The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page is a Webnovel created by Burton Jesse Hendrick.
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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 n.o.blest monument to its labours is the State College in Raleigh, an inst.i.tution 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 inst.i.tution 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 t.i.tle 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 ill.u.s.trated 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 ma.s.s of ma.n.u.scripts 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 a.s.sociates. 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 att.i.tude 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 t.i.tle 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 a.s.sociates.
“Do you see that waste basket?” he asked, pointing to a large receptacle filled to overflowing with ma.n.u.scripts. “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 a.s.sociate would sometimes say.
In response Page would take the ma.n.u.script and, holding it aloft in two hands, tear it into several bits, and throw the sc.r.a.ps 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 a.s.sembled 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 compet.i.tion 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 cla.s.ses–“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 n.i.g.g.e.rs” 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 cooperation 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 ma.n.u.script 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 ma.n.u.script 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 ma.n.u.script 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 ma.n.u.script the honour of taking it out to lunch in his coat-pocket, and an a.s.sociate 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 pa.s.sages 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 ma.n.u.script 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 cooperation. 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 pa.s.sion 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 tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, 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 a.s.semble such a group as that, and above all, only Page could give such an enticing turn of the t.i.tles. 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 s.p.a.ce to a high type of fiction, poetry, and reviews of contemporary literature, but every number contained also an a.s.sortment 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 pa.s.s 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. G.o.dkin to review the dangers and the hopes of American democracy; Jacob Rus 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 ill.u.s.trated Page’s genius at rewriting t.i.tles. 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 t.i.tle 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 a.s.sistant, 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 a.s.sume 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 ma.n.u.script 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 ma.n.u.script. 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 ma.n.u.script and took it with him from Birmingham that night.”
Page’s enterprising visit had put into his hands the half-finished ma.n.u.script 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 pa.s.sed 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 ent.i.tled 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, const.i.tuted 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.]
CHAPTER III
“THE FORGOTTEN MAN”
I
In July, 1899, the publishing community learned that financial difficulties were seriously embarra.s.sing the great house of Harper. For nearly a century this establishment had maintained a position almost of preeminence among American publishers. Three generations of Harpers had successively presided over its destinies; its magazines and books had become almost a household necessity in all parts of the United States, and its authors included many of the names most celebrated in American letters. The average American could no more a.s.sociate the idea of bankruptcy with this great business than with the federal Treasury itself. Yet this incredible disaster had virtually taken place. At this time the public knew nothing of the impending ruin; the fact was, however, that, in July, 1899, the banking house of J.P. Morgan & Company practically controlled this property. This was the situation which again called Page to New York.
In the preceding year Mr. S.S. McClure, whose recent success as editor and publisher had been little less than a sensation, had joined forces with Mr. Frank N. Doubleday, and organized the new firm of Doubleday & McClure. This business was making rapid progress; and that it would soon become one of the leading American publishing houses was already apparent. It was perhaps not unnatural, therefore, that Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, scanning the horizon for the men who might rescue the Harper concern from approaching disaster, should have had his attention drawn to Mr. McClure and Mr. Doubleday. “The failure of Harper & Brothers,”
Mr. Morgan said in a published statement, “would be a national calamity.” One morning, therefore, a member of the Harper firm called upon Mr. McClure. Without the slightest hesitation he unfolded the Harper situation to his astonished contemporary. The solution proposed was more astonishing still. This was that Mr. Doubleday and Mr. McClure should amalgamate their young and vigorous business with the Harper enterprise and become the active managers of the new corporation. Both Mr. McClure and Mr. Doubleday were comparatively young men, and the magnitude of the proposed undertaking at first rather staggered them. It was as though a small independent steel maker should suddenly be invited to take over the United States Steel Corporation. Mr. McClure, characteristically impetuous and daring, wished to accept the invitation outright; Mr. Doubleday, however, suggested a period of probation. The outcome was that the two men offered to take charge of Harper & Brothers for a few months, and then decide whether they wished to make the a.s.sociation a permanent one. One thing was immediately apparent; Messrs.
Doubleday and McClure, able as they were, would need the help of the best talent available in the work that lay ahead. The first man to whom they turned was Page, who presently left Boston and took up his business abode at Franklin Square. The rumble of the elevated road was somewhat distracting after the four quiet years in Park Street, but the new daily routine was not lacking in interest. The Harper experiment, however, did not end as Mr. Morgan had hoped. After a few months Messrs. Doubleday, Page and McClure withdrew, and left the work of rescue to be performed by Mr. George Harvey, who, curiously enough, succeeded Page, twenty-one years afterward, in an even more important post–that of amba.s.sador to the Court of St. James’s. The one important outcome of the Harper episode, so far as Page was concerned, was the forming of a close business and personal a.s.sociation with Mr. Frank N. Doubleday. As soon as the two men definitely decided not to a.s.sume the Harper responsibility, therefore, they joined forces and founded the firm of Doubleday, Page & Company. Page now had the opportunity which he had long wished for; the mere editing of magazines, even magazines of such an eminent character as the _Forum_ and the _Atlantic Monthly_, could hardly satisfy his ambition; he yearned to possess something which he could call his own, at least in part.