THE GAY NINETIES
Chicago a phoenix city risen from the ashes of its great fire; downtown business buildings two, three and four stories high, more of former than latter, few a little higher, elevators a rare luxury; across the river many one-story stores and shops with signs in large lettering, pioneer style, on their false fronts; streets paved with granite blocks echo to the rumble of iron-tired wheels and the clank of iron-shod hoofs; a continuous singing of steel car-cables on State Street and Wabash Avenue; horse-drawn cross-town cars thickly carpeted with straw in winter; outlying residential streets paved with cedar blocks; avenues boasting asphalt. Bonneted women with wasp waists, leg o’ mutton sleeves, bustles, their lifted, otherwise dust-collecting, skirts revealing high-buttoned shoes and gaily-striped stockings; men in brown derbies, short jackets, high-buttoned waist-coats, tight trousers without cuffs and, when pressed, without pleats; shirts with Piccadilly collars and double-ended cuffs of detachable variety (story told of how a famous author’s hero, scion of an old house, when traveling by train, saw a beautiful young lady, undoubtedly of aristocratic birth, possibly royal, and wanting to meet her, love at first sight, object matrimony, first retires, with true blue-blood gentility, to wash-room and reverses cuffs. Romance, incident ruthlessly deleted by publisher, proves a best seller). Black walnut furniture upholstered in hair-cloth, pride of many a Victorian parlor, is gradually being replaced by golden oak and ash; painters’ studios, especially portrait variety, are hung with oriental rugs and littered with oriental screens and pottery. High bicycles, the Columbia with its little wheel behind and the Star with the little wheel in front, soon to disappear, are still popular. Low wheels, called “safeties,” are beginning to appear, occasionally ridden by women wearing bloomers. Pneumatic tires unknown.
Recognized now as a period of over-ornamentation and bad taste, the Nineties were nevertheless years of leisurely contacts, kindly advice and an appreciative pat on the back by an employer, and certainly a friendly bohemianism seldom known in the rush and drive of today.
Eugene Field has just returned from a vacation in Europe and in his column, Sharps and Flats, Chicago is reading the first printing of Wynken, Blynken and Nod. Way & Williams, publishers, have an office on the floor below my studio. Irving Way, who would barter his last shirt for a first edition, his last pair of shoes for a volume from the Kelmscott Press of William Morris, is a frequent and always stimulating visitor.
“Will,” says Irving, “be over at McClurg’s some noon soon, in Millard’s rare book department, the ‘Amen Corner.’ Field will be there, and Francis Wilson, who is appearing at McVickar’s in The Merry Monarch, and other collectors. Maybe there’ll be an opportunity for me to introduce you—and Francis Wilson might ask you to do a poster.”
I go to the Press Club occasionally with Nixon Waterman, the columnist who was later to write his oft-quoted, “A rose to the living is more, If graciously given before The slumbering spirit has fled, A rose to the living is more Than sumptuous wreaths to the dead.” We sit at table with Opie Read, the well-loved humorist; Ben King, who wrote the delightful lament, “Nothing to eat but food, nowhere to go but out”; Stanley Waterloo, who wrote The Story of Ab and, with Luders, the musical comedy, Prince of Pilsen, and other newspaper notables whose names I have forgotten.
Two panoramas, Gettysburg and Shiloh, are bringing welcome wages to landscape and figure painters who will soon migrate to St. Joe across the lake and return in the fall with canvases to be hung at the Art Institute’s annual show.
Only one topic on every tongue—the coming World’s Fair.
Herbert Stone is at Harvard. He and his classmate, Ingalls Kimball, quickened with enthusiasm and unable to await their graduation, have formed the publishing company of Stone & Kimball. On paper bearing two addresses, Harvard Square, Cambridge, and Caxton Building, Chicago, Herbert commissions a cover, title-page, page decorations and a poster for When Hearts Are Trumps, a book of verse by Tom Hall—my first book assignment. This pleasing recognition from a publishing house is followed by a meeting with Harriet Monroe and a Way & Williams commission for a cover and decorations for the Columbian Ode.
Your studio is now in the Monadnock building. It is the year of the World’s Fair. You have an exhibit that has entitled you to a pass. Jim Corbett is in a show on the Midway. When he is not on the stage you can see him parading on the sidewalks. Buffalo Bill is appearing in a Wild West show. An edition of Puck is being printed in one of the exhibition buildings.
You design a cover for a Chicago and Alton Railroad folder. The drawing goes to Rand McNally for engraving and printing. Mr. Martin asks you to come and see him. His salary offer is flattering. But, aside from Bridwell’s designs at Mathews Northrup’s in Buffalo, railroad printing is in a long-established rut, void of imagination. You prefer free-lancing. Later Mr. Martin buys the K & L plant. Herbert Rogers, the former bookkeeper, establishes his own plant and you hope he will continue the K & L tradition.
Mr. McQuilkin, editor of The Inland Printer, commissions a permanent cover. When the design is finished I ask:
“Why not do a series of covers—a change of design with each issue?”
“Can’t afford them.”
“How about my making an inducement in the way of a tempting price?”
“I’ll take the suggestion to Shephard.”
Suggestion approved by Henry O. Shephard, printer and publisher, and the series is started—an innovation, the first occasion when a monthly magazine changes its cover design with each issue. One cover, nymph in pool, is later reproduced in London Studio. Another, a Christmas cover, has panel of lettering that four American and one German foundry immediately begin to cut as a type. Later the American Type Founders Company, paying for permission, names the face “Bradley.”
A poster craze is sweeping the country. Only signed copies are desired by collectors and to be shown in exhibitions. Designs by French artists: Toulouse-Lautrec, Chéret, Grasset, etc., some German and a few English, dominate displays. Edward Penfield’s Harper’s Monthly and my Chap-Book designs are only American examples at first available.
Will Davis, manager of the Columbia Theater, has just completed the Haymarket, out on West Madison at Halstead. You design and illustrate the opening-night souvenir booklet. This you do for Mr. Kasten, of McClure’s. Thus you meet Mr. Davis. He introduces you to Dan Frohman who commissions you to design a twenty-eight sheet stand for his brother, Charles, who is about to open the new Empire Theater in New York. So you design a poster for The Masqueraders, by Henry Arthur Jones. This is probably the first signed theatrical poster produced by any American lithographer. Then Dan suggests that you visit New York. You do, and meet Charles. Dan takes you to the Players for lunch. There you see show-bills set in Caslon. They influence all of your future work in the field of typography.
We now move to Geneva, Illinois, and I have my studio in a cottage overlooking the beautiful Fox River.
Holiday covers for Harper’s Weekly, Harper’s Bazaar, Harper’s Young People, later named Harper’s Roundtable, page decorations for Vogue, a series of full-page designs for Sunday editions of Chicago Tribune, Herbert Stone’s Chap-Book article and other favorable publicity—plucking me long before I am ripe, cultivate a lively pair of gypsy heels; and believing myself, perhaps excusably, equal to managing a printing business, editing and publishing an art magazine, designing covers and posters, I return to Boston, then settle in Springfield, start the Wayside Press, and publish Bradley: His Book.
SPRINGFIELD:
THE WAYSIDE PRESS
Typography, with nothing to its credit following Colonial times, had reached a low ebb during the Victorian period; and by the mid-Nineties typefounders were casting and advertising only novelty faces void of basic design—apparently giving printers what they wanted; while, adding emphasis to bad taste in type faces, compositors were never content to use one series throughout any given piece of display but appeared to be finding joy in mixing as many as possible.
During the Colonial period printers were restricted to Caslon in roman and italic, and an Old English Text. What gave me my love for Caslon and the Old English Text called Caslon Black I do not know. It may have happened in the Ishpeming print shop where I worked as a boy, or it may have come as a result of some incident or series of incidents that occurred later and are not now remembered. At any rate, for many years I knew nothing about the history of types or the derivation of type design and probably thought of “Caslon” as merely a trade designation of the typefounder, and my early preference for the face may have been merely that of a compositor who found joy in its use—as I always have.
One day in 1895, while busy with the establishment of the Wayside Press in Springfield, Massachusetts, I was inspired by some quickening of interest to make a special trip to Boston and visit the Public Library. There I was graciously permitted access to the Barton collection of books printed in New England during the Colonial period; and, thrilled beyond words, I thus gained some knowledge of Caslon’s noble ancestry. The books were uncatalogued and stacked in fireproof rooms which were called the “Barton Safes.” I was allowed to carry volumes to a nearby gallery above the reference room, where, at conveniently arranged lecterns along an iron balustrade, I examined them at my leisure and was given the outstanding typographic experience of my life.
Such gorgeous title-pages! I gloated over dozens of them, making pencil memoranda of type arrangements and pencil sketches of wood-cut head and tail pieces and initials. Using Caslon roman with italic in a merry intermingling of caps and lower case, occasionally enlivened with a word or a line in Caslon Black, and sometimes embellished with a crude wood-cut decoration depicting a bunch or basket of flowers, and never afraid to use types of large size, the compositors of these masterly title-pages have given us refreshing examples of a typography that literally sparkles with spontaneity and joyousness. Apparently created stick-in-hand at the case, and unbiased by hampering trends and rules, here are honest, direct, attention-compelling examples of type arrangements reflecting the care-free approach of compositors merrily expressing personalities void of the self-consciousness and inhibitions that always tighten up and mar any mere striving for effect.
This Colonial typography, void of beauty-destroying mechanical precision, is the most direct, honest, vigorous and imaginative America has ever known—a sane and inspiring model that was to me a liberal education and undoubtedly the finest influence that could come to me at this time—1895.
I now become a member of the newly formed Arts and Crafts Society of Boston, possibly a charter member, and contribute two or three cases and a few frames of Wayside Press printing to the society’s first exhibition in Copley Hall. This showing wins flattering approval from reviewers—laughter from printers who comment: “Bradley must be crazy if he thinks buyers of printing are going to fall for that old-fashioned Caslon type.”
At this time the Caslon mats, imported from England, are in possession of one or two branches of the American Type Founders, probably those in New York and Boston, possibly the Dickenson Foundry in Boston. Less than a year after my original receipt of body sizes of Caslon in shelf-faded and fly-specked packages, these foundries cannot keep pace with orders and it is found necessary to take the casting off the slow “steamers” and transfer mats to the main plant in Communipaw, New Jersey, where they can be adapted to fast automatic type-casters. Here additional sizes are cut and a new series, Lining Caslon, is in the works—and, with novelty faces no longer in demand, foundries outside the combine, not possessing mats, are hurrying cutting.
“When the tide is at the lowest, ’tis but nearest to the turn.”
That quotation certainly applies to the year 1895 that had started with so little to its credit in the annals of commercial printing and in which we were now witnessing an encouraging æsthetic awakening in the kindred field of publishing. Choice little volumes printed on deckle-edge papers were coming from those young book-making enthusiasts—Stone and Kimball in Chicago and Copeland and Day in Boston—and were attracting wide attention and winning well-earned acclaim. Also there were the Kelmscott Press hand-printed books of William Morris, especially his Chaucer, set in type of his own design and gorgeously illustrated by Burne-Jones; the Vale Press books, designed by Charles Ricketts and for which he also designed the type; the exotic illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley in John Lane’s Yellow Book, all coming to us from London. Then there was the excitement occasioned by our own “poster craze,” with its accompanying exhibitions giving advertisers and the general public an opportunity to see the gay designs of Chéret and the astounding creations of Lautrec. All these were indicative of a thought-quickening trend due to have a stimulative influence in the then fallow field of commercial printing.
The Wayside Press which I opened in this year of transition was so named for a very real reason. I had worked in Ishpeming and Chicago so as to earn money to take me back to Boston where I hoped to study and become an artist, the profession of my father. I had always thought of printing as being along the wayside to the achieving of my ambition. And I chose a dandelion leaf as my device because the dandelion is a wayside growth.
On the main business street in Springfield there was a new office building called the Phoenix. In two offices on the top floor of the Phoenix Building I had my studio. Back of the office building there was a new loft building on the top floor of which I was establishing my Wayside Press, a corridor connecting it with the top floor of the Phoenix Building and thus making it easily accessible from my studio. It was an ideal location, and with windows on two sides and at the south end insuring an abundance of sunshine, fresh air and light, the workshop was a cheerful spot and one destined to woo me (probably far too often) from my studio and my only definitely established source of income, my designing.
My first Wayside Press printing, before the publication of my magazine, was a Strathmore deckle-edge sample book. Heretofore all Connecticut Valley paper-mill samples, regardless of color, texture or quality of paper, had carried in black ink, usually in the upper corner of each sheet, information as to size and weight. No attempt had been made to stimulate sales by showing the printer how different papers might be used. But one day just after the Press opened, I had a visitor who changed all that.
I had a bed-ticking apron that had been made for me by my wife, copying the apron I had worn when at the ages of fifteen to seventeen I had served as job printer and foreman of that little print shop in Ishpeming, where I used to proudly stand, type-stick-in-hand, in the street doorway to enjoy a brief chat with my wife-to-be, then a school-teacher and my sweetheart, as she was on her way to school. Wearing that apron, and at the stone, is how and where Mr. Moses of the Mittineague Paper Company, first of the Strathmore Paper Company units, found me on the occasion of our first meeting.
In my mind’s eye I can see Mr. Moses now as he entered from the corridor. He was wearing a navy blue serge suit that emphasized his slight build and made him appear younger than I had expected. I was then twenty-seven and undoubtedly thought of myself as quite grown up, and I marveled that a man seemingly so young should possess the business knowledge necessary to have put him at the head of an even then well-known mill. The contrast of that natty blue-serge with my striped bed-ticking apron should have made me self-conscious. Perhaps it did; but, filled with the youthful enthusiasm and glorious hopes of a dreamer, I probably had thoughts for nothing but my new print shop and publishing. Seeing me unpacking type, my visitor may have thought my time could have been employed more profitably at my drawing-board, as of course it could—though in my then frame of mind it could not have been employed more enjoyably. Displaying samples of his new line, Mr. Moses asked if I would lay out and print a showing for distribution to commercial printers and advertisers.
I explained that the Wayside Press was being established for the printing of Bradley: His Book, an art and literary magazine, and for a few booklets and brochures—publications to which I planned to give my personal attention throughout all details of production, and that I had not contemplated undertaking any outside work.
However, after a moment’s brief consideration, I became so intrigued with the printing possibilities of these new Strathmore papers, their pleasing colors and tints, together with their being such a perfect, a literally made-to-order, vehicle for Caslon roman and Caslon Black, that I enthusiastically agreed to undertake the commission—a decision for which I shall always feel thankful.
The favorable publicity won by the use of these “old-fashioned” types on Strathmore papers, convinces me that to attain distinction a print shop must possess personality and individuality. At any rate, my continued use of Strathmore papers with appropriate typography and designs aroused such widespread interest among merchants and advertisers and brought so many orders for printing that it soon produced the need for more space. My plant was then moved to a top loft in a new wing that had been added to the Strathmore mill at Mittineague, across the river from Springfield.
Caslon types on Strathmore papers having proved so popular, business was humming. A “Victor” bicycle catalog for the Overman Wheel Company, involving a long run in two colors on Strathmore book and cover papers, and an historically-illustrated catalog for the new “Colonial” flatware pattern of the Towle Silversmiths of Newburyport, for which Strathmore’s deckle edge papers and Caslon types were strikingly appropriate, together with the increased circulation of Bradley: His Book, now a much larger format than the original issues, necessitated the addition of another cylinder press, the largest “Century” then being made by the Campbell Press Company; and also the employment of an additional pressman and two additional feeders, and keeping the presses running nights as well as days, often necessitating my remaining at the plant throughout the full twenty-four hours—quite a change from the humble beginnings of the Wayside Press when one “Universal” and two “Gordon” job presses were believed sufficient for the magazine and booklet printing then planned.
In this growth of the commercial printing involving lay-outs and supervision, together with trying to edit and publish an art magazine, I had waded far beyond my depth. When I was starting my Wayside Press in Springfield a business man had advised: “Learn to creep before you try to walk, and learn to walk before you try to run.” I had tried to run before even learning to creep. Mr. Moses gave me what I am now sure was much good business advice—but, alas, I was temperamentally unfitted to listen and learn and, knowing nothing about finances, was eventually overwhelmed and broke under the strain and had to go away for a complete rest. With no one trained to carry on in my absence it was necessary to cease publication of Bradley: His Book and in order to insure delivery on time of the catalogs and other commercial printing, forms were lifted from the presses and transferred to the University Press at Cambridge; and the Wayside Press as a unit, including name and goodwill and my own services, soon followed—a hurried and ill-conceived arrangement that eventually proved so mutually unsatisfactory that I faded out of the picture.
This was a heart-breaking decision for me, and one that but for the wisdom of my wife and her rare understanding and nursing could have resulted in a long and serious illness. No printing and publishing business ever started with finer promise and more youthful enthusiasm than did the Wayside Press and the publication of Bradley: His Book, that are now just memories.
Among other magazine covers designed during this period there is one for a Christmas number of Century. It brings a request for a back-cover design. Both designs are in wood-cut style and require four printings—black and three flat colors. The DeVinne Press, familiar only with process colors, hesitates to do the printing. That issue carries a Will Bradley credit. When John Lane imports sheets of the Studio, edits an American supplement and publishes an American edition, I design the covers.
