copy of the magazine contained a hundred and fifty thousand words, written by from thirty to forty different contributors, all with their own individual style or lack of style, their own unique ideas of punctuation and capitalization, their own varying capacity for accuracy. Now, I thought then, as I think now, that up to the limits of good taste and permissible idiomatic or grammatical construction a writer's style should be respected, but that the magazine also had rights -rights of consistency, accuracy, and good form. To devote my chief efforts to the task of reconciling the differences between magazine and contributors appealed to me as the most fruitful field left open. Beneath the simpler need of perfecting a uniform style in typography and harmonizing dialectical forms there lay a foundation of certain longestablished requirements. I had learned on my entrance to the office that all quotations, dates, and proper names were always to be verified, and that we possessed a list of words, based largely, as I was to learn later, on the one Bryant had used on the "New York Evening Post," that were to be avoided. In addition there were traditional safeguards to which my attention would be drawn from time to time. Occasionally, we would find on our desks, when we opened them in the morning, little yellow slips in Mr. Johnson's handwriting similar in their warning character, if not in their substance, to this one which fell to my lot in that early time: "Dear L. F. T. Please note mems. R. U. J.-I. Paragraphing, but beware of breaking continuity. II. Profanity. III. Libels or undue personalities. IV. Advertisements. V. Query all doubt ful things. VI. Snags. VII. Foreign languages to experts. VIII. Keep close touch with R. U. J. IX. Consider economy of changes. X. Please speak to R. U. J. after looking up queries. XI. Go on with your bulletin of style, so that R. U. J. & C. C. B. can catch step with you and save expense." The degree of enthusiasm called forth by these little slips varied, it must be confessed, with the temperament or conscience of the recipients. One never knew what lay behind them, and whether the arrow had been shot from the bow impelled by the cord of one's own negligence or merely by the personal zeal of the writer. The time of this particular document evidently had fallen in one of our closed seasons against profanity. Always we deleted oaths that were irreverent, and usually those of any sort, but now and then we would come across others so genially native in character or so happily true to local color that we would break our rule in sympathy with the old malster in "Far from the Madding Crowd": "Nater requires her swearing at the regular times, or she's not herself; an unholy exclamation is a necessity of life.” Such relapses, however, were short, and the protests of readers would quickly bring back our old restrictions. Against the milder forms of profanity no one dreams of protesting to editors to-day, a change that reveals the drift in one form of license that has occurred since the eighties. One of these tabulated reminders"Consider economy of changes"-I took, I remember, to heart. At that time, with a few exceptions, all manuscripts were set up in type just as they came from their authors, and received no editorial revision until they reached the form of page proof. Sometimes these pages would be returned to the printers with their margins black with penciled corrections. Indeed, so frequently were comparatively trifling changes made in the plates that had already been cast, and so often were the presses held up while the corrections were being made, that sometimes I felt that we had assumed the pose of the Queen in "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" in the easy casualness with which we cried, "Off with their heads!" The great expense incurred by such methods worried my frugal mind so greatly that I early asked to be allowed to edit all manuscripts before they were set up in type. I was told that it was impractical, because articles that had been engaged would often be late, while there would always be others of a timely nature that it would be necessary to withhold from the printers until the last moment. I worked for years to gain my point. the magazine as a personal organ and the unnamed writer more likely to be amenable to editorial guidance. In the first reason authors of the better class readily concurred. Longfellow was long opposed to any open appearance in a magazine as derogatory to his standing as a poet who took himself seriously, and Holmes had believed that to permit his name to appear openly in a magazine as a contributor would be harmful to him as a physician. Even as late as 1883 this opinion was to survive, and the fear of the cap and bells of a writer of mere fiction, a confessedly low avocation for one who had aspirations above those of the ragtag and eccentrics of Bohemia, had led John Hay to permit "The Breadwinners" to appear in THE CENTURY MAGAZINE only under the pledge that his name as the author should be kept a profound secret. The change took place without a ripple, and a year later any return to the old way would have been considered unthinkable; for not only were costs materially lowered, but abundant time was gained in which to submit proofs to authors, to receive their corrections, and to consider their protests against changes made in the office. The warfare that has raged in America over the last point is as old as the history of magazines themselves. It has, however, materially changed in character. In the early days of the magazine in America editors had favored anonymity in their authors partly in the belief common to the period that a certain divinity hedged in the veiled prophet, and thus aroused a greater curiosity in readers, and partly because they thought of It was a situation well devised to make the editor high-handed. He became a literary dictator, a censor of ideas, and in his own mind a molder of public opinion. Naturally, the opinion was always his own, unless, as in the cases of "The Knickerbocker" and "Harper's," the editor resigned himself to a Laodicean pose and, refusing to allow his pages to express any opinions at all, gave himself wholly to entertainment and academic instruction. "Godey's" never troubled its conscience about the rights of its authors, but could show a pleasing appreciation of their ideas by incorporating them bodily, without thought of giving credit, in the editor's notes as parts of the editorial wisdom. Lowell had heatedly declared that a magazine could have only one editor without losing all individuality, and as the director of "The North American Review" and "The Atlantic" he made himself a taskmaster an academic taskmaster freely blue-penciling the essays of his unhappy pupils. As editor of the "Review" he believed that it should present the best thought of the nation, but he saw to it that the best thought "followed along with his own mind." To Stedman he wrote: "I shall take the liberty to make a verbal change here and there, such as I am sure you would agree to could we talk the matter over. I think, for example, you speak rather too well of young Lytton, whom I regard both as an impostor and as an antinomian heretic. Swinburne I must modify a little, as you will see, to make the Review consistent with itself. But you need not be afraid of not knowing your own child again." Even his best friends in the inner literary circle of Boston, whom the awed barbarian of outer darkness naturally thinks of as common heirs with him to all esoteric literary wisdom, had occasion to complain of his unsubmitted changes in their poems and his mangling of what they thought their highly polished prose. But just where lies the point at which a legitimate editorial prerogative becomes culpable narrowness will always be an open question. Lowell, with other editors of his time, was undoubtedly fully within his rights in holding himself responsible for both the substance and form of the great journals he edited, and no student of magazine history who knows his experience and attainments will take too seriously the complaints of his contributors that his emendations in their style marred its polish. There are few authors indeed who do not occasionally fall into verbal pits, and fewer still who have no affectations of manner, dear children of an unreasoning love. In the matter of being broad-minded toward opinions not their own, modern editors like to plume themselves on having become more liberal than their predecessors of an earlier day, though critics may be found who believe their broad-mindedness due to the absence of convictions rather than to the lessening of prejudice. 82 It was into this arena of personal organs and regional magazines that THE CENTURY sprang with the avowed ambition to be both broad-minded and national. The fear of offending narrowness or error never swerved Dr. Holland a jot when he thought that right was to be defended or wrong to be assailed; but the magazine he conducted was still strongly personal in that "right" to him was the thing he believed in, and “wrong” was the thing he abhorred. He made the magazine a channel through which flowed the common beliefs and aspirations of the American people, or, rather, that great body of the people whom he conceived to be, like himself, upright, religious, and firmly moored in certain long-established conventions. To his mind there was no lack of breadth in that he possessed strong reticences. Any other course was only to compromise with the devil. The shadowy form of that sinister personage was speedily to fade on the editorial horizon of THE CENTURY after the death of Dr. Holland. The magazine broadened its outlook, softened its asperities, and no longer refused to give place to opinions in which the editors were not wholly in accord. It still had its reticences, like its rules against profanity, reflections upon certain supposedly sensitive religious bodies, and a too great freedom of speech, though now on different grounds: religion and morality had graciously given way to good taste. Indeed, it was the genial autumn of the Victorian age of literature, and we basked pleasantly in the golden glow of its rich fruitage. With Pater's "A perfect poem like Lycidas, a perfect fiction like Esmond, the perfect handling of a theory like Newman's Idea of a University, has for them something of the uses of a religious retreat," we were all, I believe, thoroughly in accord. And thus being assured in our own minds that we had arrived at the perfection of literary form, we were resolved to keep our heritage unsoiled. The structure of the poem and the good taste of the short story or novel were bound by the rules of regularity as rigidly as the entasis of the columns of the Parthenon was governed by the formulæ of the craftsmen who shaped them. Imagination and fertility of thought might be as dynamic as one chose, but form and good taste were static. To the literary world there had been in the earlier utterances of the vigorous young monthly something that smacked of the camp-meeting and the chapel in chapel in a community given over to a more formal worship; but in the methods and ideals of the new young editor and his associates, keen followers of form and, within the restricted limits of Victorian good taste, having a broad-minded tolerance in the matter of ideas, the literary world had entire confidence and sympathy. More than a generation ago I was preparing for the press the manuscripts of Howells, James, and Stedman: of Kipling, Weir Mitchell, and Cable: of Mrs. Ward, Crawford, and Stockton, yet no protests against the editorial treatment of their work ever came to my ears, as they would if any had been made. If the authors I have mentioned concerned themselves little with the editorial changes made in their copy, one might find a very obvious explanation in the fact that few were needed; for, first of all, they were craftsmen. If occasionally they fell into faults, they were grateful for correction; for they had little of the supersensitiveness of certain lesser writers who hedge themselves about with omniscience, and hold all emendations as merely reflections on their self-constituted divinity. Something of the spirit of that faroff day Mr. Howells brought back when, after a long absence from the magazine, he returned to it in 1916 with his novel, "The Leatherwood God." The book had already been set in galley form when it came to us, and on the margins of the pages that I had selected for the first instalment I made many changes, most of them, of course, mere matters of editorial style and consistent punctuation. It seemed more gracious in this case, however, to submit the changes to the author for approval before sending them to the printer, and, in doing so, I added a note to the effect that reading his manuscript in the office again was like renewing my youth, for that had been my pleasure more than thirty years before. He possessed the businesslike promptness that has characterized most of the better class of writers whom I have known, for his proof was returned the next day, with this note: "Dear Mr. Tooker: "Thirty years ago! that is a long time. I doubt if you will be reading my proof thirty years from now. Still, you may be; no one can tell. You will see that I have bowed to your greater scientific methods, and have accepted nearly all of your changes. In a few cases, however, I have kept the old form. Sometimes, you know, one likes to play by ear." Before the second instalment of "The Leatherwood God" was ready to go to Mr. Howells, he went to St. Augustine for the winter; but on the eve of his departure he sent me a note, saying that I need not take the trouble to submit any proof to him in the future, as he was perfectly willing to leave all question of changes entirely to my judgment. Naturally, in making subsequent corrections, I was not unmindful of his occasional liking "to play by ear." It was like him, that first note, gracious and friendly, and quick with a kindly instinct to put at his ease one charged with a difficult task. It is only with the greatest reluctance that the conscientious magazine man tinkers with the work of another, whether he admires or detests it, for he can have neither predilections nor prejudices. It is for him to be loyal to the magazine itself, to make it as impeccable as he, in his fallible human judgment, can make it. For beliefs or sentiments that it condemns the public naturally holds the author responsible, and upon him visits its censure; but for the blunders in his English the magazine is blamed. Few magazine writers are men of genius, and few, indeed, are even good craftsmen, and between their disapproval and the scorn of that small body of readers whose foible is the searching out of printers' errors the unhappy editor walks the narrow path that divides the devil and the deep sea. When at times I read the despairing lamentations of contributors who declare that their work has been ruined by too many changes and the derisive outcries of those critics who point out that too few have been made, I sometimes have a beautiful dream of allowing one number of the magazine to go out into the world with every contributor displaying just that degree of art and skill that he has received from his Maker, untouched by the polishingbrush of the editor. It might easily be a revelation to the chosen few, though the vast majority might note little difference, having small concern with literary niceties. A dream I have more frequently is of a cordial coöperation between authors and editors, the leisure to offer suggestions and reconcile differences of opinion, and no haste in rushing a work to the public before the last touch has been made. Leisure for this is necessary, but easily to be had, for no magazine can be "timely," though often the harassed editor thinks otherwise, and, catching at a momentary sensation, like a straw in a summer wind, has a vision of himself as a modern Joshua bidding the sun of popular interest to stand still for his message, though it has all the repose of immemorial platitudes by the time it reaches the public. Indeed, he would megaphone the call of the muezzin from the foot of the minaret to hasten to a waiting world, by so much as the slow climb to the top, the news that there is no god but Allah. It is recorded in W. R. Thayer's life of John Hay that Hay had strongly re |
