IT was about this time that I began to establish cordial relations with
the short, broad-shouldered, sad-faced labor reporter whom I have
previously mentioned. At first he appeared to be a little shy of me, but
as time passed and I seemed to have established myself in the favor of
the paper, he became more friendly. He was really a radical at heart,
but did not dare let it be known here. Often of a morning he would spend
as much as two hours with me, discussing the nature of coal-mining and
steel-making, the difficulty of arranging wage conditions which would
satisfy all the men and not cause friction; but in the main he commented
on the shrewd and cunning way in which the bosses were more and more
overreaching their employees, preying upon their prejudices by religious
and political dodges, and at the same time misusing them shamefully
through the company store, the short ton, the cost of mining materials,
rent. At first, knowing nothing about the situation, I was inclined to
doubt whether he was as sound in these matters as he seemed to be.
Later, as I grew in personal knowledge, I thought he might be too
conservative, so painful did many of the things seem which I saw with my
own eyes and his aid.
* * * * *
About this time several things conspired to stir up my feelings in
regard to New York. The Pittsburgh papers gave great space to New York
events and affairs, much more than did most of the mid-Western papers.
There was a millionaire steel colony here which was trying to connect
itself with the so-called “Four Hundred” of New York, as well as the
royal social atmosphere of England and France; and the comings and
goings and doings of these people at Newport, New York, Bar Harbor,
London and Paris were fully chronicled. Occasionally I was sent to one
or another of these great homes to ask about the details of certain
marriages or proposed trips, and would find the people in the midst of
the most luxurious preparations. One night, for instance, I was sent to
ask a certain steel man about the rumored resumption or extension of
work in one of the mills. His house was but a dot on a great estate, the
reaching of which was very difficult. I found him about ten o’clock at
night stepping into a carriage to be driven to the local station, which
was at the foot of the grounds. Although I was going to the same station
in order to catch a local back to the city, he did not ask me to
accompany him. Instead he paused on the step of his carriage to say that
he could not say definitely whether the work would be done or not. He
was entirely surrounded by bags, a gun, a fishing basket and other
paraphernalia, after which of course a servant was looking. When he was
gone I walked along the same road to the same station, and saw him
standing there. Another man came up and greeted him.
“Going down to New York, George?” he inquired.
“No, to the Chesapeake. My lodge man tells me ducks are plentiful there
now, and I thought I’d run down and get a few.”
The through train, which had been ordered to stop for him, rolled in and
he was gone. I waited for my smoky local, marveling at the comfort and
ease which had been already attained by a man of not more than
forty-five years of age.
But there were other things which seemed always to talk to me of New
York, New York. I picked up a new weekly, the _Standard_, one evening,
and found a theatrical paper of the most pornographic and alluring
character which pretended to report with accuracy all the gayeties of
the stage, the clubs, the tenderloins or white-light districts, as well
as society of the racier and more spendthrift character. This paper
spoke only of pleasure: yacht parties, midnight suppers, dances, scenes
behind the stage and of blissful young stars of the theatrical, social
and money worlds. Here were ease and luxury! In New York, plainly, was
all this, and I might go there and by some fluke of chance taste of it.
I studied this paper by the hour, dreaming of all it suggested.
And there was _Munsey’s_, the first and most successful of all the
ten-cent magazines then coming into existence and being fed to the
public by the ton. I saw it first piled in high stacks before a news and
book store in Pittsburgh. The size of the pile of magazines and the
price induced a cursory examination, although I had never even heard of
it before. Poor as it was intellectually—and it was poor—it contained an
entire section of highly-coated paper devoted to actresses, the stage
and scenes from plays, and still another carrying pictures of beauties
in society in different cities, and still another devoted to successful
men in Wall Street. It breathed mostly of New York, its social doings,
its art and literary colonies. It fired me with an ambition to see New
York.
A third paper, _Town Topics_, was the best of all, a paper most
brilliantly edited by a man of exceptional literary skill (C. M. S.
McLellan). It related to exclusive society in New York, London and
Paris, the houses, palaces, yachts, restaurants and hotels, the goings
and comings of the owners; and although it really poked fun at all this
and other forms of existence elsewhere, still there was an element of
envy and delight in it also which fitted my mood. It gave one the
impression that there existed in New York, Newport and elsewhere (London
principally) a kind of Elysian realm in which forever basked the elect
of fortune. Here was neither want nor care.
How I brooded over all this, the marriages and rumors of marriages, the
travels, engagements, feasts such as a score of facile novelists
subsequently succeeded in picturizing to the entertainment and
disturbance of rural America. For me this realm was all flowers,
sunshine, smart restaurants, glistering ballrooms, ease, comfort, beauty
arrayed as only enchantment or a modern newspaper Sunday supplement can
array it. And while I knew that back of it must be the hard contentions
and realities such as everywhere hold and characterize life, still I
didn’t know. In reading these papers I refused to allow myself to cut
through to the reality. Life must hold some such realm as this, and
spiritually I belonged to it. But I was already twenty-three, and what
had I accomplished? I wished most of all now to go to New York and enter
the realm pictured by these papers. Why not? I might bag an heiress or
capture fortune in some other way. I must save some money, I told
myself. Then, financially fortified, against starvation at least, I
might reconnoiter the great city and—who knows?—perhaps conquer.
Balzac’s heroes had seemed to do so, why not I? It is written of the
Dragon God of China that in the beginning it swallowed the world.
And to cap it all about this time I had a letter from my good brother,
in which he asked me how long I would be “piking” about the West when I
ought to be in New York. I should come this summer, when New York was at
its best. He would show me Broadway, Manhattan Beach, a dozen worlds. He
would introduce me to some New York newspaper men who would introduce me
to the managers of the _World_ and the _Sun_. (The mere mention of these
papers, so overawed was I by the fames of Dana and Pulitzer, frightened
me.) I ought to be on a paper like the _Sun_, he said, since to him Dana
was the greatest editor in New York. I meditated over this, deciding
that I would go when I had more money. I then and there started a bank
account, putting in as much as ten or twelve dollars each week, and in a
month or two began to feel that sense of security which a little money
gives one.
Another thing which had a strange psychologic effect on me at the time,
as indeed it appeared to have on most of the intelligentsia of America,
was the publication in _Harper’s_ this spring and summer of George Du
Maurier’s _Trilby_. I have often doubted the import of novel-writing in
general, but viewing the effect of that particular work on me as well as
on others one might as well doubt the import of power or fame or emotion
of any kind. The effect of this book was not so much one of great
reality and insight such as Balzac at times managed to convey, but
rather of an exotic mood or perfume of memory and romance conveyed by
some one who is in love with that memory and improvising upon it as
musicians do upon a theme. Instanter I saw Paris and Trilby and the Jew
with his marvelous eyes. Trilby being hypnotized and carried away from
Little Billee seemed to me then of the essence of great tragedy. I
myself fairly suffered, walking about and dreaming, the while I awaited
the one or two final portions. I was lost in the beauty of Paris, the
delight of studio life, and resented more than ever, as one might a
great deprivation, the need of living in a land where there was nothing
but work.
And yet America and this city were fascinating enough to me. But because
of the preponderant influence of foreign letters on American life it
seemed that Paris and London must be so much better since every one
wrote about them. Like Balzac’s _Great Man from the Provinces_, this
book seemed to connect itself with my own life and the tragedy of not
having the means to marry at this time, and of being compelled to wander
about in this way unable to support a wife. At last I became so wrought
up that I was quite beside myself. I pictured myself as a Little Billee
who would eventually lose by poverty, as he by trickery, the thing I
most craved: my Western sweetheart. Meditating on this I vented some of
my misery in the form of sentimental vaporizings in my feature articles,
which were all liked well enough but which seemed merely to heighten my
misery. Finally, some sentimental letters being exchanged between myself
and my love, I felt an uncontrollable impulse to return and see her and
St. Louis before I went farther away perhaps never to return. The sense
of an irrecoverable past which had pervaded _Trilby_ had, I think,
something to do with this, so interfused and interfusing are all
thoughts and moods. At any rate, having by now considerable influence
with this paper, I proposed a short vacation, and the city editor,
wishing no doubt to propitiate me, suggested that the paper would be
glad to provide me with transportation both ways. So I made haste to
announce a grand return, not only to my intended but to McCord, Wood and
several others who were still in St. Louis.
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