Overtures were made to The Curtis Publishing Company, but its hands were full, and the matter was presented for Bok's personal consideration.The idea interested him, as he saw in The Century a chance for his self-expression.He entered into negotiations, looked carefully into the property itself and over the field which such a magazine might fill, decided to buy it, and install an active editor while he, as a close adviser, served as the propelling power.
Bok figured out that there was room for one of the trio of what was, and still is, called the standard-sized magazines, namely Scribner's, Harper's, and The Century.He believed, as he does to-day, that any one of these magazines could be so edited as to preserve all its traditions and yet be so ingrafted with the new progressive, modern spirit as to dominate the field and constitute itself the leader in that particular group.He believed that there was a field which would produce a circulation in the neighborhood of a quarter of a million copies a month for one of those magazines, so that it would be considered not, as now, one of three, but the one.
What Bok saw in the possibilities of the standard illustrated magazine has been excellently carried out by Mr.Ellery Sedgwick in The Atlantic Monthly; every tradition has been respected, and yet the new progressive note introduced has given it a position and a circulation never before attained by a non-illustrated magazine of the highest class.
As Bok studied the field, his confidence in the proposition, as he saw it, grew.For his own amusement, he made up some six issues of The Century as he visualized it, and saw that the articles he had included were all obtainable.He selected a business manager and publisher who would relieve him of the manufacturing problems; but before the contract was actually closed Bok, naturally, wanted to consult Mr.Curtis, who was just returning from abroad, as to this proposed sharing of his editor.
For one man to edit two magazines inevitably meant a distribution of effort, and this Mr.Curtis counselled against.He did not believe that any man could successfully serve two masters; it would also mean a division of public association; it might result in Bok's physical undoing, as already he was overworked.Mr.Curtis's arguments, of course, prevailed; the negotiations were immediately called off, and for the second time--for some wise reason, undoubtedly--the real Edward Bok was subdued.He went back into the bottle!
A cardinal point in Edward Bok's code of editing was not to commit his magazine to unwritten material, or to accept and print articles or stories simply because they were the work of well-known persons.And as his acquaintance with authors multiplied, he found that the greater the man the more willing he was that his work should stand or fall on its merit, and that the editor should retain his prerogative of declination--if he deemed it wise to exercise it.
Rudyard Kipling was, and is, a notable example of this broad and just policy.His work is never imposed upon an editor; it is invariably submitted, in its completed form, for acceptance or declination."Wait until it's done," said Kipling once to Bok as he outlined a story to him which the editor liked, "and see whether you want it.You can't tell until then." (What a difference from the type of author who insists that an editor must take his or her story before a line is written!)"I told Watt to send you," he writes to Bok, "the first four of my child stories (you see I hadn't forgotten my promise), and they may serve to amuse you for a while personally, even if you don't use them for publication.Frankly, I don't myself see how they can be used for the L.
H.J.; but they're part of a scheme of mine for trying to give children not a notion of history, but a notion of the time sense which is at the bottom of all knowledge of history; and history, rightly understood, means the love of one's fellow-men and the land one lives in."James Whitcomb Riley was another who believed that an editor should have the privilege of saying "No" if he so elected.When Riley was writing a series of poems for Bok, the latter, not liking a poem which the Hoosier poet sent him, returned it to him.He wondered how Riley would receive a declination--naturally a rare experience.But his immediate answer settled the question:
"Thanks equally for your treatment of both poems, [he wrote], the one accepted and the other returned.Maintain your own opinions and respect, and my vigorous esteem for you shall remain 'deep-rooted in the fruitful soil.' No occasion for apology whatever.In my opinion, you are wrong;in your opinion, you are right; therefore, you are right,--at least righter than wronger.It is seldom that I drop other work for logic, but when I do, as my grandfather was wont to sturdily remark, 'it is to some purpose, I can promise you.'
"Am goin' to try mighty hard to send you the dialect work you've so long wanted; in few weeks at furthest.'Patience and shuffle the cards.'
"I am really, just now, stark and bare of one commonsence idea.In the writing line, I was never so involved before and see no end to the ink-(an humorous voluntary provocative, I trust of much merriment)-creasing pressure of it all.
"Even the hope of waking to find myself famous is denied me, since Ihaven't time in which to fall asleep.Therefore, very drowsily and yawningly indeed, I am your "James Whitcomb Riley."Neither did the President of the United States consider himself above a possible declination of his material if it seemed advisable to the editor.In 1916 Woodrow Wilson wrote to Bok:
