Recollections

Front matter

■Hi

■■1

\\mms0mm

Chapter I. A Host Of Memories

Early Life — Publishing Experiences — Purchase of the Ledger — Irving, Hawthorne, Lowell, Holmes — Distinguished Guests.

I want to set out by saying that I am sure you in kindness exaggerate the interest the world takes in me and my affairs. You say I am a successful man. Perhaps I am ; and if so, I owe my success to industry, temperance, and frugality. I suppose I had always a rather remarkable aptitude for business. James Parton, at any rate, was right in speaking of me in his biographical sketch as " bartering at school my boyish treasures, — knives for pigeons, marbles for pop-guns, a bird-cage for a book."

I was self-supporting at a very early age.

In my twelfth year, when school was dismissed for the summer, I took the place of errand-boy in a book-store in Baltimore, at a salary of two dollars a week, and spent the vacation in hard work. And I enjoyed it. I have never been out of employment ; always found something to do, and was ahwavs ea^er to do it, and think I earned every cent of my first money. When first at work in Philadelphia I would get up very early in the morning, go down to the store, and w r ash the pavement and put things in order before breakfast, and in the wintertime would make the fire and sweep out the store. In the same spirit, when books were bought at night at auction, I would early the next morning go for them with a wheelbarrow. And I have never outgrown this wholesome habit of doing things directly and in order. I would to-day as lief carry a bundle up Chestnut Street from the Ledger office as I would then. As a matter of fact, I carry bundles very often. But I understand that certain young men of the period would scorn to do as much.

At the as;e of thirteen I entered the United States navy, and passed fifteen months at Norfolk; but I didn't like it. Returning to Baltimore, I attended school for a time. Then I came to Philadelphia, and entered a book-store kept by Mr. Thomson at the corner of Sixth and Arch Streets. I was both clerk and errand-boy, worked from early in the morning until late at night, and received a salary of three dollars a w r eek. Gradually I began to attend the evening auctions, which at that time were frequently held in this city; I became familiar with the titles and prices of valuable books, and was soon able to buy them cheaply. In this way I assisted. Mr. Thomson for four years ; his business kept increasing; and at length he sent me to represent him at the book-trade sales held every six months in New York and Boston. Here, of course, I made the acquaintance of many book-buyers and publishers, — excellent men, whom I have never forgotten, and who, I am glad to say, have not forgotten me. Those still living often visit me, and whenever they do the old life and the old faces are very vivid in my memory, — the Harpers, Lippincotts, Putnams, Ticknors, Fields, Appletons, Little & Browns.

I had saved enough money when about eighteen years old to go into business for myself; so I set up a modest store in a small room in the old Public Ledger building. It was a success : I made money slowly but surely. .Meanwhile, it is said of me that I aspired to higher things; that I was even heard to say, " I shall yet be the owner of the Public Ledger." If this is true, and doubtless it is, I do not seem to have overreached myself at that early age.

I was twenty-one years old when I entered into the book-publishing business under the firm name of R. E. Peterson & Co., afterwards Childs & Peterson. One of our first books, Dr. Kane's " Arctic Explorations," was a great hit. It did not look at first as though we had made a wise venture. "When the work was ready to be issued, I took a sample copy and went over to New York to solicit orders from the leading booksellers. The largest house would only give me a small order. " Mr. Childs," they said, " you won't sell more than a thousand altogether." They ordered at first only one hundred copies, but soon after sent for five thousand more to meet the demand. Within one year after the publication we paid Dr. Kane a copyright of nearly seventy thousand dollars. It was the Doctor's original intention to write only a scientific account of the expedition in search of Sir John Franklin, but I persuaded him to make of it the popular narrative he did, and he afterwards admitted to me that I was right in my suggestion. When the manuscript was finished he sent me a pathetic note, in which he said, " Here you have the book complete, and, poor as it is, it has been my coffin/' No doubt he had then some premonition of the beginning of the end of his remarkable career. He died in Cuba within a year after receiving his copyright money; and doubtless many people remember well the splendid tribute arranged for him : that funeral was one of the most remarkable in history.

We made another hit with Parson Brownlow's book, of which fifty thousand copies were ordered in advance of publication. Other successful works issued by us were " Peterson's Familiar Science," of which a quarter of a million copies have been sold ; Bouvier's Law Dictionary ; Sharswood's Blackstone; and Dr. Allibone's great " Dictionary of British and American Authors." It cost over sixty thousand dollars to publish this last-named important book in its three large volumes, and a great deal of the credit for the successful completion of the undertaking is due to the enterprise of the late J. B. Lippincott, w 7 ho brought out the last 2 two volumes upon my retirement from the book-publishing business in 1868.

The following year I purchased the Public Ledger. And I want to say just here that much of the success of the paper has been due to the cordial and intelligent co-operation of my friend, A. J. Drexel.

The war, by greatly increasing the cost of labor and material, chiefly the white paper, had made it impossible to continue, save at a loss, the publication of the Ledger as a penny paper. It had been sold at a cent ever since it was started in 1836, and Messrs. Swain & Abel], then the proprietors, though they had lost over one hundred thousand dollars by keeping the rate at " six and a quarter cents per week," were averse to a change. There they made their great mistake. They seemed to regard the past prosperity of the Ledger as due alone to its selling for a penny. They forgot that in 1864 the purchasing power of a penny was not what it was before the war. Cheapness, indeed, was a vital feature of the journal; but to sell the Public Ledger for a penny was to give it half away. Thus the proprietors, unable to agree to increase the price of the paper or the rates of advertising, determined to dispose of their property. The Ledger was for sale, and I bought it — the whole of it, just as it was — for a sum slightly in excess of the amount of its annual loss.

It was not generally known, of course, that the establishment was then losing about four hundred and eighty dollars upon every number of the paper which it issued. To all appearances it was as prosperous as ever ; the circulation was great, the columns were crowded with advertisements. Yet, as a matter of fact, there was a weekly loss of three thousand dollars, or a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year.

The Ledger was purchased on the 3d of December, 1864. A week later I announced two simple but radical changes. I doubled the price of the paper and advanced the advertising rates to a profitable figure. Of course there was an instant and not inconsiderable falling oft* of patronage. But the Ledger was already an " institution" of the city : for twenty years it had been the established medium of communication between employers and employed, between buyers and sellers, landlords and tenants, bereaved families and their friends. To very many people it was a necessity. So, although at first I lost some subscribers and advertisers, they were soon won back again. At the end of a month the price of the Ledger was reduced from twelve to ten cents a week, and from that day to this the circulation and advertising have increased.

I worked hard to make the paper a success; for several years I seldom left the editorial rooms before midnight, averaging from twelve to fourteen hours a day at the office. I strove to elevate its tone, and think I succeeded. If asked what I mean by this, perhaps I had better quote the friendly words of the late Rev. Dr. Prime : " Mr. Childs excluded from the paper all details of disgusting crime; all reports of such vice as may not be with propriety read aloud in the family; that poison the minds of young men, inflame the passions and corrupt the heart; all scandal and slang, and that whole class of news which constitutes the staple of many daily papers. The same rule was applied to the advertising columns, and from them was excluded all that, in any shape or form, might be offensive to good morals. The friends of the new publisher predicted an early and total failure, and the more speedy because he doubled the price of the paper and increased the rates of advertising. But he was governed in his course by two considerations : first, he had his own strong convictions of what is right, and, secondly, as strong convictions of what would pay; and it has been well said that when one's views of duty coincide with his pecuniary interests, all the faculties work in perfect harmony. The effect of this sudden change was at first to sink the sinking concern still lower. A class of readers and advertisers fell off". A less conscientious and a less courageous man would have staggered in the path he had marked out. Not so with Mr. Childs. He employed the best talent, and paid fair wages for good work. He published six days in the week only, and on the seventh day he rested from his labors. His paper and his principles began to obtain recognition in the city. He made it a family journal. It gained the confidence of the best people, who became its daily readers, and therefore it was sought as the best medium of advertising.' 5 It is not for me to add to or comment upon these complimentary words. On the 20th of June, 1867, the present Ledger building was completed and formally opened. The ceremonies were followed by a banquet attended by many distinguished men from different parts of the country.

I look back with genuine pleasure upon b 2* my experiences as a publisher. I was more than prosperous in acquiring the friendship of so many worthy men among the publishers, booksellers, and authors with whom I came in contact. If I were to enumerate them, their names would fill a page of Lippincott's Magazine.

I can recall, as though it were yesterday, a solemn conversation in the office of the Harpers, then on Cliff Street. The four founders of the great firm were present. I was one of a group of Philadelphians, and we were discussing the first number of Harper's New Monthly Magazine. It seemed so certain to us that the publication would be a failure. " It can't," said one Philadelphian, emphatically, — " it can't last very long." The only successful magazines then published in the United States were those issued in Philadelphia, — Graham's, Godey's, Sartain's, and Peterson's.

I have personally known and corresponded with Longfellow, Emerson, Lowell, Holmes, Whittier, John Lothrop Motley, William Cullen Bryant, George Bancroft, W. H. Prescott, Fitz-Greene Halleck, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Washington Irving, and a score of other writers who have given us an American literature.

Washington Irving I remember well. His was not a face one readily forgot. A kindly humorous man, of big brain and heart. I visited him several times at " Sunnyside :" he would go to sleep at dinner, but his guests understood his physical weakness and respected it. He was a very sensitive and nervous man. I saw his desk piled up with papers, the last time I was there, and remarked that he seemed to have a heavy mail. It was shortly after the publication of the first volume of his Life of Washington. " Yes," he said, " I haven't the courage to look at it. I'm afraid to learn what the critics are saying of my book."

Hawthorne was another sensitive man and extremely shy. The last time we met was under very distressing circumstances. He was travelling South for the benefit of his health, accompanied by his friend W. D. Ticknor, the publisher. They stopped at the Continental Hotel in Philadelphia, and both came clown to the Ledger office to call on me. They were in excellent spirits ; and that was on Friday. It was agreed that they should attend a party to be given the next evening by Mr. Joseph Harrison. These Saturday evening parties were then a feature of social life in Philadelphia. Neither

Ticknor nor Hawthorne came, greatly to our disappointment. As no explanation of their absence was sent me, I called on Sunday morning at the hotel and went directly to their rooms. I knocked on the door, and receiving no answer, opened it and walked in. There I found Hawthorne pacing up and down the room, apparently dazed.

"Hawthorne," I said, "how are you? Where is Ticknor?"

" They have taken him away," said he.

" What do you mean ?" I asked. " I don't understand you."

" Well," he said, " it is too bad. He was my best friend ; I depended on him ; and he came here to please me."

I could make nothing out of it at all : he seemed to me bewildered. I feared for his mind, and, going down to the office, asked the clerk, Mr. Duffy, what it all meant. He then staggered me with the information that Ticknor had died that morning.

" Where is his body ?" I asked.

" It was taken early this morning to the undertaker's," he said.

I was astounded, but, hastening back to Hawthorne, comforted him as much as I could, implored him to keep quiet, and at last succeeded somewhat in calming him.

A Host of Memories. 2 L

I then went to the undertaker's, took charge of Ticknor's body, saw that it was properly cared for and embalmed, and telegraphed to his partner, my old friend James T. Fields. One of Ticknor's sons at once came on to Philadelphia and took his father's remains to Boston.

It was a deplorable and distressing event ; a fatal journey. Hawthorne lingered here in Philadelphia with me for a few days, and then I placed him in the keeping of the good Bishop Howe, of Pennsylvania, a common friend, who accompanied him to Boston. There he passed the night with James T.. Fields, who says that they sat up late talking about Ticknor, and that Hawthorne was in a very excited and nervous state, recalling incessantly the sad scenes he had been passing through in Philadelphia. In the morning he returned to his old home in Concord, and shortly after he died at Plymouth, New Hampshire, whither he had gone under the charge of his life-long friend, Ex-President Franklin Pierce.

I have still in my possession the touching letter written by President Pierce to Mr. Fields in which he describes the peaceful death of Hawthorne. It was plainly penned under the greatest excitement and distress of mind. It contained a note announcing to Mrs. Hawthorne her bereavement, and was carried to Mr. Fields by Colonel Hibbard. " Oh, how will she bear this shock?" the note says. " Dear mother ! dear children ! When I met Hawthorne at Boston a week ago, it was apparent that he was much more feeble and more seriously diseased than I had supposed him to be. We came from Senter Harbor yesterday afternoon, and I thought he was, on the whole, brighter than he was the day before. He retired last night soon after nine o'clock, and soon fell into a quiet slumber. In less than half an hour he changed his position, but continued to sleep. I left the door open between his bedroom and mine, our beds being opposite to each other. I was asleep myself before eleven o'clock. The light continued to burn in my room. At two o'clock I went to H.'s bedside. He was apparently in a sound sleep. I did not place my hand upon him. At four o'clock I went into his room again, and, as his position was unchanged, I placed my hand upon him, and found that life was extinct. I sent immediately for a physician, and called Judge Bell and Colonel Hibbard, who occupied rooms upon the same floor and near me. He lies upon his side, his position so perfectly natural and easy, his eyes closed, that it is difficult to realize, while looking upon his noble face, that this is death. He must have passed froni natural slumber to that from which there is no waking, without the slighest movement. I cannot write to dear Mrs. Hawthorne, and you must exercise your judgment with regard to sending this and the unfinished note enclosed to her."

It was a beautiful death, but a sad event. Hawthorne I shall always hold vividly in remembrance. I have the original manuscript of his " Consular Experiences," and the copy of the first edition of the " Scarlet Letter," brought to light so wonderfully by Mr. Fields. Hawthorne wrote me, soon after its publication in 1851, that he was much gratified by my favorable opinion of the charming romance, and that I might be interested to know " that it was so far founded on fact that such a symbol as the Scarlet Letter was actually worn by at least one woman in the early times of New England." Whether this personage, he added, resembled Hester Prynne in any other circumstances of her character, he could not say; nor whether this mode of ignominious punishment was brought from beyond the Atlantic or originated with the New England Puritans. At any rate, he said, the idea was so worthy of them that he felt " piously inclined' 5 to allow them all the credit of it.

Longfellow I knew well and entertained at my home. He was a quiet, gentle, admirable man ; a poet in all his moods. We often corresponded, and I remember how glad he was when he heard that I had bought an estate near the historic church of St. David's, Radnor, the resting-place of General Anthony Wayne, celebrated by Longfellow in exquisite verse. " The Radnor Church poem," he wrote me from Nahant in 1880, " shall be copied for you when I return home in August or September. Here by the seaside I have no paper fit for the purpose. You shall have it all in due time for the honor to be conferred on it. I congratulate you on having a country-place in the beautiful region round Radnor. I am sure you will all enjoy it extremely."

I prize very much the tender note he sent me, March 13, 1877, a propos of his seventieth birthday. " You do not know yet," it reads, " what it is to be seventy years old. I will tell you, so that you may not be taken by surprise when your turn comes. It is like climbing the Alps. You reach a snowcrowned summit, and see behind you the deep valley stretching miles and miles away, and before you other summits higher and whiter, which you may have strength to climb, or may not. Then you sit down and meditate, and wonder which it will be. That is the whole story, amplify it as you may. All that one can say is, that life is opportunity." How very true this is I know full well. My experience enables me to perceive the wisdom of the poet's words.

There is a curious incident in my acquaintance with James Russell Lowell. It happened lately that he was in Philadelphia while I was confined to the house with a slight attack of sickness, and he came promptly and kindly to call upon me and pass the afternoon. One of the treasures of my library is the manuscript of Lowell's poem " Under the Willows," which, according to a marginal note, was begun in 1850 and finished in 1868. "We spent a quiet, pleasant afternoon together, and he seemed to be much interested in my collection of original manuscripts, which includes " Our Mutual Friend," by Dickens, Poe's " Murders in the Rue Morgue," and many other precious writings. Finally I surprised him

B 3 with a glimpse of his own poem. He had half forgotten it, and at my request took the volume away with him, returning it in a few days with the following explanatory note : "A part of this poem (as the note on the margin opposite says) was written in 1850 as an introduction to the ' Nooning/ a projected volume of tales in verse. By changes and additions I tried to make a self-subsident poem out of material already prepared for another purpose. Old and new are so interwoven that I cannot now, after an interval of twenty years, distinguish between them." About twenty-five years ago, on a wretched, rainy, sloppy, and muddy day, I was in a book-store in Boston, when I saw the striking figure of a little man, wearing a slouched hat, his pantaloons rolled up, dashing along the street. He looked as little like a poet as a man could. I turned to the bookseller and asked him who that was. " That is Oliver "Wendell Holmes," he said. " Well, I want to know that man ;" and I got to know him, and we have been the best of friends ever since. A more genial, genuine, delightful man, and a finer conversationalist, I never knew. A copy of " The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table," which he sent me, contains an interesting letter giving me his reasons for beginning the papers in the Atlantic Monthly, a name which he says he gave to the magazine.

As I speak, a thousand faces pass before me. None more gentle and kind than that of Emerson. He visited me with his daughter ; a tranquil, lovable man; and he wrote me letters. It is a pity, by the way, that I failed to preserve my correspondence; much of it, doubtless, would be now of considerable interest.

John Lothrop Motley, W. H. Prescott, and George Bancroft were valued friends. I remember Motley writing me that he thought no history of our great civil war should be written within fifty years of its close. Prescott had the last photograph of himself taken for me. He wrote to tell me so, and said, " I shall never sit again for another picture, unless it is taken from the back of my head." Bancroft I am still enabled to honor as one of my oldest and most precious friends.

With the novelist GL P. R. James I was quite intimate. While he held the post of British Consul at Richmond, Virginia, he would often come up to Philadelphia to see me ; and he told me once that he dictated all his books. Then there were T. Buchanan

Read, who painted Longfellow's portrait for me, and who was present at the dinner I gave Longfellow in Rome, "W. W. Story, Fitz-Grreene Halieck, Jared Sparks, William Gilmore Simms, William Cullen Bryant, Professors E. A. Freeman and Bryce, of Oxford, Henry 0. Carey, Paul B. Du Chaillu (he brought me from Africa the wood for the ebony table now in my library), Thomas Hughes, Joaquin Miller, Wilkie Collins, — a whole troop of them, mj 7 honored friends and guests. Above all, I should not forget to note one of my earliest and most intimate friends, the elder James Gordon Bennett. He was a quiet, unobtrusive, forcible man. For years, he told me, he had his office a few doors from the Brooks's, — Erastus and James, of the Evening Express, — and yet had never met them. "We often talked together in reflective moods. He was eminently practical. " Childs," he once said, " how unfortunate it is for a boy to have rich parents ! If you and I had been born that way, perhaps we wouldn't have amounted to much." I might, indeed, go on recalling names until you wearied of hearing me. It has been my good fortune to possess the friendship or acquaintance of a very large number of the men and women who have distinguished themselves in the politics, science, arts, literature, and commerce of this country and Europe during the last thirty years. There was Edward Everett, for instance, who used to spend much of his time in this city, the guest of his friend Charles Macalester. I have a notable letter from him, written under date of Boston, July 9, 1862, in which he remarks, " I ought to say that, though I think the arrest of Mason and Slidell was authorized by the Law of Xations, I think it was expedient to give them up. I therefore approved of their surrender by Mr. Seward, and rejoiced that he was able to find grounds for it, though not concurring with him in all his views. "

I have been on friendly terms with men of all parties and creeds. I accompanied Thomas H. Benton to Boston when he delivered his great oration there. Setting aside General "Winfield Scott (who sent me an early copy of his book, of which he had estimated the hundreds of thousands of people in the United States who would purchase copies), Benton was beyond comparison the most kindly and agreeably egotistical man I ever met.

Thurlow Weed, an extraordinary man in many ways, I knew very well. He once 3* gave me an illustration of the great variety and curious character of his wonderful stock of information. He told me that there was an old Roman well on such and such a spot on the Strand in London. I went to John Murray while in London and asked him about it, as Murray's guide-book made no mention of the fact. Murray was in utter ignorance of the well, but it was really where Thurlow Weed had said it was.

It is a pleasure for me to recall the myriad feces of my guests during many years, here in Philadelphia, at Wootton, and at Long Branch. Besides those I have mentioned, there was the great and good George Peabody. We were very close to each other. He had his portrait painted for me by the Queen's artist, and there it hangs on the wall, one of the most valued of my possessions. Hisname recalls that of Peter Cooper. These two were considerate and broad-minded philanthropists. I went with Mr. Cooper on his ninetieth birthday to Baltimore during the sesqui-centennial celebration. He there told me an interesting story of his early life in that city when he had become manager of the iron-works at Canton. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company had built their road beyond Point of Rocks, bat no engine could get round the curve. Cooper then, with fifty gentlemen, embracing the directors and others interested in the road, improvised an engine bnilt of gun-barrels, and successfully rounded the curve. When we were in Baltimore together, only one man, J. H. B. Latrobe, besides himself, was left of the original fifty.

[It is a brave array of names, the guests of Mr. Childs, — Generals Grant, Sherman, Meade, Sheridan, Hancock, McDowell, and Patterson, Edmund Quincy, Chief Justice Waite, A. J. Drexel, Asa Packer, the Astors, Cadwaladers, Prof. Joseph Henry, Hamilton Fish, Robert G. Winthrop, Charles Francis Adams, Presidents Hayes, Arthur, and Cleveland, Chauncey M. Depew, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Thomas A. Edison, Simon Cameron, Henry Wilson, William M. Evarts, James G. Blaine, John Welsh, J. B. Lippincott, Morton McMichael, August Belmont, Alex. H. Stephens, Samuel J. Tilden (one of his last requests was to have Mr. Childs visit him at Greystone), Cyrus W. Field, B. J. Lossing, Mrs. Grover Cleveland, Charlotte Cushman, Christine Nilsson, Harriet Hosmer, John Bigelow, Thomas A. Bayard, Parke Godwin, Andrew Carnegie, and many others. Mr. Childs does not hesitate to say that one of the chief pleasures of his life has been the keeping of an open house to worthy and distinguished people. The reception he gave to the Emperor and Empress of Brazil was perhaps the most notable gathering of people ever assembled in any private house in America. There were over six hundred guests ; and Mr. Childs's was the first private house at which the Emperor and Empress had ever been entertained. But one must not overlook in this incomplete list of visitors the names of the Duke and Duchess of Buckingham, the Duke of Sutherland, the Duke of Newcastle, Lords Dufferin, Rosebery, Houghton, Uchester, Boss, Iddesleigh, Bayleigh, Herschell, Caithness, and Dunraven, Sir Stafford Northcote, Lady Franklin, Dean Stanley, Canon Kingsley, Charles Dickens, George Augustus Sala, Joseph Chamberlain, M.P., J.