By the time the New Yorker of to-day has read thus far, if he has read, it may have become clear to him how great a part of all the renown in literature we have abroad comes to us from Boston. All the American writers best known here and most read, Whitman excepted, are of Boston, or of the State of which Boston is, or was, the final expression. If another exception were to be made it would be Lincoln, whose greatest pieces of prose, and most of all the Gettysburg address, are well known to Englishmen who know anything of America. If what Dr. Jonson said in the preface to his dictionary, "The chief glory of every people arises from its authors," be true, then what do we Americans not owe to Boston? Supposing, that is, we care for the judgment of a foreign nation, which Browning declared to be like the judgment of posterity.
For some of these Bostonians London has a personal affection. Emerson is beloved. Lowell was an immense favourite; a favourite notwithstanding his combativeness in a society which prefers toleration to excursions on the warpath. Holmes during his visits here was idolized, and as the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table he is idolized, and quoted day in and day out. Of Longfellow's Poems in the pre-copyright days more copies were sold than of Tennyson, and when he was here the English thought him almost one of themselves. Dana's Two Years Before the Mast is the one story of the sea which, among many rivals, seems likely to be immortal in England, and is, meantime, the one which in circulation year after year far exceeds all others. And Dana was one of those Americans on whom the English found an English birthmark.
There was a time when Mr. James and Mr. Howells used to be bracketed, as if they hunted in couples; which was not a discriminating view, though a popular view. It expressed itself in the jingle about "Howells and James Young Men," of which the music-hall was the proper home; and there it related to a firm in Regent Street, now extinct. But it was sung by the daughters of a house where Mr. James was a guest, and almost in his hearing, to the horror of its mistress. To all popularity there are penalties. But the popularity of Mr. James is perennial.
CHAPTER XXIII
SOME ACCOUNT OF A REVOLUTION IN INTERNATIONAL JOURNALISM
I
Returning to New York in the early autumn of 1866 and spending the winter in The Tribune office, I was again sent abroad the following year, this time under an agreement to remain till 1870. I was to go as the exponent of a new theory of American journalism in Europe, a theory based on the belief that the cable had altered all the conditions of international news gathering and that a new system had to be created. I had been long enough in London and on the Continent to be convinced that London must become the distributing centre of European news for America. I talked it over with Mr. Young on my return. Mr. Young had a mind open to new ideas and he was unusually quick in deciding. But this suggestion struck him at first as a proposal to impair the authority of the managing editorship. He thought, naturally, there ought to be but one executive head, and that a European manager, no matter how strictly subordinated to his chief in New York, would, at such a distance, acquire too much independence. The proposal, moreover, was far-reaching and had no precedent; not that the want of a precedent troubled Mr. Young much. He had spent much of his time as managing editor of The Tribune in disregarding precedents and laying down laws of his own. But this scheme, he presently saw, would never have been thought of had not submarine telegraphy taken a practicable shape, nor would such a scheme have been of much practical use so long as news went by mail. Nor could it be tried till a great many details had been thought out.
Under the old system, each Tribune correspondent reported directly to New York. Had that system remained unaltered, the triumphs of American journalism in Europe would have been impossible. That all the European representatives of this paper should report to London instead of New York might seem no very great matter, but in truth it was vital. When it had once been decided to establish a Tribune office in London, a revolution had taken place. There was to be a responsible agent in charge. He was to organize a new administration. He was to appoint and dismiss other agents all over the Continent. He was—subject, of course, to orders from New York—to transmit news to New York.
He was to be the telephone between Europe and the managing editor in New York. But he was to relieve the New York office of its supervision over the European staff. What St. Petersburg and Vienna, Berlin and Paris, had to say to New York was to be said through London. There would be an economy of time. Orders could be sent from London and results received much more quickly than from New York. In an emergency as was presently to be shown, the difference was enormous. The notion of the centrality of London, of its unity as a news bureau, was perfectly simple.