XII.
FORTUNE BEGINS TO SMILE
Edwards’ literary fortunes all but reached financial zero in 1897; with 1898 they began to mount, although the tendency upward was not very pronounced until the month of April. During the first quarter of the year he wrote and sold one Stella Edwards serial entitled “Lovers En Masque.” His poor health continued, and he was able to work only a few hours each day, but the fact that he could drive himself to the typewriter and lash his wits into evolving acceptable work gave him encouragement to keep at it. Early in April, with part of the proceeds from the serial story for expenses, he made a trip to New York.
“Prospecting trips” is the name Edwards gives to his frequent journeys to the publishing center of the country. He prospected for ordrs, prospected for better prices, prospected for new markets. No fiction factory can be run successfully on a haphazard system for disposing of its product. There must be some market in prospect, and on the wheel of this demand the output must be shaped as the potter shapes his clay.
Edwards made it a rule to meet his publishers once a year, secure their personal views as he could not secure them through correspondence, and keep himself prominently before them. In this way he secured commissions which, undoubtedly, would otherwise have been placed elsewhere. With each succeeding journey Edwards has made to New York, his prospecting trips have profited him more and more. This is as it should be. There is no “marking time” for a writer in the fierce competition for editorial favor; for one merely to “hold his own” is equivalent to losing ground. The writer must grow in his work. When he ceases to do that he will find himself slipping steadily backward toward oblivion.
Edwards found that in reaching New York in early April 1898, he had arrived at the psychological moment. Harte & Perkins, already described as keeping tense fingers on the pulse of their reading public, had discovered a feverish quickening of interest for which the Klondike gold rush was responsible. The prognosis was good for a new five-cent library; so the “Golden Star Library” was given to the presses. Edwards, because he was on the spot and urging his claims for recognition, was chosen to furnish the copy. During the year he wrote sixteen of these stories.
For half of April and all of May and June, Edwards and his wife were at their old boarding place in Forty-fourth street. During this time, along with the writing of the Golden Star stories, a juvenile serial and a Stella Edwards serial were prepared. The title of the Stella Edwards rhapsody was “A Blighted Heart.”
On July 2, owing to the excessive heat in the city and a belief on Edwards’ part that the country would benefit him, the Fiction Factory was temporarily removed to the Catskill Mountains. Comfortable quarters were secured in a hotel near Cairo, and the work of producing copy went faithfully on. Edwards’ health improved somewhat, although he was still unable to keep at his machine for a union day of eight hours.
Under date of Aug. 1, Harte & Perkins wrote Edwards that on account of the poor success of the Golden Star Library they would have to stop its weekly publication and issue it as a monthly. Mr. Perkins write:
“I do not think that the quality of the manuscciipt is so much at fault as the character of the library itself, though it is very difficult always to know just what the boys want.”
Edwards was depending upon this library to support himself and wife, and the weekly check was a sine qua non. Summer-resorting is expensive, and he had not yet had his fill of the historic old Catskills. He wrote the firm and requested them to send on a check for “A Blighted Heart.” The blight did not confine itself to the story but was visited upon Edwards’ hopes, as well. Harte & Perkins did not respond favorably. The serial was not to begin in “The Weekly Guest” until the latter part of September, and upon beginning publication was to be paid for in weekly installments of $25. Wrote Mr. Perkins:
“This is a season when, with depressed business and the many accounts we have to look after, it is difficult for us to make advanced payments on manuscripts. You may rest assured that, if conditions were otherwise, I should have been giad to meet your wishes.”
This meant an immediate farewell to the stamping grounds of good old Rip Van Winkle. Forthwith the Edwards struck their tent and boarded a night boat at Catskill Landing for down river. In their stateroom that night, with a fountain pen and using the washstand for a table, Edwards completed No. 16 of the ill-fated Golden Star Library. He had begun this manuscript before the notification to stop work on the series had reached him. In such cases, Harte & Perkins never refused to accept the complete story.
December found Edwards again settled on the North Side, in Chicago. He had consulted a physician regarding his health, and after a thorough examination had been told that it would require at least a year, and perhaps a year and a half, to cure him. The physician was a young man of splendid ability, and as he had just “put out his shingle” and patients were slow in rallying “round the standard,” he threw himself heart and soul into the task of making a whole man out of Edwards. The writer helped by leasing a flat within half a block of his medical adviser and faced the twelve or eighteen months to come with more or less equanimity.
Edwards, of course, could not recline at his ease while the work of rehabilitation was going forward. The family must be supported and the doctor paid. Forty dollars a month from the Golden Star Library would not do this. It was necessary to run up the returns somehow and another Stella Edwards story was undertaken. The title of this story was “Won by Love,” and Harte & Perkins acknowledged receipt of the first two installemnts on Dec. 6. Inasmuch as “Won by Love” came very near being the death of its author, it may be interesting to consider the story a little further. The letter of the 6th ran:
“We have received the first two installments of ‘Won by Love’ and like them very much indeed, but before giving you a definite answer we would like to have four more instalments on approval, making six in all. Kindly send these at your earliest convenience and oblige.”
The four installments were sent and nothing more was heard from them until a telegram, dated Jan. 19, 1899, was received:
“Please send more of ‘Won by Love’ as soon as possible. Must have it Monday.”
Owing to the fact that the writer of the old Five-Cent Library, for which Edwards had furnished copy some years before, had been taken seriously ill, this work had been turned over to Edwards on Dec. 27, 1898.
At this time Edwards was confined to his bed, and there he woirked, his typewriter in front of him on an improvised table. He had just finished several hours’ work on a library story when the telegram regarding “Won by Love” was received. This was Saturday. Edwards wired at once that he would send two more installments on the following Monday. These 12,000 words went forward according to schedule, and on the night they were sent the doctor called and found his patient in a state of collapse. Cause, too much “Won by Love.” The young physician took it more to heart than Edwards did.
“I’m afraid,” said he gloomily, “that you have ended your writing for all time.”
“You’re wrong, doctor,” declared Edwards; “I’m not going to be removed until I’ve done something better than pot-boilers.”
“I want to call a specialist into consultation,” was the reply.
The specialist was called and Edwards was stripped and his body marked off into sections – mapped out with one medical eye on the “undiscovered country” and the other on this lowly but altogether lovely “vale of tears.” When the examination was finished, the preponderance of testimony was all in favor of the Promised Land.
“I should say, Mr. Edwards,” said the specialist, in a tone professionally sympathetic, “that you have one chance in three to get well. Your other chance is for possibly seven or eight years of life. The third chance allows you barely time to settle your affairs.”
Settle his affairs! What affairs had Edwards to settle? There was the next library to be written and “Won by Love” to finish, but these would have netted Mrs. Edwards no more than $340. And the smallest chance would not suffer Edwards to leave his wife even this pittance. Since his disastrous Arizona experience Edwards had not been able to save any money. He was only just beginning to look ahead to a little garnering when the doctors pronounced their verdict. He had not a dollar of property, real or personal, if his library was not taken into account, and not a cent of life insurance. After turning this deplorable situation over in his mind, he decided that it was impossible for him to die.
“I’m going to take the first chance,” said he, “and make the most of it.”
He did. The young physician gave up more of his time and worked like a galley slave to see his patient through. Now, thirteen years after the specialist spoke the last word, Edwards is in robust health – the monument of his own determination and the young doctor’s skill. Nothing succeeds – sometimes – like the logic of nil desperandum.
To regain a foothold with his publishers, following the disastrous year of 1897, had cost Edwards so much persistent work that he would not cancel a single order. He hired a stenographer and for two weeks dictated his stories, then again resumed the writing of them himself, in bed and with the use of the improvised table. Success awaited all his fiction, even when turned out in such adverse circumstances. This, perhaps, was the best tonic he could have. He improved slowly but surely and was able, in addition to his regular work, to write a hundred-thousand word novel embracing his Arizona experiences. This novel he called “He Was a Stranger.”
The title was awkward, but it had been clipped from the quotation, “he was a stranger, and they took him in.” The story was submitted to Harte & Perkins, but they were not in the mood for taking in strangers of that sort. But the year following the novel secured the friendly consideration of Mr. Matthew White, Jr., and introduced Edwards into the Munsey publications.
Another novel, “The Man from Dakota,” was returned by Harte & Perkins after they had had it on hand for a year. It was declined in the face of a favorable report by one of their readers because, “We have so many books on hand that must be brought out during the next year that we cannot consider this story.”
The year 1899 closed with Fortune’s smile brightening delightfully for Edwards, and the new century beckoning him pleasantly onward with the hope of better things to come. The returns for the two years, standing to the credit of The Fiction Factory, are summarized thus:
1898:
"Lovers En Masque," $ 300.
"Golden Star Library," 16 at $40 each, 640.
Boys Serial, 100.
"A Blighted Heart," 300.
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Total $1340.
1899:
"Won by Love," $ 300.
3 "Golden Stars" at $40 each 120.
35 Five-Cent Libraries at $40 each, 1400.
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Total $1820.Edwards lives in the outskirts of a small town, on a road much travelled by farmers. Two honest tillers of the soil were passing his home, one day, and one of them was heard to remark to the other: “A man by the name of Edwards lives there, Jake. He’s one of those fictitious writers.”
§
Edwards has few friends whom he prizes more highly than he does Col. W.F. Cody, “Buffalo Bill,” and Major Gordon W. Lillie, “Pawnee Bill.” While the Wild West and Far East Show, of which Cody and Lillie are the proprietors was making its farewell tour with the Last of the Scouts, Major Lillie had this to tell about Colonel Cody:
“You’d be surprised at the number of people who try to beat their way into the show by stringing the Colonel. The favorite way is by claiming acquaintance with him. A stranger will approach Buffalo Bill with a bland smile and an outstretched hand. ‘Hello, Colonel!’ he’ll say, ‘guess who I am! I’ll bet you can’t guess who I am!’ Cody will give it up. ‘Why,’ bubbles the stranger, ‘don’t you remember when you were in Ogden, Utah, in nineteen-two? Remember the crowd at the depot to see you get off the train? Why, I was the man in the white hat!’”
“Just this afternoon,” laughed the Major, “Cody came up to where I was standing. He was wiping the sweat from his forehead and his face was red and full of disgust. ‘What’s the matter?’ I inquired. ‘Oh,’ he answered, ‘another one of those d— guessing contests! Why in blazes can’t people think up something new?’”
