In this hurriedly written sketch, which is thrown together to meet the modern exigencies of publishing, the round, and full, and complete biography cannot be looked for. There is no time here for the selection and arrangement in an orderly way of the details of this busy and brilliant life. Under the circumstances, even the hand of affection can only touch it here and there so swiftly and so lightly that the random result must be inartistic and unsatisfactory. It was at such moments as these—moments of hurry and high-pressure—that Mr. Grady was at his best. His hand was never surer,—the machinery of his mind was never more responsive to the tremendous demands he made on it,—than when the huge press of the Constitution was waiting his orders; when the forms were waiting to be closed, when the compositors were fretting and fuming for copy, and when, perhaps, an express train was waiting ten minutes over its time to carry the Constitution to its subscribers. All his faculties were trained to meet emergencies; and he was never happier than when meeting them, whether in a political campaign, in conventions, in local issues, or in the newspaper business as correspondent or managing editor. Pressed by the emergency of his death, which to me was paralyzing, and by the necessity of haste, which, at this juncture, is confusing, these reminiscences have taken on a disjointed shape sadly at variance with the demands of literary art. Let me, therefore, somewhere in the middle, begin at the beginning.
Henry Woodfin Grady was born in Athens, Georgia, on the 24th of April, 1850. As a little boy he was the leader of all the little boys of his acquaintance—full of that moral audacity that takes the lead in all innocent and healthy sports. An old gentleman, whose name I have forgotten, came into the Constitution editorial rooms shortly after Mr. Grady delivered the New England banquet speech, to say that he knew Henry when a boy. I listened with interest, but the memory of what he said is vague. I remember that his reminiscences had a touch of enthusiasm, going to show that the little boy was attractive enough to make a deep impression on his elders. He had, even when a child, all those qualities that draw attention and win approval. It is easy to believe that he was a somewhat boisterous boy. Even after he had a family of his own, and when he was supposed (as the phrase is) to have settled down, he still remained a boy to all intents and purposes. His vitality was inexhaustible, and his flow of animal spirits unceasing. In all athletic sports and out-door exercises he excelled while at school and college, and it is probable that his record as a boxer, wrestler, sprinter, and an all-around athlete is more voluminous than his record for scholarship. To the very last, his enthusiasm for these sports was, to his intimate friends, one of the most interesting characteristics of this many-sided man.
One of his characteristics as a boy, and it was a characteristic that clung to him through all his life, was his love and sympathy for the poor and lowly, for the destitute and the forlorn. This was one of the problems of life that he could never understand,—why, in the economy of Providence, some human beings should be rich and happy, and others poor and friendless. When a very little child he began to try to solve the problem in his own way. It was a small way, indeed, but if all who are fortunately situated should make the same effort charity would cause the whole world to smile, and Heaven could not possibly withhold the rich promise of its blessings. From his earliest childhood, Mr. Grady had a fondness for the negro race. He was fond of the negroes because they were dependent, his heart went out to them because he understood and appreciated their position. When he was two years old, he had a little negro boy named Isaac to wait on him. He always called this negro “Brother Isaac,” and he would cry bitterly, if any one told him that Isaac was not his brother. As he grew older his interest in the negroes and his fondness for them increased. Until he was eight or nine years old he always called his mother “Dear mother,” and when the weather was very cold, he had a habit of waking in the night and saying: “Dear mother, do you think the servants have enough cover? It’s so cold, and I want them to be warm.” His first thought was always for the destitute and the lowly—for those who were dependent on him or on others. At home he always shared his lunch with the negro children, and after the slaves were freed, and were in such a destitute condition, scarcely a week passed that some forlorn-looking negro boy did not bring his mother a note something like this: “Dear Mother: Please give this child something to eat. He looks so hungry. H. W. G.” It need not be said that no one bearing credentials signed by this thoughtful and unselfish boy was ever turned away hungry from the Grady door. It may be said, too, that his love and sympathy for the negroes was fully appreciated by that race. His mother says that she never had a servant during all his life that was not devoted to him, and never knew one to be angry or impatient with him. He could never bear to see any one angry or unhappy about him. As a child he sought to heal the wounds of the sorrowing, and to the last, though he was worried by the vast responsibilities he had taken on his shoulders and disturbed by the thoughtless demands made on his time and patience, he suffered more from the sorrows of others than from any troubles of his own. When he went to school, he carried the same qualities of sympathy and unselfishness that had made him charming as a child. If, among his school-mates, there was to be found a poor or a delicate child, he took that child under his especial care, and no one was allowed to trouble it in any way.
Shortly after he graduated at the State University, an event occurred that probably decided Mr. Grady’s future career. In an accidental way he went on one of the annual excursions of the Georgia Press Association as the correspondent of the Constitution. His letters describing the incidents of the trip were written over the signature of “King Hans.”
They were full of that racy humor that has since become identified with a large part of Mr. Grady’s journalistic work. They had a flavor of audacity about them, and that sparkling suggestiveness that goes first by one name and then another, but is chiefly known as individuality. The letters created a sensation among the editors. There was not much that was original or interesting in Georgia journalism in that day and time. The State was in the hands of the carpet-baggers, and the newspapers reflected in a very large degree the gloom and the hopelessness of that direful period. The editors abused the Republicans in their editorial columns day after day, and made no effort to enlarge their news service, or to increase the scope of their duties or their influence. Journalism in Georgia, in short, was in a rut, and there it was content to jog.
Though the “King Hans” letters were the production of a boy, their humor, their aptness, their illuminating power (so to say), their light touch, and their suggestiveness, showed that a new star had arisen. They created a lively diversion among the gloomy-minded editors for a while, and then the procession moved sadly forward in the old ruts. But the brief, fleeting, and humorous experience that Mr. Grady had as the casual correspondent of the Constitution decided him. Perhaps this was his bent after all, and that what might be called a happy accident was merely a fortunate incident that fate had arranged, for to this beautiful and buoyant nature fate seemed to be always kind. Into his short life it crowded its best and dearest gifts. All manner of happiness was his—the happiness of loving and of being beloved—the happiness of doing good in directions that only the Recording Angel could follow—and before he died Fame came and laid a wreath of flowers at his feet. Fate or circumstance carried him into journalism. His “King Hans” letters had attracted attention to him, and it seemed natural that he should follow this humorous experiment into a more serious field.
He went to Rome not long afterwards, and became editor of the Rome Courier. The Courier was the oldest paper in the city, and therefore the most substantial. It was, in fact, a fine piece of property. But the town was a growing town, and the Courier had rivals, the Rome Daily, if my memory serves me, and the Rome Commercial. Just how long Mr. Grady edited the Courier, I have no record of; but one fine morning, he thought he discovered a “ring” of some sort in the village. I do not know whether it was a political or a financial ring. We have had so many of these rings in one shape or another that I will not trust my memory to describe it; but it was a ring, and probably one of the first that dared to engage in business. Mr. Grady wrote a fine editorial denouncing it, but when the article was submitted to the proprietor, he made some objection. He probably thought that some of his patrons would take offense at the strong language Mr. Grady had used. After some conversation on the subject, the proprietor of the Courier flatly objected to the appearance of the editorial in his paper. Mr. Grady was about eighteen years old then, with views and a little money of his own. In the course of a few hours he had bought out the two opposing papers, consolidated them, and his editorial attack on the ring appeared the next morning in the Rome Daily Commercial. It happened on the same morning that the two papers, the Courier and the Daily Commercial, both appeared with the name of Henry W. Grady as editor. The ring, or whatever it was, was smashed. Nobody heard anything more of it, and the Commercial was greeted by its esteemed contemporaries as a most welcome addition to Georgia journalism. It was bright and lively, and gave Rome a new vision of herself.
It was left to the Commercial to discover that Rome was a city set on the hills, and that she ought to have an advertising torch in her hands. The Commercial, however, was only an experiment. It was run, as Mr. Grady told me long afterwards, as an amateur casual. He had money to spend on it, and he gave it a long string to go on. Occasionally he would fill it up with his bright fancies, and then he would neglect it for days at a time, and it would then be edited by the foreman. It was about this time that I met Mr. Grady. We had had some correspondence. He was appreciative, and whatever struck his fancy he had a quick response for. Some foolish paragraph of mine had appealed to his sense of humor, and he pursued the matter with a sympathetic letter that made a lasting impression. The result of that letter was that I went to Rome, pulled him from his flying ponies, and had a most enjoyable visit. From Rome we went to Lookout Mountain, and it is needless to say that he was the life of the party. He was its body, its spirit, and its essence. We found, in our journey, a dissipated person who could play on the zither. Just how important that person became, those who remember Mr. Grady’s pranks can imagine. The man with the zither took the shape of a minstrel, and in that guise he went with us, always prepared to make music, which he had often to do in response to Mr. Grady’s demands.
Rome, however, soon ceased to be large enough for the young editor. Atlanta seemed to offer the widest field, and he came here, and entered into partnership with Colonel Robert A. Alston and Alex St. Clair-Abrams. It was a queer partnership, but there was much that was congenial about it. Colonel Alston was a typical South Carolinian, and Abrams was a Creole. It would be difficult to get together three more impulsive and enterprising partners. Little attention was paid to the business office. The principal idea was to print the best newspaper in the South, and for a time this scheme was carried out in a magnificent way that could not last. Mr. Grady never bothered himself about the finances, and the other editors were not familiar with the details of business. The paper they published attracted more attention from newspaper men than it did from the public, and it was finally compelled to suspend. Its good will—and it had more good will than capital—was sold to the Constitution, which had been managed in a more conservative style. It is an interesting fact, however, that Mr. Grady’s experiments in the Herald, which were failures, were successful when tried on the Constitution, whose staff he joined when Captain Evan P. Howell secured a controlling interest. And yet Mr. Grady’s development as a newspaper man was not as rapid as might be supposed. He was employed by the Constitution as a reporter, and his work was intermittent.
One fact was fully developed by Mr. Grady’s early work on the Constitution,—namely, that he was not fitted for the routine work of a reporter. One day he would fill several columns of the paper with his bright things, and then for several days he would stand around in the sunshine talking to his friends, and entertaining them with his racy sayings. I have seen it stated in various shapes in books and magazines that the art of conversation is dead. If it was dead before Mr. Grady was born, it was left to him to resurrect it. Charming as his pen was, it could bear no reasonable comparison with his tongue. I am not alluding here to his eloquence, but to his ordinary conversation. When he had the incentive of sympathetic friends and surroundings, he was the most fascinating talker I have ever heard. General Toombs had large gifts in that direction, but he bore no comparison in any respect to Mr. Grady, whose mind was responsive to all suggestions and to all subjects. The men who have made large reputations as talkers have had the habit of selecting their own subjects and treating them dogmatically. We read of Coleridge buttonholing an acquaintance and talking him to death on the street, and of Carlyle compelling himself to be heard by sheer vociferousness. Mr. Grady could have made the monologue as interesting as he did his orations, but this was not his way. What he did was to take up whatever commonplace subject was suggested, and so charge it with his nimble wit and brilliant imagination as to give it a new importance.