JOURNALISM
I
The five years from 1878 to 1883 Page spent in various places, engaged,
for the larger part of the time, in several kinds of journalistic work.
It was his period of struggle and of preparation. Like many American
public men he served a brief apprenticeship--in his case, a very brief
one--as a pedagogue. In the autumn of 1878 he went to Louisville,
Kentucky, and taught English for a year at the Boys' High School. But he
presently found an occupation in this progressive city which proved far
more absorbing. A few months before his arrival certain energetic
spirits had founded a weekly paper, the _Age_, a journal which, they
hoped, would fill the place in the Southern States which the very
successful New York _Nation_, under the editorship of Godkin, was then
occupying in the North. Page at once began contributing leading articles
on literary and political topics to this publication; the work proved so
congenial that he purchased--on notes--a controlling interest in the new
venture and became its directing spirit. The _Age_ was in every way a
worthy enterprise; in the dignity of its make-up and the high literary
standards at which it aimed it imitated the London _Spectator_. Perhaps
Page obtained a thousand dollars' worth of fun out of his investment; if
so, that represented his entire profit. He now learned a lesson which
was emphasized in his after career as editor and publisher, and that was
that the Southern States provided a poor market for books or
periodicals. The net result of the proceeding was that, at the age of
twenty-three, he found himself out of a job and considerably in debt.
He has himself rapidly sketched his varied activities of the next five
years:
"After trying in vain," he writes, "to get work to do on any newspaper
in North Carolina, I advertised for a job in journalism--any sort of a
job. By a queer accident--a fortunate one for me--the owner of the St.
Joseph, Missouri, _Gazette_, answered the advertisement. Why he did it,
I never found out. He was in the same sort of desperate need of a
newspaper man as I was in desperate need of a job. I knew nothing about
him: he knew nothing about me. I knew nothing about newspaper work. I
had done nothing since I left the University but teach English in the
Louisville, Kentucky, High School for boys one winter and lecture at the
summer school at Chapel Hill one summer. I made up my mind to go into
journalism. But journalism didn't seem in any hurry to make up its mind
to admit me. Not only did all the papers in North Carolina decline my
requests for work, but such of them in Baltimore and Louisville as I
tried said 'No.' So I borrowed $50 and set out to St. Joe, Missouri,
where I didn't know a human being. I became a reporter. At first I
reported the price of cattle--went to the stockyards, etc. My salary
came near to paying my board and lodging, but it didn't quite do it. But
I had a good time in St. Joe for somewhat more than a year. There were
interesting people there. I came to know something about Western life.
Kansas was across the river. I often went there. I came to know Kansas
City, St. Louis--a good deal of the West. After a while I was made
editor of the paper. What a rousing political campaign or two we had!
Then--I had done that kind of a job as long as I cared to. Every
swashbuckling campaign is like every other one. Why do two? Besides, I
knew my trade. I had done everything on a daily paper from stockyard
reports to political editorials and heavy literary articles. In the
meantime I had written several magazine articles and done other such
jobs. I got leave of absence for a month or two. I wrote to several of
the principal papers in Chicago, New York, and Boston and told them that
I was going down South to make political and social studies and that I
was going to send them my letters. I hoped they'd publish them.
"That's all I could say. I could make no engagement; they didn't know
me. I didn't even ask for an engagement. I told them simply this: that
I'd write letters and send them; and I prayed heaven that they'd print
them and pay for them. Then off I went with my little money in my
pocket--about enough to get to New Orleans. I travelled and I wrote. I
went all over the South. I sent letters and letters and letters. All the
papers published all that I sent them and I was rolling in wealth! I had
money in my pocket for the first time in my life. Then I went back to
St. Joe and resigned; for the (old) New York _World_ had asked me to go
to the Atlanta Exposition as a correspondent. I went. I wrote and kept
writing. How kind Henry Grady was to me! But at last the Exposition
ended. I was out of a job. I applied to the _Constitution_. No, they
wouldn't have me. I never got a job in my life that I asked for! But all
my life better jobs have been given me than I dared ask for. Well--I was
at the end of my rope in Atlanta and I was trying to make a living in
any honest way I could when one day a telegram came from the New York
_World_ (it was the old _World_, which was one of the best of the
dailies in its literary quality) asking me to come to New York. I had
never seen a man on the paper--had never been in New York except for a
day when I landed there on a return voyage from a European trip that I
took during one vacation when I was in the University. Then I went to
New York straight and quickly. I had an interesting experience on the
old _World_, writing literary matter chiefly, an editorial now and then,
and I was frequently sent as a correspondent on interesting errands. I
travelled all over the country with the Tariff Commission. I spent one
winter in Washington as a sort of editorial correspondent while the
tariff bill was going through Congress. Then, one day, the _World_ was
sold to Mr. Pulitzer and all the staff resigned. The character of the
paper changed."
What better training could a journalist ask for than this? Page was only
twenty-eight when these five years came to an end; but his life had been
a comprehensive education in human contact, in the course of which he
had picked up many things that were not included in the routine of Johns
Hopkins University. From Athens to St. Joe, from the comedies of
Aristophanes to the stockyards and political conventions of Kansas
City--the transition may possibly have been an abrupt one, but it is not
likely that Page so regarded it. For books and the personal relation
both appealed to him, in almost equal proportions, as essentials to the
fully rounded man. Merely from the standpoint of geography, Page's
achievement had been an important one; how many Americans, at the age of
twenty-eight, have such an extensive mileage to their credit? Page had
spent his childhood--and his childhood only--in North Carolina; he had
passed his youth in Virginia and Maryland; before he was twenty-three he
had lived several months in Germany, and, on his return voyage, he had
sailed by the white cliffs of England, and, from the deck of his
steamer, had caught glimpses of that Isle of Wight which then held his
youthful favourite Tennyson. He had added to these experiences a winter
in Kentucky and a sojourn of nearly two years in Missouri. His Southern
trip, to which Page refers in the above, had taken him through
Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana; he had visited
the West again in 1882, spending a considerable time in all the large
cities, Chicago, Omaha, Denver, Leadville, Salt Lake, and from the
latter point he had travelled extensively through Mormondom. The several
months spent in Atlanta had given the young correspondent a glimpse into
the new South, for this energetic city embodied a Southern spirit that
was several decades removed from the Civil War. After this came nearly
two years in New York and Washington, where Page gained his first
insight into Federal politics; in particular, as a correspondent
attached to the Tariff Commission--an assignment that again started him
on his travels to industrial centres--he came into contact, for the
first time, with the mechanism of framing the great American tariff. And
during this period Page was not only forming a first-hand acquaintance
with the passing scene, but also with important actors in it. The mere
fact that, on the St. Joseph _Gazette_, he succeeded Eugene Field--"a
good fellow named Page is going to take my desk," said the careless
poet, "I hope he will succeed to my debts too"--always remained a
pleasant memory. He entered zealously into the life of this active
community; his love of talk and disputation, his interest in politics,
his hearty laugh, his vigorous handclasp, his animation of body and of
spirit, and his sunny outlook on men and events--these are the traits
that his old friends in this town, some of whom still survive,
associate with the juvenile editor. In his Southern trip Page
called--self-invited--upon Jefferson Davis and was cordially
received. At Atlanta, as he records above, he made friends with that
chivalric champion of a resurrected South, Henry Grady; here also he
obtained fugitive glimpses of a struggling and briefless lawyer, who,
like Page, was interested more in books and writing than in the humdrum
of professional life, and who was then engaged in putting together a
brochure on _Congressional Government_ which immediately gave him a
national standing. The name of this sympathetic acquaintance was Woodrow
Wilson.
[Illustration: Walter H. Page in 1876, when he was a Fellow of Johns
Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md.]
[Illustration: Basil L. Gildersleeve, Professor of Greek, Johns Hopkins
University, 1876-1915]
Another important event had taken place, for, at St. Louis, on November
15, 1880, Page had married Miss Willia Alice Wilson. Miss Wilson was the
daughter of a Scotch physician, Dr. William Wilson, who had settled in
Michigan, near Detroit, in 1832. When she was a small child she went
with her sister's family--her father had died seven years before--to
North Carolina, near Cary; and she and Page had been childhood friends
and schoolmates. At the time of the wedding, Page was editor of the St.
Joseph _Gazette_; the fact that he had attained this position, five
months after starting at the bottom, sufficiently discloses his aptitude
for journalistic work.
Page had now outgrown any Southern particularism with which he may have
started life. He no longer found his country exclusively in the area
south of the Potomac; he had made his own the West, the North--New York,
Chicago, Denver, as well as Atlanta and Raleigh. It is worth while
insisting on this fact, for the cultivation of a wide-sweeping
Americanism and a profound faith in democracy became the qualities that
will loom most largely in his career from this time forward. It is
necessary only to read the newspaper letters which he wrote on his
Southern trip in 1881 to understand how early his mind seized this new
point of view. Many things which now fell under his observant eye in the
Southern States greatly irritated him and with his characteristic
impulsiveness he pictured these traits in pungent phrase. The atmosphere
of shiftlessness that too generally prevailed in some localities; the
gangs of tobacco-chewing loafers assembled around railway stations; the
listless Negroes that seemed to overhang the whole country like a black
cloud; the plantation mansions in a sad state of disrepair; the old
unoccupied slave huts overgrown with weeds; the unpainted and
broken-down fences; the rich soil that was crudely and wastefully
cultivated with a single crop--the youthful social philosopher found
himself comparing these vestigia of a half-moribund civilization with
the vibrant cities of the North, the beautiful white and green villages
of New England, and the fertile prairie farms of the West. "Even the
dogs," he said, "look old-fashioned." Oh, for a change in his beloved
South--a change of almost any kind! "Even a heresy, if it be bright and
fresh, would be a relief. You feel as if you wished to see some kind of
an effort put forth, a discussion, a fight, a runaway, anything to make
the blood go faster." Wherever Page saw signs of a new spirit--and he
saw many--he recorded them with an eagerness which showed his loyalty to
the section of his birth. The splitting up of great plantations into
small farms he put down as one of the indications of a new day. A
growing tendency to educate, not only the white child, but the Negro,
inspired a similar tribute. But he rejoiced most over the decreasing
bitterness of the masses over the memories of the Civil War, and
discovered, with satisfaction, that any remaining ill-feeling was a
heritage left not by the Union soldier, but by the carpetbagger.
And one scene is worth preserving, for it illustrates not only the zeal
of Page himself for the common country, but the changing attitude of the
Southern people. It was enacted at Martin, Tennessee, on the evening of
July 2, 1881. Page was spending a few hours in the village grocery,
discussing things in general with the local yeomanry, when the telegraph
operator came from the post office with rather more than his usual
expedition and excitement. He was frantically waving a yellow slip which
bore the news that President Garfield had been shot. Garfield had been
an energetic and a successful general in the war and his subsequent
course in Congress, where he had joined the radical Republicans, had not
caused the South to look upon him as a friend. But these farmers
responded to this shock, not like sectionalists, but like Americans.
"Every man of them," Page records, "expressed almost a personal sorrow.
Little was said of politics or of parties. Mr. Garfield was President of
the United States--that was enough. A dozen voices spoke the great
gratification that the assassin was not a Southern man. It was an
affecting scene to see weather-beaten old countrymen so profoundly
agitated--men who yesterday I should have supposed hardly knew and
certainly did not seem to care who was President. The great centres of
population, of politicians, and of thought may be profoundly agitated
to-night, but no more patriotic sorrow and humiliation is felt anywhere
by any men than by these old backwoods ex-Confederates."
Page himself was so stirred by the news that he ascended a cracker
barrel, and made a speech to the assembled countrymen, preaching to
responsive ears the theme of North and South, now reunited in a common
sorrow. Thus, by the time he was twenty-six, Page, at any rate in
respect to his Americanism, was a full-grown man.
II
A few years afterward Page had an opportunity of discussing this, his
favourite topic, with the American whom he most admired. Perhaps the
finest thing in the career of Grover Cleveland was the influence which
he exerted upon young men. After the sordid political transactions of
the reconstruction period and after the orgy of partisanship which had
followed the Civil War, this new figure, acceding to the Presidency in
1885, came as an inspiration to millions of zealous and intelligent
young college-bred Americans. One of the first to feel the new spell was
Walter Page; Mr. Cleveland was perhaps the most important influence in
forming his public ideals. Of everything that Cleveland
represented--civil service reform; the cleansing of politics, state and
national; the reduction in the tariff; a foreign policy which, without
degenerating into truculence, manfully upheld the rights of American
citizens; a determination to curb the growing pension evil; the doctrine
that the Government was something to be served and not something to be
plundered--Page became an active and brilliant journalistic advocate. It
was therefore a great day in his life when, on a trip to Washington in
the autumn of 1885, he had an hour's private conversation with President
Cleveland, and it was entirely characteristic of Page that he should
make the conversation take the turn of a discussion of the so-called
Southern question.
"In the White House at Washington," Page wrote about this visit, "is an
honest, plain, strong man, a man of wonderfully broad information and of
most uncommon industry. He has always been a Democrat. He is a
distinguished lawyer and a scholar on all public questions. He is as
frank and patriotic and sincere as any man that ever won the high place
he holds. Within less than a year he has done so well and so wisely that
he has disappointed his enemies and won their admiration. He is as
unselfish as he is great. He is one of the most industrious men in the
world. He rises early and works late and does not waste his time--all
because his time is now not his own but the Republic's, whose most
honoured servant he is. I count it among the most inspiring experiences
in my life that I had the privilege, at the suggestion of one of his
personal friends, of talking with him one morning about the complete
reuniting of the two great sections of our Republic by his election. I
told him, and I know I told him the truth, when I said that every young
man in the Southern States who, without an opportunity to share either
the glory or the defeat of the late Confederacy, had in spite of himself
suffered the disadvantages of the poverty and oppression that followed
war, took new hope for the full and speedy realization of a complete
union, of unparalleled prosperity and of broad thinking and noble living
from his elevation to the Presidency. I told him that the men of North
Carolina were not only patriotic but ambitious as well; and that they
were Democrats and proud citizens of the State and the Republic not
because they wanted offices or favours, but because they loved freedom
and wished the land that had been impoverished by war to regain more
than it had lost. 'I have not called, Mr. President, to ask for an
office for myself or for anybody else,' I remarked; 'but to have the
pleasure of expressing my gratification, as a citizen of North Carolina,
at the complete change in political methods and morals that I believe
will date from your Administration.' He answered that he was glad to
see all men who came in such a spirit and did not come to
beg--especially young men of the South of to-day; and he talked and
encouraged me to talk freely as if he had been as small a man as I am,
or I as great a man as he is.
"From that day to this it has been my business to watch every public act
that he does, to read every public word he speaks, and it has been a
pleasure and a benefit to me (like the benefit that a man gets from
reading a great history--for he is making a great history) to study the
progress of his Administration; and at every step he seems to me to
warrant the trust that the great Democratic party put in him."
The period to which Page refers in this letter represented the time when
he was making a serious and harassing attempt to establish himself in
his chosen profession in his native state. He went south for a short
visit after resigning his place on the New York _World_, and several
admirers in Raleigh persuaded him to found a new paper, which should
devote itself to preaching the Cleveland ideals, and, above all, to
exerting an influence on the development of a new Southern spirit. No
task could have been more grateful to Page and there was no place in
which he would have better liked to undertake it than in the old state
which he loved so well. The result was the _State Chronicle_ of Raleigh,
practically a new paper, which for a year and a half proved to be the
most unconventional and refreshing influence that North Carolina had
known in many a year. Necessarily Page found himself in conflict with
his environment. He had little interest in the things that then chiefly
interested the state, and North Carolina apparently had little interest
in the things that chiefly occupied the mind of the youthful journalist.
Page was interested in Cleveland, in the reform of the civil service;
the Democrats of North Carolina little appreciated their great national
leader and were especially hostile to his belief that service to a party
did not in itself establish a qualification for public office. Page was
interested in uplifting the common people, in helping every farmer to
own his own acres, and in teaching the most modern and scientific way of
cultivating them; he was interested in giving every boy and girl at
least an elementary education, and in giving a university training to
such as had the aptitude and the ambition to obtain it; he believed in
industrial training--and in these things the North Carolina of those
days had little concern. Page even went so far as to take an open stand
for the pitiably neglected black man: he insisted that he should be
taught to read and write, and instructed in agriculture and the manual
trades. A man who advocated such revolutionary things in those days was
accused--and Page was so accused--of attempting to promote the "social
equality" of the two races. Page also declaimed in favour of developing
the state industrially; he called attention to the absurdity of sending
Southern cotton to New England spinning mills, and he pointed out the
boundless but unworked natural resources of the state, in minerals,
forests, waterpower, and lands.
North Carolina, he informed his astonished compatriots, had once been a
great manufacturing colony; why could the state not become one again?
But the matter in which the buoyant editor and his constituents found
themselves most at variance was the spirit that controlled North
Carolina life. It was a spirit that found comfort for its present
poverty and lack of progress in a backward look at the greatness of the
state in the past and the achievements of its sons in the Civil War.
Though Page believed that the Confederacy had been a ghastly error, and
though he abhorred the institution of slavery and attributed to it all
the woes, economic and social, from which his section suffered, he
rendered that homage to the soldiers of the South which is the due of
brave, self-sacrificing and conscientious men; yet he taught that
progress lay in regarding the four dreadful years of the Civil War as
the closed chapter of an unhappy and mistaken history and in hastening
the day when the South should resume its place as a living part of the
great American democracy. All manifestations of a contrary spirit he
ridiculed in language which was extremely readable but which at times
outraged the good conservative people whom he was attempting to convert.
He did not even spare the one figure which was almost a part of the
Southerner's religion, the Confederate general, especially that
particular type who used his war record as a stepping stone to public
office, and whose oratory, colourful and turgid in its celebrations of
the past, Page regarded as somewhat unrelated, in style and matter, to
the realities of the present. The image-breaking editor even asserted
that the Daughters of the Confederacy were not entirely a helpful
influence in Southern regeneration; for they, too, were harping always
upon the old times and keeping alive sectional antagonisms and hatreds.
This he regarded as an unworthy occupation for high-minded Southern
women, and he said so, sometimes in language that made him very
unpopular in certain circles.
Altogether it was a piquant period in Page's life. He found that he had
suddenly become a "traitor" to his country and that his experiences in
the North had completely "Yankeeized" him. Even in more mature days,
Page's pen had its javelin-like quality; and in 1884, possessed as he
was of all the fury of youth, he never hesitated to return every blow
that was rained upon his head. As a matter of fact he had a highly
enjoyable time. The _State Chronicle_ during his editorship is one of
the most cherished recollections of older North Carolinians to-day. Even
those who hurled the liveliest epithets in his direction have long since
accepted the ideas for which Page was then contending; "the only trouble
with him," they now ruefully admit, "was that he was forty years ahead
of his time." They recall with satisfaction the satiric accounts which
Page used to publish of Democratic Conventions--solemn, long-winded,
frock-coated, white-neck-tied affairs that displayed little concern for
the reform of the tariff or of the civil service, but an energetic
interest in pensioning Confederate veterans and erecting monuments to
the Southern heroes of the Civil War. One editorial is joyfully
recalled, in which Page referred to a public officer who was
distinguished for his dignity and his family tree, but not noted for any
animated administration of his duties, as "Thothmes II." When this
bewildered functionary searched the Encyclopædia and learned that
"Thothmes II" was an Egyptian king of the XVIIIth dynasty, whose
dessicated mummy had recently been disinterred from the hot sands of the
desert, he naturally stopped his subscription to the paper. The metaphor
apparently tickled Page, for he used it in a series of articles which
have become immortal in the political annals of North Carolina. These
have always been known as the "Mummy letters." They furnished a vivid
but rather aggravating explanation for the existing backwardness and
chauvinism of the commonwealth. All the trouble, it seems, was caused by
the "mummies." "It is an awfully discouraging business," Page wrote, "to
undertake to prove to a mummy that it is a mummy. You go up to it and
say, 'Old fellow, the Egyptian dynasties crumbled several thousand years
ago: you are a fish out of water. You have by accident or the
Providence of God got a long way out of your time. This is America.' The
old thing grins that grin which death set on its solemn features when
the world was young; and your task is so pitiful that even the humour of
it is gone. Give it up."
Everything great in North Carolina, Page declared, belonged to a
vanished generation. "Our great lawyers, great judges, great editors,
are all of the past. . . . In the general intelligence of the people, in
intellectual force and in cultivation, we are doing nothing. We are not
doing or getting more liberal ideas, a broader view of this world. . . .
The presumptuous powers of ignorance, heredity, decayed respectability
and stagnation that control public action and public expression are
absolutely leading us back intellectually."
But Page did more than berate the mummified aristocracy which, he
declared, was driving the best talent and initiative from the state; he
was not the only man in Raleigh who expressed these unpopular views; at
that time, indeed, he was the centre and inspiration of a group of young
progressive spirits who held frequent meetings to devise ways of
starting the state on the road to a new existence. Page then, as always,
exercised a great fascination over young men. The apparently merciless
character of his ridicule might at first convey the idea of intolerance;
the fact remains, however, that he was the most tolerant of men; he was
almost deferential to the opinions of others, even the shallow and the
inexperienced; and nothing delighted him more than an animated
discussion. His liveliness of spirits, his mental and physical vitality,
the constant sparkle of his talk, the sharp edge of his humour,
naturally drew the younger men to his side. The result was the
organization of the Wautauga Club, a gathering which held monthly
meetings for the discussion of ways and means of improving social and
educational conditions in North Carolina. The very name gives the key to
its mental outlook. The Wautauga colony was one of the last founded in
North Carolina--in the extreme west, on a plateau of the Great Smoky
Mountains; it was always famous for the energy and independence of its
people. The word "Wautauga" therefore suggested the breaker of
tradition; and it provided a stimulating name for Page's group of young
spiritual and economic pathfinders. The Wautauga Club had a brief
existence of a little more than two years, the period practically
covering Page's residence in the state; but its influence is an
important fact at the present time. It gave the state ideas that
afterward caused something like a revolution in its economic and
educational status. The noblest monument to its labours is the State
College in Raleigh, an institution which now has more than a thousand
students, for the most part studying the mechanic arts and scientific
agriculture. To this one college most North Carolinians to-day attribute
the fact that their state in appreciable measure is realizing its great
economic and industrial opportunities. From it in the last thirty years
thousands of young men have gone: in all sections of the commonwealth
they have caused the almost barren acres to yield fertile and
diversified crops; they have planted everywhere new industries; they
have unfolded unsuspected resources and everywhere created wealth and
spread enlightenment. This institution is a direct outcome of Page's
brief sojourn in his native state nearly forty years ago. The idea
originated in his brain; the files of the _State Chronicle_ tell the
story of his struggle in its behalf; the activities of the Wautauga Club
were largely concentrated upon securing its establishment.
The State College was a great victory for Page, but final success did
not come until three years after he had left the state. For a year and a
half of hard newspaper work convinced Page that North Carolina really
had no permanent place for him. The _Chronicle_ was editorially a
success: Page's articles were widely quoted, not only in his own state
but in New England and other parts of the Union. He succeeded in
stirring up North Carolina and the South generally, but popular support
for the _Chronicle_ was not forthcoming in sufficient amount to make the
paper a commercial possibility. Reluctantly and sadly Page had to forego
his hope of playing an active part in rescuing his state from the
disasters of the Civil War. Late in the summer of 1885, he again left
for the North, which now became his permanent home.
III
And with this second sojourn in New York Page's opportunity came. The
first two years he spent in newspaper work, for the most part with the
_Evening Post_, but, one day in November, 1887, a man whom he had never
seen came into his office and unfolded a new opportunity. Two years
before a rather miscellaneous group had launched an ambitious literary
undertaking. This was a monthly periodical, which, it was hoped, would
do for the United States what such publications as the _Fortnightly_ and
the _Contemporary_ were doing for England. The magazine was to have the
highest literary quality and to be sufficiently dignified to attract the
finest minds in America as contributors; its purpose was to exercise a
profound influence in politics, literature, science, and art. The
projectors had selected for this publication a title that was almost
perfection--the _Forum_--but which, after nearly two years'
experimentation, represented about the limit of their achievement. The
_Forum_ had hardly made an impression on public thought and had
attracted very few readers, although it had lost large sums of money for
its progenitors. These public-spirited gentlemen now turned to Page as
the man who might rescue them from their dilemma and achieve their
purpose. He accepted the engagement, first as manager and presently as
editor, and remained the guiding spirit of the _Forum_ for eight years,
until the summer of 1895.
That the success of a publication is the success of its editors, and not
of its business managers and its "backers," is a truth that ought to be
generally apparent; never has this fact been so eloquently illustrated
as in the case of the _Forum_ under Page. Before his accession it had
had not the slightest importance; for the period of his editorship it is
doubtful if any review published in English exercised so great an
influence, and certainly none ever obtained so large a circulation. From
almost nothing the _Forum_, in two or three years, attracted 30,000
subscribers--something without precedent for a publication of this
character. It had accomplished this great result simply because of the
vitality and interest of its contents. The period covered was an
important one, in the United States and Europe; it was the time of
Cleveland's second administration in this country, and of Gladstone's
fourth administration in England; it was a time of great controversy and
of a growing interest in science, education, social reform and a better
political order. All these great matters were reflected in the pages of
the _Forum_, whose list of contributors contained the most distinguished
names in all countries. Its purpose, as Page explained it, was "to
provoke discussion about subjects of contemporary interest, in which the
magazine is not a partisan, but merely the instrument." In the highest
sense, that is, its purpose was journalistic; practically everything
that it printed was related to the thought and the action of the time.
So insistent was Page on this programme that his pages were not "closed"
until a week before the day of issue. Though the _Forum_ dealt
constantly in controversial subjects it never did so in a narrow-minded
spirit; it was always ready to hear both sides of a question and the
magazine "debate," in which opposing writers handled vigorously the same
theme, was a constant feature.
Page, indeed, represented a new type of editor. Up to that time this
functionary had been a rather solemn, inaccessible high priest; he sat
secluded in his sanctuary, and weeded out from the mass of manuscripts
dumped upon his desk the particular selections which seemed to be most
suited to his purpose. To solicit contributions would have seemed an
entirely undignified proceeding; in all cases contributors must come to
him. According to Page, however, "an editor must know men and be out
among men." His system of "making up" the magazine at first somewhat
astounded his associates. A month or two in advance of publication day
he would draw up his table of contents. This, in its preliminary stage,
amounted to nothing except a list of the main subjects which he aspired
to handle in that number. It was a hope, not a performance. The subjects
were commonly suggested by the happenings of the time--an especially
outrageous lynching, the trial of a clergyman for heresy, a new attack
upon the Monroe Doctrine, the discovery of a new substance such as
radium, the publication of an epoch-making book. Page would then fix
upon the inevitable men who could write most readably and most
authoritatively upon these topics, and "go after" them. Sometimes he
would write one of his matchless editorial letters; at other times he
would make a personal visit; if necessary, he would use any available
friends in a wire-pulling campaign. At all odds he must "get" his man;
once he had fixed upon a certain contributor nothing could divert him
from the chase. Nor did the negotiations cease after he had "landed" his
quarry. He had his way of discussing the subject with his proposed
writer, and he discussed it from every possible point of view. He would
take him to lunch or to dinner; in his quiet way he would draw him out,
find whether he really knew much about the subject, learn the attitude
that he was likely to take, and delicately slip in suggestions of his
own. Not infrequently this preliminary interview would disclose that the
much sought writer, despite appearances, was not the one who was
destined for that particular job; in this case Page would find some way
of shunting him in favour of a more promising candidate. But Page was no
mere chaser of names; there was nothing of the literary tuft-hunter
about his editorial methods. He liked to see such men as Theodore
Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, William Graham Sumner, Charles W. Eliot,
Frederic Harrison, Paul Bourget, and the like upon his title page--and
here these and many other similarly distinguished authors appeared--but
the greatest name could not attain a place there if the letter press
that followed were unworthy. Indeed Page's habit of throwing out the
contributions of the great, after paying a stiff price for them, caused
much perturbation in his counting room. One day he called in one of his
associates.
"Do you see that waste basket?" he asked, pointing to a large receptacle
filled to overflowing with manuscripts. "All our Cleveland articles are
there!"
He had gone to great trouble and expense to obtain a series of six
articles from the most prominent publicists and political leaders of
the country on the first year of Mr. Cleveland's second administration.
It was to be the "feature" of the number then in preparation.
"There isn't one of them," he declared, "who has got the point. I have
thrown them all away and I am going to try to write something myself."
And he spent a couple of days turning out an article which aroused great
public interest. When Page commissioned an article, he meant simply that
he would pay full price for it; whether he would publish it depended
entirely upon the quality of the material itself. But Page was just as
severe upon his own writings as upon those of other men. He wrote
occasionally--always under a nom-de-plume; but he had great difficulty
in satisfying his own editorial standards. After finishing an article he
would commonly send for one of his friends and read the result.
"That is superb!" this admiring associate would sometimes say.
In response Page would take the manuscript and, holding it aloft in two
hands, tear it into several bits, and throw the scraps into the waste
basket.
"Oh, I can do better than that," he would laugh and in another minute he
was busy rewriting the article, from beginning to end.
Page retired from the editorship of the _Forum_ in 1895. The severance
of relations was half a comedy, half a tragedy. The proprietors had only
the remotest relation to literature; they had lost much money in the
enterprise before Page became editor and only the fortunate accident of
securing his services had changed their losing venture into a financial
success. In a moment of despair, before the happier period had arrived,
they offered to sell the property to Page and his friends. Page quickly
assembled a new group to purchase control, when, much to the amazement
of the old owners, the _Forum_ began to make money. Instead of having a
burden on their hands, the proprietors suddenly discovered that they had
a gold mine. They therefore refused to deliver their holdings and an
inevitable struggle ensued for control. Page could edit a magazine and
turn a shipwrecked enterprise into a profitable one; but, in a tussle of
this kind, he was no match for the shrewd business men who owned the
property. When the time came for counting noses Page and his friends
found themselves in a minority. Of course his resignation as editor
necessarily followed this little unpleasantness. And just as inevitably
the _Forum_ again began to lose money, and soon sank into an obscurity
from which it has never emerged.
The _Forum_ had established Page's reputation as an editor, and the
competition for his services was lively. The distinguished Boston
publishing house of Houghton, Mifflin & Company immediately invited him
to become a part of their organization. When Horace E. Scudder, in 1898,
resigned the editorship of the _Atlantic Monthly_, Page succeeded him.
Thus Page became the successor of James Russell Lowell, James T. Fields,
William D. Howells, and Thomas Bailey Aldrich as the head of this famous
periodical. This meant that he had reached the top of his profession. He
was now forty-three years old.
No American publication had ever had so brilliant a history. Founded in
1857, in the most flourishing period of the New England writers, its
pages had first published many of the best essays of Emerson, the second
series of the Biglow papers as well as many other of Lowell's writings,
poems of Longfellow and Whittier, such great successes as Holmes's
"Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," Mrs. Howe's "Battle Hymn of the
Republic," and the early novels of Henry James. If America had a
literature, the _Atlantic_ was certainly its most successful periodical
exponent. Yet, in a sense, the _Atlantic_, by the time Page succeeded to
the editorship, had become the victim of its dazzling past. Its recent
editors had lived too exclusively in their back numbers. They had
conducted the magazine too much for the restricted audience of Boston
and New England. There was a time, indeed, when the business office
arranged the subscribers in two classes--"Boston" and "foreign";
"Boston" representing their local adherents, and "foreign" the loyal
readers who lived in the more benighted parts of the United States. One
of its editors had been heard to boast that he never solicited a
contribution; it was not his business to be a literary drummer! Let the
truth be fairly spoken: when Page made his first appearance in the
_Atlantic_ office, the magazine was unquestionably on the decline. Its
literary quality was still high; the momentum that its great
contributors had given it was still keeping the publication alive;
entrance into its columns still represented the ultimate ambition of the
aspiring American writer; but it needed a new spirit to insure its
future. What it required was the kind of editing that had suddenly made
the _Forum_ one of the greatest of English-written reviews. This is the
reason why the canny Yankee proprietors had reached over to New York and
grasped Page as quickly as the capitalists of the _Forum_ let him slip
between their fingers.
Page's sense of humour discovered a certain ironic aspect in his
position as the dictator of this famous New England magazine. The fact
that his manner was impatiently energetic and somewhat startling to the
placid atmosphere of Park Street was not the thing that really signified
its break with its past. But here was a Southerner firmly entrenched in
a headquarters that had long been sacred to the New England
abolitionists. One of the first sights that greeted Page, as he came
into the office, was the angular and spectacled countenance of William
Lloyd Garrison, gazing down from a steel engraving on the wall. One of
Garrison's sons was a colleague, and the anterooms were frequently
cluttered with dusky gentlemen patiently waiting for interviews with
this benefactor of their race. Page once was careless enough to inform
Mr. Garrison that "one of your niggers" was waiting outside for an
audience. "I very much regret, Mr. Page," came the answer, "that you
should insist on spelling 'Negro' with two 'g's'." Despite the mock
solemnity of this rebuke, perennial good-nature and raillery prevailed
between the son of Garrison and his disrespectful but ever sympathetic
Southern friend. Indeed, one of Page's earliest performances was to
introduce a spirit of laughter and genial coöperation into a rather
solemn and self-satisfied environment. Mr. Mifflin, the head of the
house, even formally thanked Page "for the hearty human way in which you
take hold of life." Mr. Ellery Sedgwick, the present editor of the
_Atlantic_, has described the somewhat disconcerting descent of Page
upon the editorial sanctuary of James Russell Lowell:
"Were a visitant from another sphere to ask me for the incarnation
of those qualities we love to call American, I should turn to a
familiar gallery of my memory and point to the living portrait that
hangs there of Walter Page. A sort of foursquareness, bluntness, it
seemed to some; an uneasy, often explosive energy; a disposition to
underrate fine drawn nicenesses of all sorts; ingrained Yankee
common sense, checking his vaulting enthusiasm; enormous
self-confidence, impatience of failure--all of these were in him;
and he was besides affectionate to a fault, devoted to his country,
his family, his craft--a strong, bluff, tender man.
"Those were the decorous days of the old tradition, and Page's
entrance into the 'atmosphere' of Park Street has taken on the
dignity of legend. There were all kinds of signs and portents, as
the older denizens will tell you. Strange breezes floated through
the office, electric emanations, and a pervasive scent of tobacco,
which--so the local historian says--had been unknown in the
vicinity since the days of Walter Raleigh, except for the literary
aroma of Aldrich's quarantined sanctum upstairs. Page's coming
marked the end of small ways. His first requirement was, in lieu of
a desk, a table that might have served a family of twelve for
Thanksgiving dinner. No one could imagine what that vast, polished
tableland could serve for until they watched the editor at work.
Then they saw. Order vanished and chaos reigned. Huge piles of
papers, letters, articles, reports, books, pamphlets, magazines,
congregated themselves as if by magic. To work in such confusion
seemed hopeless, but Page eluded the congestion by the simple
expedient of moving on. He would light a fresh cigar, give the
editorial chair a hitch, and begin his work in front of a fresh
expanse of table, with no clutter of the past to disturb the new
day's litter.
"The motive power of his work was enthusiasm. Never was more
generous welcome given to a newcomer than Page held out to the
successful manuscript of an unknown. I remember, though I heard the
news second hand at the time, what a day it was in the office when
the first manuscript from the future author of 'To Have and To
Hold,' came in from an untried Southern girl. He walked up and
down, reading paragraphs aloud and slapping the crisp manuscript
to enforce his commendation. To take a humbler instance, I recall
the words of over generous praise with which he greeted the first
paper I ever sent to an editor quite as clearly as I remember the
monstrous effort which had brought it into being. Sometimes he
would do a favoured manuscript the honour of taking it out to lunch
in his coat-pocket, and an associate vividly recalls eggs, coffee,
and pie in a near-by restaurant, while, in a voice that could be
heard by the remotest lunchers, Page read passages which many of
them were too startled to appreciate. He was not given to
overrating, but it was not in his nature to understate. 'I tell
you,' said he, grumbling over some unfortunate proof-sheets from
Manhattan, 'there isn't one man in New York who can write
English--not from the Battery to Harlem Heights.' And if the faults
were moral rather than literary, his disapproval grew in emphasis.
There is more than tradition in the tale of the Negro who,
presuming on Page's deep interest in his race, brought to his desk
a manuscript copied word for word from a published source. Page
recognized the deception, and seizing the rascal's collar with a
firm editorial grip, rejected the poem, and ejected the poet, with
an energy very invigorating to the ancient serenities of the
office.
"Page was always effervescent with ideas. Like an editor who would
have made a good fisherman, he used to say that you had to cast a
dozen times before you could get a strike. He was forever in those
days sending out ideas and suggestions and invitations to write.
The result was electric, and the magazine became with a suddenness
(of which only an editor can appreciate the wonder) a storehouse of
animating thoughts. He avoided the mistake common to our craft of
editing a magazine for the immediate satisfaction of his
colleagues. 'Don't write for the office,' he would say. 'Write for
outside,' and so his magazine became a living thing. His phrase
suggests one special gift that Page had, for which his profession
should do him especial honour. He was able, quite beyond the powers
of any man of my acquaintance, to put compendiously into words the
secrets of successful editing. It was capital training just to hear
him talk. 'Never save a feature,' he used to say. 'Always work for
the next number. Forget the others. Spend everything just on that.'
And to those who know, there is divination in the principle. Again
he understood instinctively that to write well a man must not only
have something to say, but must long to say it. A highly
intelligent representative of the coloured race came to him with a
philosophic essay. Page would have none of it. 'I know what you are
thinking of,' said Page. 'You are thinking of the barriers we set
up against you, and the handicap of your lot. If you will write
what it feels like to be a Negro, I will print that.' The result
was a paper which has seemed to me the most moving expression of
the hopeless hope of the race I know of.
"Page was generous in his coöperation. He never drew a rigid line
about his share in any enterprise, but gave and took help with each
and all. A lover of good English, with an honest passion for things
tersely said, Page esteemed good journalism far above any
second-rate manifestation of more pretentious forms; but many of us
will regret that he was not privileged to find some outlet for his
energies in which aspiration for real literature might have played
an ampler part. For the literature of the past Page had great
respect, but his interest was ever in the present and the future.
He was forever fulminating against bad writing, and hated the
ignorant and slipshod work of the hack almost as much as he
despised the sham of the man who affected letters, the dabbler and
the poetaster. His taste was for the roast beef of literature, not
for the side dishes and the trimmings, and his appreciation of the
substantial work of others was no surer than his instinct for his
own performance. He was an admirable writer of exposition,
argument, and narrative--solid and thoughtful, but never dull. . . .
I came into close relations with him and from him I learned more of
my profession than from any one I have ever known. Scores of other
men would say the same."
But the fact that a new hand had seized the _Atlantic_ was apparent in
other places than in the _Atlantic_ office itself. One of Page's
contributors of the _Forum_ days, Mr. Courtney DeKalb, happened to be in
St. Louis when the first number of the magazine under its new editor
made its appearance. Mr. DeKalb had been out of the country for some
time and knew nothing of the change. Happening accidentally to pick up
the _Atlantic_, the table of contents caught his eye. It bore the traces
of an unmistakable hand. Only one man, he said to himself, could
assemble such a group as that, and above all, only Page could give such
an enticing turn of the titles. He therefore sat down and wrote his old
friend congratulating him on his accession to the _Atlantic Monthly_.
The change that now took place was indeed a conspicuous, almost a
startling one. The _Atlantic_ retained all its old literary flavour, for
to its traditions Page was as much devoted as the highest caste
Bostonian; it still gave up much of its space to a high type of fiction,
poetry, and reviews of contemporary literature, but every number
contained also an assortment of articles which celebrated the prevailing
activities of men and women in all worth-while fields of effort. There
were discussions of present-day politics, and these even became
personal dissections of presidential candidates; there were articles on
the racial characters of the American population: Theodore Roosevelt was
permitted to discuss the New York police; Woodrow Wilson to pass in
review the several elements that made the Nation; Booker T. Washington
to picture the awakening of the Negro; John Muir to enlighten Americans
upon a national beauty and wealth of which they had been woefully
ignorant, their forests; William Allen White to describe certain aspects
of his favourite Kansas; E.L. Godkin to review the dangers and the hopes
of American democracy; Jacob Rüs to tell about the Battle with the Slum;
and W.G. Frost to reveal for the first time the archaic civilization of
the Kentucky mountaineers. The latter article illustrated Page's genius
at rewriting titles. Mr. Frost's theme was that these Kentucky
mountaineers were really Elizabethan survivals; that their dialect,
their ballads, their habits were really a case of arrested development;
that by studying them present-day Americans could get a picture of their
distant forbears. Page gave vitality to the presentation by changing a
commonplace title to this one: "Our Contemporary Ancestors."
There were those who were offended by Page's willingness to seek
inspiration on the highways and byways and even in newspapers, for not
infrequently he would find hidden away in a corner an idea that would
result in valuable magazine matter. On one occasion at least this
practice had important literary consequences. One day he happened to
read that a Mrs. Robert Hanning had died in Toronto, the account
casually mentioning the fact that Mrs. Hanning was the youngest sister
of Thomas Carlyle. Page handed this clipping to a young assistant, and
told him to take the first train to Canada. The editor could easily
divine that a sister of Carlyle, expatriated for forty-six years on
this side of the Atlantic, must have received a large number of letters
from her brother, and it was safe to assume that they had been carefully
preserved. Such proved to be the fact; and a new volume of Carlyle
letters, of somewhat more genial character than the other collections,
was the outcome of this visit[4]. And another fruit of this journalistic
habit was "The Memoirs of a Revolutionist," by Prince Peter Kropotkin.
In 1897 the great Russian nihilist was lecturing in Boston. Page met
him, learned from his own lips his story, and persuaded him to put it in
permanent form. This willingness of Page to admit such a revolutionary
person into the pages of the _Atlantic_ caused some excitement in
conventional circles. In fact, it did take some courage, but Page never
hesitated; the man was of heroic mould, he had a great story to tell, he
wielded an engaging pen, and his purposes were high-minded. A great book
of memoirs was the result.
Mr. Sedgwick refers above to Page's editorial fervour when Miss Mary
Johnston's "Prisoners of Hope" first fell out of the blue sky into his
Boston office. Page's joy was not less keen because the young author was
a Virginia girl, and because she had discovered that the early period of
Virginia history was a field for romance. When, a few months afterward,
Page was casting about for an _Atlantic_ serial, Miss Johnston and this
Virginia field seemed to be an especially favourable prospect.
"Prisoners of Hope" had been published as a book and had made a good
success, but Miss Johnston's future still lay ahead of her. With Page to
think meant to act, and so, instead of writing a formal letter, he at
once jumped on a train for Birmingham, Alabama, where Miss Johnston was
then living. "I remember quite distinctly that first meeting," writes
Miss Johnston. "The day was rainy. Standing at my window I watched Mr.
Page--a characteristic figure, air and walk--approach the house. When a
few minutes later I met him he was simplicity and kindliness itself.
This was my first personal contact with publishers (my publishers) or
with editors of anything so great as the _Atlantic_. My heart beat! But
he was friendly and Southern. I told him what I had done upon a new
story. He was going on that night. Might he take the manuscript with him
and read it upon the train? It might--he couldn't say positively, of
course--but it might have serial possibilities. I was only too glad for
him to have the manuscript. I forget just how many chapters I had
completed. But it was not quite in order. Could I get it so in a few
hours? In that case he would send a messenger for it from the hotel.
Yes, I could. Very good! A little further talk and he left with a strong
handshake. Three or four hours later he had the manuscript and took it
with him from Birmingham that night."
Page's enterprising visit had put into his hands the half-finished
manuscript of a story, "To Have and to Hold," which, when printed in the
_Atlantic_, more than doubled its circulation, and which, when made into
a book, proved one of the biggest successes since "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
Page's most independent stroke in his _Atlantic_ days came with the
outbreak of the Spanish-American War. Boston was then the headquarters
of a national mood which has almost passed out of popular remembrance.
Its spokesmen called themselves anti-imperialists. The theory back of
their protest was that the American declaration of war on Spain was not
only the wanton attack of a great bully upon a feeble little country: it
was something that was bound to have deplorable consequences. The
United States was breaking with its past and engaging in European
quarrels; as a consequence of the war it would acquire territories and
embark on a career of "imperialism." Page was impatient at this kind of
twaddle. He declared that the Spanish War was a "necessary act of
surgery for the health of civilization." He did not believe that a
nation, simply because it was small, should be permitted to maintain
indefinitely a human slaughter house at the door of the United States.
The _Atlantic_ for June, 1898, gave the so-called anti-imperialists a
thrill of horror. On the cover appeared the defiantly flying American
flag; the first article was a vigorous and approving presentation of the
American case against Spain; though this was unsigned, its incisive
style at once betrayed the author. The _Atlantic_ had printed the
American flag on its cover during the Civil War; but certain New
Englanders thought that this latest struggle, in its motives and its
proportions, was hardly entitled to the distinction. Page declared,
however, that the Spanish War marked a new period in history; and he
endorsed the McKinley Administration, not only in the war itself, but in
its consequences, particularly the annexation of the Philippine Islands.
Page greatly enjoyed life in Boston and Cambridge. The _Atlantic_ was
rapidly growing in circulation and in influence, and the new friends
that its editor was making were especially to his taste. He now had a
family of four children, three boys and one girl--and their bringing up
and education, as he said at this time, constituted his real occupation.
So far as he could see, in the summer of 1899, he was permanently
established in life. But larger events in the publishing world now again
pulled him back to New York.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 4: "Letters of Thomas Carlyle to his Youngest Sister." Edited
by Charles Townsend Copeland. Houghton, Mifflin & Company, 1899.]