Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 944
But in spite of that sky-scraper, the light-signs on Broadway and the scandals that the younger members of the Four Hundred families caused in remote New England it was still in remote New England that they caused scandals. What they did in Newport they were hardly even beginning to do in New York. The note of the dominant Gotham city father was still staidness. The younger set might act the road-hog in automobiles but their severe sires in high hats with mourning bands drove in landaus and pairs from their mansions on Staten Island to the ferry and then at the Battery would be met by other carriages and be conveyed to Wall Street or its neighbourhood in an attitude of awfulness that much resembled that of my relative Mr Justice Ford North of the Court of Chancery. He was the last of Her Majesty’s judges to carry out the once universal habit of going on horseback to the Royal Courts of Justice. Mr Justice North had to be translated from the more active courts of criminal jurisdiction because he sentenced Foote the Atheist to penal servitude for life. Foote had stated in print that he did not believe ın a Deity and Mr Justice North had found an old statute that justified his inflicting that penalty for that crime.
I fancy the older inhabitants of Staten Island at the beginning of the century would have sentenced Foote to death. I visited quite lately the mansion of one of my American uncles, a forty-niner who eventually settled on Staten Island. It was a mansion that resembled for all the world the residences of London Aldermen and those who have ‘passed the chair.’ There were the hothouses, the stables, the ‘sweep’ or horseshoe shaped carriage-drive. My aunt used to wave from the stoep or verandah to her husband as he stood on the ferry making the dangerous transit to Manhattan. My uncle was a top-hatted ‘character,’ all his friends were top-hatted characters, and New York itself was a city of characters just like the London of Mr Pickwick. There were notorious barbers, boot-blacks, restaurateurs like Mouquin, waiters full of quaint humour, actors, literati, divines, millionaires – and all were well known by sight to all New York. In 1906 you could see people on the sidewalks. You could recognise Mr John Drew, or Richard Mansfield, or Blanche Bates, or W. D. Howells in his white ducks from a distance of a quarter of a mile up Fifth Avenue. You saw all New York not only at the Players’ Club but also at five o’clock in the tea-shop at the corner of Fifth Avenue and East Twenty-Seventh Street. I have seen Mr Poulteney Bigelow, at the time New York’s star international reporter and intimate of the German Emperor, having tea outside the Waldorf Astoria with Mrs Lily Langtry and, I think, Mark Twain. They were on the sidewalk behind a privet hedge in green boxes for all the world as if it had been Paris.
And most of New York’s fixings were little and as it were domestic. The hermetically sealed office note was still wanting in the great majority of offices when I first trod the streets of God’s Own Country (Western Division) as opposed to God’s Country, Eng. My naturally first action was to go down town on a horse-trolley through the Dickensian landscape. I clung precariously to its hind-brake. You really did that in New York of those – ah, so distant, days! You desired to travel by one of those always packed vehicles. You stood far out in the roadway and extended a hand displaying in its palm a dime. That was a lot of money in those days. If the driver deigned to slacken his pace for you to make a grab at any portion of the vehicle the dime became his.
I was going to a down town bank to change some money. The bank was like a drawing-room. It was carpeted with seas of Oriental rugs and warmed by what appeared to be an immense wood-stove. I daresay it really burned anthracite. Beside it stood two gentlemen picking their teeth. They wore perfectly elegant costumes. From time to time they conversed. A quarter of an hour passed. I ventured to ‘hem!’ slightly. One of them strolled, still using his toothpick, over to an isolated counter of unimaginably polished mahogany. He looked sceptically at my letter of credit, initialled it. He opened a drawer beneath the rear of the counter, slammed some notes down before me and then without a word returned to the stove. It was just before lunch.
I went into the churchyard beside Rector Street to count my notes. I was very young and diffident and notes of any denomination were in those days unfamiliar to me. Gold and silver were almost the only European coinages of those days. According to my calculations – at fifty pence English to the dollar – I was about $5.75 to the bad. I returned timidly to the bank. The personnel of the establishment had completely changed. I said:
‘Your Mr Brown has given me five and three quarter dollars too little on my letter of credit.’
Mr Brown’s remplaçant replied:
‘Smart man, Mr Brown,’ and that was all I got out of that. A U.S.N. bluejacket sat in my lap and smoked a stogie as far as Union Square. I reflected that New York was indeed little and old and went south that afternoon.
But by 1906 the domestic note was vanishing even from New York offices. The one that comes most vividly back to me was that of the S. S. McClure Company. That, as I have said, was panelled with polished tulip wood which gave it a very pretty effect. Pretty is the exact word. It was certainly not august, neither was it opulent, nor yet drawing-room-like as was the case with Lord Northcliffe’s private office in Carmelite House. It had already a number of shining, nickelled and black celluloid instruments. But still panelled room opened out into panelled room. There was not a sea of instrument-operating young women in shirt waists or any glass cases.
Sam McClure was then the dominating and romantic figure of the New York magazine-and-literary world. He was florid and stout and fond of relating to you how he had landed, a barefoot Belfast boy, in New York years before. His anecdotes for and against himself were innumerable. He would relate how coming over on a German boat he had looked one dinner time at the music programme. There was no Wagner on it. He got up and approached the band.
‘I am S. S. McClure,’ he said. ‘There is no Wagner on your programme. Play nothing but Wagner to-night. Wagner was the McClure of music.’
He occupied the Imperial suite on the Kaiserin Augusta Victoria and had an enclosed space on the sun-deck where he sat all day in his pyjamas. He would take you into his suite and ask:
‘Notice anything?’ Then he would point out that the corners of all the tables were rounded off. ‘That was ordered by the Kaiser.’ When the German Emperor had inspected the vessel he had noticed that all the tables had sharp edges. They would hurt you if you ran against them during a roll of the vessel. Immediately the corners of all the tables on the ship were rounded off. McClure added the comment: ‘Sam McClure is the Kaiser of American magazines.’ Sometimes he would change it to: ‘The Kaiser is the Sam McClure of the Concert of Nations.’ That in those days seemed nearer the mark.
McClure’s Magazine was at that day a power in America such as, I imagine, no other magazine or periodical ever since became. America was passing through a phase of misgivings and McClure’s harped brilliantly on that note. It exposed everything and everybody with ability and insistence. Its denunciatory writings were called Muckrake Articles. They were written or inspired by Miss Ida Tarbell who had an admirable pen for the purpose and a sombre passion in doing it.
I passed the greater part of my time in New York in McClure’s office not because I wanted to work for the Magazine but because I liked the editorial staff. It consisted of Miss Tarbell, Miss Willa Sibert Cather and Mr William Aspenwall Bradley who was then a slim young poet and is now a substantial literary agent in Paris. Miss McClung, who is now Mrs Mark Hambourg, was also on the staff, as I think assistant to Miss Cather.
McClure I had known well in England. I had seen him maybe three times but you got to know him well in less than that. Pinker had persuaded him that he ought to publish Conrad in America and had got me to meet him and persuade him to that effect. I was glad enough to but it did not prove very easy. McClure did not understand Conrad’s books very well. But he prided himself on having discovered Robert L. Stevenson for America and was anxious to be in at such another discovery. Pinker, I and I daresay other people all swore to him that if he published Conrad he would. He grew nervous and several times described how he had ‘made’ R. L. S., giving each time a slightly different turn to the narrative so that I confuse one version with another. I know that at one date he bought a prodigious number of umbrellas, in San Francisco, and gave them to bootblacks with instructions to loan them to their clients gratis on the occasion of sudden thunderstorms. At the next downfall that city found itself confronted with hundreds of umbrellas each one bearing on its distended upper surface the inscription: ‘Read Treasure Island.’
I fancy it was really some other product that McClure actually thus advertised but when he was in the mood for greater glories he usually said it was some book of Stevenson’s. The question of taking up Conrad caused him a great deal of perplexity. I remember dining with him one night at the Ritz in the company of, I think, Percival Gibbon and his beautiful wife and some other people. Percival Gibbon was one of McClure’s most popular English story writers.
The occasion was not one on which one could very well discuss the selling qualities of Conrad’s work. To get it over McClure asked me to return to the Savoy where he occupied an Imperial or Royal or Grand Ducal suite. Mrs McClure was there, a simple, old-fashioned, admirable body. She appeared to be dazed as McClure walking frantically up and down threw wad after wad of banknotes into her lap, ordering her to buy all sorts of rather fabulous objects that I imagine she did not want. McClure kept on pushing his fingers through his forelock and saying that he did not know whether he wanted Conrad or not. At last Mrs McClure said: ‘Well, father, if this gentleman says you ought to have him, maybe you ought, though to be sure I have not heard him say anything.’ I had not as yet been able to get a word in, but then I assured her that to publish Conrad would be to gain at least as much honour as to have published R. L. S. She said that that appeared to settle it. So the honour of being the first country fittingly to have appreciated that great writer the United States may be said to owe to that comfortable and charming lady.
But the struggle was by no means over since Conrad had to be brought to accept McClure. This was by no means easy. He had his own opinions of American publishers. I don’t know how he had formed them, for he had not yet come in contact with any. But he had the settled opinion that all American publishers asked you to lunch and over that meal, made you enormous offers which they afterwards repudiated or forgot about. He was not inclined to go up from the Pent to London on any such fool errand. McClure on the other hand would not sign any contract before he had had a sight of Conrad. He wanted to see how he liked him personally and he liked of course what glory was to be had out of meeting distinguished authors.
The difficulty was solved by Conrad’s inviting McClure to lunch at the Cecil which was almost next door to Pinker’s office. Conrad made a judicious choice of wines with the idea of stimulating but not too much stimulating McClure. Then he ordered Pinker not to go to lunch at all but to sit in his office waiting for Conrad’s phone. During the lunch McClure made his offer. It was considerably better than anything Conrad had hitherto either received or expected and Conrad was sure that McClure who had actually drunk whisky and Perrier was under the influence of liquor and would certainly repudiate the contract as soon as he was sober. He therefore said to McClure:
‘Mr McClure, is this your firm offer?’ and McClure said it was.
Conrad excused himself and went to the telephone to call up Pinker. He dictated the terms to a subordinate, Pinker being engaged and ordered Pinker to come straight round to the Cecil with a contract ready for signature. He himself would hold McClure until Pinker arrived.
Pinker was there contract and all in the surprising time of four minutes or four minutes and a half. As a matter of fact he had not chosen to go without his lunch but had gone to the Savoy Grill which was next door to the Cecil. He had already fully discussed the terms with McClure and so had a contract all ready in his pocket.
I do not know how many books of Conrad’s – or indeed of mine – were published by the S. S. McClure Company. McClure had his vicissitudes and lost his control of the Company and the Magazine. The firm became known as McClure Doubleday & Co. and after other changes as Doubleday Page. As such it continued to publish Conrad. I had however a singular encounter with Mr Page. I had published an historical novel in which one of the characters said – in order to indicate extreme rarity: ‘You will find a chaste whore as soon as that.’
Mr Page told me that his firm certainly could not publish such a phrase. I said:
‘Oh, well, Mr Page make it “a chaste dash …” You will find a chaste – as soon as that.’
Mr Page said:
‘We certainly could not print the word “chaste”. It is too suggestive.’
I said that in that case Mr Page’s firm should certainly not publish my book and that ended my publications in America for a good number of years.
I had later a curious encounter with Dr Page, then United States Ambassador to Great Britain. It was at the time when I was editing the English Review. Ezra came into my office in a great state of excitement. An American poet had come to England as a stowaway and had been imprisoned on the arrival of the ship at Plymouth. I was to go at once to the American Embassy and make them get the poet out.
I obeyed. I thought the Embassy would be delighted to release a poet and could not see why I was needed.
Dr Page received me politely but coldly. He evidently remembered and rather disliked my face but was vague as to my identity. That is not to be wondered at. Ezra had explained who I was and Americans never understand his particular dialect. Neither do they usually understand that in him they possess the greatest poet of our time – and of several other times. Dr Page probably imagined therefore that I was an assistant professor in English whom he had met at Chatauqua.
I explained my case. Dr Page at once became colder – but infinitely colder! He said:
‘Young man. Do you know what my position is in this country?’
I said I was under the impression that His Excellency was United States Ambassador at the Court of St. James’s.
He said: yes, but did I understand what that meant?
I said I understood that His Excellency was there to protect the interests of oppressed citizens of the United States in the country to which he was accredited.
He said: not at all. His position in Great Britain was exactly that of the King. He represented a sovereign state. It was not his province to interfere in the criminal affairs of the country any more than it was the King’s.
I said that an American or any other foreign citizen was only in Great Britain or any other country to which he was not subject by favour of the Prince – par faveur du Prince was the technical term. I did not see why Dr Page as royal by his functions could not intercede with the local royalty in order to obtain additional favour for a national of his own who had got into trouble.
Dr Page exclaimed:
‘Young man. If you were a British subject and you got into trouble in a foreign country you would not expect your King to interest himself in your case.’
I said:
‘Dr Page: if I got into trouble in a foreign country and my King did not interfere by his representative to my advantage my King would not remain for three weeks on his throne.’
Dr Page said he supposed I must be a British subject. But he still refused to interfere in favour of his poet. I daresay he was technically right. And no doubt as a publisher he had reason to think that prison is quite a good place for poets.
The immediate sequel was amusing. I went round to the Home Office and found C. F. G. Masterman who was not yet, I think, a Cabinet Minister but had already the ear of the All Highest in England. Indeed, even then, amongst the younger politicians he was considered to be well in the running for next Liberal Prime Minister. They had forgotten David.
I told him about the American poet’s trouble and he scribbled something on a piece of paper. We got into one of the interminable arguments that I always had with him on every subject under the sun except politics. I knew him at that date very well but was not as intimate with him as I was later. But I had played a good deal of golf with him at Hythe and he professed a great admiration for my writing. He must have read some of my books for he was always quoting from them catchwords that amused him.
We argued for a long time and then went out to dinner at the Mont Blanc – a famous semi-Bohemian restaurant of those days. Afterwards he asked me to go back to his office and, whilst he was talking to someone in the hall, told me to go up and ask his secretary if he had anything for me. His secretary gave me an official telegram addressed to the Home Secretary. I took it down to Masterman in the hall and he told me to read it and give it to Ezra. It was from the governor of Plymouth gaol or the Chief Constable and announced that that poet had been released before dinner.
