Recollections of a Varied Life

by George Cary Eggleston

LV

When Mr. Bryant died, Mr. Parke Godwin assumed editorial control of the Evening Post, and his attention promptly wrought something like a miracle in the increased vigor and aggressiveness of its editorial conduct. Mr. Godwin was well advanced in middle life at that time; he was comfortably provided with this world's goods, and he was not anxious to take up again the strenuous journalistic work in which he had already achieved all there was to achieve of reputation. But in his own interest and in the interest of Mr. Bryant's heirs, it seemed necessary for him to step into this breach. Moreover, he had abated none of his interest in public affairs or in those things that make for culture, enlightenment, and human betterment. He had never ceased to write for the Evening Post upon matters of such kind when occasion called for strong, virile utterance.

In his declining years Mr. Bryant had not lost interest in these things, but he had abated somewhat his activity with reference to them. He had more and more left the conduct of the newspaper to his subordinates, trusting to what he used to call his "volunteer staff"—Parke Godwin, John Bigelow, Samuel J. Tilden, and other strong men, to furnish voluntarily all that was needed of strenuosity in the discussion of matters closely concerning the public weal. I do not know that Mr. Tilden was ever known to the public even as an occasional writer for the Evening Post. He was a man of singularly secretive temperament, and when he wrote anything for the Evening Post its anonymity was guarded with a jealousy such as I have never known any other person to exercise. What he wrote—on the infrequent occasions of his writing at all—was given to Mr. Bryant and by him handed in with instructions for its publication and without a hint to anybody concerning its authorship. It was only by accident that I learned whence certain articles came, and I think that knowledge was not usually shared with any other member of Mr. Bryant's staff.

Mr. Godwin pursued a different course. These occasional contributions did not satisfy his ideas of what the Evening Post should be in its editorial utterances. He set to work to stimulate a greater aggressiveness on the part of the staff writers, and he himself brought a strong hand to bear upon the work.

"A Lion in a Den of Daniels"

When Mr. Godwin died, a few years ago, Dr. Titus Munson Coan, in an obituary sketch read before the Authors Club, said with reference to this part of his career that in the Evening Post office "he was a lion in a den of Daniels," and the figure of speech was altogether apt.

He had gifts of an uncommon sort. He knew how to say strong things in a strong way. He could wield the rapier of subtle sarcasm, and the bludgeon of denunciation with an equally skilled hand. Sometimes he brought even a trip-hammer into play with startling effect.

I remember one conspicuous case of the kind. Sara Bernhardt was playing one of her earliest and most brilliant engagements in New York. Mr. Godwin's alert interest in every form of high art led him not only to employ critics of specially expert quality to write of her work, but himself now and then to write something of more than ordinary appreciation of the great Frenchwoman's genius as illustrated in her performance.

Presently a certain clergyman of the "sensational" school, who had denounced the theater as "the door of hell and the open gateway of damnation," sent to the Evening Post an intemperate protest against the large space it was giving to Sara Bernhardt and her art. The letter was entitled "Quite Enough of Sara Bernhardt," and in the course of it the writer declared the great actress to be a woman of immoral character and dissolute life, whom it was a shame, a disgrace, and a public calamity for the Evening Post even to name in its columns.