Vienna was not published by the _Evening Post_ till ten weeks after the
event. Wellington stormed Badajos on April 7, 1812, and the _Evening
Post_ announced the fact on June 11, or more than two months later;
while the battle of Salamanca that summer, where Wellington “beat forty
thousand in forty minutes,” was not known for sixty-six days, the news
coming in part through a traveler who arrived from Cadiz at Salem, and
was interviewed by a correspondent there. It was the middle of October
when the armies of Napoleon and the Allies took position for the battle
of Leipsic, and Coleman was not able to publish his three-column
summary from a London paper till just after New Year’s. When the
description of the battle of Toulouse came in, there occurred an office
tragedy:
Here ought to follow an account of a great battle between Lord
Wellington and Soult [explained Coleman after an abrupt break in
the news], and other selections amounting to about two columns, but
it being necessary to get it set up abroad, the boy in bringing
it home blundered down in the street, and threw the types into
irretrievable confusion. It will be given to-morrow.
After that wily and selfish old invalid Bourbon, Louis XVIII, given his
crown by the Allies, visited London in state, a spectator sent a vivid
account of his triumphal passage up Piccadilly to the _Evening Post_.
Louis had passed so near that this tourist could have touched him. “He
is very corpulent, with a round face, dark eyes, prominent features,
the character of countenance much like that of the portraits of the
other Louises; a pleasant face; his eyes were suffused with tears.”
Then came the Hundred Days; and the greatest European news of all was
thus introduced on Aug. 2, 1815:
IMPORTANT
We received from our correspondent at Boston, by this morning’s
mail, the following important news, which we hasten to lay before
our readers:
From Our Correspondent,
Office of the Boston _Daily Advertiser_,
July 31, 1815.
A gentleman has just arrived in town from a vessel which he
left in the harbor, bringing London dates from June 24. The
principal article is an official dispatch of Lord Wellington’s,
dated Waterloo, June 19, giving a detailed account of a general
engagement.
There followed Wellington’s succinct dispatch. Its modesty of tone
misled many New York supporters of Napoleon, who made heavy bets that
Wellington had really been drubbed, and who when fuller news came had
to pay them.
Even in the third decade of the century news of every kind was
unconscionably slow. The _Evening Post_ of June 20, 1825, came out late
because the presses had been held till the last minute in the vain hope
of giving particulars of the dedication of the Bunker Hill monument
on the 17th; the steamboat from New London having arrived without any
intelligence. Only on the next day was a narrative carried, and though
it filled four columns, it contained no extracts from Webster’s oration.
One year later one of the most impressive coincidences in our history
afforded a striking illustration of the long wait forced upon each
section of the United States for information from outside its
borders. The fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence
was celebrated with fervor in every hamlet and city, though in New
York a storm of wind and rain interfered with the ceremonies. Every
American thought of the two aged ex-Presidents, one the author of
the Declaration, the other the radical patriot who had done most to
forward it in Congress. At 1 o’clock in the afternoon Jefferson died at
Monticello. At 6 o’clock John Adams, after remarking that every report
of the celebratory cannon had added five minutes to his life, passed
away at Quincy. Which news would reach New York first? The _Evening
Post_ published the death of Adams on the seventh, and the demise of
Jefferson on the eighth. Then began to come evidence that the two
circles of intelligence were more and more overlapping each other, and,
on the tenth, Coleman commented:
The newspapers of the North and East are filled with remarks upon
the death of John Adams, while those from the South are equally
filled with the obsequies of Jefferson, neither section having yet
heard of the loss sustained by the other. How much is the surprise
at each extremity of the country destined to be increased by the
information which is now traveling from the South to the North,
and from the North to the South! Last evening, in all probability,
President Adams heard of the death of his father; at about the same
moment news of the decease of Jefferson must have reached Quincy.
To a large proportion of subscribers--the wholesalers, retailers,
auctioneers, shippers, and manufacturers--the most interesting news was
generally to be found in the column headed “Evening Post Marine List,”
and in the advertisements. The shipping news was at this time collected
with the utmost attention to accuracy and completeness, for it was as
much one of the journal’s grounds for claiming a superior position
as its financial news became after the Civil War. A special employee
obtained it from the custom house, counting rooms, and wharves, and
regularly gathered some dozens or even scores of such items as the
following:
CLEARED, Brig Caroline, Lee, Teneriffe, by N. L. and G. Griswold;
schrs. Miranda, Sayre, St. Augustine, by the captains, Linnet,
Paterson, Shelburne, by do.
ARRIVED, The schr. Red-Bird, Walker, in 12 days from Washington,
N. C., with 447 bbl. of naval stores, 700 bushels of corn, for Mr.
Gardiner, of Rhode Island. Spoke, five leagues from the capes of
Virginia, the schr. Farmer’s Daughter, 24 days from Port Morant for
Marblehead, the captain informed that he saw a large ship under
jury masts, standing in for Havanna; being about two leagues
distant; supposed to be English. At the same time, a brig to
leeward, with her main-top-masts gone and both pumps agoing; she
had black sides and supposed to be an eastern brig, & was making
for Havanna.
Sloop Harriet, Lynds, 60 days from Jamaica, with rum, to George
Pratt. Captain L. has experienced the most distressing weather, and
his crew would have starved had it not been for supplies received
from 3 vessels which he fell in with. On the 5th of Nov. he met
with the schr. Goliath, Pinkham (arrived at this port), then out 35
days; and though Captain P. was then short, and on allowance, he
humanely divided, as it were, his last mouthful with Captain Lynds.
Nov. 10, in lat. 33, fell in with the bark Calliope, 46 days from
Kingston for Norfolk--gave her some water, and received some bread
and beef. Nov. 14, in lat. 36, got some bread from the ship Lovina,
18 days from Savannah for Philadelphia.
Then, as now, advertisements were the principal support of newspapers,
though they yielded a revenue that seems pitiful by modern standards.
Until some years after Coleman died in 1828, merchants paid $40 a year
for the privilege of advertising, a subscription being thrown in. It
was left to their sense of fairness not to present advertisements of
undue length, and “display ads” were of course unknown. The monthly
rate was $3.50, four insertions could be had for a dollar, and one for
fifty cents. A study of the first ledger of the _Evening Post_, for
the years 1801–1804, shows that the largest receipts from a single
firm were $276.49, from Bronson and Chauncey. The publishers, T. and
J. Swords, paid in eighteen months $157.55--they were destined to be
good customers of the _Evening Post_ for decades. But nearly all the
accounts were for small amounts. James Roosevelt, the wealthy Pearl
Street merchant, paid $57.37 between the beginning of 1802 and Nov.
16, 1803; Minturn and Barker, representing two families long prominent
in business, paid $39.55 in the same period; and Robert Lenox paid
$91.50. This ledger is a virtual directory of all important business
and professional men of the city, in which we meet entries of payments
for subscriptions by Hamilton, Burr, Rufus King, Oliver Wolcott,
Brockholst Livingston, Morgan Lewis, and many other notables.
Ordinarily, from 1801 to 1825, of the twenty short columns all but four
or five were devoted to advertisements. Shipping, auctions, wholesale
stores (seldom retail), lotteries, legal notices, and the theater
furnished most of the patronage, but the range of advertising was
surprising. In 1802 we find such insertions as these:
ST. CROIX RUM.--50 puncheons, just arrived per the brig Harriet,
from St. Croix, now landing at Schermerhorn’s Wharf. For sale by
CURRIE & WHITNEY, 47 Front Street.
FOR SALE--A likely Negro Wench, 16 years old--sold for no fault.
For terms, enquire of WILLIAM LEAYCROFT, 109 Liberty Street.
TAKE NOTICE
LOTTERY TICKETS to be had at the Book and Stationery Store of
NAPHTALI JUDAH, No. 84 Maiden-Lane. Tickets in the Lottery No. 1,
for the encouragement of Literature--$25, the highest prize--for
sale in Halves, Quarters, and Eighth Parts. The Lottery will
positively commence drawing in this city on the first Tuesday in
February next. Owing to the great demand for Tickets, they will
rise from the present price of six dollars and a half, in a few
days.
Editor Coleman would have lifted his brows had he been told that within
a little more than a century St. Croix rum, lotteries to encourage
literature, and the sale of likely negro wenches would all be outlawed.
The circulation of the _Evening Post_ rose only slowly, and like all
the other New York newspapers of the time, until after the War of 1812
it found the struggle for existence a harsh one. At the beginning
of 1804 the whole group, except the youngest and weakest, Irving’s
_Morning Chronicle_, concerted to raise their yearly subscription
price from $8 to $10; this meaning, in the instance of Coleman’s
journal, the difference between $9,600 and $12,000 a year. The reason
alleged was the heavy increase in the cost of labor and materials.
Journeymen printers, recently paid $6 a week, were now asking $8; the
faithfullest clerk and most dogged collector in town could once have
been had for $300 a year, and now any such employee wanted $400; while
paper had risen until it cost the editor $7,000 to $8,000 a year. The
_Gazette_ and the _Mercantile Advertiser_ caused much ill-feeling when
they immediately broke faith and reverted to the $8 rate, but Coleman
stood by his guns. To help in holding his subscribers, he advanced
his printing hour from four p. m. to two. Year after year there was a
slight increase in the daily circulation, though it hardly kept pace
with the growth of population; in 1815 it stood at 1,580 copies daily,
and in 1820 at 1,843.
Arrears long cost New York editors the same sleepless nights which
they cost the owners of some ill-managed country journals to-day.
City residents paid regularly, for they could be reached through the
ten-pound court if they did not; but in 1805 Coleman despairingly
affirmed that “not one in a hundred” of the subscribers to the
semi-weekly were prompt. In some centers, as Boston, from $500 to
$1,000 was due the _Post_ and _Herald_, and in Kingston, Canada, more
than $60 was owed merely for postage. “The loss that arises from
neglected arrearages would amount to not less than 30 per cent.,”
lamented the editor. It was necessary to send a collector up through
New York and New England to Upper Canada, stopping for money all along
the mail routes.
When Michael Burnham took charge, on Nov. 16, 1806, business affairs
were greatly systematized; a fact of which we find evidence both in
the disappearance of complaints of arrears, and in the ledgers and a
curious old account book, 1801–1810. These accounts throw much light
on mechanical details. A frequent charge for “skins” presumably refers
to the buckskins which were cut and rolled into balls, soaked in ink,
and then used by the printers’ devils to pound the forms and thus ink
the type. Almost daily charges appear for candles and quill pens. The
journal seems to have paid many of the expenses of apprentices, for
there are numerous entries for “cloathing” and for board at $3 a week.
Coleman drew upon the till occasionally, as is shown by an item of
May 25, 1809: “Boots for Mr. Coleman, $10.” But all the improvements
that Burnham made in the business management did not save Coleman at
times before 1810 from half-resolving to let the _Evening Post_ die and
to return to the bar again; in the year named, when he was trying to
arrange his English debts, he confessed such a hesitation. When Duane
of the _Aurora_ charged that the Federalist newspapers in seaport towns
were bribed “by support in the form of _mercantile advertisements_”
to oppose all Jefferson’s measures, Coleman bitterly replied that
Federalist merchants actually neglected their press. Taking up a copy
of the chief Federalist organ in Philadelphia, and one of the chief
neutral journal there, he found six ship advertisements in the former
and forty in the latter; while “on a particular day not long since the
New York _Gazette_ had eighty-five new advertisements, the _Mercantile
Advertiser_ sixty-one, and the _Evening Post_ nine.”
But after the Embargo and the war the skies slowly brightened, not
so much because of the growing circulation as because of the more
remunerative advertisements. It was not the $40-a-year advertising
that paid, but the single “ads” inserted at the new rate of 75 cents
a “square.” There were now many more of these. Because of the rapid
growth of the city a brisk trade had sprung up in Brooklyn and
Manhattan real estate, which by 1820 often engrossed from one-eighth
to one-fourth the whole paper. Steamboats had come, and from Capt.
Vanderbilt’s little _Nautilus_, which left Whitehall daily for Staten
Island at 10, 3, and 6:30, charging twenty-five cents a trip, to the
big _Chancellor Livingston_ running to Albany, and the boat _Franklin_,
which offered excursions to Sandy Hook, with a green turtle dinner,
for $2, all were advertising. Competing stage-coach lines were eager
to impress the public with their speedy schedules; advertising that
you could leave the City Hotel at 2 p. m., packed six inside and
eight outside a gaudily painted vehicle, and be at Judd’s Tavern in
Philadelphia at 5 a. m. the next day.
Competition continued keen, for while weak newspapers died, new
journals were constantly being established. The most important of these
were Charles Holt’s _Columbian_, established in 1808 as a Clintonian
sheet; the _National Advocate_, founded in 1813 and edited for a time
by Henry Wheaton, later known as a diplomat, who supported Madison; and
the _American_, an evening journal first published in the spring of
1819, and edited by Charles King, later president of Columbia College.
But the _Evening Post_ kept well to the front, as is shown by a table
of comparative circulations in May, 1816:
_Mercantile Advertiser_, 2000
_Daily Gazette_, 1750
_Evening Post_, 1600
Gardiner’s _Courier_, 980
_Columbian_, 825
_National Advocate_, 875
_Commercial Advertiser_, 1200
The circulation of the _Mercantile Advertiser_, we are told by Thurlow
Weed, who was then working on the _Courier_, was considered enormous.
It seldom had more than one and a half or two columns of news, while
Lang’s _Gazette_ frequently carried only a half column; so that the
_Evening Post_ was clearly the leading newspaper. People in the early
twenties regarded it as a well established institution. Its editor
had become one of the lesser notables of the city, like Dr. Hosack
and Dr. Mitchill; and we are informed by a contemporary that he “was
pronounced by his advocates a field-marshal in literature, as well
as politics.” Poor as the newspapers of that time seem by modern
standards, the _Evening Post_ when compared with the London _Times_ or
the London _Morning Post_ (for which Lamb and Coleridge wrote) was not
discreditable to New York; it was not so well written, but it was as
large and as energetic in news-gathering and editorial utterance.
CHAPTER FOUR
LITERATURE AND DRAMA IN THE EARLY “EVENING POST”
The infancy of the _Evening Post_ coincided with the rise of the
Knickerbocker school of letters, with which its relations were always
intimate. Its first editor delighted in his old age to speak of his
friendship with Irving, Halleck, Drake, and Paulding; while the second
editor, Bryant, escaped inclusion with the Knickerbockers only by the
fact that his poetry is too individual and independent to fit into any
school at all.
A mellow atmosphere hangs over the literary annals of New York early in
the last century. We think of young Irving wandering past the stoops of
quaint gabled houses, where the last representatives of the old Dutch
burghers puffed their long clay pipes; or taking country walks within
view of the broad Tappan Zee and the summer-flushed Catskills, halting
whenever he could get a good wife to favor him with her version of the
legends of the countryside. We think of that brilliant rainbow which
Halleck stopped to admire one summer evening in front of a coffee-house
near Columbia College, exclaiming: “If I could have my wish, it should
be to lie in the lap of that rainbow and read Tom Campbell”; of
Paulding, Henry Brevoort, and others of the “nine worthies” holding
high revel in “Cockloft Hall” on the outskirts of Newark; and of Drake,
the handsomest young man in town, like Keats studying medicine and
poetry, and like Keats dying of consumption. We think of how the young
men of the city were less interested in the news of Jena and Trafalgar
than that Moore and Jeffrey had been arrested for fighting a duel,
that Mr. Campbell had improved the leisure given him by a government
pension by writing “Gertrude of Wyoming,” and that “The Lay of the Last
Minstrel” was the work of a Scotch border sheriff.
When the first _Evening Post_ was laid on six hundred doorsteps and
counters, New York was almost ready to assert her temporary primacy
in literature. Irving was studying law downtown in the office of
Brockholst Livingston; Paulding, four and a half years older, was
living with his sister, Mrs. William Irving; Cooper was at school with
an Englishman in Albany; Halleck was a child of eleven playing about
the Guilford Green. Bryant at Cummington had not yet begun his juvenile
scribblings, but would soon do so. Charles Brockden Brown had just
returned to the city from a summer excursion, and was watching the
sale of the second part of “Arthur Mervyn.” Coleman sometimes met him
at the homes of John Wells and Anthony Bleecker. The few Americans who
paid any attention to letters had till now kept their gaze chiefly upon
New England and Philadelphia. Dwight, the president of Yale, had just
finished revising Watts’s Psalms, Joel Barlow, after shining abroad as
a diplomat and making a fortune in speculation, was living in state
in Paris, and Trumbull, another of the Hartford Wits, had just become
a Connecticut judge. Nothing better than the unreadable “Columbiad”
of Barlow and Dwight’s “Travels” was now to be expected from this
trio. But in New York by 1805, though there was as yet little pure
literature, there was an intellectual and semi-literary atmosphere. In
addition to the young Knickerbockers, mention should be made of Tom
Paine, dividing his last days, in debt, dirt, and dissipation, between
New York and New Rochelle; and Philip Freneau, who frequently came over
from his New Jersey seat.
Washington Irving made his first appearance in the _Morning Chronicle_,
his brother’s journal, where at nineteen he published his “Jonathan
Oldstyle” papers. Nearly five years later he, his brother William,
and his brother-in-law, Paulding, collaborated upon the “Salmagundi
Papers,” issued in leaflet form “upon hot-pressed vellum paper, as
that is held in highest estimation for buckling up young ladies’
hair.” The twenty numbers, full of whimsy, mock seriousness, and light
satire, delighted Coleman not as literature but as journalism. He
saw that his long editorials attacking Jefferson’s measures for coast
defense were flimsy weapons compared with the humorous “Plans for
Defending Our Harbor,” which he copied in full, saying that it “hits
off admirably some of the late philosophical, economical plans which
our philosophical, economical administration seems to be intent on our
adopting.” The _Evening Post_ termed the whole series “the pleasant
observations of one who is a legitimate descendant of Rabelais, and a
true member of the Butler, Swift, and Sterne family.” Irving perhaps
recalled this praise when the time came to announce his next work.
The clever expedient by which announcement and advertisement were
joined is familiar to all readers of the “Knickerbocker History of New
York.” Irving handed to Coleman for publication in the _Evening Post_
of Oct. 26, 1809, the following notice:
_Distressing_
Left his lodgings some time since, and has not since been heard of,
a small elderly gentleman, dressed in an old black coat and cocked
hat, by the name of _Knickerbocker_. As there are some reasons
for believing he is not entirely in his right mind, and as great
anxiety is entertained about him, any information concerning him,
left either at the Columbian Hotel, Mulberry Street, or at the
office of this paper, will be thankfully received.
P. S. Printers of newspapers would be aiding the cause of humanity
in giving an insertion to the above.
Such notices were then not infrequent. An authentic account has been
preserved of how, some years later, the _Evening Post_ saved the
life of a Vermonter named Stephen Bourne by publishing an appeal for
information regarding the whereabouts of an eccentric fellow named
Colvin, who had disappeared and of whose murder Bourne had just been
convicted upon circumstantial evidence. This appeal was read aloud
in one of the New York hotels. It occurred to one of the guests that
his brother-in-law in New Jersey had a hired man whose description
answered to that given of Colvin; identification followed; and
Bourne was released to fire a cannon at a general celebration of his
deliverance. The news of Knickerbocker’s disappearance caused much
concern, and a city officer took under advisement the propriety of
offering a reward.
Within a fortnight a letter was published in the _Evening Post_ which
described the appearance of Knickerbocker trudging weariedly north from
Kingsbridge. Two days later appeared in the _Post_ an announcement by
Seth Handaside, proprietor of the Columbian Hotel, that “a very curious
kind of a written book” had been found in the room of Mr. Diedrich
Knickerbocker, and that if he did not return to pay his bill, it would
be disposed of to satisfy the charges. A preliminary advertisement
of the two volumes of the Knickerbocker “History” was printed in the
_Evening Post_ of Nov. 28, by Innskeep and Bradford, with the price--$3.
Because the _Evening Post_ circulated among the most intelligent people
of the city, and because it had never forgotten that one object stated
in its prospectus was “to cultivate a taste for sound literature,”
it was chosen by Drake and Halleck as the medium for the most famous
series of satirical poems, the “Biglow Papers” excepted, in American
literature.
Year in and year out, the _Evening Post_ kept a space at the head
of its news columns open for the best verse it could obtain. Just a
month after it was established it plumed itself upon the publication
of an original poem by the coarse but lively English satirist, “Peter
Pindar” (Dr. John Wolcot), with whom Coleman corresponded. Wolcot is
best remembered for verses ridiculing George III, and for his witticism
that though George was a good subject for him, he was a poor subject
to George. His contribution for Coleman, however, was not satiric, but
a jejune three-stanza “Ode to the Lark.” In 1803 the editor obtained a
poem from the banker-poet Samuel Rogers, then regarded as a luminary of
the first magnitude. A year later he had the distinction of receiving
from the august hand of Thomas Moore himself, who was on a tour through
America, a manuscript poem, which was published in the _Evening Post_
of July 9 without a title, and may be found in Moore’s works under
the heading, “Lines Written on Leaving Philadelphia.” Unfortunately,
Coleman had to accompany the publication with an apology; for though
Moore had requested that the verses, which express his gratitude for
his reception in Philadelphia, be withheld until Joseph Dennie could
print them in his _Portfolio_ there, Coleman had indiscreetly lent a
copy to friends, and they had become such public property that there
was no reason for keeping them longer out of the _Post_.