THE FINEST SIDE OF “THE SUN”
_Literary Associations of an Editorial Department That
Has Encouraged and Attracted Men of Imagination and
Talent.--Mitchell, Hazeltine, Church, and Their Colleagues._
The _Sun’s_ association with literature, particularly with fiction, has
been more intimate than that of any other daily American newspaper. Ben
Day had a taste for fiction, else the moon hoax, a bit of good writing
as well as the greatest of fakes, would not have appeared. In the time
of Moses Y. Beach the balloon hoax and other writings of Poe were in
the _Sun_. Moses S. Beach, who owned or controlled the paper for twenty
years, brought popularity and profit to it through stories written
exclusively for the _Sun_ by Mary J. Holmes, Horatio Alger, Jr., and a
dozen other authors whose tales compelled readers to burn the midnight
gas.
Under Dana the _Sun’s_ interest in literature became broader, more
intense. Dana’s knowledge that the most avid appetite of the public
was for the short story and the novel, led him to encourage his men
to adopt, when feasible, the fiction form in news writing. In his
four-page daily there was not much room for romance proper, but when
the Sunday _Sun_ was under way, its eight pages afforded space for
tales of fancy.
In the first few years of Dana’s ownership the walks of American
literature were not crowded. As late as 1875 the _Sun_ lamented:
For younger rising men we look almost in vain. Bret Harte gives
no promise of lasting fecundity. Howells does charming work,
and will probably long remain in position as a dainty but not
suggestive or formative writer. Aldrich is very slight. John
Hay easily won whatever name he has, and it will easily pass
away. Henry James the younger is one of the rising men, the
youth of literature.
But of all these there is not one who has yet discovered the
stuff out of which the kings and princes, or even the barons,
of literature are made.
Harte, having written his most famous short stories, had come East.
Howells, then thirty-eight, had published three or four novels, but
“The Rise of Silas Lapham” was ten years ahead. John Hay, then on the
_Tribune_ editorial staff, had written his “Pike County Ballads” and
“Castilian Days.” Henry James had put forth only “Watch and Ward.” To
these budding geniuses the general public was rather inclined to prefer
Augusta Evans’s “St. Elmo,” E. P. Roe’s “Barriers Burned Away,” and
Edward Eggleston’s “Hoosier Schoolmaster.”
Notwithstanding the expressed doubt as to Harte’s fecundity, Dana
admired his work and printed his stories in the _Sun_ for years
afterward. Late in the seventies he bought Harte’s output and
syndicated it--probably the first successful application of the
newspaper syndicate system to fiction. About the same period Robert
Louis Stevenson’s earlier successes, such as “The Treasure of
Franchard” and “The Sire de Maletroit’s Door,” were having their first
American printing in the _Sun_, their original appearance having been
in _Temple Bar_ and other English magazines.
The files of the _Sun_ for 1891 contain writings of Stevenson that are
omitted from most, if not from all of the collections of his works.
These are parts of his articles on the South Seas, an ambitious series
which he was unable to finish. Some of them were printed in the
London _Black and White_. All of them appeared in the _Sun_. Through
the _Sun’s_ literary syndicate the American public gained some of its
earliest acquaintance with Harte and Henry James. Kipling’s “Light That
Failed” had its first American appearance in the _Sun_ in the autumn
of 1890. It may interest Mr. James’s admirers to know that one of the
Middle Western newspapers, having bought a James novel from the _Sun_,
played it up with a gingery head-line:
GEORGINA’S REASONS!
HENRY JAMES’S LATEST STORY!
A Woman Who Commits Bigamy and Enforces Silence on
Her Husband!
Two Other Lives Made Miserable by Her Heartless Action!
Among the literary men given less to fiction and more to history,
sociology, and philosophy who have yielded to the _Sun’s_ columns
from their treasure, sometimes anonymously, were Jeremiah Curtin, the
translator of Sienkiewicz and Tolstoy and an authority on folk-lore;
George Ticknor Curtis, jurist and writer on the Constitution; Goldwin
Smith, whose views on the subject of the destiny of Canada coincided
with Dana’s, and who contributed to the _Sun_ hundreds of articles
from his store of philosophical and political wisdom; Charles Francis
Adams, Jr., who wrote on railway management; General Adam Badeau, one
of Grant’s biographers; William Elliot Griffis, probably the most
authoritative of all American writers upon Japanese affairs; and
Francis Lynde Stetson, the distinguished authority on corporation and
railway law.
[Illustration:
PAUL DANA
]
Of the more strictly journalistic writers who, although not attached
permanently to the _Sun’s_ staff, contributed to its news and editorial
columns, the names rise of James S. Pike, of Joseph Pulitzer and
his predecessor as editor of the _World_, William Henry Hurlbut; of
James F. Shunk and his brother-in-law, Chauncey F. Black, both of
Pennsylvania and both humorists; of Edward Spencer, a writer of fiction
who displayed splendid imaginative qualities, and of Oliver Dyer, whose
range of ability was so great that while one day he wrote for Bonner’s
_Ledger_ advice to distressed lovers, the next day would find him
penning for the _Sun_ an exhaustive article on the methods employed in
building a railroad across the Andes!
Dana encouraged the men who wrote exclusively, or almost entirely,
for the _Sun_, to write fiction. Edward P. Mitchell, whom Mr. Dana
attracted to the _Sun_ from the Lewiston (Maine) _Journal_ in 1875,
when Mr. Mitchell was twenty-three years old, wrote for the _Sun_
at least a score of short stories of between two thousand and six
thousand words. Two of his tales--“The Ablest Man in the World” and
“The Tachypomp,” both scientific fantasies of remarkably ingenious
construction, were included in the Scribner collection of “Short
Stories by American Authors,” Mr. Mitchell being the only writer doubly
represented in those volumes. “The Ablest Man in the World” also
has its place in Stedman and Hutchinson’s distinguished “Library of
American Literature.”
Other short stories of Mr. Mitchell’s, like “The Man Without a Body”
and “The Balloon Tree,” are remembered by older _Sun_ readers for
their ingenious form and delightful narrative. Mr. Mitchell’s smaller
sketches, numbering perhaps three hundred, included not only fancy but
humour, and particularly little burlesques delicately picturing the
weaknesses of the great or quasi-great men of the day. As a change
from his strictly editorial work he might write a description of Mark
Twain in his observatory, armed with a boat-hook and preparing to
fend off a comet; or, becoming Mr. Dana’s reporter, he would expose a
spiritualistic séance of the Eddy Brothers somewhere up in Vermont, or
go to Madison Square to record the progress of George Francis Train
toward world dictatorship by self-evolution on a diet of peanuts; or he
would write a dramatic criticism of the appearance of the _Sun’s_ droll
friend, George, the Count Joannes, as _Hamlet_.
These few instances, a dozen out of twenty thousand articles that Mr.
Mitchell wrote for the _Sun_, are not mentioned as a key to the general
tenor of his work--which has covered everything from the definition
of a mugwump to the interpretation of a President’s Constitutional
powers--but rather as an indication of the _Sun’s_ catholicity in
subjects. If incidentally they serve to counteract the impression that
the editorship of a great newspaper is gained through mere erudition,
as opposed to a fine understanding of the very human reader, so much
the better.
From his first day with the _Sun_ Mr. Mitchell absorbed his chief’s
lifelong belief that the range of public interest was infinite. As he
said in 1916, in an address to the students of the Pulitzer School of
Journalism on “The Newspaper Value of Non-Essentials”:
Sometimes people are as much interested in queer names, like
Poke Stogis, for example, or in the discussion of a question
such as “What Is the Best Ghost in Fiction?” or “How Should
Engaged Couples Act at the Circus?” or “What Is a Dodunk?”
or “Do the Angels Play Football?” as some other people are
interested in the conference of the great powers.
It is well to remember always this psychological factor.
Both the range of the newspaper and the attractive power of
the writer for the newspaper in any department depend upon
the breadth of sympathy with human affairs and the diversity
of things in which he, the writer, takes a genuine personal
interest.
In that speech the _Sun’s_ judgment of what the people want, whether
it be in news, editorial, or fiction, is restated exactly as it might
have been stated at any time within the last fifty years. And Dana
and Mitchell are found in agreement not only upon the subject of
what the reader wishes, but upon the necessity for the preservation
in newspapers, as well as in books, of the ideals of the language.
Speaking at a conference held at Princeton University in 1917, Mr.
Mitchell said:
The most serious practical evil that will result from the
elimination of the classics will fall upon the English
language itself. The racial memory begins to decay, the racial
imagination, the begetter of memory, begins to weaken, the
sense of precise meanings begins to lose its edge, and the
English language ceases to be a vital thing and becomes a mere
code of arbitrary signals wigwagged from mouth to ear. Were
I the emergency autocrat of this language, I should proclaim
in drastic regulations and enforce by severe penalties the
American duty of adherence to the old habits of speech, the old
scrupulous respect for the finer shades of meaning, the old
rigid observance of the morality of word relations; and this, I
believe, can be done only by maintaining the classical culture
at high potency.
Mr. Mitchell was born in Maine in 1852, and was graduated from Bowdoin
in 1871. It is curious to note, scanning the names of the editors and
proprietors, how the _Sun_ has drawn upon New England.
Benjamin H. Day was born in West Springfield, Massachusetts, April 10,
1810.
Moses Yale Beach was born in Wallingford, Connecticut, January 7, 1800.
Moses Sperry Beach was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, October 5,
1822.
Charles A. Dana was born in Hinsdale, New Hampshire, August 8, 1819.
Edward P. Mitchell was born in Bath, Maine, March 24, 1852.
Frank A. Munsey was born in Mercer, Maine, August 21, 1854.
Any grouping of _Sun_ men on the purely literary side brings the name
of Hazeltine to stand with those of Dana and Mitchell. Mayo Williamson
Hazeltine was a fine example of the scholar in newspaper work; an
example of the way in which Dana, with his intellectual magnificence,
found the best for his papers.
Educated at Harvard and Oxford and in continental Europe, Hazeltine
came to the _Sun_ in 1878, and was its literary critic until his
death in 1909. During the same period he was also one of its
principal writers of articles on foreign politics and sociology.
His book-reviews, published in the _Sun_ on Sundays, which made the
initials “M. W. H.” familiar to the whole English-reading world, were
marvels of comprehension. Many a publisher of a three-volume historical
work lamented when it attracted Hazeltine’s attention, for his review,
whether two columns or seven, usually compressed into that space all
that the average student cared to know about the book, reducing the
high cost of reading from six or eight dollars to a nickel.
Hazeltine enjoyed, under both Dana and Mitchell, practically his own
choice of subjects, a free hand with them, and a generous income; and
in return, for more than thirty years, he poured into the columns
of the _Sun_ a wealth of the erudition which was his by right of
education, travel, an intense interest in all things intellectual, and
a wonderful memory.
In the list of writers of editorial articles which includes Dana,
Mitchell, William O. Bartlett, and Hazeltine, are found also the names
of Frank P. Church, E. M. Kingsbury, Napoleon L. Thiéblin, James Henry
Wilson, John Swinton, Henry B. Stanton, Fitz-Henry Warren, William T.
Washburn, Harold M. Anderson, Frank H. Simonds, and Henry M. Armstrong.
Of these Church stands alone as the writer in whose case the _Sun_
broke its rule that the anonymity of editorial writers is absolute.
After Mr. Church’s death on April 11, 1906, it was announced in the
_Sun_ that he was the author of what for more than twenty years has
been regarded as the most popular editorial article ever written. It
appeared on September 21, 1897:
IS THERE A SANTA CLAUS?
We take pleasure in answering at once and thus prominently the
communication below, expressing at the same time our great
gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the
friends of the _Sun_:
DEAR EDITOR:
I am eight years old. Some of my little friends say there is no
Santa Claus. Papa says “If you see it in the _Sun_ it’s so.”
Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?
VIRGINIA O’HANLON.
115 West Ninety-Fifth Street.
Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the
skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see.
They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their
little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s,
are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an
ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him,
as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth
and knowledge.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love
and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and
give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas, how dreary would
be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if
there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no
poetry, no romance, to make tolerable this existence. We should have
no enjoyment except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which
childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies!
You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on
Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa
Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but
that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in
the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever
see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof
that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders
there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside,
but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest
man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever
lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can
push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and
glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is
nothing else real and abiding.
No Santa Claus! Thank God, he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand
years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now,
he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.
Church, as one intimate wrote upon his death, after more than thirty
years with the _Sun_, had all the literary gifts, “the tender fancy,
the sympathetic understanding of human nature, the humour, now wistful,
now joyous, the unsurpassed delicacy of touch.”
[Illustration:
WILLIAM M. LAFFAN
]
In dramatic criticism, where the _Sun_ has required from its writers
somewhat more than the mere ability to praise or blame, its roster
bears such names as Frank Bowman, Willard Bartlett, Elihu Root, William
Stewart (“Walsingham”), who was the first of the dramatic critics to
adopt an intimate style; Andrew Carpenter Wheeler, better known to
the public under his pen-name of “Nym Crinkle,” whose reviews were a
feature of the Sunday issue of the _Sun_; William M. Laffan, the always
brilliant and sometimes caustic; Franklin Fyles, who wrote plays as
well as reviews of plays; John Corbin, the scholarly analyst; Walter
Prichard Eaton, author of “The American Stage of To-day,” and Lawrence
Reamer, who has been with the _Sun_, as reporter or critic, for a
quarter of a century.
In criticism of opera and other musical events the _Sun_, through the
writings of William J. Henderson, has pleased the general public as
well as the musicians, and has added many sound and scholarly chapters
to newspaper literature.
In book-reviewing a hundred pens have served the _Sun_. Hazeltine, E.
P. Mitchell, Willard Bartlett, Erasmus D. Beach, George Bendelari, Miss
Dana Gatlin, H. M. Anderson, and Grant M. Overton are but a few of the
men and women who have told _Sun_ readers what’s worth while.
For _Sun_ reporters the Sunday paper has been a favourable field for
an excursion into fiction-writing. In its columns a man with a tale
to tell has every chance. There William Norr gave, in his “Pearl of
Chinatown,” the real atmosphere of a little part of New York that once
held romance. It was for the Sunday _Sun_ that Edward W. Townsend
created his celebrated characters, _Chimmie Fadden_, _Miss Fanny_,
_Mr. Paul_, and the rest of that happy, if slangy, family. Clarence
L. Cullen laid bare the soul of alcoholic adventurers in his “Tales
of the Ex-Tanks.” Ed Mott made famous the bears of Pike County,
Pennsylvania. David A. Curtis related the gambling ways of _Old Man
Greenlaw_ and his associates. Charles Lynch conferred the title of the
Duke of Essex Street upon an obscure lawyer, and made him the talk of
the East Side. Joseph Goodwin brought to the notice of an ignorant
world the ways of _Sarsaparilla Reilly_ and other Park Row restaurant
heroes. David Graham Phillips, Samuel Hopkins Adams, and other men
destined to be known through their books, ground out, for glory and
eight dollars a column, the yarns--sometimes fact turned into fiction,
sometimes fiction masked as fact--that kept the readers of the Sunday
_Sun_ from getting out into the open air.