from his
writing with a quick “What’s that?” This often happened in the editorial
rooms, and he would frequently write while taking part in a
conversation, never losing the thread of his article or of the talk.
As I have said, he reserved his editorials for occasions or emergencies,
and it was then that his luminous style showed at its best. He employed
always the apt phrase; he was, in fact a phrase-builder. His gift of
expression was something marvelous, and there was something melodious
and fluent about his more deliberate editorials that suggested the
movement of verse. I was reading awhile ago his editorial appealing to
the people of Atlanta on the cold Christmas morning which has already
been alluded to in this sketch. It is short—not longer than the pencil
with which he wrote it, but there is that about it calculated to stir
the blood, even now. Above any other man I have ever known Mr. Grady
possessed the faculty of imparting his personal magnetism to cold type;
and even such a statement as this is an inadequate explanation of the
swift and powerful effect that his writings had on the public mind.
He had a keen eye for what, in a general way, may be called climaxes.
Thus he was content to see the daily _Constitution_ run soberly and
sedately along during the week if it developed into a great paper on
Sunday. He did more editorial work for the Sunday paper than for any
other issue, and bent all his energies toward making an impression on
that day. There was nothing about the details of the paper that he did
not thoroughly understand. He knew more about the effects of type
combinations than the printers did; he knew as much about the business
department as the business manager; and he could secure more
advertisements in three hours than his advertising clerks could solicit
in a week. It used to be said of him that he lacked the business
faculty. I suppose the remark was based on the fact that, in the midst
of all the tremendous booms he stirred up, and the enterprises he
fostered, he remained comparatively poor. I think he purposely neglected
the opportunities for private gain that were offered him. There can be
no more doubt of his business qualification than there can be of the
fact that he neglected opportunities for private gain; but his business
faculties were given to the service of the public—witness his faultless
management of two of the greatest expositions ever held in the South.
Had he served his own interests one-half as earnestly as he served those
of the people, he would have been a millionaire. As it was, he died
comparatively poor.
Mr. Grady took great pride in the _Weekly Constitution_, and that paper
stands to-day a monument to his business faculty and to his wonderful
methods of management. When Mr. Grady took hold of the weekly edition,
it had about seven thousand subscribers, and his partners thought that
the field would be covered when the list reached ten thousand. To-day
the list of subscribers is not far below two hundred thousand, and is
larger than that of the weekly edition of any other American newspaper.
Just how this result has been brought about it is impossible to say. His
methods were not mysterious, perhaps, but they did not lie on the
surface. The weekly editions of newspapers that have reached large
circulations depend on some specialty—as, for instance, the Detroit
_Free Press_ with the popular sketches of M. Quad, and the Toledo
_Blade_, with the rancorous, but still popular, letters of Petroleum V.
Nasby. The _Weekly Constitution_ has never depended on such things. It
has had, and still has, the letters of Bill Arp, of Sarge Wier, and of
Betsey Hamilton, homely humorists all, but Mr. Grady took great pains
never to magnify these things into specialties. Contributions that his
assistants thought would do for the weekly, Mr. Grady would cut out
relentlessly.
It sometimes happened that subscribers would begin to fall off. Then Mr.
Grady would send for the manager of the weekly department, and proceed
to caucus with him, as the young men around the office termed the
conference. During the next few days there would be a great stir in the
weekly department, and in the course of a fortnight the list of
subscribers would begin to grow again. Once, when talking about the
weekly, Mr. Grady remarked in a jocular way that when subscriptions
began to flow in at the rate of two thousand a day, he wanted to die.
Singularly enough, when he was returning from Boston, having been seized
with the sickness that was so soon to carry him off, the business
manager telegraphed him that more than two thousand subscribers had been
received the day before.
In the midst of the manifold duties and responsibilities that he had
cheerfully taken on his shoulders, there came to Mr. Grady an ardent
desire to aid in the reconciliation of the North and South, and to bring
about a better understanding between them. This desire rapidly grew into
a fixed and solemn purpose. His first opportunity was an invitation to
the banquet of the New England Society, which he accepted with great
hesitation. The wonderful effect of his speech at that banquet, and the
tremendous response of applause and approval that came to him from all
parts of the country, assured him that he had touched the key-note of
the situation, and he knew then that his real mission was that of
Pacificator. There was a change in him from that time forth, though it
was a change visible only to friendly and watchful eyes. He put away
something of his boyishness, and became, as it seemed, a trifle more
thoughtful. His purpose developed into a mission, and grew in his mind,
and shone in his eyes, and remained with him day and night. He made many
speeches after that, frequently in little out-of-the-way country places,
but all of them had a national significance and national bearing. He was
preaching the sentiments of harmony, fraternity, and good will to the
South as well as to the North.
He prepared his Boston speech with great care, not merely to perfect its
form, but to make it worthy of the great cause he had at heart, and in
its preparation he departed widely from his usual methods of
composition. He sent his servants away, locked himself in Mrs. Grady’s
room, and would not tolerate interruptions from any source. His memory
was so prodigious that whatever he wrote was fixed in his mind, so that
when he had once written out a speech, he needed the manuscript no more.
Those who were with him say that he did not confine himself to the
printed text of the Boston speech, but made little excursions suggested
by his surroundings. Nevertheless, that speech, as it stands, reaches
the high-water mark of modern oratory. It was his last, as it was his
best, contribution to the higher politics of the country—the politics
that are above partisanry and self-seeking.