X.
THE WOLF AT THE DOOR
Perhaps very few men in this life escape a period as black and dispiriting as was the year 1897 for Edwards. If not in one way, then in another, it is the fate of a man to be chastened and subdued so thoroughly, at least once in his career, that a livid rememberance of it remains always with him. Edwards has always been an optimist, but those blows of circumstance of the year 1897 found many weak places in the armor of his philosophy.
In tangling and untangling the threads of a story plot Edwards had become tolerably proficient, but in straightening out the snarls Fate had made in his own life he was crushed with a feeling of abject helplessness. There is a vast difference, it seems, in dealing with the complications of others and those that beset ourselves. The impersonal attitude makes for keener analysis and wiser judgment.
In a story, the poverty stricken hero and his wife may exist for a week on a loaf of bread, ten cents’ worth of potatoes and a twenty-cent soup-bone; but let the man who creates such a hero attempt to emulate his fictional fancies and stark realism plays havoc with the equation. The wolf at our own door is one sort of animal, and the wolf at our neighbor’s is of an altogether different breed.
The thermometer in Southern Arizona was “eighty in the shade” when Mr. and Mrs. Edwards, during the Christmas holidays, set their faces eastward. New York City, the shrine of so many pilgrims seeking prosperity, was their goal; and the metropolis, on that bleak New Year’s Day that witnessed their arrival, was shivering in the grip of real, old-fashioned winter. The change from a balmy climate to blizzards and ice and a below-zero temperature brought Edwards to his bed with a vicious attack of rheumatism. For days while the little fund of $100 melted steadily away, he lay helpless.
The great city, in its dealings with impecunious strangers, has been painted in cruel colors. Edwards found this to be a mistake. On the occasion of their first visit to New York he and his wife had found quarters in a boarding house in Forty-fourth street. A pleasant landlady was in charge and the Edwards had won her friendship.
Here, forming one happy family, were actors and actresses, a salesman in a down-town department store, a stenographer, a travelling man for a bicycle house, and others. All were cheerful and kindly, and took occasion to drop in at the Edwards’ third floor front and beguile the tedious hours for the invalid.
Fourteen years have brought many changes to Forty-fourth street between Broadway and Sixth avenue. The row of high-stoop brownstone “fronts” has that air of neglect which precedes demolition and the giving way of the old order to the new. The basement, where the pleasant landlady sat at her long table and smiled at the raillery and wit of “Beaney,” and Sam, and “Smithy,” and Ruth, and Ina and the rest, has fallen sadly from its high estate. A laundry has taken possession of the place. And “Beaney,” the light-hearted one who laughed at his own misfortunes and sympathized with the misfortunes of others, “Beaney” has gone to his long account. A veil as impenetrable has fallen over the pleasant landlady, Sam, “Smithy,” Ruth and Ina; and where-ever they may be, Edwards, remembering their kindness to him in his darkest days, murmurs for each and all of them a fervent “God bless you!” …
Before he was compelled to take to his bed Edwards had called at the offices of Harte & Perkins. His interview with Mr. Perkins impressed upon him the fact that, once a place upon the contributors’ staff of a big publising house is reliniquished it is difficult to regain. Others had been given the work which Edwards had had for three years. These others were turning in acceptable manuscripts and, in justice to them, Harte & Perkins could not take the work out of their hands. Mr. Perkins, however, did give Edwards an order for four Five-Cent Libraries – stories to be held in reserve in case manuscripts from regular contributors failed to arrive in time. On Feb. 11 he received a letter from the firm to the following effect:
“When we wrote you day before yesterday asking you to turn in four Five-Cent Libraries before doing anything else in the Library line for us, we were under the impression that the gentleman who has been engaged upon this work for some time would not be able to turn the material in with usual regularity on account of illness, but we hear from him today that he is now in better health, and will be able to keep up with the work, which he is very anxious to do, and somewhat jealous of having any other material in the series so long as he can fill the bill. On this account it will be well for you to stop work on the library. When you have completed the story on which you are now engaged, turn your attention to the Ten-Cent Library work, which we think you will be able to do to our satisfaction.”
This will illustrate the attitude which some authors assume toward the “butter-in.” All of a certain grist that comes to a publisher’s mill must be their grist. If the mill ground for another, and found the product better than ordinary, the other might secure a “stand-in” that would threaten the prestige of the regular contributor.
In seeking to keep his head above water financially, Edwards attempted to sell book rights of “The Astrologer,” the serial published in 1891 in The Detroit Free Press. He had written, also 66 pages of a present-tense Gunteresque story which he hoped would win favor as had his other stories in that style. This yarn he called “Croesus, Jr.” Both manuscripts were submitted to Harte & Perkins.
On Jan. 28, when the Edwards’ exchequer was nearly depleted, “Croesus, Jr.,” was returned with this written message:
“It might be said of the story in a way that it is readable, but it does not promise as good a story as we desire for this series. ‘Most decidedly,’ says the reader, ‘it lacks originality, novelty and strength.’ This criticism, which we consider entirely competent, must deter us from considering the story favorably.”
This was blow number one. Blow number two was delivered Feb. 3:
“We have had your manuscript, ‘The Astrologer,’ examined, and the verdict is that it would not be suitable for any of our regular publications, and it is not in our line for book publication. The reader states that it very humorous in parts but rather long drawn out…. We return manuscript.”
Two Five-Cent Libraries at $40 each were accepted and paid for; also four sketches written for a small magazine which Harte & Perkins were starting. [*]
[*This magazine, by the way, which had an humble beginning, has grown into one of the high class “populars” and has a wide circulation.]
Although he grew better of his rheumatism, Edwards failed to improve materially in health, and late in March he and his wife returned to Chicago. They rented a modest flat on the North Side, got their household effects out of storage, and faced the problem of existence with a courage scarcely warranted by their circtmistances.
Edwards was able to work only half a day. The remainder of the day he spent in bed with an alternation of chills and fever and a grevious malady growing upon him. During this period he tried syndicating articles in the newspapers but without success. He also wrote for Harte & Perkins a “Guest” serial, the order for which he had brought back with him from New York. He made one try for this by submitting the first few chapters and synopsis of story which he called “A Vassar Girl.” These were returned to him as unsuitable. He then wrote seven chapters of a serial entitled, “A Girl from the Backwoods,” and – with much fear and trembling be it confessed – sent them on for examination. Under date of July 8 this word was returned:
“The seven chapters of ‘A Girl from the Backwoods’ read very good, and we should like to have you finish the story, and should it prove satisfactory in its entirely, we should consider it an acceptable story.”
Here was encouragement at a time when encouragement was sorely needed. But how to keep the Factory going while the story was being finished was a difficult question. There were times when twenty-five cents had to procure a Sunday dinner for two; and there was a time when two country cousins arrived for a visit, and Edwards had not the half-dollar to pay an expressman for bringing their trunks from the station! Pride, be it understood, was one of Edwards’ chief assets. He had always been a regal spender, and his country cousins knew it. How the lack of that fifty-cent piece grilled his sensitive soul!
It was during these trying times that the genius of Mrs. Edwards showed like a star in the heavy gloom. On next to nothing she contrived to supply the table, and the conjuring she could do with a silver dollar was a source of never-failing wonder to her husband.
Edwards remembers that, at a time when there was not even car-fare in the family treasury, a check for $1.50 arrived in payment for a 1,500-word story that had been out for several years.
During the latter part of July the demand for money pending the completion of “A Girl from the Backwoods” became so insistent, that Edwards wrote and submitted to Harte & Perkins a sketch for their magazine. It contained 1,232 words and was purchased on Aug. 3 for $6.16.
“A Girl from the Backwoods” was submitted late in September, and was returned on Oct. 13 for a small correction. The following letter, dated Oct. 27, was received from the editor of the “Guest:”
“The manuscript of ‘A Girl from the Backwoods’, also the correction which you have made, have been duly received. The correction is very satisfactory.
In regard to your suggestion about the heroine’s name being that of a well known writer, we would say that inasmuch as the name is rather appropriate and suits the character we do not see that the lady who already bears it would in any way find fault with your use of it, and at present we think it may be allowed to stand.”
As showing Edwards’ pecuniary distress, the following paragraph from a letter from Harte & Perkins, dated Oct. 28, may be given:
“In response to your favor of the 19th and your telegram of yesterday, [*] we enclose you herewith our check for $200 in full for your story ‘A Girl from the Backwoods.’ This is the best price we can make you for this and other stories of this class from your pen, and it is a somewhat better one than we are now paying for similar material from other writers. We believe this will be satisfactory to you.”
[* Telegram sent on same day letter was received saying story was satisfactory.]
The price was not saticfactory. Edwards and his wife had counted upon receiving at least $300 for the story, and they needed that amount sorely. A respectful letter at once went forward to Harte & Perkins, appealing to their sense of justice and fairness, which Edwards had never yet known to fail him. On Nov. 3 came an additional check for $100, and these words:
“Replying to your favor of Nov. 1st, at hand today, we beg to state that we shall, agreeably with your request and especially as you put it in such strong terms, make the payment on ‘A Girl from the Backwoods’ $300. The story is much liked by our reader and we do think it is worth as much if not more than the Stella Edwards material which, however, in the writer’s judgement was much overpaid. We shall take this into account when considering the acceptance of other stories from your pen, and while we do not say positively that we will not pay $300 for the next one, as we wrote you in our last letter this is a high price for this class of material and we will expect to pay you according to our views as to the value of the manuscript.”
The year closed with an order from Harte & Perkins for another story of the Stella Edwards sort; a very dismal year indeed, and showing Factory returns as follows:
Two Five-Cent Libraries at $40 $ 80.00
Four magazine sketches at $10 40.00
One magazine sketch 6.16
"A Girl from the Backwoods," 300.
______
Total $426.16Perhaps, after all, this was not doing so badly; for during this year, and the year immediately following, Edwards was to discover that he had had one foot in the grave. But his fortunes were at their lowest ebb. With 1898 they were to begin taking an upward turn.
Some one said that some one else, by using Ignatius Donnelly’s cryptogram, proved that the late Bill Nye wrote the Shakespeare plays. This, of course, is merely a reflection on the cryptogram; BUT if Shakespeare’s publishers had not been so slovenly with that folio edition of his plays, there would never have been any hunt for a cipher, nor any of this Bacon talk.
§
“In the early days, when I lived on the plains of Western Kansas on a homestead,” says John H. Whitson, well and favorably known to dozens of editors, “I was nosed out by a correspondent for a Kansas City paper, who thought there was something bizarre in the fact that an author was living the simple life of a Western Settler. The purported interview he published was wonderful concoction! He gave a descriptive picture of the dug-out in which I lived, and filled in the gaps with other matter drawn from his imagination, making me out a sort of literary troglodyte; whereas, as a matter of fact, I had never lived in a dug-out. On top of it, one of my homesteading friends asked me in all seriousness how much I had paid to get that write-up and picture in the Kansas City paper, and seemed to think I was doing some tall lying when I said I had paid nothing.”
