And never anywhere had I seen so much show and luxury. Nearly all of the houses along upper Fifth Avenue and its side streets boasted their liveried footmen. Wall Street was a sea of financial trickery and legerdemain, a realm so crowded with sharklike geniuses of finance that one’s poor little arithmetic intelligence was entirely discounted and made ridiculous. How was a sniveling scribbler to make his way in such a world? Nothing but chance and luck, as I saw it, could further the average man or lift him out of his rut, and since when had it been proved that I was a favorite of fortune? A crushing sense of incompetence and general in-efficiency seemed to settle upon me, and I could not shake it off. Whenever I went out on an assignment—and I was always being sent upon those trivial, shoe-wearing affairs—I carried with me this sense of my unimportance.
CHAPTER LXXIV
It is entirely possible that, due to some physical or mental defect of my own, I was in no way fitted to contemplate so huge and ruthless a spectacle as New York then presented, or that I had too keen a conception of it at any rate. After a few days of work here I came in touch with several newspaper men from the West—a youth by the name of Graves, another by the name of Elliott, both formerly of Chicago, and a third individual who had once been in St. Louis, Wynne Thomas, brother of the famous playwright, Augustus. All were working on this paper, two of them in the same capacity as myself, the third a staff man. At night we used to sit about doing the late watch and spin all sorts of newspaper tales. These men had wandered from one place to another, and had seen—heavens, what had they not seen! They were completely disillusioned. Here, as in newspaper offices everywhere, one could hear the most disconcerting tales of human depravity and cruelty. I think that in the hours I spent with these men I learned as much about New York and its difficulties and opportunities, its different social strata, its outstanding figures social and political, as I might have learned in months of reporting and reading. They seemed to know every one likely to figure in the public eye. By degrees they introduced me to others, and all confirmed the conclusions which I was reaching. New York was difficult and revolting. The police and politicians were a menace; vice was rampant; wealth was shamelessly showy, cold and brutal. In New York the outsider or beginner had scarcely any chance at all, save as a servant. The city was overrun with hungry, loafing men of all descriptions, newspaper writers included.
After a few weeks of experimenting, however, I had no need of confirmation from any source. An assignment or two having developed well under my handling, and I having reported my success to the city editor, I was allowed to begin to write it, then given another assignment and told to turn my story over to the large gentleman with the gold-headed cane. This infuriated and discouraged me, but I said nothing. I thought it might be due to the city editor’s conviction, so far not disturbed by any opportunity I had had, that I could not write.
But one night, a small item about a fight in a tenement house having been given me to investigate, I went to the place in question and found that it was a cheap beer-drinking brawl on the upper East Side which had its origin in the objection of one neighbor to the noise made by another. I constructed a ridiculous story of my own to the effect that the first irritated neighbor was a musician who had been attempting at midnight to construct a waltz, into which the snores, gurgles, moans and gasps of his slumberous next-door neighbor would not fit. Becoming irritated and unable by calls and knocking to arouse his friend and so bring him to silence, he finally resorted to piano banging and glass-breaking of such a terrible character as to arouse the entire neighborhood and cause the sending in of a riot call by a policeman, who thought that a tenement war had broken out. Result: broken heads and an interesting parade to the nearest police station. Somewhere in the text I used the phrase “sawing somnolent wood.”
Finding no one in charge of the city editor’s desk when I returned, I handed my account to the night city editor. The next morning, lo and behold, there it was on the first page consuming at least a fourth of a column! To my further surprise and gratification, once the city editor appeared I noticed a change of attitude in him. While waiting for an assignment, I caught his eye on me, and finally he came over, paper in hand, and pointing to the item said: “You wrote this, didn’t you?” I began to think that I might have made a mistake in creating this bit of news and that it had been investigated and found to be a fiction. “Yes,” I replied. Instead of berating me he smiled and said: “Well, it’s rather well done. I may be able to make a place for you after a while. I’ll see if I can’t find an interesting story for you somewhere.”
And true to his word, he gave me another story on this order. In the Hoffman House bar, one of the show-places of the city, there had been a brawl the day before, a fight between a well-known society youth of great wealth who owed the hotel money and would not pay as speedily as it wished, and a manager or assistant manager who had sent him some form of disturbing letter. All the details, as I discovered on reading the item (which had been clipped from the Herald), had been fully covered by that paper, and all that remained for me twenty-four hours later was to visit the principals and extract some comments or additions to the tale, which plainly I was expected to revamp in a humorous fashion.
As I have said, humor had never been wholly in my line, and in addition I had by no means overcome my awe of the city and its imposing and much-advertised “Four Hundred.” Now to be called upon to invade one of its main hostelries and beard the irate and lofty manager in his den, to say nothing of this young Vanderbilt or Goelet—well——I told myself that when I reached this hotel the manager would doubtless take a very lofty tone and refuse to discuss the matter—which was exactly what happened. He was infuriated to think that he had been reported as fighting. Similarly, should I succeed in finding this society youth’s apartment, I should probably be snubbed or shunted off in some cavalier fashion—which was exactly what happened. I was told that my Mr. X. was not there. Then, as a conscientious newspaper man, I knew I should return to the hotel and by cajolery or bribery see if I could not induce some barkeeper or waiter who had witnessed the fight to describe some phase of it that I might use.
But I was in no mood for this, and besides, I was afraid of these New York waiters and managers and society people. Suppose they complained of my tale and denounced me as a faker? I returned to the hotel, but its onyx lobby and bar and its heavy rococo decorations and furniture took my courage away. I lingered about but could not begin my inquiries, and finally walked out. Then I went back to the apartment house in which my youth lived, but still he was not in and I could extract no news from the noble footman who kept the door. I did not see how I was to conjure up humor from the facts in hand. Finally I dropped it as unworthy of me and returned to the office. In doing so I had the feeling that I was turning aside an item by which, had I chosen to fake, I could have furthered myself. I knew now that what my city editor wanted was not merely “accuracy, accuracy, accuracy,” but a kind of flair for the ridiculous or the remarkable even though it had to be invented, so that the pages of the paper, and life itself, might not seem so dull. Also I realized that a more experienced man, one used to the ways of the city and acquainted with its interesting and eccentric personalities, might make something out of this and not come to grief; but not I. And so I let it go, realizing that I was losing an excellent opportunity.
And I think that my city editor thought so too. When I returned and told him that I could not find anything interestingly new in connection with this he looked at me as much as to say, “Well, I’ll be damned!” and threw the clipping on his desk. I am satisfied that if any reporter had succeeded in uncovering any aspect of this case not previously used I should have been dropped forthwith. As it turned out, however, nothing more developed, and for a little time anyhow I was permitted to drag on as before, but with no further favors.
One day, being given a part of a “badger” case to unravel, a man and woman working together to divest a hotel man of a check for five thousand dollars, and I having cajoled the lady in the case (then under arrest) into making some interesting remarks as to her part in the affair and badgering in general, I was not allowed to write it but had to content myself with seeing my very good yarn incorporated in another man’s story while I took “time.” Another day, having developed another excellent tale of a runaway marriage, the girl being of a family of some standing, I was not allowed to write it. I was beginning to see that I was a hopeless failure as a reporter here.
CHAPTER LXXV
The things which most contributed to my want of newspaper success in New York and eventually drove me, though much against my will and understanding, into an easier and more agreeable phase of life were, first, that awe of the grinding and almost disgusting forces of life itself which I found in Spencer and Huxley and Balzac and which now persistently haunted me and, due possibly to a depressed physical condition at this time, made it impossible for me to work with any of the zest that had characterized my work in the West. Next, there was that astounding contrast between wealth and poverty, here more sharply emphasized than anywhere else in America, which gave the great city a gross and cruel and mechanical look, and this was emphasized not only by the papers themselves, with their various summaries of investigations and exposures, but also by my own hourly contact with it—a look so harsh and indifferent at times as to leave me a little numb. Again, there was something disillusioning in the sharp contrast between the professed ideals and preachments of such a constantly moralizing journal as the World and the heartless and savage aspect of its internal economy. Men such as myself were mere machines or privates in an ill-paid army to be thrown into any breach. There was no time off for the space-men, unless it was for all time. One was expected to achieve the results desired or get out; and if one did achieve them the reward was nothing.
One day I met an acquaintance and asked about an ex-city editor from St. Louis who had come to New York, and his answer staggered me.
“Oh, Cliff? Didn’t you hear? Why, he committed suicide down here in a West Street hotel.”
“What was the trouble?” I asked.
“Tired of the game, I guess,” he replied. “He didn’t get along down here as well as he had out there. I guess he felt that he was going downhill.”
I walked away, meditating. He had been an excellent newspaper man, as brisk and self-centered as one need be to prosper. The last time I had seen him he was in good physical condition, and yet, after something like a year in New York, he had killed himself.
However, my mood was not that of one who runs away from a grueling contest. I had no notion of leaving New York, whatever happened, although I constantly speculated as to what I should do when all my money was gone. I had no trade or profession beyond this reporting, and yet I was convinced that there must be something else that I could do. Come what might, I was determined that I would ask no favor of my brother, and as for my sister, who was now a burden on my hands, I was determined that as soon as this burden became too great I would take up her case with my brother Paul, outline all that had been done and ask him to shoulder the difference until such time as I could find myself in whatever work I was destined to do.
But what was it?
One of the things which oppressed me was the fact that on the World, as well as on the other papers, were men as young as myself who were apparently of a very different texture, mentally if not physically. Life and this fierce contest which I was taking so much to heart seemed in no wise to disturb them. By reason of temperament and insight perhaps, possibly the lack of it, or, what was more likely, certain fortunate circumstances attending their youth and upbringing, they were part of that oncoming host of professional optimists and yea-sayers, chorus-like in character, which for thirty years or more thereafter in American life was constantly engaged in the pleasing task of emphasizing the possibilities of success, progress, strength and what not for all, in America and elsewhere, while at the same time they were humbly and sycophantically genuflecting before the strong, the lucky, the prosperous. On the World alone at this time, to say nothing of the other papers, were at least a dozen, swaggering about in the best of clothes, their manners those of a graduate of Yale or Harvard or Princeton, their minds stuffed with all the noble maxims of the uplifters. There was nothing wrong with the world that could not be easily and quickly righted, once the honest, just, true, kind, industrious turned their giant and selected brains to the task. This newest type of young newspaper man was to have no traffic with evil in any form; he was to concern himself with the Good, the True, the Beautiful. Many of these young men pretended to an intimate working knowledge of many things: society, politics, finance and what not else. Several had evidently made themselves indispensable as ship reporters, interviewers of arriving and departing celebrities, and these were now pointed out to me as men worthy of envy and emulation. One of them had, at the behest of the World, crossed the ocean more than once seeking to expose the principals in a growing ship-gambling and bunco scandal. There were those who were in the confidence of the mayor, the governor, and some of the lights in Wall Street. One, a scion of one of the best families, was the paper’s best adviser as to social events and scandals. The grand air with which they swung in and out of the office set me beside myself with envy.
And all the time the condition of my personal affairs tended to make me anything but optimistic. I was in very serious financial straits. I sometimes think that I was too new to the city, too green to its psychology and subtlety, to be of any use to a great metropolitan daily; and yet, seeing all I had seen, I should have been worth something. I was only five years distant from the composition of Sister Carrie, to say nothing of many short stories and magazine articles. Yet I was haunted by the thought that I was a misfit, that I might really have to give up and return to the West, where in some pathetic humdrum task I should live out a barren and pointless life.
With this probable end staring me in the face, I began to think that I must not give up but must instead turn to letters, the art of short-story writing; only just how to do this I could not see. One of the things that prompted me to try this was the fact that on the World at this time were several who had succeeded—David Graham Phillips, James Creelman, then a correspondent for the paper in the war which had broken out between China and Japan, to say nothing of George Cary Eggleston and Reginald de Koven, the latter on the staff as chief musical critic. There was another young man, whose name I have forgotten, who was pointed out to me as a rapidly growing favorite in the office of the Century. Then there were those new arrivals in the world of letters: Kipling, Richard Harding Davis, Stephen Crane and some others, whose success fascinated me.
