Part 3

INTERLUDE IN NEW YORK

And now we are in the Gay Nineties, the mid Gay Nineties, when a hair-cloth sofa adorns every parlor and over-decoration is running riot; when our intelligentsia are reading Anthony Hope’s _Prisoner of Zenda_, Stanley Weyman’s _Gentlemen of France_ and George McCutcheon’s _Graustark_; when William Morris is printing _Chaucer_, with illustrations by Burne-Jones, and Aubrey Beardsley is providing an ample excuse for the _Yellow Book_; when LeGallienne’s _Golden Girl_ is brought over here by John Lane and established in a bookshop on lower Fifth Avenue, and Bliss Carman is singing his songs of rare beauty; when the Fifth Avenue Hotel and the nearby Algonquin are flourishing Madison Square hostelries; when Stern’s and McCreery are across the street from Putnam’s and Eden Musee, and the modern skyscraper is only an architect’s vague dream.

Into this glad era a young man steps off a Twenty-third Street horse-car. This young man, now an ambitious designer, printer, editor and publisher, is yourself.

At the age of twenty-seven you are sporting the encouraging beginnings of a mustache, still too thin to permit of twirling at the tips. There is also the brave suggestion of a Vandyke. These embellishments are brown, as is also true of abundant and wavy hair of artistic and poetic length. Your waistcoat is buttoned high, and your soft, white collar is adorned with a five-inch-wide black cravat tied in a flowing bowknot. Your short jacket and tight-fitting pants quite possibly need pressing. A black derby and well-polished shoes complete your distinguished appearance. Many scrubbings have failed to remove all traces of printing ink from beneath and at the base of your finger nails.

You are on your way to Scribner’s. A few moments later we find you seated in a leather-upholstered chair in the editorial department of this famous publishing house. You are waiting patiently and hopefully while an editor is penning a note of introduction to Richard Harding Davis, the popular writer of romantic fiction.

Now, the note safely bestowed in your breast pocket, the envelope showing above a liberal display of silk handkerchief and thus plainly in view of passing pedestrians who would doubtless be filled with envy did they but know its contents, you are crossing Madison Square Park on your way to one of the Twenties, where Mr. Davis has his lodging. You reach the house, walk up the steps and rap.

“Is Mr. Davis at home? Why ... why you are Mr. Davis. I ... I didn’t recognize you at first. Seeing you portrayed in Mr. Gibson’s illustrations to some of your romances--”

“And now seeing me in this bathrobe you naturally were a bit confused?”

“Yes, I was.”

“I’m not at all surprised.”

“Here, Mr. Davis, is a letter, I mean a note introducing me to you.”

“How about coming inside while I read the note?”

“That’s ... that’s what I was hoping you’d say, Mr. Davis.”

And now our favorite romantic author is seated with one leg thrown over the corner of a table. “Of course. Of course,” he exclaims, cordially, “I know your posters and your cover designs. And now you are starting a magazine and you would like one of my stories for your first number?”

“Yes, Mr. Davis. That is what I should like.”

“Of course I’ll write a story for you. I shall be happy to write a story; and I have one in mind that I think will be just the kind you will like for your new magazine.”

“Well, Mr. Davis, that’s something that’s just about as wonderful as anything that could possibly happen to anybody. Only ... only--”

“Only you are not really started and your magazine hasn’t begun to earn money, and so you are wondering--”

“Yes, Mr. Davis--”

“Well, lad,” and now Mr. Davis has his arm about your shoulders. “Well, lad, just go home to your Wayside Press print-shop in Springfield and don’t do any worrying about payment. Sometime when you are rich and feel like sending me something,--why, any amount you happen to send will be quite all right with me--and good luck go with you.”

(At this point it should be stated that when a small check goes to Mr. Davis, with an apology for it being just the first installment and that another check will go a month later, the return mail brings a pleasant letter of thanks and an acknowledgment of payment in full.)

And now, as you are recrossing Madison Square Park, your head so high in the clouds that not even the tips of your toes are touching the earth, all the birds in the neighborhood, including the sparrows, have gathered and are singing glad anthems of joy; and all the trees that an hour ago were just in green leaf are now billowed with beautiful flowers.

Well, that is that, and of course you are now sitting pretty. But presently we see you on a Fifth Avenue bus, returning from Fifty-ninth Street where, in a sumptuous Victorian apartment overlooking Central Park you have asked William Dean Howells for a story--and on this incident we will charitably draw the curtain.

Meanwhile _Bradley: His Book_ met with kind reception--advance orders for the second number being: Brentano’s New York, six hundred copies, Old Corner Bookstore, Boston, four hundred, etc.; the first issue being out of print except for the supply being held for new subscribers. Pratt, Sixth Avenue, New York, sent check to pay for one hundred subscriptions.

There being no joy in doing today what one did yesterday, or what another did yesterday; and creative design in which there is no joy or laughter being of little worth, a new lay-out and change of stock were provided for each issue of _Bradley: His Book_; the fifth number started a change of format.

But as a business tycoon Will Bradley was a lamentable failure despite this auspicious start--a story I have already told.

NEW FIELDS

At the turn of the century, after saying a sad farewell to fond hopes and feeling older at thirty-two than is now true at eighty-two, I finally gave up trying to be a publisher and printer. While covers for _Collier’s_ were bridging an awkward gap Edward Bok appeared on the scene and commissioned the laying-out of an editorial prospectus for the _Ladies’ Home Journal_, the printing to be done at the Curtis plant. For this I used a special casting of an old face not then on the market, Mr. Phinney of the Boston branch of ATF telling me it was to be called Wayside. When the prospectus was finished Mr. Bok invited me to his home just outside Philadelphia and there it was arranged that I design eight full pages for the _Journal_--eight full pages of house interiors. These were followed by a series of house designs. Finding it difficult to keep to merely four walls I added dozens of suggestions for individual pieces of furniture--this being the “Mission” period when such designing required no knowledge of periods, only imagination. Then Mr. Bok suggested that I move to Rose Valley, start a shop to make furniture and other forms of handicraft in line with designs shown in my _Journal_ drawings; and assume art editorship of _House Beautiful_, which he was considering buying. But having failed in one business venture, there was little excuse to embark on another.

The roman and italic face, used later for _Peter Poodle, Toy Maker to the King_, was now designed for American Type Founders; and while building a home in Concord, adjoining Hawthorne’s “Wayside,” and working every day in the open, regaining lost health, the story, _Castle Perilous_, was written--also outdoors. These activities were followed by a request from Mr. Nelson, president of American Type Founders, that I undertake a campaign of type display and publicity for the Foundry, with a promise to cut any decorative or type designs that I might supply, also to purchase as many Miehle presses as might be required for the printing--an invitation to which I replied with an enthusiastic “Yes!” [In this way Bradley’s famous set of _Chap Books_ was inaugurated--Ed.]

During this type-display and foundry-publicity period _Castle Perilous_, as a three-part serial, with illustrations made afternoons following mornings spent with American Type Founders at Communipaw, was published in _Collier’s_; and in 1907 I became that publication’s art editor. Sometime during the intervening years--I can’t remember where or when--time was found for designing several _Collier’s_ covers.

From 1910 to 1915, again with my own studios, I took care of the art editorship of a group of magazines: _Good Housekeeping_, _Century_, _Metropolitan_ and others, also an assignment from the Batten Advertising Agency and, as recreation, wrote eleven _Tales of Noodleburg_ for _St. Nicholas_.

THE MAGAZINE WORLD--AN INTERPOLATION

For easier understanding by you whose magazine memories do not go back to the turn of the century it should be told that we were then carrying a Gibson Girl hangover from the Gay Nineties and were but a few years removed from a time when there were only three standard monthlies: _Harper’s_, _Scribner’s_, and _Century_; and seven illustrated weeklies: _Harper’s_, _Frank Leslie’s_, _Harper’s Bazaar_, _Police Gazette_, _Puck_, _Judge_ and the old _Life_,--magazines and weeklies that were seldom given display other than in hotels and railroad depots, where they were shown in competition with the then-popular paper-covered novels.

In the mid-Eighties all monthlies, weeklies, books and booklets were hand-fed, folded, collated and bound; halftones were in an experimental stage; advertising agencies, if any existed, were not noticeable in Chicago, and advertising of a national character used only quarter-page cover space. But something in the air already quickened imagination, and the Nineties gave us more magazines and better display.

In 1907, magazines were shedding swaddling clothes and getting into rompers; the _Saturday Evening Post_ had cast off its pseudo-Benjamin Franklin dress and adopted a live editorial policy that was winning readers and advertising; Edward Bok had ventured a Harrison Fisher head on a _Ladies’ Home Journal_ cover and won a fifty-thousand gain in newsstand sales, and Robert Collier had built a subscription-book premium into a national weekly.

THE MAGAZINE WORLD--COLLIER’S AND OTHERS

On a Saturday afternoon in 1907, believing myself alone, for the offices and plant had closed at twelve, I was standing at a drafting table making up the Thanksgiving issue of _Collier’s_ when Mr. Collier entered. He became intrigued with proofs of decorative units being combined for initial-letter and page borders, as had earlier been done with similar material in designing a cover, and asked for some to take home and play with on the morrow. Robert Collier was that kind of a boss--a joy!

Of the Thanksgiving issue Royal Cortissoz wrote: “This week’s number has has just turned up and I cannot refrain from sending you my congratulations. The cover is bully; it’s good decoration, it’s appropriate, it’s everything that is first rate. The decorations all through are charming. More power to your elbow. It does my heart good to see _Collier’s_ turning up in such splendid shape.” There were other favorable comments--but no noticeable jump in newsstand sales.

My joining Collier’s staff has been under circumstances quite exceptional, even for that somewhat pioneer period in which the streamlined editorial and publishing efficiency of today was only a vague dream. I had been asked to give the weekly a new typographic lay-out. When this was ready Mr. Collier suggested that I take the art editorship. He said I would be given his office in the editorial department and he would occupy one in the book department, where he could devote more time to that branch of the business, an arrangement he knew would please his father. I was to carry the title of art editor but in reality would be responsible for make-up and other details that had been demanding too much of his own time.

At the age of twelve I had begun to learn that type display is primarily for the purpose of selling something. In 1889, as a free-lance artist in Chicago, I had discovered that to sell something was also the prime purpose of designs for book and magazine covers and for posters. Later I was to realize that salesmanship possessed the same importance in editorial headings and blurbs. These never-to-be-forgotten lessons, taught by experience and emphasized by the sales results of the publicity campaign I had lately conducted for the American Typefounders Company, would classify that Thanksgiving number as a newsstand disappointment. However, it pleased Robert Collier who, even to hold a guaranteed circulation--when a loss would mean rebates to advertisers--would not permit the use of stories by such popular writers as Robert Chambers and Zane Gray nor the popular illustrations of such artists as Howard Chandler Christy!

My tenure at _Collier’s_ gave me a new experience. There I always worked under conditions inviting and stimulating imagination, and there I probably unknowingly shattered many a precious editorial precedent.

_Collier’s_ had one of the early color presses akin to those used on newspapers. We decided to use this to print illustrations for a monthly “Household Number” carrying extra stories. The editorial back-list showed no fiction suitable for color; the awarding of one thousand dollars a month for the best story, judgment based upon literary merit, had resulted in the purchase of nothing but literary fog. Mr. Collier told Charles Belmont Davis, fiction editor, to order what was necessary. Charley asked me who could write the type of story needed. I said, “Gouverneur Morris.” Mr. Morris, then in California, sent a list of titles accompanied by the request: “Ask Will Bradley to take his pick.” We chose _The Wife’s Coffin_, a pirate tale. During an editorial dinner at his home Robert Collier read a letter from his father, then out of the city, in which P. F. (his father) wrote: “If you continue printing issues like this last our subscription-book salesmen report the weekly will sell itself.” Robert said: “Mr. Bradley can make this kind of a number because he knows the people from whom the salesmen obtain subscriptions. I don’t, and any similar undertaking by me would be false and a failure.”

During this period of art editorship, and following the lay-out of a booklet, _Seven Steps and a Landing_, for Condé Nast, advertising manager of _Collier’s_, a color-spread for Cluett-Peabody, lay-outs for the subscription-book department, and pieces of printing for Mr. Collier’s social activities (also a request from Medill McCormick that I go to Chicago and supply a new typographic make-up for the _Tribune_; a suggestion from Mr. Chichester, president of the Century Company, that if I were ever free he would like to talk with me about taking the art editorship of _Century_; and from Mr. Schweindler, printer of _Cosmopolitan_ and other magazines, an expression of the hope that I could be obtained for laying-out a new publication), Robert Collier proposed the building of a pent-house studio on the roof near his father’s office where, relieved of much detail, I could give additional thought to all branches of the business. This promised too little excitement, and instead I rented a studio-office on the forty-fifth floor of the then nearly-finished Metropolitan Tower. At this time Condé Nast had just purchased _Vogue_, then a small publication showing few changes from when I had contributed to it in the early Nineties.

In this new environment I handled the art editorship and make-up of _Metropolitan_, _Century_, _Success_, _Pearson’s_ and the new _National Weekly_, which was given a format like that of present-day weeklies and a make-up that included rules. Caslon was used for all headings except for _Pearson’s_ which, using a specially-drawn character, were lettered by hand.

Among some discarded _Metropolitan_ covers I found one by Stanislaus--the head of a girl wearing a white-and-red-striped toboggan cap against a pea-green background. By substituting the toboggan-cap red for the pea-green background, with the artist’s approval, we obtained a poster effect that dominated the newsstands and achieved an immediate sellout.

ENTER MR. HEARST

In the Nineties I had been asked to provide a lay-out for the Sunday magazine section of Mr. Hearst’s New York paper. I could not do this properly except at my Wayside Press. This the typographic union would not permit, but in the years that followed, I enjoyed an intermittent part-time association with Mr. Hearst--working on magazines, papers and motion pictures.

One of these assignments was _Good Housekeeping_. This magazine had been published by the Phelps Company, and had achieved a circulation of 250,000 copies. Additional sales would tax the plant and necessitate more equipment and the magazine was sold to William Randolph Hearst. I was asked to design a new lay-out and to take over the art editorship during its formative period. For the new venture Mr. Hearst ordered a Winston Churchill serial--_Inside the Cup_ if my memory is not at fault. Mr. Tower, the editor brought from Springfield, said this would mean taking out departments and a loss of half the circulation--but the departments came out, the serial went in, Mr. Tower resigned, Mr. Bigelow became editor, and circulation mounted into the millions!

In 1915 Mr. Hearst asked me if I could arrange to give him all of my time and art-supervise production of the motion picture serial, _Patria_, starring Irene Castle. I agreed.

In 1920, after writing, staging and directing _Moongold_, a Pierrot fantasy photographed against black velvet, using properties but no pictorial backgrounds--an independent production launched with a special showing at the Criterion Theater in Times Square, I returned to Mr. Hearst in an art and typographic assignment including magazines, newspapers, motion pictures and a trip to Europe where commissions were placed with Edmund Dulac, Arthur Rackham and Frank Brangwyn. Somewhere along the trail _Spoils_, a drama in verse, and _Launcelot and the Ladies_, a novel, were written--the former printed in _Hearst’s International_ and the latter destined to carry a Harper & Brothers imprint--but not to become a best seller.

Another Hearst project in the early Twenties was a new format and the creation of a typographic lay-out for _Hearst’s International_. For the lay-out, the headings of which would have to be different from those provided earlier for _Cosmopolitan_, I designed a set of initial letters, later catalogued by the foundry and called “Vanity.” Knowing that Mr. Hearst would want to use portrait heads for covers and that they would all have to be made by a single artist whose style did not permit of confusion with the Harrison Fisher heads used on _Cosmopolitan_, I approached Benda with the suggestion that if he would use one color scheme for both head and background he could probably get the contract. On seeing the first Benda cover Mr. Hearst asked how it happened that this was the only Benda head he ever liked! He was told, and authorized a contract.

These _Hearst International_ changes led to my being asked to give thought to strengthening _Cosmopolitan_ headings in 1923. The request came on a Monday morning. The issue then in hand closed at Cuneo’s in Chicago on the following Friday. Mr. Hearst never urged hurry, but early results were appreciated. Obtaining a current dummy with page proofs, I headed for the ATF composing room at Communipaw, N. J. About half-past four I had personally set, without justification, every heading in the issue--using Caslon in roman and italic in the manner it had been assembled by uninhibited compositors of the Colonial period. That night, at home, I trimmed and mounted proofs in a new dummy. The mixing of roman and italic in radically different sizes and with consideration for desired emphasis, with possibly a 96- or 120-point roman cap starting a 48- or 60-point italic word, resulted just as I had visualized while the type was being set in fragmentary form. No changes were necessary, and every minute of the afternoon had been good fun. Tuesday I left for Chicago; Wednesday was spent at Cuneo’s where, using this reprint copy, all headings were set, made-up with text pages, and proved; Thursday the new lay-outs were enthusiastically approved in New York; Friday, at Cuneo’s, _Cosmopolitan’s_ managing editor closed the forms according to schedule. It had been a grand lark--and within a few weeks that free style of typography began to appear in national advertising.

One morning a request came from Mr. Hearst to use color at every editorial opening in _Hearst’s International_--a startling innovation at a time when illustrators were accustomed to drawing or painting only for reproduction in black and white or for an occasional insert in process colors. Closing day on the current dummy was only two weeks away. With the aid of editorial substitutions it was thought we could make the date. Taking a dummy showing possible signature distribution of colors, I made the round of studios to find artists agreeable to the use of one extra color.

After ten days’ work I arrived at the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago, where Mr. Hearst was holding conferences. I had an appointment for noon of the next day. Spending the intervening time at Cuneo’s, I finished the dummy and appeared for my appointment, asking at the hotel that Mr. Hearst’s secretary be informed. The clerk shook his head; orders had been given that no phone calls were to be put through to that floor. The manager was called, I pointed to my brief-case lying on the counter, and said that Mr. Hearst was waiting for its contents. The manager took a chance, made the call, and I was told to go right up.

The conference was in a large room with window seats overlooking the lake. We sat on one of these seats while the dummy was viewed--page by page--twice. Mr. Hearst was pleased and asked if he might keep the dummy so he could enjoy it at his leisure. I told him the closing date would not permit this. He understood, and saying so in an appreciative manner suggesting a pat on the back, he sent me off to catch the afternoon limited so I could reach New York in the morning. There I was shown a wire evidently written and sent as soon as I had left. It was to Ray Long, editor-in-chief, saying: “Shall be pleased if future numbers are as attractive as the dummy I have just seen.” That is the “Chief”--always stimulating and appreciative!

TOWARDS A NEW STYLE

After retiring from the Hearst organization I was recalled and asked to go to Chicago and see if something could not be done to improve the printing of illustrations. A trip to Chicago was not necessary, there being an obvious change long overdue in the New York art departments, and not in the Cuneo printing plant. This fact was reported to Mr. Hathaway, who had relayed the request from Mr. Hearst in California; but Chicago was in the cards and I went. Upon my return a written report, the substance of which had received Mr. Cuneo’s approval, was given to Mr. Long. In lay language, briefly expressed, it said: “Illustrators should be cautioned about an over-use of fussy and valueless detail and asked to restrict their compositions to only so much of the figure or figures, backgrounds and accessories as are required for dramatic story-telling and effective picture-making; requested to forego a full palette when subjects are to be presented in only one or two colors, and to simplify renderings and avoid so many broken tones. Full-page and spread reproductions will then not only solve your press-room worries but create a new and finer type of magazine.”