will illustrate. In the spring of 1859 a bill was pending at Albany
to increase the compensation paid for legal advertisements, which was
unfairly low. All the newspapers urged it, and the _Evening Post’s_
correspondent, one Wilder, proved a perfect Hercules of a lobbyist.
“Yet,” Bryant wrote Bigelow, “I was uncomfortable all the while at
the idea of having a bill before the Legislature from which, if it
passed, I would derive a personal advantage, and I was quite relieved
when I saw that it was defeated.” Some years earlier the London
_Examiner_ published a complimentary article regarding Bigelow’s book
upon Jamaica, of which he had about a hundred copies that he was eager
to sell. He asked Bryant if he would be guilty of an impropriety in
republishing the notice. “No,” Bryant said hesitatingly, looking up
from his desk, “no, not as the world goes.” “But,” persisted Bigelow,
“how as the _Evening Post_ goes?” “Why,” rejoined the poet, “I never
did such a thing. I have had a good many pleasant things said about me,
but I never republished one of them in the _Evening Post_.” It need not
be said that Bigelow abandoned his plan.
Bryant brought to his editorship a culture such as American journalism
had not seen before, and has not since seen surpassed. A writer in
_Fraser’s Magazine_ in 1855 made sport of the ignorance of American
newspapers. He cited the _Herald’s_ statement, in a criticism of
Racine’s “Phedre,” that “the language is written in what we call blank
verse”; and its translation of a tag from Virgil: “Adsum qui feci; he
or me must perish.” His sweeping criticism was unjust to a profession
which already enlisted men like Richard Hildreth, Richard Grant White,
and George Ripley, but Bryant, with his international reputation,
was the most shining exception to it. His readers thought nothing of
seeing an editorial on the United States Bank begin with an allusion
to the episode of Nisus and Euryalus in Virgil, some story drawn from
the legal lore he had mastered at the bar, or an apt quotation from
the wide range of English poetry. His allusions and illustrations
were always deft. “Like the misshapen dwarf in the ‘Lay of the Last
Minstrel,’” he said of the anti-Jacksonians in 1833, “they wave their
lean arms on high and run to and fro crying, ‘Lost! Lost! Lost!’” When
Cass objected to any “temporary” measures regarding slavery in the
territories, Bryant simply retold the story of Swift’s servant, who did
not clean his master’s shoes because they would soon be dirty again;
whereupon the Dean punished him by making him go without breakfast,
because he would soon be hungry again.
The editor read assiduously. His wide acquaintance with the most
intellectual men of New York kept him conversant with the latest
ideas in every field. Above all, at a time when few journalists went
abroad, his many trips to Europe supplied him with a constant fund of
suggestions for civic and other improvements. These ranged from penny
postage to street cleaning machines, from apartment houses to police
uniforms, and from Central Park to the nickel five-cent piece, which,
in imitation of a German coin, he was one of the first to advocate.
Bryant’s insistence upon purity of diction was such that John Bigelow
believed that in all his writings for the _Post_ fewer blemishes
could be found than in the first ten numbers of the _Spectator_.
His sensitiveness as to literary form was fully developed when he
joined the paper. On May 11, 1827, he published in it a paragraph on
affectations of expression, condemning such barbarisms in current
newspapers as “consolate.” The most famous evidence of his love of
precision was his _index expurgatorius_. This was less extensive than
it was sometimes represented to be, containing but eighty-six words
or phrases; and as Bryant told George Cary Eggleston, it was for
the guidance only of immature staff writers, and might sometimes be
overstepped. It includes inflated words like inaugurate for begin,
misemployed words like mutual for common, and along with some terms now
used without hesitation, others universally condemned:
Above and over (for more than); Artiste (for artist); Aspirant;
Authoress; Beat (for defeat); Bagging (for capturing); Balance (for
remainder); Banquet (for dinner or supper); Bogus; Casket (for
coffin); Claimed (for asserted); Commence (for begin); Collided;
Compete; Cortege (for procession); Cotemporary (for contemporary);
Couple (for two); Darkey (for negro); Day before yesterday (for
the day before yesterday); Début; Decease; Democracy (applied
to a political party); Develop (for expose); Devouring element
(for fire); Donate; Employee; Enacted (for acted); Endorse (for
approve); En Route; “Esq.”; Graduate (for is graduated); Gents
(for gentlemen); Hon. House (for House of Representatives);
Humbug; Inaugurate (for begin); In our midst; Item (for particle,
extract, or paragraph); Is being done, and all passives of this
form; Jeopardise; Jubilant (for rejoicing); Juvenile (for boy);
Lady (for wife); Last (for latest); Lengthy (for long); Leniency
(for lenity); Loafer; Loan or loaned (for lend or lent); Located;
Majority (relating to places or circumstances, for most); Mrs.
President, Mrs. Governor, Mrs. General, and all similar titles;
Mutual (for common); Official (for officer); Ovation; On yesterday;
Over his signature; Pants (for pantaloons); Parties (for persons);
Partially (for partly); Past two weeks (for last two weeks, and all
similar expressions relating to a definite time); Poetess; Portion
(for part); Posted (for informed); Progress (for advance); Quite
(prefixed to good, large, etc.); Raid (for attack); Realized (for
obtained); Reliable (for trustworthy); Rendition (for performance);
Repudiate (for reject); Retire (as an active verb); Rev. (for the
Rev.); Role (for part); Roughs; Rowdies; Secesh; Sensation (for
noteworthy event); Standpoint (for point of view); Start (in the
sense of setting out); State (for say); Talent (for talents or
ability); Talented; Tapis; The deceased; War (for dispute).
Bryant was frequently called upon to decide nice questions of English,
which he did with care; during the Civil War he took time, in answer
to a query regarding the superlative, to dig up ancient instances
like Milton’s “virtuousest, discreetest, best.” He has recorded his
judgment that from newspaper writing a man’s style gains in clearness
and fluency, but is likely to become loose, diffuse, and stuffed with
bad diction. He always insisted upon simplicity as the sole foundation
of a fine style. Once the _Post_ received a letter from a servant girl
so clear and precise that Bryant had her sought out to learn how she
could write so well. She explained that she used no expression of whose
meaning she was not certain; that if at first she did so, she later
struck it out and substituted a simpler word or phrase. Bryant held
this procedure to be a model for reporters.
Parke Godwin, writing Charles A. Dana in 1845 that the best all-round
editor in America was Greeley, added that Bryant “is by all odds the
most varied and beautiful writer.” He here touched one of Bryant’s most
distinctive merits as an editor. Bryant could not argue with more force
than Greeley, or with the incisiveness and point of E. L. Godkin; but
when moved by a great event, he wrote with an eloquence which no other
editor ever attempted. The springs that fed his poetry fed this mastery
of elevated prose. Any one who will study the fine rhetorical effects
of his first great poem, “Thanatopsis,” or of one of his last, “The
Flood of Years,” will understand what effects he sometimes wrought in
the editorial columns of the _Evening Post_. Opening soberly though on
a high plane, his more impassioned editorials would rise to a splendid
climax. He did not use his grand style too frequently, but during the
Civil War he employed it again and again. Thus he wrote July 6, 1863,
upon the “three glorious days” at Vicksburg and Gettysburg:
Many a gallant spirit lies silent forever on the bloody field; many
peaceful homes are instantly made desolate; our hearts go forth in
sorrow to the fallen and in condolence to the bereaved; but this
is the eternal glory of those who have perished, as of those who
mourn their deaths, that they have given their lives in the noblest
cause in which man was ever called to suffer. They have died for
a country which is worthy of the blood of its citizens; for the
integrity and honor of a government in which the dearest rights
of millions are involved; and for the great principles of human
freedom and human justice, in which the world and ages to come
are deeply interested. Nowhere else could they have earned a more
glorious renown, for nowhere else could they have contributed a
better service to humanity.
Again, we find him hailing the doom of the Confederacy (Dec. 5, 1864):
In the tone of that pristine rebel whom the great poet makes to
exclaim, “Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven,” these
proud and insolent spirits disdained to brook their fate, and flew
to revolt. A new slave empire, a new semi-tropical nation, a grand
aristocracy of white masters, was to be built around the Gulf of
Mexico, our western Mediterranean, but alas for these dreams of
ambition, the throne of Maximilian casts its shadow over one end
of their prospective dominion, and the tread of Sherman’s soldiers
shakes the other into dust.
But the foundation of Bryant’s power as an editor lay simply in his
soundness of judgment, and his unwavering courage in maintaining
it. The greatest peril of the profession, he wrote in 1851, “is the
strong temptation which it sets before men, to betray the cause of
truth to public opinion, and to fall in with what are supposed to be
the views held by a contemporaneous majority, which are sometimes
perfectly right and sometimes grossly wrong.” That peril was greater in
Bryant’s day than now, for the comparative smallness and homogeneity
of the reading public made it more dangerous to incur the general
displeasure. He never yielded in the slightest degree to it; and the
number of instances in which his view of public questions became the
view taken by history is remarkable. The _Evening Post’s_ defense of
trade unions, and of the abolitionists’ right to free use of the mails
and to free speech, are memorable illustrations. Just before the Civil
War began Bryant ran over in the _Post_ a list of its measures, at
first opposed by the majority, but later accepted as sound. It was
for many years the only powerful journal north of the Potomac which
pleaded for a low tariff. It resisted the internal improvement system,
advocated the sub-treasury system, and defended the right of petition.
It successfully opposed the assumption of State debts by the national
government. It was one of the earliest and most earnest advocates of
cheaper postage rates, already partly realized. When the Fugitive
Slave law had been proposed, it had denounced it as an infringement
of the rights of the States, though most Northerners regarded it with
indifference or approbation. As for the great slavery question in
general, Bryant had already written just after Lincoln’s election:
We take this occasion to congratulate the old friends of the
_Evening Post_, who have read it for the last score of years
or thereabouts, on this new triumph of the principles which it
maintains. The Wilmot Proviso is now consecrated as a part of the
national public policy by this election; but earlier than the
Wilmot Proviso was the opposition of our journal to the enlargement
of slavery. It began with the first whisper of the scheme to annex
Texas to the American Union, and it has been steadily maintained
from that moment till now, when the right and justice of our cause
is proclaimed in a general election by the mighty voice of a larger
part of thirty millions of people.
Freedom, democracy--to these two principles every utterance of the
_Evening Post_ in its fifty years under Bryant was referred. Other
journals might think of the day only and let the morrow take care of
itself, but he was solicitous that each issue should fit into the
exposition of a policy good for the year and the decade. “He looked
upon the journal which he conducted,” wrote his last managing editor,
Robert Burch, “as a conscientious statesman looks upon the official
trust which has been committed to him, or the work which he has
undertaken--not with a view to do what is to be done to-day in the
easiest or most brilliant way, but so to do it that it may tell upon
what is to be done to-morrow, and all other days, until the worthiest
object of journalism is achieved. This is the most useful journalism;
and first and last, it is the most effective and influential.”
In his method of work, combining remarkable efficiency with a
remarkable amount of disorder, Bryant was a true newspaper man. His
desk, a large one used after him by Parke Godwin and Carl Schurz, was
kept piled with litter--books, manuscripts, pamphlets, documents, and
stranded memoranda; a little square being left in the middle where he
could place writing materials and do his work. Once when Bryant went
to Europe, says Bigelow, “I thought, I am going to clean house, and I
did, and found all sorts of old newspapers, old contributions, letters,
etc., etc.” When the poet returned and saw his desk cleared, he
demanded an explanation. Bigelow, giving it, perceived instantly that
his little housecleaning had been an error. “I saw by his expression
that I was trespassing. He did not make any remark, but his silence
was a very severe rebuke. He did not like it at all that he could not
have his old papers just as he had left them.” Indeed, he was attached
to a large number of homely but familiar objects. Among these was a
pen-knife with which he used to trim both his quill pen and his finger
nails. He owned an old blue cotton umbrella that he always insisted
upon carrying. When he was departing for Mexico, his daughter replaced
it with a handsome new one, but he missed it and refused the exchange.
It was Bryant’s habit to write for the _Post_ on the backs of
circulars, letters received, and rejected manuscripts, for he held that
it was shameful to waste the least scrap of useful material, since
it represented men’s time and labor. It is curious, in looking over
his papers, to find what these scraps were; a letter to Lincoln, for
example, was copied off from the back of a wine merchant’s circular,
offering Moët champagne at $12 the case. Yet he was really the soul
of carefulness. His copy often went up to the printer a mass of
interlineations and corrections; he never sent a letter away without
first making a rough draft. Throughout his life he made it a rule to
write everything for the _Post_ in the office, never at home, and even
when an additional task was laid upon him, as when he wrote a sketch of
the journal’s history in 1851, he refused to do it elsewhere. This was
a wise husbanding of his nervous energy; but his family recalls that he
and Parke Godwin often discussed the paper’s affairs at night.
No head of a newspaper was ever more considerate of his subordinates
than Bryant, who had but one serious quarrel with an associate, and
that was soon bridged over. Bigelow tells us that “he never rebuked
me; he never criticized me.” In looking over Bigelow’s proofs, he
would sometimes say, “Had not this word better be changed for that
or the other? Does that phrase express all or more than you mean, or
as clearly as you wish it to?” Even this gentle correction was rare.
Another worker tells us that it was Bryant’s habit, whenever he wished
to speak to any one in the office, to go to the desk of the man rather
than call him in. When John R. Thompson, the Southern poet, became
literary editor just after the Civil War, Bryant knew how ardently he
had sympathized with the Confederacy, and personally saw that he was
given no book to review that would hurt his feelings. We have noted how
he refused to say a word against the inefficient business manager of
the _Post_ early in the fifties, though recognizing his incompetence.
He never wavered in his loyalty to Isaac Henderson when the latter was
under fire in connection with Civil War contracts, and beyond doubt
remained sincerely convinced that Henderson had done no wrong.
In the office, as outside of it, in fact, Bryant was a thorough
democrat. During his travels in England, while staying at the home of a
business man, he was once invited to dine with a country gentleman near
by, and accepted in the belief that, as a matter of course, his host
had also been invited. When he learned that this was not true, and that
his host, being in trade, never thought of entering the gentleman’s
house, Bryant angrily canceled his acceptance. The incident made so
disagreeable an impression upon him that be shortened his stay in the
country. Similarly, when Dickens first visited New York, a rich old
Knickerbocker who had never theretofore taken the slightest notice of
Bryant asked him to his house to meet the young novelist; and Bryant
declined; telling a friend that he would never be a stool-pigeon to
attract fine birds of passage. In all relations with others Bryant
thought of the man, not of his rank, money, or reputation. The
poverty-stricken, invalid Thompson became one of the intimates of his
home soon after he joined the _Post_, and the editor showed a much
higher regard for the rugged head of the composing-room, Dithmar, than
for many a general or millionaire. When the _Post_ moved to its new
building in 1875, Bryant rarely occupied the handsome office fitted up
for him there, with its fine view of the harbor, preferring a humble
chair and desk in a corner of the composing room upstairs, where he was
free from boresome callers.
“In his intercourse with his co-laborers and subordinates,” wrote
Parke Godwin, “the impression produced by Mr. Bryant, after a certain
reticence, which diffused an atmosphere of coldness about him, was
broken through, was that of his extreme simplicity and sincerity of
character. He was as transparent as the day, as guileless as a child,
and as clear in his integrity as the crystal that has no flaw nor
crack.” The coldness was but a mask, and Bryant’s own feelings often
threw it off. Entering the office one day, he told in a self-accusing
way how, walking down-town, he had smashed a kite that a small
boy dragged across his face, without paying the urchin for it; he
reproached himself deeply. George Cary Eggleston, who worked beside
him three or four years, says that “I found him not only warm in his
human sympathies, but even passionate.” Sometimes he would do something
almost boyish. Once he was standing by a form around which the printers
were gathered, hurriedly preparing it for the press. A word was spoken
which suggested some stanzas from Cowley, and Bryant, locking his hands
before him, repeated the verses with remarkable force and expression,
while the printers paused and listened. Then he recovered himself with
a start, a look of embarrassment overspread his face, and--to change
the subject--he turned to the casement around the elevator, tapped it,
and said: “There is very little wood there to make trouble in case of
fire.”
He was wont to impress upon his associates the desirability of acting
as courteously toward men and women of the outside world as possible.
Bigelow says that he used to cite the example of Dr. Bartlett, editor
of the _Albion_, whose rule was “never to write anything of any one
which would make it unpleasant to meet him the following day at
dinner.” When Martin F. Tupper was about to visit the Philadelphia
Exposition of 1876, Eggleston wrote a playful editorial about him,
which the managing editor received with some apprehension, for he knew
that Tupper had once entertained Bryant in England. It was decided to
show Bryant the manuscript. The editor read it with evident amusement,
but remarked: “I heartily wish you had printed this without saying a
word to me about it, for then, when Mr. Tupper becomes my guest, as he
will if he comes to America, I could have explained to him that the
thing was done without my knowledge by one of the flippant young men of
my staff. Now that you have brought the matter to my attention, I can
make no excuse.” The article was not published.
He disliked to rebuff unwelcome visitors. “It is a positive fact,”
writes the veteran dramatic editor of the _Evening Post_, Mr. J. Ranken
Towse, “that he not infrequently preferred to escape them by passing
through a back door opening into the composing room, and descending
thence to the ground floor by means of the freight elevator. Sometimes
he sent for me and asked me to rid him of the visitors. This I did
easily and unscrupulously. Thus, in addition to my regular duties--I
was then city editor--I became a sort of amateur Cerberus.” When the
widow of John Hackett, a young woman of striking beauty but no stage
experience, resolved to play Lady Macbeth, she visited the _Post_,
and although Mr. Towse tried to dissuade her, she induced Bryant to
make a half-promise to deliver an introductory speech at her first
appearance. Bryant uneasily confessed this to Mr. Towse, who warned him
plainly of the false position in which he would be left when her début
proved a failure, as it was certain to do. When Mr. Towse offered to
extricate him by dismissing Mrs. Hackett upon her next call, the poet
eagerly assented.
It should be said that Bryant could be very blunt on occasion, and
had no hesitancy in offending those he disliked. There were some men
to whom he would never speak. Thurlow Weed, who for a time edited
the _World_, was one. Once when they were together at an evening
party a friend insisted that he must be allowed to introduce them;
finally Bryant half arose from his chair, and then sank back, saying,
“Not yet--not yet!” When he concluded that a man in public life had
done wrong, he followed him to the end of his career with unbending
aversion. In the warfare over the United States Bank, he conceived a
fierce hatred of Nicholas Biddle; and when Biddle died, far from taking
a _nil nisi bonum_ attitude, he expressed deep regret that he had not
died in jail. His judgment so angered Philip Hone that he wrote of
Bryant in his famous Diary as a “black-hearted misanthrope,” saying:
“This is the first instance I have known of the vampire of party spirit
seizing the lifeless body of its victim before its interment, and
exhibiting its bloody claws to the view of mourning relatives.” As well
expect honey from the rattle-snake as poetry from such a man, he added.
It must also be remembered that Bryant was always severely dignified.
If he never commanded a subordinate to do anything, but always
requested it, he knew that his request was a command. He always
addressed others with the prefix “Mr.,” and no one, not even Bigelow or
his son-in-law Parke Godwin, omitted the word in addressing him. When
Dom Pedro of Brazil visited the _Evening Post_, Bryant did not greet
the popular Emperor in the hall, but waited to receive him at his desk;
and he called a junior to show Dom Pedro the press room.
A certain testiness grew upon the editor in his later years, though
it was never more than momentary. He was especially sensitive to
any suggestion that he was losing his bodily vigor. Not only would
he climb the stairs to his ninth-floor office, but he would now and
then seize the frame of his door, and show his ability to “chin” it
repeatedly. Once, when he fell in Broadway, he sharply rebuffed a
gentleman who stepped up and asked, “Are you hurt, Mr. Bryant?”--and
he was a little ashamed of it later. Mr. Towse once saw him consulting
the city directory, his face showing plainly that the print was too
fine for his eyes. Forgetting Bryant’s pride in using no spectacles, he
inquired, “Cannot I help you, Mr. Bryant?” The poet instantly rejoined,
“No, sir!” with the angry tone of an insulted man, flung the book on a
table, and walked swiftly from the room. Mr. Towse also tells us that
if you asked Bryant a question, you were wise to accept his answer as
final. “I was not long in finding that out. There had been an argument
over the correct spelling of the word ‘peddler.’ As he was at his desk,
I referred the matter to him. ‘I shall have to write it,’ he said,
‘to make sure. It is often only by the look of it that I can decide
whether a word is rightly spelled.’ He wrote the word in several ways
and finally selected the form in which I have given it. I thanked him
and asked him whether either of the other spellings was permissible. He
turned on me like a flash and said angrily, ‘I thought you asked me how
to spell it?’”