LXIII
I had been operating my little literary shop successfully for three or four years after quitting the Evening Post, when Mr. Parke Godwin came to me to say that he and some friends were about buying a controlling interest in the newspaper called The New York Commercial Advertiser, and that he wanted me to join his staff. I told him I had no desire to return to journalism, that I liked my quiet literary life at home, and that I was managing to make enough out of it to support my family.
He replied that at any rate I might undertake the literary editorship of his newspaper; that it would involve no more than a few hours of office attendance in each week, and need not interfere in any way with my literary undertakings of other kinds.
I had a very great personal regard for Mr. Godwin; a very great admiration for his character, and an abiding affection for him as a man. When he pressed this proposal upon me, insisting that its acceptance would relieve him of a burden, I decided to undertake what he wanted. I was the readier to do so for a peculiar reason. In those days pretty nearly all books, American or English, were first offered to the Harpers, and I had to examine them all, either in manuscript, if they were American, or in proof sheets if they were English. Consequently, whether they were published by the Harpers or by some one else, I was thoroughly familiar with them long before they came from the press. I foresaw that it would be easy for me to review them from the acquaintance I already had with their contents.
In Newspaper Life Again
I was resolutely determined not to be drawn again into the newspaper life, but I foresaw no danger of that in making the literary arrangement suggested.
Accordingly, I became literary editor of the Commercial Advertiser under Mr. Godwin's administration as the editor-in-chief of that newspaper. The paper had never been conducted upon the lines he proposed or upon any other well-defined lines, so far as I could discover, and I foresaw that he had a hard task before him. All the reputation the paper had was detrimental rather than helpful. I was eager to help him over the first hurdles in the race, and so, in addition to my literary duties I not only wrote editorials each day, but helped in organizing a news staff that should at least recognize news when it ran up against it in the street.
Mr. Godwin was himself editor-in-chief, and the vigor of his utterances made a quick impression. But his managing editor lacked—well, let us say some at least of the qualifications that tend to make a newspaper successful. Mr. Godwin was an exceedingly patient man, but after a while he wearied of the weekly loss the paper was inflicting upon him. In the meanwhile, I discovered that my attention to the newspaper was seriously interfering with my literary work, and that the fifty dollars a week which the paper paid me did not compensate me for the time I was giving to it at the expense of my other undertakings. I wrote to Mr. Godwin, recommending a very capable young man to take my place, and asking to be released from an engagement that was anything but profitable to me.
For reply I had a prompt letter from Mr. Godwin asking me to see him at his home. There he asked and urged me to become managing editor of the paper from that hour forth. He told me he was losing money in large sums upon its conduct, and appealed to me to come to his rescue, urging that he was "too old and too indolent" himself to put life into the enterprise.
The question of salary was not mentioned between us. He appealed to me to help him and I stood ready to do so at any sacrifice of personal interest or convenience. But when the board of directors of the corporation met a month later, he moved an adequate salary for me and suggested that it should be dated back to the day on which I had taken control. A certain excessively small economist on the board objected to the dating back on the ground that no bargain had been made to that effect and that he was "constitutionally opposed to the unnecessary squandering of money."