This book was to have been written in 1914, when I foresaw some leisure
to write it, for I then intended to retire from active editorship. But
the war came, an entirely new set of duties commanded, and the project
was laid aside.
Its title and the form, however, were then chosen. By the form I refer
particularly to the use of the third person. I had always felt the most
effective method of writing an autobiography, for the sake of a better
perspective, was mentally to separate the writer from his subject by
this device.
Moreover, this method came to me very naturally in dealing with the
Edward Bok, editor and publicist, whom I have tried to describe in this
book, because, in many respects, he has had and has been a personality
apart from my private self. I have again and again found myself watching
with intense amusement and interest the Edward Bok of this book at work.
I have, in turn, applauded him and criticised him, as I do in this book.
Not that I ever considered myself bigger or broader than this Edward
Bok: simply that he was different. His tastes, his outlook, his manner
of looking at things were totally at variance with my own. In fact, my
chief difficulty during Edward Bok's directorship of The Ladies' Home
Journal was to abstain from breaking through the editor and revealing my
real self. Several times I did so, and each time I saw how different was
the effect from that when the editorial Edward Bok had been allowed
sway. Little by little I learned to subordinate myself and to let him
have full rein.
But no relief of my life was so great to me personally as his decision
to retire from his editorship. My family and friends were surprised and
amused by my intense and obvious relief when he did so. Only to those
closest to me could I explain the reason for the sense of absolute
freedom and gratitude that I felt.
Since that time my feelings have been an interesting study to myself.
There are no longer two personalities. The Edward Bok of whom I have
written has passed out of my being as completely as if he had never been
there, save for the records and files on my library shelves. It is easy,
therefore, for me to write of him as a personality apart: in fact, I
could not depict him from any other point of view. To write of him in
the first person, as if he were myself, is impossible, for he is not.
The title suggests my principal reason for writing the book. Every life
has some interest and significance; mine, perhaps, a special one. Here
was a little Dutch boy unceremoniously set down in America unable to
make himself understood or even to know what persons were saying; his
education was extremely limited, practically negligible; and yet, by
some curious decree of fate, he was destined to write, for a period of
years, to the largest body of readers ever addressed by an American
editor--the circulation of the magazine he edited running into figures
previously unheard of in periodical literature. He made no pretense to
style or even to composition: his grammar was faulty, as it was natural
it should be, in a language not his own. His roots never went deep, for
the intellectual soil had not been favorable to their growth;--yet, it
must be confessed, he achieved.
But how all this came about, how such a boy, with every disadvantage to
overcome, was able, apparently, to "make good"--this possesses an
interest and for some, perhaps, a value which, after all, is the only
reason for any book.
EDWARD W. BOK
MERION, PENNSYLVANIA, 1920