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In Myself
way
turns to a
Memoirs,
his
When Young, Arthur Krock of life only briefly explored
and
to a time
9 10, Krock grew up
rural
in
a place long past, yet
From 1887
here richly and fully recaptured. 1
re-
to
and streets of
in the fields
and urban Kentucky, learning about the
world around him, and eventually, about the par-
With
world of newspaper journalism.
ticular
a
keen eye and a clear prose, Krock brings back those
days
—
of rural
ling excitement and
He
summer afternoons and
lazy
the
community
sense of
Glasgow, the bust-
activity of Louisville.
recreates the big brick house he lived in,
surrounded by uncles and aunts and ruled by the strict
but gentle hand of his grandfather; the
country courting and of melon-patch
rituals of
raiding in August; the pleasures of a very infor-
mal type of fox-hunting,
which the hounds
in
and handlers went chasing while the "hunters" sat
on a
hill
with
He
and drank bourbon.
camp meetings,
led by
tumultuous
spirituals;
when normally
peaceable
Saturday
;
filled
nights,
displayed
citizens
"special inclination to violence
ence of alcohol"
recalls fiery
Negro preachers and
under the
a
influ-
breezy stagecoach rides to near-
by villages; and the exciting process of learning the "three useful things"
— how
to
ride,
shoot,
and draw a bow.
And
then he moves to Louisville and the pic-
ture changes to the rough-and-tumble world of
newspaper reporting with like editor
its
legendary figures
Henry Watterson, with
his
one blaz-
ing blue eye. and cartoonist Fontaine Fox, creator of the
Toonerville Trolley.
He
creates a pene-
trating portrait of the fierce newspaper competition
in
1907 and of Louisville
atmosphere, social
prominent
and
personalities
Mother Savage, famed
life,
theatrical
the
and
in
general:
entertainments, characters,
proprietress of
boarding house.
its
its
like
Louisville's
And Krock
talks about his initiation into politics, his stories
resounding with the
likes
of
William Jennings
Bryan, William Taft, William Randolph Hearst,
and
local figures like the
"mountain
of a
man,"
Senator Ollie James.
The book
ends with Krock's triumphant ar-
Washington, D.C.,
rival in
in
1910, the begin-
ning for him of a "new and awesome phase of
was to post me twice in Haldeman papers (1910New York Times (1932-
national journalism that
Washington:
for the
and for the
1915)
1966)."
This age,
a
is
a
warmly
nostalgic
memoir
of another
book both entertaining and informative
about the details of Arthur Krock's personal
— and about American in
the whole
way
life
of life of the simpler
society that preceded
World War
I.
"There have been localities in a span of history which the conditions of living seem to have
overbalanced the
human
the day-to-day problems
bent for destruction and
were minimal
parison with the pleasure of existence. true of the region
grew
to
where one
young manhood."
in
com-
This was
individual, myself,
BOOKS BY ARTHUR KROCK THE EDITORIALS OF HENRY WATTERSON IN
THE NATION
MEMOIRS
THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED AND OTHER DECEITS MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
MYSELF
WHEN YOUNG
MYSELF
WHEN YOUNG
Growing Up
in the 1890's
BY ARTHUR KROCK
Little,
Brown and Company
— Boston-Toronto
COPYRIGHT
©
1973 BY ARTHUR KROCK
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPROPRODUCED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY ELECTRONIC OR MECHANICAL MEANS INCLUDING INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEMS WITHOUT PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHER, EXCEPT BY A REVIEWER WHO MAY QUOTE BRIEF PASSAGES IN A REVIEW. FIRST EDITION T O3/73
The author is grateful for permission to quote from the following previously copyrighted works:
Max Gordon Presents by Max Gordon with Lewis Funke. Published by Bernard Geis Associates. Copyright 1963 by Max Gordon and Lewis Funke. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
©
"Derelict" by Young E. Allison from The Best Loved Poems of the American People edited by Hazel Felleman. Published by Doubleday & Company, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging
in
Publication Data
Krock, Arthur, 1886Myself when young. Title. I. PN4874-.K73A3
070'. 92 '4 [B]
72- -8830
ISBN 0-316-50441-6
by
Published simultaneously in Canada Brown &f Company (Canada) Limited
Little,
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
1732715 Introduction
The
who
phrasemaker
of the
Boston Centinel
described the Administration of Presi-
Monroe as "the era of good feeling" had his eye Western hemisphere, because never in the history of mankind has there been such a period in the world at large. The same can be said of the many "Golden Ages" which have been proclaimed; dent
only on the
for, as
Pascal wrote, though man's creative achieve-
ments advance from age
to age, his
malignancy
re-
mains the same. Yet there have been in
localities in a
which the conditions
balanced the
human
of living
span of history
seem
to
have over-
bent for destruction and the
day-to-day problems were minimal in comparison
with the pleasure of existence. This was true of the region where one individual, myself,
grew
to
young
manhood.
The purpose detail
of this
book
is to set
Wagnalls, 1968) what
life
was
more Funk &
forth in
than in a previous one (Memoirs,
like in that region
INTRODUCTION
Vlll
for a
growing boy, and then
ing his
way
for a
young man
learn-
in the field of metropolitan journalism.
In retrospect, though as always the times were good
and bad,
it
was an
of regret that
it
era to
remember with
a mixture
cannot be returned to and of recogni-
tion that the progress of social justice
would be
stifled
by the reversion.
But though on the global scale the period 18871910 was marred by many wars of which the British-Boer conflict in South Africa was the bloodiest even these were localized the pandemic military encounter of 1914-1918 had not been joined. And
—
—
:
while the forces of nature inflicted great asters,
human
dis-
such as the Johnstown, Pennsylvania, flood
and the great
tidal
wave
that razed Galveston, Texas,
the attainments of science were of a measure and of
matched by no equal stretch of history, even though some of the blessings engendered new a quality
problems.
The
first
combustion-engine-vehicle, invented by
Benz, was exhibited
at the Paris
Exposition of 1889.
In 1892 Dr. Rudolf Diesel produced the internal
combustion engine which bears his name. later, via the
kinetoscope, the era of
Two years
moving
objects
on a screen was inaugurated, one of the steps which led to both
sound and picture through the media of
television.
Roentgen discovered the
X ray. Marconi, in
1896,
INTRODUCTION
IX
patented wireless communication and able in 1901
made
oper-
it
by sending a message from Cornwall
Newfoundland. Becquerel
to
in Paris discovered the ra-
dioactive quality of uranium,
and
1898 the Curies
in
turned pitchblende into polonium and radium. In
1900 Dr. Walter Reed completed the research which led to the prevention
Ford founded the
and cure
Henry
of yellow fever.
Ford Motor Company. And
1906 Captain Alfred Dreyfus was ated of charges of treachery
officially
by fellow
in
exoner-
who
officers
had hatched the anti-Semitic plot that had led
to his
long imprisonment on Devil's Island.
Most
of these great advances entered the public
domain before
I
reached
my teens
1900) and they the family and in the (
,
must have been talked about in community. But I remember only the Dreyfus and
my of
this
because
at the
age of ten (1897)
I
had
hands on and was devouring the forbidden
Emile Zola's Nana
laid fruit
until an uncle, discovering
snatched the book away. So that
in the act,
case,
me
when
January 1898, published his celebrated at{T Accuse) on the perversion of French justice,
Zola, in
tack
my
interest in the discussion that article
derived from the fact that Zola I
know
was the
author.
a standard attitude of youth
whole American past ing of value
is
is
provoked
is
that the
an "irrelevancy," that noth-
to be learned
from
it
in
addressing the
problems of today. Yet the present can be the past's
INTRODUCTION
X
And
deformed offspring.
this
one
is
rushing with
such speed and in such volume that even the youth
who
are "with
it"
are swept along the faster because
they have been deprived of the historical markings
which would enable them
mad tide
this
creation
is
of time.
that
when
And
to
swim
intelligently in
the inexplicable decree of
the future arrives
no longer
it is
the future.
The offers
antidote for the false philosophy that the past
— have —
no lessons for the present action
phy by which
so
many
intellectuals
a philoso-
led youth
badlands of anti-intellectualism
is,
view, a return to inspection of the past
itself.
into the
of this inspection tions.
may
my
Some
be provided by these recollec-
Moreover, the thoughts, diversions and
plines in rural
in
and urban Kentucky
disci-
in the times cov-
may lay some innocent balm on the spirits who bear the enormous burdens, and must
ered here, of those live
with the daily menaces, of this troubled world.
The members
of
my own
profession
they have invented what they call
may is
discover in these pages that
"New
it,
who
think
Journalism"
in another dress,
an updated version of the personal journalism
which long dominated the press of the United States.
The
idea that
it
is
new
to
compose the
re-
by recording every known or rumored word and gesture uttered or made by the prin-
port of an event
cipals involved, the "profile" treatment, is at least as
INTRODUCTION old as Plutarch
XI
and was perfected more than a hun-
dred years ago, not by the
New
Yorker, but by
Ma-
caulay in his essay on Dr. Johnson.
And the
words
Agnes" I've
insofar as this book of the old
is
woman
directly apply:
"But
mickle time to grieve."
otherwise concerned, in let
"The Eve
me
of St.
laugh awhile,
MYSELF
WHEN YOUNG
Chapter One
How
happily remember: the noon whistle that announced the L&N train had arrived from Glasgow Junction on the main line of the railroad.
The sound
i
of hoofbeats
and the jingle
ness as carriages neared the depot.
The
stir
of har-
around
Square as merchants, lawyers and mounted
the
countryfolk awaited the delivery and sorting of the
mail at the Post Office.
The
bustle around the soda
Mr. Raubold's confectionery. The tramp of feet into "the" restaurant that marked the noonday lull in the town's commerce that the train whistle
fountain in
had inaugurated. For a few boys, of a
happy
ritual to
rolled in.
whom
I
We could hear
it
was one, it was when the noon train
usually
be at the depot
coming
as
it
crossed the
bridge over Beaver Creek a couple of miles away.
was
a matter of great pride to be recognized
It
by the
red-bearded Mr. McConnell, whose surrey was the taxi of those times,
—
his high estate
by Captain Crigler, the conductor
made even more glamorous by
his
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
4
blue, brass-buttoned serge suit, his gold-braided cap
and the heavy watch chain that hung resplendent over his well-nurtured belly. But especially proud
were the boys who got a personal greeting from Mr.
Payne because he was the engineer, and by the use of
shrewd
flatteries
it
was
possible to be invited to
him once in a while Somewhat less desirable
ride in the engine cab with
and from the Junction.
to
—
because this might involve helping feed the fuel into the engine
— was
to
be on a personal footing with
I
have forgotten his form, his
the fireman (alas,
visage and his
After
all
name
!
)
these amenities
we would
return to the
Square, purveyors of whatever news of the outside
world we had acquired arrival
of a
V.I. P.
by the
boots.
at the depot,
such as the
stranger, established as obviously a city
magnificence of his clothes and
We were dusty from the walk on the unpaved
road, but
Not
it
was the dust of adventure.
less so
before us, did
than
we
Tom
Sawyer, several decades
teen-agers of the year of the turn of
the century seek to put into practice the military exploits of lances,
Wilfred of Ivanhoe. Armed with wooden
mounted on wooden
"horses,"
we
constantly
reenacted the tiltings at Ashby-de-la-Zouche. goal
was
and the
to stay
The
aboard and tumble your opponent,
ratio of success
was such
that every house-
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
5
hold in Glasgow was equipped with salves and
lini-
ments.
Our family had
a special salve with the remark-
able quality of rapidly curing small of the skin disturbances
which outdoor
and insect-breeding climate
my
inflicted.
grandmother prepared from
ham
dients, including
wounds and some life in
a hot
This emollient
a variety of ingre-
which she never com-
fat,
pletely disclosed.
One
of
my
uncles set up a production apparatus
under the name of "Grandma's
for the concoction
Salve" and tried to find a market for inventor
it
would make us
all rich.
marketing and promotional with which
my
skills,
it,
assuring the
But, lacking the
and the
capital,
Princeton classmate Gerard B.
bert put Listerine into millions of
holds, he never
made
a
Lam-
American house-
And
go of the project.
the
miraculously healing balm never attained more than local use I
and distribution.
suppose
down from
a
my
grandmother's recipe was a hand-
remote ancestor
grandfather, she told me, small town it.
to
It
named
in Bavaria,
was burgomeister
Eisweiler, as nearly as
would be more romantic
an ancestor of the
where her
I
to attribute the
Romany
in
a
can spell
formula
breed. But her fair
hair and complexion, her straight nose, broad brow
and other definitely Teutonic features gave no substance to this fancy.
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG John and Bob Lessenberry, being smaller and skinnier than self-appointed
I,
were
my
manager
favorite opponents;
of the jousts
one or the other until protests obliged for a fairer matching.
my
selected
As
a regular
best friend, Frank
I
and as
paired with
me
to arrange
enemy
I
then
McQuown, and
got
my share of the tumbles as was right and proper. When we were not tilting exchanging after each
—
joust the roles of Ivanhoe and Sir Brian de Bois-
Guilbert the Six
— we suddenly transmuted
Hundred
ourselves into
at Balaclava, galloped
our wooden
horses around the Square, to the annoyance and peril of citizens, pigs,
dogs and such cats as ventured from
their sanctuaries
under the plank walks.
Our wooden horses were
not, as
might be sup-
posed, the toy rockers which, in those days, were the first gifts
on a boy's emergence from infancy. Ours
consisted of broomsticks, each affixed with a straw-
maned wooden parisoned. attained
horse's
head that was splendidly
And we made
as
by the hard striking
much of
clatter as could
ca-
be
wood ferules on wood
sidewalks, a joy regularly terminated, however, by the
town marshal.
Chapter Two
Glasgow was built around the Court House Square, from which radiated broad streets
expanding
into "pikes"
and smaller
streets
and lanes
culminating in dead ends. In the center of the Square in
my
boyhood was the Court House (the fourth
structure of
its
kind), a Georgian, white-columned,
many-roomed building within a white wooden fence supplemented by hitching posts, and surrounded by a spacious lawn of bluegrass. The rest of the Square consisted of four blocks containing the business com-
munity
— banks, shops,
and the Opera House
in
stores, offices, restaurants,
which
itinerant stock
panies performed such melodramas as
com-
The Serpent
and the Dove, and individual and concert musicales were held.
The
radial streets
fortable houses, set far as the
estates
were lined with large, com-
amid
trees in
broad grounds, as
town boundaries extended. Behind these
was
the modest housing occupied by citizens
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG and ultimately the make-do dwell-
of lesser income,
ings of the poor, in various states of upkeep.
But a separate section, known as the Kingdom, was occupied by the Negro population. The houses were superior
many
to
where the "poor
of those
whites" lived, and the yards and gardens more care-
The churches
fully tended.
— were
whitewashed
handcrafted with tion.
— painted
or
meticulously clean, airy and
skills
enhanced by religious devo-
Whatever Glasgow
could be termed a slum,
The
especially
in those it
days had of what
was not
the
Kingdom.
"pikes" that broadened from the streets en-
House led to the capitals of the adjoining counties of Warren, Allen, Cumberland, Adair, Metcalfe, Monroe, Hart and Green. My famclosing the Court
ily, after fire
destroyed our house on the Square, lived
successively on two of these pikes
Allen County, the other at Burkes-
at Scottsville, in ville, in
Cumberland County.
My memory of the first, ing is
— one terminating
known
as the
of a large,
a temporary family lodg-
Ford Place, on the
Scottsville Pike,
many-windowed frame
structure with
enveloping galleries (verandas), enclosed in a lawn of
moderate
size
ble gardens. It
and backing on flower and vegeta-
was
there
my
grandfather, reading
the Courier-Journal on the garden gallery, voiced to
me his
sorrow over the defeat of John L. Sullivan by
James
J.
Corbett in 1892; there
I
helped stuff geese
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
9
with corn to fatten them for Christmas dinner, and shared, though not with her calm,
my grandmother's
discovery of a rattlesnake in the pantry shelves.
But the house on the Burkesville Pike of
town
—
my Washington Hill
me
this is as familiar to
apartment
now.
is
at the
edge
in retrospect as
on Ritter
It sat
and thus was known as the Ritter Place, Judge
Ritter's estate
having sold
it
my
to
grandfather.
A
by flower gardens,
long, tree-filled lawn, enriched
extended from a musket-barrel front fence to and
around the house, bisected by a driveway edged with maples which glowed
The
like torches in the
was dark-red
construction
autumn.
brick, faced
by
a
white-columned portico and white shutters. From the rear doors the land extended past a
pump,
a lye
hopper, a springhouse, an icehouse and a smokehouse, to the usual farm outbuildings (including a privy)
;
thence to fields of cane and pea vines, a large
melon-patch and stables and grazing meadows for horses and cattle.
The back boundary was
the Co-
lumbia Pike, heading for the town of that name, seat of
Adair County.
Except for the melon-patch
in
August, when the
succulent crop was so plentiful that
and
I
my
playmates
regularly got the bellyache trying to eat the
surplus before
it
was
fed to the certified swine of the
animal kingdom, the rain barrel beside the house
was the source
of
supreme
bliss.
Five feet high, wide-
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
10
mouthed, wondrously crafted of bent wooden staves
and brass hoops, the rain barrel offered a wealth delights.
When
half-foot
boy could climb
it
was drought-empty, sides
its
of
a four-and-a-
and holler
into
it,
booming sound. When the water level in the barrel was sufficiently high, the women and girls of the family would dip out nature's elixir for washing hair (I am told on the best authority that no pharmaceutical compound is comparable)
making
a glorious
Sometimes, a sense of deep Victorian guilt highly visible
on her face, a family female would dip out
enough rainwater
for the lascivious luxury of a bath.
But discovery evoked such
was not soon
dation
The wide
a protest that the depre-
repeated.
front door of the residence opened
hall,
upon
a
reaching from the front to the back door,
with a "parlor," dining room, kitchen and pantry on the right, also an office-study, and a
on the
left
where most
huge
living
of the family life
was
room con-
The two upstairs many bedrooms re-
ducted around a vast fireplace. floors
were complexes of the
quired by so large a family. But our only bathroom,
whose
was a very large porcelain tub on bronze lion claws, was a large closet off the kitchen and pantry to which the hot water was sole furniture
brought by hand.
So
far as
we boys were
was minimal —
concerned,
its
daily use
the pitchers and washbasins in our
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG bedrooms
sufficing for the light toilet
tomary, especially I
in
11
which was cus-
summer, among barefoot boys.
describe this toilet as "light" because, as
remember,
tinctly
and
face
my own
I
consisted of washing
dis-
my
pants with cross-
feet, slipping into a pair of
braces, and, thus accoutered, climbing out of
my
window onto the tin eaves above the front portico and sliding down a column to land on a sward fresh with morning dew.
common
In addition to the fireplace, the rooms, the living
Franklin stove
to nearly all
room was further heated by
when
the weather
w as
a
inclement.
r
my grandfather had a special chair,
There
so had my room was lighted lamps with green shades, making it a
grandmother; and
by many
oil
at nightfall the
most agreeable place
to converse, read,
pretend to
study, and engage surreptitiously in horseplay until
commanded phones
in the
just outside.
when
to leave off.
One
of the earliest tele-
county was screwed onto the hall wall
And among my
a lightning storm
was
vivid
memories
would often emit from the instrument and harmless self-extinction
The had
is that,
in progress, a ball of fire
at the
end of the
skitter to
hall.
"parlor," used only for important
company,
a fireplace with silver-framed mirrors
above the
marble mantel; and, for furniture, chairs and sofas upholstered in horsehair that were more pleasant to slide
down than
sit
on, a high-napped carpet
and an
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
12
upright piano. Small fry were forbidden to enter this palatial
found less
apartment save by invitation, but ways were
to disobey this injunction
found
The
with impunity un-
out.
was in Glasgow, in the Nineteen Fifties, this house was the headquarters of the Barren County Board of Education, and I had difficulty in finding my way about, even to my little room over the portico. But, of all the memories crowding upon me, one, so given to vagary is the human mind, was outstanding: my uncle Edward, years my senior, dancing about the stove in the living room in his time
last
I
nightgown and chanting a kind
of rune of his
devising: u
Bo-shee, bo-shee, bo-shee hah
Ouch!
I
burned
—
my bo-shee bah!"
(For "bo-shee" read "behind.")
own
Chapter Three
The new begun
south to
in
my
boyhood had not even
supplant the Old South either eco-
nomically or socially. Hence opportunity to better
drew
oneself steadily
male and female, I
went
to
young white
off the
to cities near
Washington,
of the Louisville
in
and
far.
adults,
the time
1910, as the correspondent
my
Times, three of
sought their fortunes
By
Far Northwest; three
in the
Louisville; one in Chicago, to
long since repaired; one in
uncles had
my
which
New
in
parents had
Orleans and one
in
Baltimore.
But
in
my early years most of the
family
still
lived
together in a house large enough to accommodate
We were more than a dozen at table; staple
articles
goods,
etc.,
my
as
basic
clothing,
and as for such grains,
canned
grandfather ordered them in large
consignments. "By the carload,"
my playmates, but this was
I
used
to boast to
an exaggeration.
This large personnel exemplified the family tern of the time
it.
—
as an example,
my
pat-
grandfather
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
14
his first wife,
Of these, six~ were borne by Marinda Nevil Turner, in Metcalfe
County (three
of
sired fifteen children.
by
whom
died in infancy), and nine
my grandmother. Marinda Turner's surviving children were named
Cornelia Belle, Victoria Regina and Frederick flecting
on
my
—
re-
grandfather's part both a sense of his
German origins and a devotion (incomprehensible to me) to the lackluster House of Hanover which gave Britain
its
monarchs
after
Queen Anne. This
same tendency appeared, with two exceptions,
naming of my mother,
in the
Caroline, and her brothers.
Frederick, the eldest of the brood, had married
Mary
the town beauty,
Dickey, before
and he lived across the pike.
man, educated bilt,
and
it
at the
He was
I
was born,
a large, bland
Naval Academy and Vander-
was he who
directed
my
reading to the
English and French literary masters of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. half-sisters
were
also
rooftree. Victoria
My
married and
mother's two
left
the paternal
Regina lived with her growing
family in another part of town. Cornelia Belle had
become mentally deranged, the which at
lost
result of an accident
her the sight of an eye, and was a patient
an institution.
But her
fate
had not
affected a congenital trait
of plain speaking, as witness the following colloquy
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG one day, when her
sister Victoria
15
Regina was
visiting
my childless Aunt Belle: "Vic,
how many children have you?"
"Six."
"You slut!"
The
street accident
which cost Aunt Belle her
eye was a consequence of one of the episodes of violence that occurred
when some
of the citizens
had
imbibed too much bourbon or moonshine whiskey,
At
a frequent event of Saturday night in those times. that period the family
was
living on the Court
House
Square; and in front of the dwelling was a
where guests could disembark and hitch
stile
their horses.
My aunt was sitting on the stile, awaiting the arrival of a beau,
when
broke out in the roadway
a fight
among some drunks. They fell to rock-throwing, and one
errant missile
struck her on the temple, the expense being the loss of her right eye.
An unhappy
guese nobleman —
at least
proof claimed the proud vated the
damage
marriage with a Portuhe said he was and
name
of
in
d'Acosta — aggra-
to the delicate structures of the
cranium. Her husband vanished into the distances
whence he came, and her condition deteriorated the point
where only an
to
institution could provide
proper care.
The house on
the Square lives vaguely in
my
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
16
memory,
for
was
I
burned down.
I
less
than
recall that
it
five-
was
when
years old
spacious;
it
remem-
I
ber the white-trimmed Georgian brick facade and,
when
resummon
I
its
aspects from the long, long
past, several others are especially clear.
One was
the parlor (living
room)
which
in
my
grandfather sat of evenings reading his newspaper
under the light of one of the green-shaded
—
a light
I still
ticated devices
oil
lamps
think superior to any of the sophis-
which have supplanted
particularly clear
remembrance
flower garden which, under
my
Another
it.
of the expansive
is
grandmother's green
thumb, became a thing of fame and wondrous beauty, with box-edged alleys, a
lily
pond and a small
Once her Marechal Neal rosebushes bore more than seven hundred blooms at the same time. In evoking the lamplit parlor I remember an evening when I, having equipped myself with a pair of grotto.
small shears, sitting as usual at feet
my
and becoming entranced with the white
stripes of his trousers
six inches.
With such
this act that
done.
I
up
to
quiet devotion did
no one noticed until the
forget
vertical
which alternated with black
ones, carefully fringed the bottoms
I
grandfather's
I
fell
what the punishment was;
at
perhaps
perform
deed was
any
rate,
did not repeat the sacrilege.
Such
recollection as
I
have of the house on the
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG Square has persisted for two
17
final reasons.
Next
to
it
was the Glasgow Hotel, and when I was about four years old there was an oil strike a few miles from town and the hotel was crowded with pectors and other operatives of the
drillers, pros-
limited by family ukase to short visits
fascinating strangers,
Having announced I
stretched
I
that
I
knew
all
Though among these
field.
my
permission.
the latest songs,
found myself their favorite guest; and, encourage-
ment
sang
forthcoming,
them.
Annie
"Little
Rooney," "Sweet Rosie O'Grady," "A Bicycle Built
Two," "After The Ball" and "My Coal Black Lady" were very popular items in my repertoire.
for
The
oilmen, being then as
habits, took
up
a collection for
formance, repeated all
now generous
and
unwilling)
it
it
me
the day
after the first per-
regularly thereafter (I not at
was not long before
secreted a hoard of about three
Dark was
in their
hundred
when my grandmother,
I
had
dollars.
discover-
ing conduct she considered no better than that of a professional beggar, ordered
me to return
the money.
But since there was neither means nor disposition
among the oilmen to calculate what amount belonged to whom, was commanded to give the money to a fund for indigent citizens. Which I am sure with I
resentment
—
—
I
did.
Deceit and stupidity on
my own
part were respon-
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
18 sible for
my
secret hoard. that, I
though
knew when
grandmother's discovery that
The I I
deceit
was
I
had
a
attributable to the fact
had persuaded myself took the oilmen's
to the contrary,
money
was
I
violat-
ing her stern rule against the acceptance of gifts of value from "strangers."
my of
The
stupidity consisted of
choice of a hiding place for the money: the roots
some rosebushes
in
my
grandmother's garden.
Since she was a most diligent gardener, ordinary juvenile intelligence ceal the
would have counseled me
money anywhere but among her
to con-
At
roses.
my criminal career insofar as I can recall the events of my childhood. The final reason for my remembrances of this house was supplied by my eldest uncle, Fred. We any
rate, the incident
ended
had been safely evacuated
at the
outbreak of the
which eventually destroyed the house, but,
fire
at the
height of the blaze, he rushed back into the building. Horrified, the watchers speculated on
explain this act of apparent heroism.
what could
Was
there a
missing brat? No, the count of small fry was complete.
Had
he, realizing that his Annapolis uniform,
or sword, or dirk, or
some
priceless jewel
on the premises, decided to risk his
life
remained
for its sal-
vage?
The
solution of the mystery
was not long
in
coming. Fred emerged in a few seconds, slightly
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
19
singed as to hair and bearing a book in about the
same
condition. Later
it
so.
learned the book's
title,
but
much later did I understand why he The book (illustrated) was Fanny Hill.
not until very prized
I
Chapter Four
My when he
grandfather,
laid
down
the law, obedience
by most
pected and promptly
rietta"
fulfilled.
for ex-
His wife invariably
him she was "Henjust "Ma." He had made his Mississippi to Kentucky from his father's
— sometimes
in
bearded,
— even — was
of his elders
him "Mr. Morris," and
way up the house
slender,
ruled the "roast" with a gentle hand, but,
this child spoiled
called
tall,
New
to
Orleans with a pack on his back and
become the leading merchant and unofficial banker in Glasgow after brief storekeeping in Hart County (at Three Springs) and in Metcalfe County (at Edmonton). At Edmonton he had married Marinda Nevil a small
amount
of silver in his pocket to
Turner, and, after her early death, had moved to
Glasgow. In resisting an attack during the
War
Between
town by QuantrelPs infamous who preyed on both Confederate and
the States on the guerrillas,
Union
citizens,
my
grandfather
had
developed
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG asthma from exposure
in
2\
the canebrakes, also a
minor gunshot wound which troubled him the of his
rest
Eventually he died of the combination, so
life.
asthmatic that he passed his last months sitting upright in an invalid chair, his long-ago-wounded foot
corrupted by gangrene beyond the medical
skill of
those times to dispel.
But
until his invalidism
he was one of the most
members
active, as well as prosperous,
of the
com-
munity: chairman of the Fiscal Court, and thereby invested with the lifetime of the largest
title
of "Squire"; proprietor
and most modern and diversified store
owner
of the buildings on the
Square
with "The Morris Block" carved on their
lintels;
in the area;
and benefactor
Negroes,
to the poor, particularly
with non-interest-bearing loans and donations.
He came
of largely
and Alsace-Lorraine, formal worship
Jewish stock and,
in that faith
had
ritual
it.
Since he regularly
I
Prussia
and other
been feasible
munity without a synagogue, would, practiced
in rural
in a
com-
suppose, have
made business
trips
on horseback to Louisville, a hundred and ten miles distant,
he
his aunts
may
well have gone to church there.
were educated
in the
But
convent school of the
ancient French cathedral of St. Trophime, at Aries.
And no cially so
was impressed on me as a child, espebecause my father was a freethinker, and I
creed
drifted into agnosticism without exposure to ritual
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
22
or other observances involving
commitment
to
any
denomination.
But the consequence was that I grew up without knowledge of one of the most ancient cultures. Of the races of man, only three the Hebrews, the Brah-
—
mins
of India
and the Chinese
— who were
in antiquity, projected their civilization into
times.
The
civilized
modern
present inhabitants of Egypt, Italy and
Greece respectively do not descend from the people the
of
Pharaohs, the Roman-Etruscans and the
Greeks. And, though the wandering tribes of Israel were, of course, more or less mongrelized through
made
the ages in proportion to the use
women by contemptuous overlords, even quarterings of world's definition.
Hebrew blood
And by
a
of their
Caucasian with
is
a
Jew by
the
that definition a direct
heir to one of the three cultures
which have survived
antiquity.
The
definition
nic group
On
is
unique in that
it
identifies
an eth-
by creed, whether or not long forsaken.
the other hand, such populations as those of
Spain and Sicily
— conglomerate
ethnic mixtures
—
by nationality and geography. Many stories were told of my grandfather in the community where he was greatly admired and respected, of which I remember one in particular. When the financial panic of 1873 struck, Barren County was not spared the intense pressure of crediare defined
WHEN YOUNG
MYSK1.1
everywhere
tors
to salvage
some
23
of their loans, and,
word spreading that my grandfather was bankrupt, he had to take measures to prevent the report from becoming a reality. He gathered all the paper currency he could lay his hands on, made a large ball of it and went on horseback among his creditors throughout the county. To each he said, showing the roll, "I understand you are afraid you won't get your money back, so I can pay you now if you want the
me
to." In
and thus survived the
trary
The
roll,
than by or
every instance he was assured to the con-
its
however, was more impressive by
with
its size
had covered the ninety was composed of one-dollar
content. For he
more percent
bills
crisis.
of
it
that
bills of large
denomination, and the sight
of these dispelled the anxiety of the creditors.
any others
tually they, as well as
became indebted, were repaid
to
in full
whom
Even-
he ever
with the interest
due.
My
grandfather spoke with the soft accent of the
South where his
life
developed into what
was
a
was is
asthma
spent. Until his
now termed emphysema, he
pipe-smoker and chewed tobacco; drank three
"toddies" of bourbon
gourd"
— each
country songs
— with
day on in
u
a fixed
a little
sugar
in the
schedule; and sang
the family circle.
It
was
his un-
at
home,
though he often brought business associates
to the
broken rule never to discuss "business"
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
24
noonday meal
—
particularly those
On
were called "drummers."
grandmother told
me
who
in that
time
one such occasion,
my
years afterward, he embar-
When
rassed her as follows:
"What
finished he asked her,
main course was
the
we having
are
for
change?" But that day, most unusually, she had none.
should explain
I
that
Barren County
in
"change" was the term for dessert. called this
While
anywhere
I
never heard
it
else.
my grandfather was the unquestioned head was
of the family, his wife
the equally unquestioned
head of the household, a larger and even more de-
manding occupation.
involved feeding, bedding,
It
disciplining, doctoring
and administering the con-
duct and morals of a large brood that included the three surviving children of the six borne to
grandfather by his
first
my
wife, and the nine (eight
which
sons and one daughter)
my
grandmother
To
these responsibilities she added the role of
unofficial
nursing assistant to our family doctor
bore.
when some poor family
in
some emergency need
for medical care, especially
town or
in the
country had
obstetrical.
In response to her sense of duty to humanity, she
helped the doctor deliver so
many babies,
self-trained
though she was, and regardless of the hour, that she was, in effect, godmother to a population. Yet the
bunch
of locker keys she carried at her waist
was
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
25
testimony to the extent of her detailed supervision of her large private
My
domain.
grandmother came
same German-
the
of
her husband — her
Jewish stock as
surname was
Frank. But her features and coloring suggested a
wider strain than his of the Teutonic. Also she was of the I
town and he
of the country.
was only seven when
his forebears
my
She
told
grandfather died
were farmers and cattlemen
— —
me in
for
that
Prussia
and Alsace, while, as aforesaid, her grandfather was a burgomeister in Bavaria.
She had been beautiful when young and was
still
when I became aware that the lady who was rearing me was not my mother but my grandmother. Her brow was broad, her hair chestnut in color, her eyes light brown and lambent, her nose what is termed Roman, her figure slenderly handsome
in
her
fifties
rounded, her voice modulated. Harassed as she constantly yell at
was by eight
active sons,
I
never heard her
them, but she could speak with cutting and
effective firmness
when
the occasion warranted.
She was the source of my information on how she met my grandfather. She was living with relatives in Louisville, she said,
eighteen
these
relatives
set
and when she turned
upon matchmaking.
Their candidate was a young widower, with three
young children, who had gow and a rising position
a prospering store in Glasin the
community. He was
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
26
described to her as attractive, kind and of the highest character.
And,
after this conditioning
some months,
for
my
had gone on
grandfather appeared and be-
gan his courting. I
gathered that they
quickly in love (a good
fell
thing, because obviously he
had
little
time to spare
before returning to his family and his business),
were soon married, and
set
up housekeeping
in Glas-
gow. However practical the considerations of both
may have been
at the
beginning, this was a love
match unmarred, insofar as anyone who knew them remembers, even by the hard words of minor quar-
common to marriage. reportorial instinct failed me
rels that are
My
in
one particular
where she was concerned, because, though
my
early thirties
when
I
was
in
she died in her nineties,
I
never asked where she acquired the Latin tags
which, with proverbs both sacred and profane, she
used
to
fit
arising situations.
tion is that she
The
had something
tion in the classics.
of a
But she spoke
possible explana-
European educaand
in the accent
vernacular of our area, interspersed with ringing
Anglo-Saxon epithets such as "slut" for certain males
fe-
whom she suspected of "carrying on."
Apparently, as the rude country saying
"dropped" her nine offspring, for until she old, there
was no physical slackness about
is,
she
was very her.
And
the only evidence she ever gave of wanting public
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
27
appreciation of the help to others she gave so gen-
was her occasional reference to the fact that she had been introduced to William Jennings Bryan
erously
as "Glasgow's angel."
In her old age, she often searched vainly for spectacles that she
had lodged above her own
hairline,
when one of her sons appeared, would remember his name only after she had gone through the and,
process of a countdown from the eldest. She broke
her hip in her late eighties but became ambulant again in a few months, to take to her bed permanently only ninety-five.
when
she lay dying something short of
Chapter Five
Being
the firstborn
of
my
grandfather's
"second get," the only female of nine,
my
mother was treated as a precious object by her brothers: though her
name was
Caroline, to
them
was known as "Dolly," inspired by the heroine of Dickens's Barnaby Rudge. She was a petite brunette; her face was not as pretty as it was pleasing; she was gifted with a grace of manner, a soft, melodious voice and a gentle spirit. However violent the she
quarrels
among her brothers,
they were on their good
behavior in her presence. Her education was light, and in the subjects deemed appropriate for young ladies of the time
—
art,
music, riding, poetry and
Victorian fiction. But remarkably, in view of her
mother's array of household talents
— which
ex-
tended to producing yarn and thread on a spinning
wheel
sew
— she could embroider, but
at the
The and
neither cook nor
time of her marriage, and never well.
eight brothers differed strongly in personality
tastes,
but
all
were possessed of physical courage
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
—
29
esteemed and essential
a quality both highly
community where blood ran
Southern
maybe does. Herman, the eldest, shared with
in a
and
hot,
still
his half-brother
Frederick the best education of any: what
now would
be called prep school and then the university. Her-
man was tall, well built, good-looking, charming, and he made use of the latter quality with girls to a degree that would have earned him the description of "parlor snake"
had that term yet been invented.
Herman was bred
to the
law
at the
University of
Virginia, standing high in his class, and, until in
middle age he removed to Louisville from Glasgow,
was
active in politics.
town, becoming larity
was
munity
offend,
its first city
as great in the
— some
tation as a
of
man whom
some
very popular in the
attorney,
Negro
and his popu-
as in the white
it
was physically dangerous
to
for his active concern for the welfare of
gambling
at
Had
it
not been for his passion
high stakes he might have risen to
leadership in state politics and at the bar.
passion eventually in
com-
deriving from his earned repu-
it
the underprivileged. for
He was
submerged
But
this
his promising career
an overwhelming tide of debts he could not
re-
deem.
To me
this uncle
was
a
and discriminating guide
dashing figure; also a kind to
reading which nourished
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
30
my young mind,
a source of perceptive kindness and
understanding.
But the uncle whom I most desired to emulate was his immediate younger brother, Edward. Edward was equally beloved inside the family and in the community for the plenitude of gifts nature had bestowed on him. He was a delightful companion good-natured, witty, humorous and warm; his blue
—
eyes sparkled with merriment. his elder brother, he
with his
fists
shorter than
sturdier, very proficient
— but only when
him — and
upon
was
Though
their use
was
thrust
an even better local politician
(Democratic), witnessed by his election as Glasgow's
first
He was
mayor
after the
town was incorporated.
also fortunate in his marriage.
my Aunt Julia, was
the center of
my
His wife,
adoration from
boyhood, and her beauty, charm and ready laughter abide with me.
was
Her
father,
known
a Confederate veteran
tired of hearing explain
why
as
whom
"Pappy" Smith, the town never
he walked with a
list:
am full of Yankee bullets on my right side." When Aunt Julia, then a widow of many years, died in
"I
Seattle, to
she
which
me,
left
in
lace dress she
and which for kilts
The
I
had
my
uncle had removed his family,
testimony to our loving relationship, a
made
wore
for
until
me when
I
was one year
custom decreed that
old
my time
arrived.
third of
my
grandmother's sons, Julius, was
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
31
what would now be termed a "swinger." He was gay, witty, kind, tall, well muscled and born with the gift of laughter.
He
roved from one mercantile job to an-
other, his life ending in city his father
New
Orleans, from which
had started his pilgrimage
tucky. In the course of this itinerary
La Grange, Kentucky, Elizabeth
to
Ken-
he married,
at
Ballard, one of the
great beauties of her place and time.
Louis was slighter of stature than the run of his brothers, and one of those voice and
men whose
gentleness of
mien leave people unprepared
closure of a vein of iron
when
for the dis-
the necessity arises. In
his capacity as chief of the town's volunteer fire de-
partment he regularly risked injury and death, for his concept of a leader like
was
that he should lead
Lord Melbourne's cynical comment,
"I
— un-
am
their
must follow them." He was an accomplished horseman, and, next to his wife and children, his love was lavished on the best of the thoroughbreds he leader;
I
trained,
Lady
Belle, on
which he won blue ribbons
at
county fairs and quarter-mile tracks. His wife, born
Emma
Pedigo, of Huguenot ancestry, was so devout
communicant in the Baptist church that I was somewhat terrified of her godliness when I was small. But I learned in time to note and appreciate
a
that,
behind the beauty of a Spartan matron, were
deep
human compassion and
mor.
a strong sense of hu-
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
32
Gus was made
them all. In a community where his father's integrity was cited to children as a model for emulation, Gus fully lived up to his ancestor in word and deed. His piercing blue eyes, under their heavy brows, did not, as Tennyson of the finest clay of
wrote of Wellington, "freeze with one rebuke
all
strong self-seekers trampling on the right"; for he
was
a withdrawn, private
But if came within his
business.
man who minded
his
own
a wrong, committed or proposed,
could freeze the
orbit, he, too,
of-
fender.
He
also
was endowed with
the physical courage
which ran through the family, plus a temper matched only by that of his younger brother Lee. In their
youth this pair often came their encounters
which
left
to blows,
Lee threw a knife
and
at his
one of brother
a lifetime scar. But, curiously, they were
particularly devoted to each other, and
who pleaded with pline to
in
which
his father to
for a time
it
was Gus
end the strong
disci-
Lee was subjected.
my Aunt Anne (Redding) ranked with my Aunt Julia in my affections throughout her life. His wife,
,
She was an ash-blonde beauty
of great grace
charm; her voice was as sweet as her nature. In
memory
and
my
these two aunts live as objects of brightness
and gaiety, and not only because they spoiled
me
rotten.
Lee's temperament
was
fiery, as
described, but he
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
33
understood with rare perception the longings of a boy, and
was proud
I
of his reputation as a
hunter and fisherman.
immediate
of build than his
And
shorter and sturdier
elder, but
as they did in anger,
trils flared,
scribed
He was
him
as formidable
he had
champion
I
when
his nos-
would have
de-
had known the word.
if I
good measure the wit, merriment and
in
compassion which were the characteristics of his brood.
Because
I
was nearer
of age to Joe,
I
knew him on
more intimate level than his older brothers. For some years we slept in the same bed; he guided me through some of the perplexities of adolescence; and, though I could not match his prowess in such athletic activities as football, bowling and the sports of
a
the field, he encouraged
was with
my
do
my
best.
When
I
And
after
he migrated to Seattle, and
Vancouver, we maintained a frequent corre-
spondence. ity,
to
parents in Chicago, Joe lived several
years with us. finally
me
As
I
think of him,
I
find that
magnanim-
gentleness, and unusual physical strength are
the impressions
I
most
clearly retain.
Max, the youngest of my uncles and nearest to me in age, was the gayest, though his physical courage was put to the test more often than that of any of his brothers. This was because the Semitic strain in his ancestry seemed to have concentrated by implanting
on him
its
most
definitive feature.
His nose, beaked
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
34 like
an eagle's, curved like a scimitar, was an invita-
tion to taunts
The
did Cyrano.
many
bore
which he result
dealt with as militantly as
was
that in his
boyhood he
scars of battle, but eventually none of his
contemporaries was more respected, a status to which a lethal skill in boxing contributed.
Max was
Glasgow baseball
the pitcher on the
team and a crap-shooter more even than the Negro boys
(
skilled
and daring
who were supposed
to
be
endowed with something akin to genius at the haza ard) He also was an imaginative teller of tales combination which impelled me to follow him around as my dog, Princess, followed me. Of his tales I principally recall one which in my childhood I firmly belived to be true, although snow and ice were rare in our climate. Max's idol was his much older brother Edward, who, he informed me, had skated on South Fork into Beaver Creek, then into the Big Barren
—
.
River, then into the Green, the Ohio, and the Mississippi
and so on
to
The thoughts
New Orleans. of youth are long, long thoughts,
wrote Mr. Longfellow, and mine dutifully followed
Uncle
Ed on
skates to
New Orleans, which may be
record for what the poet had in mind.
down when of
I
realized that the tale
I felt
was only
sadly
team
I
remember one game
let
a product
my youngest uncle's imagination. When Max was the pitcher of the Glasgow
ball
a
base-
in particular be-
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
35
cause of a conversation that followed between him
my
and
father.
Max had
an assortment of fast balls
and curves that bewildered opposing batters,
weakness
though, because of
at the bat
and
its
al-
pitch-
games it should have won. On the occasion I remember my father asked him how many batters he had struck out. "Twentyseven," Max replied, and it was true. "But," said my er's
wildness, his team lost
father, "your
team
lost, didn't it?
How
could that
be?" Baseball experts can readily explain what would appear to be an impossibility: those on the rival team
who
didn't strike out got on base
through walks; ad-
vanced around the diamond on wild pitches and
Glasgow's errors; and Glasgow could not
due
to its feebleness
with what sportswriters used
Among my many panions were three
cousins
first
— Frank,
favorite
com-
in strutting
my
and one who had the cachet of
terim spans of city
life in
Chicago,
Frank was held up "good boy"
I
to
role in-
the metropolis of the Mis-
I
was something
tyrant, usually a benevolent one,
of a
my
Charles Wendell and
William Redding Morris. But as their senior,
to
1732715
term "the willow."
sissippi Basin,
retaliate
me
of a petty
though because
as the foremost
sometimes subjected him
example to light
tortures.
Both Frank and Charlie had sweet dispositions with which mine was constantly being unfavorably
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
36
compared by the
elders.
spent fnore time with
I
mind which
Charlie because he had a turn of eled in
my
rev-
romantic reconstructions of history and
the spoutings from the poets with
him. So the lower angels of
which
my nature,
if
I
favored
any angels
abide there, were not aroused by this cousin, and in lordly fashion
I
permitted him to follow
me
around.
William Redding Morris was ten years younger than I and a boy of daring. The result was that the tables
were turned where
cerned.
He jeered
this cousin
company
in
—
I
were con-
my calf-loves
once this took the
in a winter
remarkable in our
area for contributing a considerable snowfall
hurling snowballs
when
with an older
whom
with
my
girl
in the
And
very presence of the adored.
embarrassing form
at
and
trailing I
me
—
of
out walking
was trying
to
impress
sophistication.
way he was a spirited lad, and before he was twenty made national headlines by eloping with In every
the granddaughter of our richest and otherwise most
prominent
citizen.
His death
in the first flush of his
maturity put an abrupt end to his bright prospect of
being the toast of the town.
My in the
brood of
same
first
cousins had their
relationship.
Of
admiringly remember three
these
I
own broods
best and most
— Michael and Porter
Dickinson, brothers, and their cousin, Haiden Trigg Dickinson. Mike,
who
died early in Seattle,
was
a
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
37
prospective professional baseball pitcher of the rank. Porter
is
a
newspaper mogul
den Trigg served gallantly
World War
in the First
in the
as a
in
Honolulu. Hai-
United States Navy
gunnery
suicidal
Queenstown
He was
a legendary naval hero in the
ill-health forced his
patrol,
and
first
officer
in the
on the
China
seas.
making when retirement and brought him to
an early grave.
The
design of these boyhood reminiscences
is
to
expose for later generations the lifestyle of the family
and of a Southern community
in the setting of the
period. In pursuance of this design
some
of the principals
and their customs
greater detail. But with respect to little
my
much
in
father
I
have
of relevance to add.
He was migrated
ment
have etched
I
who had German seg-
the eldest child of a cartographer to
New
York City from the
of Silesia, the cockpit of the bloody
wars be-
tween Austria and Prussia, where the name Krock occurs more frequently than elsewhere, sometimes
with the variant of "Kroch"
mous bookstore
—
as spelled
proprietor (with
by the
whom my
fa-
father
discussed a possible but never-documented relationship).
My
paternal grandfather
must
also
have had
some connection with the Netherlands government because, according to his son, he drew the most de-
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
38 tailed
map
of the islands of
Java and Sumatra that
existed in the first half of the nineteenth century.
my birth blinded my mother for the first six years of my life, and I accordingly was reared by her parents in Kentucky, and because my mother felt that my father's parents had not appreciated him, I knew little of my father's family, not even where my Because
paternal grandmother
But when
was born
or her
maiden name.
became conscious that a person had two sets of grandparents I was told that this other set lived in Brooklyn, and my father with them until, I
having learned the trade of bookkeeping, he got a job in Pittsburgh and, after meeting
moved
to
my
mother,
re-
Kentucky. There he would have remained
but for information that there was an eye surgeon in
Chicago who had perfected an operation which could (and did) restore that, after
my mother's
The
result
was
my father had established himself there in
a job of his trade, in time a small scale, I
sight.
becoming an accountant on
my mother joined him in Chicago.
continue to be mystified by the contrast between
exact and vague recollections where his family are concerned.
But
my
father and
of the following I
am
certain
My mother went on summer holiday to Put-In
Bay, Ohio, met
cation there
(
circa
my father, who was
1885 on va-
from Pittsburgh; they became engaged
and were soon thereafter married
in
Glasgow.
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG Born
in
39
1859, and hence a child of the depression
subsequent to the
War
Between the
States,
my
fa-
ther did not attend college, but, through wide and
discriminating reading and the possession of a fine
mind, could be classified as a self-educated man.
had
a
good writing
style,
He
vented through the channel
of letters to the editor (the Courier-Journal princi-
pally); a photographic
memory,
particularly of the
writings of Shakespeare and the British Romantic poets; a fiery
temper (once he hurled out of doors a
him by losing time during bluenight); very good looks when young
clock which had betrayed the
—
black hair and eyes, a florid complexion and a graceful build;
an intense and cynical interest in politics
remember he once told me that James G. Blaine was "too intelligent to be President, even if he had cared more where his money came from") and sup(I
;
ported his wife and himself on a salary that never ex-
ceeded the subsistence
level.
But somehow
this level
included good food and whiskey, frequent journeys
by
streetcar to the racetracks for discreet two-dollar
wagers, and an evening or two a month
rooms (he was adept freethinker,
—
at the
which meant
game). Also, he was
in those
lived for ten years after
awaiting his
own
at
a
days an agnostic
a philosophy of the Creation that
He
in billiard
my
I
share.
mother's death,
seventy-nine with cheer and
comfort, in San Diego, where
I
arranged pleasant
ac-
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
40
commodations (as I saw when I visited there) him and an elderly female attendant. In view of his interest in his distant origins, a riosity
wish
which skipped me but
for
cu-
my son has inherited,
I
my father could have been with me in Germany
after the
Second World War. For
in
Frankfurt a
Catholic priest in Goppingen, Wiirttemberg, after
some correspondence, brought to me a tall maedchen of his flock who wanted to migrate to the United States and looked to me for help because our surnames were the same.
Her
Walther Krock, had been a federal judge in Silesia from which he fled with his family from the advancing Poles. Her name was Adelgunde, and her blue eyes, golden braids and complexion of cream and roses were strikingly supplemental to the name. It would further have intrigued my father to know that Walther and Adelgunde were only two of more than a dozen Krocks, all from Silesia, who, having chanced on my name in the press, wrote to me during the Second World War from father,
places as distant as a prison
camp
of
German
sol-
England and a farm in South Dakota these Krocks had owned for generations. And my father, had he lived in Washington, most certainly would have made it a point to become acquainted with R. Temple Krock, who for years was a high civilian official in the Department of Defense. I never tried. diers in
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
41
Probably because his own dreams of fame and achievement never materialized, he was impatient with the
"You
silly
range of
my own
in
middle boyhood.
are one of those parlor generals," he
was wont
when I ventured some such nonsensical opinhow Napoleon could have won at Waterloo. And he was quick to hurl this epithet at anyone (es-
to
say
ion as
pecially an academician)
who, without practical
ex-
perience in public affairs, offered cocksure solutions
problems therein. That he was often guilty of
of the
the
same arrogance simply demonstrates the
common the
ways
to all
of
truth,
sound philosophy and experience, that
man
are the
most inconsistent among the
animals.
was to his own positiveness of what was right and what was wrong that I owe my given name: It
none
in the family, before or since,
When
I
was born
porarily estranged
my
father, a tariff
from his lifetime
has borne
it.
man, was tempolitical
hero
and mine, President Stephen Grover Cleveland. The reason was that the President, in his annual message to
Congress
in
1887, had assailed the practice and
principle of the protective tariff
by proposing the
near free-trade formula of the Mills Bill
passed the House but died in the Senate)
.
(which
My father
had once met President Chester Alan Arthur, and, apparently as an expression of his lingering resent-
ment over the Mills
Bill,
I
was named Arthur. By
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
42
election time in
my
1888
support of Cleveland, but
my handle to Grover
C. as
father it
I
was
had renewed
his
too late to restore
believe
was
the original
intention.
Why
I
was given
dropped) of Bernard
was nothing
name (long never knew for sure:
the middle I
ancestral about
it.
But
my
a citizen of Fredericksburg, Virginia,
father
who
since
there
knew
in
my
hearing he described as the beau ideal of the Tide-
water Virginia gentleman. Bernard.
And his name was Arthur
Chapter Six
a household which included eight sons and In several a small grandsons, on land the edge of
at
was inevitable that a host of domestic animals and some creatures from the wild would be part of the family establishment. Our menagerie, when I was growing up in Barren County, Kentucky, in the Nineties, was composed of numerous dogs, as many caged town and extending
into the country,
it
raccoons and possums, a brace of talkative and insolent crows, a
vehicle
gamecock, horses for the plough, the
and the saddle, and now and then an indig-
nant incarcerated fox. Such cats as there were
among
the occupants of this zoo lived in "the Quarters"
(where "the help" resided), along with several hounds.
The
cats
fox-
were the working members of the
animal kingdom, the gendarmes of rodent control.
That lvanhoe was the inspiration of our tiltings derived more from Mark Twain than from the Waverley Novels. But these and Sir Walter's poetry were favorites we sampled with equal
relish,
and
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
44
even Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe was no greater hero than Roderick Dhu.
"Come
From
claimed. "This rock shall fly/
soon as I"
— providing
its
we
all!"
de-
firm base as
ourselves with the indicated
backstop. So popular a hero
The Lady
come
one,
was
the rebel chieftain
on pets throughout the county.
name was bestowed Hence it was most
appropriate, "in," and timely for
my champion
of
cock to be
of the
Lake
that his
named for him. Dhu was famous
Roderick so, for
my
could, and did,
victorious battle against any rooster he encoun-
He
could,
hens and those of other
mark
aries of his
loud and
and
did,
citizens,
by the
haughty
He
shrill,
favor.
not only at
ick detested the
company
husband
all
our
being received with
of appreciation
sense of timing impelled
it
He
of his gallant species.
tered in the area.
every
and justly
in the land,
four reasons, the fourth being unique in
knowledge
wage
game-
tittering benefici-
could,
and
did,
crow
dawn, but whenever his
him
to.
But, fourth, Roder-
of his species
and shunned
except for amorous visitations. Instead, he selected
the house as his general abode, and, after several efforts to lodge
him
at
night in the roost outside, he
was allowed his preference. This raised an obvious problem. But both
grandmother and Roderick were equal a sand-filled
plained
its
box
in
an open closet
purpose
to
to
it.
my
She put
off the kitchen, ex-
Roderick with magic words
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
45
incomprehensible to any but the two principals, and
when
thence he never failed to repair
seized
by
cer-
tain natural urges.
have known
I
many
roosters on varying terms of
intimacy, even participated in
gamecocks the opportunity tal
I
the
came, he met
was
of a household
it
common summons with dignity and
my
and
fruitfully.
of all earthlings
taste:
he was found
deceased grandfather's spe-
His age, as nearly as we could calculate,
thirteen.
served, in
member
lived long, happily
dead on the seat of cial chair.
be a
to
or heard about that
be acceptable in every way.
to
This noble bird
And when
to indulge their congeni-
was acquainted
nominated himself
and learned
available to
But Roderick Dhu was the only
love of combat.
one with which
making
my
He was
buried, with the honors he de-
grandmother's flower garden, under a
rosebush.
Rock was about twelve years old when he was imported to Virginia from England in 1730 to Bull
stand at stud. His multitudinous progeny inaugurated the great expansion in the breeding and racing of
thoroughbreds that
now
are a leading
American
industry-cum-sport. But for various reasons,
them
among
the facts that the eighteenth century's westering
pioneers brought thoroughbreds with them over the
mountains, and found the limestone water and blue-
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
46
grass pasture of Kentucky ideal to the purpose, our
Commonwealth supplanted Virginia
as the capital of
the blood horse and has continued to be.
Though
Kentucky Bluegrass
the
area, centered in
Woodford
Fayette, Bourbon, Franklin, Scott and counties,
is
the royal seat of the thoroughbred,
all
but the mountain areas of the state are his provinces,
and
my native Barren
indeed
— was least
—
or, if
County was one
Poor
of them.
not poor, certainly queer in our sight
the family which possessed no horse with at
an asserted trace of the blood of Bull Rock, Sir
Archy, Priam, Bonnie Scotland or Lexington. since
we were
neither poor nor eccentric
be bereft of the inbred
grew up with
Kentucky
enough
love of horses,
which remain
several
And
in loving
to I
mem-
ory.
The
irony
is,
however, that the best-blooded of
these did not return
my
love.
He was
Selim
— an
Arab, as his name suggests, purported to be descended from Admiral Tryon's Asil, which
Newmarket
in the 1770's.
saddle horse, which nity. Yet, as if
in
My uncles
won
the
used him as a
was something beneath
his dig-
he were familiar with certain maxims
Al Koran, he usually submitted
to this use with-
out the snorting, kicking and rearing that at times
seemed
to derive
great stake races
from
a subconscious recollection of
won by his
ancestors.
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
My
47
head crammed with "Mazeppa," "The
silly
Rushan Beg" and such poetic glorifications of the Arab horse, I was distressed to be informed by my uncles that Selim was a gelding. And, since I had Leap
of
assured
town that he was
the boys in
all
a stallion
The Arabian Nights, I had to endure amount of ribbing when the evident truth
straight out of a certain
was pointed
out.
Gelding or no,
humbler
in
aggressiveness tow ard horses of r
lineage, in beauty of pace
was conceded by
road, Selim
they were
many and
and form on the
the local experts (and
they were good ) to be "a
lot of
horse." His eventual acquiescence, therefore, to a utilitarian
duty
in his
and
my
grandfather's old age
was
an abiding wonder in our community. This duty was to transport
my
grandfather in our surrey to and
from his place of business several times a day.
Somehow appearing to understand the necessity of the condescension quite lame
— my grandfather having grown
— Selim allowed himself
to
be harnessed
and backed within the shafts of the surrey. Led the gate, he
would stand quietly
— whom he loved above his
way aboard
my
until his
others
—
passenger
painfully
made
the front seat. Then, without any di-
rection of the reins, he in front of
all
to
would
trot gently to the stile
grandfather's office-store, and, after
ascertaining his charge had safely debarked, return
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
48
with the empty carriage to his stable until the hour
came
to fetch his
master
—
a timetable
which Selim
knew and observed precisely. This was my first case of unrequited love, though Ovidian in nature. But in my own old age I still cherish the consolation that in his last years Selim
had come
briefly to tolerate the laying of
my hand on
his imperial neck.
I
do not remember any of the cats
specifically.
None was admitted to the house, and it was not until much later in my life that I learned to appreciate these animals
—
their fascinating mixture of love
and indifference, and the rippling beauty of muscular construction. Not until the time
come
a
newspaper executive
young family and ation
a house of
in Louisville,
my own,
and love for cats begin, with a
I
their
had be-
and had a
my
associ-
drifter
named
did
Grimalkin.
The
line
ended
in
Washington and Virginia
in
the Nineteen Forties with two extraordinary felines a
Siamese of imperial lineage which we called Puss-
Pants because her name in Mandarin that Rosamond Pinchot gave her in the cattery was too long for
call-
ing and too Chinese to pronounce; and James
Mc-
Near, a short-haired Persian, a very great gentle-
man.
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
The dogs
my
of
49
childhood were: a pack of St.
Bernards, both short- and long-haired, varying in
number because Moxie and produced large
litters
Princess, the matriarchs,
with the cooperation of Kain-
and
tuck, long-haired, a prolific sire
a
London dog-
show winner; Nero, a black Newfoundland; a hassle of
hounds
of the chase;
and Bright. This Bright,
short-haired fox terrier, a feist
if
ever there
was
a
one,
took advantage of his size to tyrannize over the St.
Bernards.
He w as r
further encouraged by
some mem-
bers of the family in his outrageous performances
— snarling
made kind advances, and yapping
shrilly
by his master,
when they
the big dogs
at
my
from
stealing
their
foolishly
meat bowls,
when they were being
caressed
best friend, beloved mentor and
companion, Dan Smiley.
Dan was of an angel.
number
a tall,
He
sinewy
man
with the disposition
took care of the family's needs in a
of outdoor capacities
and was available
light butlering, too. Insofar as the
for
boys of the house-
hold were concerned he was the most important of all.
He was
deeply versed in the lore of the
the forest: he instructed us
and draw the bow"
all
— those
how
field
and
to "ride, shoot
"three useful things"
which, according to Byron, were taught by the ancient Persians.
Dan's cabin
favorite gathering place.
in the
backyard was our
And, though not
sembling the drawings of Uncle
Remus
at all re-
that adorned
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
50
the immortal book by Joel Chandler Harris, he
was
a spinner of tales about the creatures in the animal
kingdom that moved us into a state of bliss. So that Bright, when he appointed himself as Dan Smiley's special dog, acquired an undeserved prestige he un-
made the most of. Dan Smiley was a genius in
pleasantly
the rearing and hand-
ling of dogs, hunting dogs in general in particular.
and foxhounds
Since Barren County, under the leader-
ship of Colonel Haiden C. Trigg, a banker and our
was the breeding center for the hounds in which the Walker and Trigg strains were fused, Dan's talent made him a very respected member of the community. Eventually, when our household dispersed to the four winds, he was appointed kennelman-in-chief for the Barren County pack. And when he died in the fullness of years, the whole comleading citizen,
munity and hunters from afar followed his casket the grave.
Of
deeply than
all
I
—
those present none
to
mourned more
not for the gifted sportsman, but
and gentle patron
for the friend, teacher
of
my
lost
youth. I
have mentioned the
sire of
our
St.
Bernard, Kain-
tuck, and that he once
won
London
by my Uncle Ed,
— taken
a prize in a
dog show
in
ownership was reluctantly conceded.
whom his Among us he
was familiarly known
lived long
beneficently.
there
as
Tuck, and he
When my
moved
uncle
to
and
his family to
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
Summer
Shade,
from Glasgow,
in
I
Metcalfe County, sixteen miles
repeated visits to that village.
complimentary
There were a
all
in
And
that
I
paid
our reunions were
his breed are suffused with af-
Tuck's ebullience
fection,
much
missed Tuck so
joyous, for, though
51
was
in greeting
my experience with
the most
a host of dogs.
when close to dog bore down his large
certain hazards involved
hundred pounds
of rearing
paws on the shoulders
of a seventy-pound
which flowed
licked his face with a tongue
boy and
like Phile-
mon's pitcher, practically inundating the object of
No such problems arose when Tuck joined me as my sleeping companion in the feather bed my Aunt Julia allotted to me. He was a most considerate his love.
bedfellow. His
first
idea of this relationship
was
ex-
pressed by getting under the cover with me. But, effectively
discouraged by
my
aunt
when
she dis-
covered Tuck's head on the pillow, he consented thereafter to sleep on the cover at the foot. In our
outdoor ramblings, he needed no lesson For, except
when we
in discipline.
accidentally flushed a quail, or
another dog indicated a challenge of the right-of-
way, Tuck behaved with dignified reserve.
This manner he maintained even
which
in
sion of
my
boyhood were
Summer Shade
—
at the cockfights
Sunday morning diverafter church. But once I a
thought Tuck carried dignity too
far,
that St. Bernards are supposed to be
considering
— and usually
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
52 are
and
—
the guardians of youth from exterior danger
interior folly.
My
best friend in
Word, who to visit.
On
Summer Shade was farm which
lived on a
the occasion
I
speak
my
delight
we were
explor-
was
it
of,
Cleveland
ing the barn and came upon a large sack of bran.
being well cious,
known
to
we decided to
down
us that cattle found bran
It
deli-
share their pleasure, and washed
a goodly quantity of the
feed with large
draughts of water. Tuck lay languidly watching as
we
ate
and drank,
for
which
I
reproached him when,
inevitably, the combination of bran
panded
violently in our stomachs
and water
ex-
and we twisted on
the barn floor in pain. It
wasn't too long until nature relieved us with a
visceral explosion that
blow the roof
off
cate concern.
But
seemed powerful enough
the barn. this
Only then did Tuck
was the one time
and loving relationship that he
in
failed to live
to
indi-
our long
up
to the
reputation of the all-round protector of children which
legend attributes to his species.
Chapter Seven
Although the village of Summer Shade was l.
only sixteen miles from Glasgow, the jour-
ney thereto by public transportation consumed a
whole forenoon
in
normal weather conditions.
this public transportation
—
was
And
the fulfillment of a
dream a bright-red stagecoach with yellow wheels, drawn by four chestnut horses! Its regular run was from Glasgow, east by south, to Burkesville, the seat of Cumberland County, on the Tennessee line, Summer Shade being a stop on the way. I still recall the thrill which suffused my being
boy's
when,
\\
ith
Tom
Shelby or his brother
the gleaming coach
drew up
at the reins,
to load this small pas-
made even more adventurous by Burkesville Road was a deeply rutted
senger for a journey the facts that
streak of red clay, and there
was always
that the fords of Boyd's, Skaggs's
a chance
and Fallen Tim-
ber creeks would mire the coach in their sandy bot-
toms, or be covered by flash floods. In the latter event only the expertness of the Shelby brothers
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
54
could prevent the coach from being swept into deep water.
On all the occasions of my visits to Summer Shade, however, whichever of these hazards that developed
was safely negotiated. But once I decided to return to Glasgow by another means of transportation, a lumber wagon without springs. It was a day's ride, and my bottom retained painful memories of it for at least a
I
week.
do not know whether the Barren County Hunt
has since acquired the pink coats of the chase that
were
set in the
English tradition as proper equip-
huntsman and the farmers who opened their land to the sport. Nor do I know whether
ment
for all but the
the Virginia gentlemen in the seventeenth and eight-
eenth centuries,
who
rode out after the fox from
Westover, Shirley, Carter's Grove or the two Brandons, included pink coats in the raiment they or-
dered from London.
But fox-hunting
in
Barren County
in
my boyhood
involved neither the traditional English dress nor the galloping after
Reynard
until
"found," "killed" or "stole away."
he was "viewed,"
The
hunters would
assemble on horseback in the twilight, place, bringing the
hounds along
at a given
in carts
and wag-
ons; also a generous supply of bourbon whiskey.
They would
then proceed to the top of a
hill
com-
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
55
manding the topography, leaving the hounds and their handlers at the foot. Moonrise was the ideal time for the hunt to begin as soon as an accommodating fox was viewed or scented by the hounds and handlers below. Then, with ears attuned to the music of the horn and the racing pack, the hunters would fall to
pleasant drinking until the hunt below culmi-
nated one
way or
another.
This leisurely
sport,
fox-hunting only for the
hounds and those who handled them, usually lasted
Which was taken as sufficient explanation for the absence now and then of married members of the hunt who were notoriously henpecked.
until
moonset.
Not
until a
boy reached his middle teens was he
likely to be allowed to join the
the
men on
the hilltop or
kennelmen below, not so much because the
called
hunt took place
at
night as because
much
so-
whis-
key was consumed. But boys needed only their parents'
permission to join in the hunt for the possum
and the coon, and these were far more enjoyable periences. Moreover, the boys, black
ex-
and white, were
essential participants because they often
were on
terms of greater intimacy with the coon and possum
dogs than most of their elders.
One
of
my
happiest remembrances
is
the sharp
barking which announced the treeing of either of these creatures
—
the coon with bared teeth chal-
lenging the dogs to try sampling them; the possum,
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
56
eyes closed, stretched out motionless in the treetop
pretending to be dead.
I
never saw one get away
was to finish in a pot where he steamed along with yams or sweet potatoes to make a meal as succulent to our palates as any entree with this
act: his fate
could be to the patrons of a three-star restaurant in
But many possums and more coons eluded the hunters and the dogs by other employments of the Paris.
inherent cunning of the small marsupial and the
daring of the ring-tailed arboreal carnivore.
My
favorite sport, however,
the quail: alternately
we
called
was the hunting of them bobwhites and
they were plentiful in the country. point
was
My usual starting
the residence of an older friend, Bryan
Strader, at Hiseville, a village ten miles from Glas-
gow. The hunt was preceded by the hospitality of a fine
supper and bed for the night, and
would
set out
at five
a.m.
we
with shotguns and bird dogs in search
we
of the coveys.
With average good
count on a
full
bag, yet within a sportsman's limit,
sometimes
after ten miles of walking.
many
years later,
South Carolina did
luck
Not
could
until,
hunted quail on horseback
I I
in
realize that the sport involved
anything less than sheer, though very worthwhile, fatigue.
Chapter Eight
Among l
the omnium,
undescriptive
labels
which corrupt the English language,
haps "white" and "black" are the affair that
not
my
of those
Americans
have induced them
to refer to
spokesmen
of African ancestry
many
falsest. It is
per-
for
themselves as "blacks," despite the fact that this was
word of the slave traders and the alien colonizers. But I am even more puzzled by the American Black Moslems and their adopted names of Ali, Mohammed and the like. For it was Arab Moslems who founded the trade of selling Africans the contemptuous
into slavery.
In the ethnic divisions of that place
and time
I
am
describing, though the classification of Negroes cov-
ered
all
shades from very light to very black, from
octoroon and mulatto to "blue gum," they were generally
lumped
by both groups as so intended.
was taken designation, and was
referentially as "colored." It a dignified
But even with respect
tion, tones of voice
to facial
composi-
and pronunciation, the differences
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
58
among
those of varying degrees of African origin
were as varied as among the descendants of the early Teutons, Celts, Angles and their innumerable mix-
who make up among the colored
tures
boys,
my
the white majority. citizens that, like
greatest affections
And it was many other
and companionships
were centered.
With these my happiest hours were spent: with Dan Smiley, with "Aunt" Courtney and "Uncle" Armistead, with Easter and Perry Wells, with Isom
and Virgil.
my mammy. At her breast she puling infant my mother could not
Aunt Courtney was had suckled the nourish until strated that
my I
that discovery
grandmother's experiments demon-
could be salvaged on oatmeal. I
emerged from the shadow
into a healthy baby.
My survival thus
Courtney concentrated on "bringing
of death
assured,
me
With Aunt
up," accord-
ing to her high standards of gentility, with a combi-
bound us in Her husband, Uncle Arm-
nation of tenderness and discipline that love to the istead, tall,
day she died.
and she were both magnificent creatures
—
ebony-black, strong physically, with broad brows
and noses, proud
in their carriage.
They were born slaves, and had small education, but they knew whence and how they came to human servitude in an alien land. They were of the warrior tribe of the Amazulu whose impis (regiments),
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
59
armed but with spears, used to shake the earth as they went into battle, and, in the days of their great king Chaka, had Caucasian soldiers retreating more than once. Aunt Courtney and Uncle Armistead had been told by their parents that, defeated
in battle,
had been captured and sold by the Arab slave-traders, who in turn sold them
their ancestors
victors to into the
bondage that began with transport
American colonies
to the
shame-
in the floating hells of that
ful era.
Obviously,
I
cannot faithfully reproduce the narra-
tive of these events as told to
Nor
years ago.
cate the dialect
shall
I
But
it
than seventy
attempt to do more than indi-
and the syntax of Uncle Armistead
as he unfolded the tale to a
Haggard's
me more
boy aglow with Rider Allan Quatermain.
tales of the exploits of
went something like
"Must have been
my
this:
grandpappy, maybe the one
befo' him, in Firginny, that 'splained
from. But he said
whar we come
we was always big
people, with
big heads and faces, like you see us now, and any of
our menfolks could
kill
a lion
with a spear
could git close enough. But land and water
—
what we was always needin' and always had for with the trash that tried to
if
he
that's
to fight
keep us from
gittin'
em: thev was called the Matabele. "Well, less]
it
seems one time we got us
king who
liked likker
and
a sorry
women
I
worth-
better than
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
60
kingdom, and when he ambushed
lookin' after his
the wife of a Matabele king and run off with started a war.
Most
and lazy under
of our fightin'
this sorry
men had
king of ours, though they
were nacherly as brave as they come, so we
war and got took
captive.
The Matabele
men, women and childern, for slaves skins on the coast, Arabs
who
[Allah], and the next thing crossin' big
water
together so's
we
landed around
in the
'er it
got fat
call
my
lost the
sold us,
to those
brown-
Lawd
'divan'
de
folks
knew we was
hold of a ship, and chained
couldn't hardly
move
We
a muscle.
New Orleans somewhere, was sold off me
to the plantations,
and your Aunt Courtney and
ended up on one
Firginny as children and was sold
off
in
Thar we got married, and that we had a good marster
together into Kintucky.
the good Jesus until
saw
to
it
Mr. Linkum give us our freedom."
Whenever I hungered for something very special, after Aunt Courtney had retired from our service, I would go
to
her house.
restaurants in
many
And
not in any of the great
lands that
I
know have
countered a cuisine which seemed to cious.
Perhaps
it
bringing to arrive
me more
I
endeli-
requires a Southern taste and upat this
judgment. But
if
there are
viands more grateful to the palate than her gumbo, hoecake, ashcake, johnnycake, corn pone, jowl-andgreens,
hominy samp and
grits,
fried
ham and
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
61
chicken, chocolate cream pie, black-eyed peas with
— any
bacon
Many ways
of these
of the
—
available to
me
at the
of the palate
of the adult
were
al-
house of Aunt Easter and
hospitality
Negroes
was
the highest
The Wellses,
area and the period.
civility of the
most
have not found them.
same delights
Uncle Perry Wells. This
like
I
in
too,
our community,
young as I was, I understood what their freedom and that of their children meant to them. Aunt Easter was our seamstress; and occasionally, when the size and had
first
seen the light in slave quarters, and,
nature of the entertaining called for escalation of our
simple dining routine, she helped in the preparation
and service of the food. As for Uncle Perry, the farm he and his family owned and worked had been made possible
my
by
grandfather: he gave a part of the
price for the land at,
of course,
On I
fear
no
and equipment and loaned the
interest.
the occasions
was
rest
when
I let it
lordly fashion, that
sample the cooking,
I
would
be known,
was
I
in a
in
what
mood
to
arrive to find a table
covered by a gleaming white cloth and a single chair
drawn up
to
it.
But, though the children of the
household were not permitted
unworthy
a
member
This undoubtedly whetted
special dishes they
with even so
of the master race as
would stand around and watch sel.
to dine
me
I,
they
devour every mor-
their appetites for the
would shortly
inherit.
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
62
So
far as I
eaten in their
was concerned company. But
would gladly have
I
to
my
hostesses this
would have been a violation of their protocol, founded in a pride which one who was not brought up by Negro
women
in the
South of
be expected to comprehend.
my
childhood could not
The
protocol did not ex-
tend to any other association:
my
most enjoyable
companions, because of their congenital gaiety, and inventive and physical skills, were the very ones
whom
their
mothers would not permit
to sit
with
me
at table.
This companionship ended when school
age — an automatic response
I
reached high-
to the accepted
customs of the society to which both groups belonged.
But the custom had
its
exceptions;
it
did not reach to
the close relations thereafter between, for example,
Dan Smiley and me. And until my boyhood was this
was
also
my relationship with Virgil. was
Virgil's shade
so black that
blue; but the expression "blue
Negroes thickets
game idea,
of this
gum"
verged on deep also
meant that
I
tree grew.
I
I.
It
played constantly was
consisted of laying a chair on
—
it
in
the
suppose a
my own
but at any rate he was as enthusiastic a
harnessing to ards
and
it
complexion usually lived
where the eucalyptus
that he
pant as
past
partici-
its
back,
either Virgil or one of the St. Bern-
usually the matriarch Princess because of
her amiability, strength and intelligence
— and
ca-
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG reening over the lawn. I
I
was always
63
a passenger,
reserved the right to decide on
my
whether
riding companion
was
and
each occasion
be Virgil or
to
Princess.
There was
my
a risk involved because of
grand-
mother's stern disapproval of the performance. If she discovered us, some punitive price had to be paid: Virgil and
were not allowed
I
for a fixed period
—
to play
with each other
usually a day or so
— during
which Princess was kept within eyesight of the house.
The animation
proval
was
of
my
in this order: I
grandmother's disap-
was subjecting
a noble
beast and a faithful retainer to indignity.
But it
after the second time the penalty
me
occurred to
with the
there
game and go
row
a kitchen knife,
er's
hearing that
was
a simple
was imposed
way
undiscovered. This
announcing
we were going
in
my
to
keep on
was
to bor-
grandmoth-
to the field across
the road to cut and eat sugar cane, ask and receive
permission for Princess to go with us, and, safely
away from the purview of the house, unearth an old chair we had hidden in the field and activate our chariot in the
When we
meadow beyond
wearied of the game, or
the ban, there were
was
to
at the
the cane.
go swimming
many happy in
it
came under
alternatives.
South Fork Creek that flowed
end of the property, where Virgil was
teacher and
I
a
One
backward
pupil.
On
a strict
a return to Glas-
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
64
gow
my early twenties
for a visit in
I
sought out Vir-
only to find that he had infracted the law and was
gil
temporarily behind stone walls in a distant town.
Many
my
experiences in
life
have saddened me, but
period none more so than the loss of this merry companion. For he did not come back, and I never saw him again. at that
The simple security measures in our town were much less official than based on voluntary assistance of neighbor to neighbor. Most important of these was a volunteer fire department. The fire engine hose-cart
was hand-drawn.
When
a fire broke out
the crew rushed the machine to the scene of action
my Uncle Louis, the commander, the blaze was put out whenever the hose was long enough to reach the nearest water supply. Often, after I was twelve years old or so, when I
where, under the direction of
heard
my
would
join
his
uncle
summoned
him
in the stable
duty in the night,
I
where he was saddling
thoroughbred, Lady Belle, and ride another
horse to the I
to
fire.
On
found the experience
the last occasion of this kind fairly expensive.
had drawn a crowd of onlookers; my presence was especially noted because I signified the return of the native, having by then been a reporter
The
fire
in Louisville for a
couple of years.
As
I
rode along
with the crowd a cluster of black and brown hands pulled gently at
my
stirrup, their
owners informing
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
65
was named for you." To have failed to present each namesake with a small coin would have been a betrayal of my caste. Fortunately I had not removed the silver from my pants pockets when I went to bed. But I think I was out about five dollars, a big bite in my salary of fifteen dollars a week in Louisme,
"I
ville.
Among
the most fascinating characters in the
country were the Negro preachers, at
camp meet-
ings of the faithful, where they prophesied
fell dis-
ease as the immediate, and an eternal environment of fire
and brimstone
after death as the eventual
punishment for sinners.
I
doubt whether the Rever-
end Billy Graham ever brought more recruits per capita to the mourners'
bench than these preachers
Negro camp meetings. And no evangelist ever surpassed them in their oratory, with respect to its at the
instant effects on the penitent.
One
of the
most accomplished of these preachers
was Theophilus
(
I
have forgotten his surname) His .
thundering bass, both
in
speech and the singing of
was not matched by any of his fellow shepherds of the erring, whose mission was to convince them they had strayed from the narrow path of righteousness. Although the talents of Theophilus
spirituals,
in the pulpit left ity of his
no reasonable doubt of the valid-
vocation,
it
was
a matter of debate
how he
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
66
had recognized
it.
For he, when not describing
my companions
hell
me
into
temporary good behavior, was a wholly illiterate
field
in a detail
which scared
and
hand.
Aware that his ascension to the ministry on Sundays was something of a mystery to the entire community, he disposed of the dubiety by his opening
remarks
to the first
he said (I
am
sermon he preached. "You
all,"
indicating rather than precisely re-
cording the dialect), "knows
I
got a mule.
You
knows I ploughs with this mule in the backbreakin' toil which is his lot and mine. Well, one day this mule turned round in his harness and opened his mouf and brayed. Well, it warn't like your usual mule-brayin', so it took me some time to figure it out. Then it come to me. This mule was savin' 'Oh, Theophilus:
And
go pree-ach, go PREE-ch, go PREE-ch!'
was God and Jesus callin' me, to put sich a call in the mouf of my mule. And I reesponded to the Call, accordin' to which I am here in I
knowed
it
this pulpit today."
Our elders laughed, but we boys did not. And never was a mule so much the observed of all observers as when he and Theophilus opened the rocky soil to fruitfulness. But, though the mule often made the music of his species in our hearing, and we were unable to
we
fit it
to the
words which Theophilus heard,
accepted the explanation as merely another proof
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
God moves
that
in a
mysterious
way
67 his
wonders
to
perform. It
was customary
member
of the congregation
preacher some doubt of Holy
ging
at his faith.
would stump sermon
in
to
for a
discuss with the
Writ which was nag-
Occasionally a question of this kind
a reverend.
One Sunday a
camp meetings
at these
But not Theophilus.
the following
Q and A occurred after
which Theophilus assured
his hearers of
the absolute infallibility of the Bible:
Q.
You
says that
when
the Prophet Jacob, layin' on
that rock in the desert, light
was woken up by
from Heaven, he see
a shinin'
God's
a big passel of
angels ascendin' and condescendin' a big ladder that reached
says
A.
I
it's
up
to
in the Bible
where God was
settin'.
and must therefoh be
says that, the Bible says that, and
it
You
so.
true.
Q. Reverend, cain't angels fly?
A. Co'se they can. Q.
Then why was them
angels ascendin' and con-
descendin' the ladder on their feet?
A.
They was mol tin'. That ended
cism.
And
the colloquy
Theophilus had of
this venture into the
a
was one
of
Higher
many,
in
Criti-
which
crushing explanation for any doubt
Holy Writ that was
raised.
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
68
The
old-time fundamental religious persuasion
that the
camp meetings
revealed
was
a
most im-
portant source of the good citizenship that domi-
nated the Negro as well as the white
community. This good citizenship
members of the was expressed in
compassion for the unfortunate, a stress on public order and a
The
common
hard-shell
front against adversity.
(hard-side)
white, firmly believed that total immersion
only baptismal state of grace,
rite
and
Baptists, black
was
which assured entrance
the
into a
and that instrumental church music
(especially the organ)
was
a lure of Satan.
The
Methodists believed that sprinkling was adequate
baptism
more
in the sight of the
lenient
Lord, and were a
little
where church music was concerned.
The
"Campbellites," followers of Alexander
bell
(their churches
this
was an
Camp-
were called "Christian," as
if
exclusive possession), adhered to the
doctrines of predestination and redemption of the spirit,
but less rigidly so than the Presbyterians.
Since there were only a handful of Catholic families
(descendants of those English folk
who accom-
panied Lord Calvert and Lord Baltimore to the
Maryland colony) there were tle
services at their
lit-
church about once a month. The priest was bor-
rowed from the pioneer Catholic community Bardstown,
in
Nelson County, where rose the
of
first
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
69
cathedral west of the Alleghenies, and east of the
Spanish communities a part of the
in the
Far West, that became
United States. As aforenoted, there was
no synagogue.
But
religion,
and especially the Negro gatherings,
camp meetings, were an enormous inand preserving what was best mores of the community. The so-called "holi-
including the
fluence in establishing in the
ness sects" were not successful in their periodic
at-
tempts to invest the Christian worship with their fanaticism.
But
they, too, contributed to the mainte-
nance of the substantial social values (however the
Higher Criticism
known
may
deride them)
as a God-fearing
Among the
community.
mysteries of man's creation, the cortex
which surrounds that part ory
lies is
sights,
of the brain
one of the most awesome.
gray envelope,
what was*
of
I
where mem-
It is
from
this
suppose, that one can reassemble the
sounds and their environment which have
fallow for decades.
why, as
I
Only
lain
way can I explain camp meetings in my
in this
think back on the
youth, the words, the melodies, and even the marvel-
ous orchestration of Negro voices that
is
unmatched
by any of the other races of man, recur almost in
my mind. Many of
the spirituals are
now widely
fully
familiar,
and there are numerous collections of them. But
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
70
some
that
heard as a boy are not to'be found in the
I
books known to me: perhaps they were native that part of the country and did not travel.
Among
these
I'm a Baptist born and a Baptist bred,
And when And when
I
die there'll be a Baptist dead.
I
goes to heaven there'll be a happy time,
A-eatin' of the
honey and a-drinkin'
of the wine.
Jine that golden band, jine that golden band.
Ef you don't jine that golden band Gwine-a hit you on the head with a golden
axe.
My brother and my sister don't you talk-a dat way, Walk on Jerusalem woe. am dark and I cannot stay, Walk on Jerusalem woe. For the night am dark and the road am rough, Walk on Jerusalem woe. For the night
Ef you
tries
you
git
dar sho e-nuf
Walk on Jerusalem woe. Lawd, I'm gwine Yes I'm gwine,
Deed I'm gwine
To walk on Jerusalem woe.
I
want
to
be an angel
And with the
angels stand,
to
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
71
A crown upon my forehead, A harp within my hand. In the white
community
also there
were songs
I
have never heard elsewhere. They were not what the entrepreneurs of Nashville have since popularized,
and thereby enriched themselves, as "country
music," though their origin actually was in the
backwoods and the
One was pure rude
hills.
non-
sense:
Tom Wilson is a walkin' man, Nobody walkin' like he can, From Pruitt's Knob to Bowling Green, Like of him was never seen.
Walk Tom Wilson, Walk Tom Wilson, Walk Tom Wilson,
walk.
walk. afternoon;
Sweep that kitchen with a brand-new broom. He combed his head with a wagon wheel
And
.
.
died with a toothache in his heel.
Another concerned jiggling a child on an knee,
.
its
purpose being
tears with laughter.
For
to replace
me
elder's
an outburst of
this transformation of
mood was always achieved when my grandfather sang:
Rain come wet me, sun come dry me, Git away black man, don't you come a-nigh
inc.
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
72
Hello, gals, give Hello, boys, give
me chaw terbacker; me drink of whiskey,
—
When I'm drunk then I'm frisky Yiddy, yiddy eye-do aye.
I
never was aware that the second line carried
implications of the attitude that
nounced as
our Negro community. Nor, tical a
now would be
"racist," since I never I
am
connected
sure, did so prac-
my
grandfather was: acting
on his own, he had freed his slaves in the teen Forties, put
many Negroes
just a jingle
late
Eigh-
them on wages, and otherwise attain
personal dignity thereafter.
was
de-
with
sympathizer with the victims of slavery and
gross discrimination as
helped
it
—
its
economic status and
To
him, as to me, this
innocent intent merely to dry
my tears. Fragments are
all
that
I
of other songs of that time
remember, such as
See that boat come round the bend,
Goodbye,
my lover, goodbye,
Laden down with Kentucky men, Goodbye, my lover, goodbye. By, baby, bye-oh, By, baby, bye-oh,
By, baby, bye-oh,
Goodbye,
my lover,
goodbye.
and place
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
I
73
got a gal, she lives in Letcher*
She won't come and
won't fetch her
I
Tennessee gals are handsome,
And Georgia But
gals are sweet,
there's a gal in old
She's the one
I
In relating that
want
all
Kaintucky
to meet.
the servants in a
such as ours were Negroes, fact of the time
and
their service that
—
place.
I
community
merely
state a social
recall
one aspect of
But
I
gave me, young as
I
was and
grew up in, a strong sense of discomfort. The sense was stronger because the servitors were my friends and playmates, once inured to the civilization
we were
outdoors.
In this period there
and windows, and
were
I
a
great
were no screens
in the
for the doors
long hot seasons the
annoyance.
So
flies
two Negro boys,
equipped with small tree branches, were stationed either
end of the table where we took our meals,
their task
ward
being to wave the branches constantly to
off the persistent flies.
these attendants were coolies; and, *
at
Letcher
is
a
known
I
knew
that in India
to the British as
punka-
Mr. Kipling having assured me Kentucky mountain county.
that
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
74 this
was
a fitting convenience to the master race in
pursuit of benevolent improvement of the "lesser
its
breeds without the law," imperialist precedent.
I
But
took some comfort in the it
bothered me, and
I
was
when we acquired screens, which supplanted the need for the human fly-swatters. The service at meals was simple: in my halcyon days the food was brought in by a colored friend, hardly more than a boy, named Isom, and my grand-
very glad
mother filled and passed the laden passed
my
in
turn by each receiver.
grandfather
(and,
after
uncle ) carved the main course viand.
forced
And, though
table
plates,
On his
death,
if it
was
manners were
(my grandmother's
which were
special occasions
an elder
that sort of strictly en-
discipline consisting of
smacking any offender's hand within reach with the sharp ivory nails of a long ebony backscratcher),
some
latitude
was permitted
in competition for a
drumstick or another desirable part of the anatomy of the entree.
Another special privilege that came within the
was extended on Sundays when ice cream topped the menu. This privilege consisted in
regulations
being allowed to lick the dasher, the central mechanical unit in
old-fashioned freezers. But eligibility de-
pended on which claimant had turned the handle of the freezer the longest.
but only
among
The
rivalry
was
intense,
a few, because to the others the
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG privilege
win
seemed hardly worth the
toil
required to
it.
In a rude fashion
Isom performed,
duties of a butler, though
term was ever employed Nevertheless, this at
75
our table, Isom
was
—
do not
I
I
suppose, the
recall that the
our simple household.
in
his function, and, well trained
as sort of
homespun
caterer
—
made a career of it, on call for any occawhen a member of the community, as our
eventually sion
vernacular had
it,
"put on the dog." After several
decades, during which
did not revisit Glasgow,
I
returned during the Fifties to see
was around
my
I
two surviving
the Thanksgiving holi-
aunts there.
It
day, and so
my Aunt Anne
(Redding) ordered
a
midday dinner appropriate to the season. Since she had invited a group of men and women I had grown up with, extra helping hands in the kitchen and at the table were necessary. Once the company was seated, in strode a grayhaired butler in a white coat,
who began
ally to supervise the service of a couple of
majestic-
aproned
young women. Our eyes met, but he made no sign of recognition: Jeeves himself, at Blandings, could
not have faulted this butler's impeccable demeanor.
But
it
broke down when, calling his name,
from the table and put this
my
I
got up
arms around him. For
paragon of itinerant majordomos was Isom.
And when
the
company
dispersed, after nostalgic
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
76
exchanges about happenings Isom, his wife Isabel
youth,
who had cooked
friend),
the days of our
in
(also
childhood
a
the dinner, and
I
had a
my departure.
reunion which delayed
My wife, who was born and reared in Lake Forest, Illinois,
was both pleased and touched by
tionship thus revealed. Nevertheless,
think she did
Not because of any arrobreed, but because she had known only
not quite understand
gance of
I
the rela-
it.
white servants, and never their children, in the
households of her parents and grandparents; and the tenderness of association thus revealed by me, herent in the South in to
my day,
in-
simply does not seem
have crossed the broad Ohio.
As
I
drove out of Glasgow, to resume a journey
whose destination was Corpus Christi, Texas, where lived my wife's older son and his family, I was thinking less of the familiar scenery I was traversing than the object lesson I had just experienced of the American wanderlust which had replaced the durable community of kinfolk of my childhood. For these two aunts were all that remained in Barren County
of the large
Morris
elders lay either in the
clan.
The
rest of the
town graveyard or
in the dis-
parate earths of Louisville, Chicago, Seattle, Eufaula,
Alabama,
New
Orleans and Vancouver, Can-
ada.
In passing the Morris Block on the Square, where
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
my
77
grandfather's office-store had been, and after his
Gus and James Depp, a partner, the name on the lintel of the front
death that of his son I
noticed that only
entrance recalled the original builder. Wordsworth's
had
line,
remembered
would have aptly demeditations: "Homeless near a thousand
I
my
scribed
it,
homes."
The affectionate childhood relationship in Glasgow between blacks and whites existed among the adults, too. It stopped at the point of dining together
and other
But the elders
social intermingling.
family and their grown-up sons and daughters
bered Negroes
among
their closest
and most
of
my
num-
faithful
friends and returned the friendship, each adult group in its
own
particular fashion.
The Negroes
were called
yes, but also they
served,
into conference on
equal terms on matters affecting the household, agri-
and the security of the community from
culture,
racial violence.
For
at least in
our community, the
responsible Negroes possessed in exceptional meas-
ure the instinct for wise solutions of such problems.
My to
fit
grandmother, as aforesaid, had a proverb
many
sciously
situations derived,
suppose, subcon-
from the experiences of ancestors
tant abyss of time. that
I
in the dis-
But the Negroes quoted proverbs
were guidelines for every conceivable perplexity,
some from the Bible but some from
folklore
more
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
78 ancient.
I
recall only a few,
may, but they include: "Ef
would have
bit
hit
you" (referring
wear no specs
brain as
I
had been a snake he to a search for
thing that lay in plain view). "De to
my
cudgel
Lawd
some-
don't have
to see a sinner at his sinning" (a
was as certain no money on de
prediction that punishment for error as the rising of the sun)
.
"Don't lay
debbil rovin' about like a ragin' lion to
he
mo'
is
liable
snuck up on you as a lamb."
There were cruelty and neglect of
:
in
our community,
which the Negroes were among the victims. And
some businessmen and farmers cheated those races
who
could not read or
who were
of both
afraid to
com-
plain of disregard of the axiom that the laborer
worthy
Southern
of his hire. Also, of course, as in all
areas, there
is
were white men who used Negro women
and cast them and their halfbreed babies heartlessly aside.
But insofar
the fact that
as
I left
I
— allowing my youth —
could observe
Glasgow
in
for
these
were exceptional cases, and the white community expressed
its
disapproval in several effective ways
such as denying hospitality to offenders
measure indeed
in the
One custom was would
"sit for
—
a radical
South of my time.
that
young unmarried women
company" on Sundays, with
writing their names in what was
known
all callers
as a chap-
book. But, as a typical example of community dis-
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG approval,
it
was made
clear to
79
men who
exploited
the Negroes that they were not welcome.
come copied by
reluctantly to
I
make use
of the ratings,
American from the British
the
press,
by
which population groups are crudely lumped as the upper, middle, lower middle and working classes.
The
descriptions cannot possibly pass the test of
accuracy, being both transitory and based on income; also this base
have searched
is
distasteful in a democracy.
in vain for substitute
in the
Negroes
I
to describe
in
our com-
Eighteen Nineties, and must
settle for
the standing of the responsible
munity
terms
But
them as the lower middle class in a society that was essentially all middle except for a few families which traced their ancestry to the English identifying
Colonial gentry.
Below
Negro group was the one accurately
this
designated as "white trash" because they were social primitives in act, manners, education and character,
with an ingrained distaste for regular work.
And no
whites, however high their station, scorned "white 11
more than did the fine Negro citizenry: deed, it was they who coined the expression. trash
Yet w e did not r
as
"Mr.
11
sat apart. still
refer, in
and "Mrs.
The
manifest
and
speech or print, to Negroes in
public assemblage they
detestable blight of slavery
in
transportation.
11
in-
was
also
such practices as segregated public
I still
remember
the sense of
shame
I
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
80 felt
when, on a hot summer day,~a Negro having
boarded a crowded streetcar in the vestibule for a
ordered
him to
in Louisville
and stood
one of
my uncles
breath of
the rear.
air,
Chapter Nine
spent very little time
I
—
school
health, of the
in the local
grammar
the yield of the bad seed of infant
ill-
pampering which accompanies rearing
by grandparents, and
of a gift of ingenuity in devis-
ing excuses for absenteeism. Since the expense of childbirth
was
my
that
mother was blind
for six
years thereafter, and in the course of this affliction
she joined
my
my grammar
father
who had
and secondary school "education" was
divided geographically. But
my
recollections of
structure in
got a job in Chicago,
my
among
the most vivid of
schooling was the one-room
Glasgow where Miss Bybee introduced
us to learning.
A its
gentle but firm teacher, with a culture beyond
humble point
least,
me,
at
with a zeal for seeking knowledge. Repulsively
had learned by the age of three how to time and memorize what was read to me (begin-
precocious, tell
of distribution, she filled
I
ning with "The Dogs' Dinner-Party")
under Miss Bybee's tutelage
I
.
When
had begun
I
came
to read
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
82
some
my
polite fiction in
bits of history
grandfather's library and
and biography.
On
this foundation I
acquired the beginnings of a mental discipline which,
my case by a congenital
though too often breached
in
indolence,
what has become known
in
is
essential to
my trade as "reporting in depth." Our
the
classes
were composed
of boys
town and from the countryside
by the
the latter restricted
and
—
girls
the range of
availability of the trans-
portation methods of the area and period. It
enough
for
the journey
was easy
town children
to
was above
miles or so, country chil-
five
dren had to depend on any
neighbor
from
who owned
walk
member
to school,
but
if
of the family or
a horse or a mule. Holiday
periods were largely in winter for climatic reasons,
even though snow and ice were rare and brief tions.
So among
my
early
of wrestling with the for spelling)
when
remembrances
is
visita-
the pain
Rule of the Three R's (plus S
the outdoors beckoned with spe-
cial insistence.
Of
my
schoolmates in Glasgow
I
best recall Brice
Leech, Waller Depp, Al Shirley, Joe Kilgore, Edgar Caldwell, a couple of the numerous sons of Colonel
and Mrs. Trigg, the Lessenberry brothers and cousins, and several girls for
whom
I felt
a deep but
shifting affection. It is
neither fable nor folklore that the
women
of
Kentucky are remarkable for their astonishing quota
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
— usually — and
of exceptional beauties
83
fair-haired, blue-
eyed and lissome of figure
all
particularly
reducing their admirers to a
skilled in the art of
happy bondage. At one time or another I was thus enslaved by Kate Depp, Maud Lessenberry and the Bohannon twins, Charlotte and Caroline, while state of
also adoring at a distance Kate's elder sister Minnie.
Although she was
my
barrier did not spare
by three years,
senior
me
this
the pangs of calf love, such
young Marchbanks suffered for Candida in the play by Shaw, when, on a homecoming visit, Minnie as
Depp drove me around
the Square in her shiny
new
phaeton.
But "the proper study
mankind
man," and
this
study, being an essential part of true education,
had
of
is
I
community such grew to know there-
that "alcohol
and gasoline don't
a vast storehouse of references in a
as that
I
grew up
in
and those
after.
The aphorism
mix" was generated by the growing number traffic
accidents for which drunken drivers are re-
— we had no combustion engines because were no automobiles community —
sponsible. In
my Glasgow
boyhood
internal
yet
of fatal
there
as
a corollary
in the
aphorism could have been: "Southerners and alcohol, especially, don't mix."
For the native Southern breed
in
those days ap-
pears in retrospect to have had a special inclination
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
84 to violence
under the influence of alcohol. And, since
Saturday night was by custom the time for drinking to excess,
it
was usually
in
Glasgow
a violent occa-
sion on the streets of town.
The town marshal, Winston Collins, was one of the gentlest men I ever knew. He maintained a remarkable degree of order by virtue of his courage, persuasiveness and the respect the community had for him. Yet, because of the intensity of the fire
some of our normally peaceful citizens, it was Marshal Collins's bitter lot to be forced to use lethal methods in dealing with them on Saturday night. Otherwise, the public order and his life, as well as the lives of innocent bystanders, would have been the sacrifice. It was the duty and function of Marshal Collins to
which alcohol lighted
in the breasts of
forestall these recurring nights of violence, or, fail-
ing, to restore
law and order by whatever means was
And
means was the Colt revolver, the "Peacemaker" of the Old West. Most of the occasions w hen Marshal Collins was forced to draw on an offender or offenders, the badge
necessary.
all
too frequently this
r
of authority that
gleamed on his
tation as a very fast in
to
chest, plus his repu-
gun and the respect and
affection
which even the brawlers held him, were sufficient end the violence, often with no more casualties
than minor wounds. But
when whiskey had inflamed
beyond control one or another
of the town's citizens
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG or visitors, pacification
tremely
and disarmament were
and dangerous
difficult
the comparatively
so because
85
to attempt, the
ex-
more
sober siblings and
friends intervened.
So
far as
I
could determine, and
I
always made
it
a point to see Marshal Collins in his old age on
homecoming
visits,
he died with the serenity of mind
that should attend awareness of a
assumed and met
ingly
in full.
Yet throughout this period of
gow was
a "dry"
hard duty know-
my
boyhood Glas-
town and Barren was
a "dry"
county. For national prohibition merely lent emphasis
to
a condition precedent,
racially
mixed conglomerate
States votes dry
key)
in the
which was that the society of the United
and drinks wet (principally whis-
"Bible Belt."
more perfect balKentucky than elsewhere
Ecological conditions, found in
ance for distilling corn in in
United States, account for the fact that
the
straight
bourbon whiskey
kind anywhere of
in the
is
the finest product of the
world. Its base
is
the purity
water when strained through deposits of lime-
stone,
and careful aging of raw bourbon by genera-
tions of distillers has steadily perfected
cause, from early times in the
life
it.
But
be-
of the nation, the
Federal government has drawn a large annual rev-
enue by taxing whiskey, evasion of the tax by moonshiners has led to the circulation in the South of a
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
86
raw
nature highly inflammatory to the
spirit of a
emotions of
its
tendency
of a congenital
This
imbibers, and especially provocative
illegal
to violence.
ously as "white lightning"
always
in full
— known and "white mule" — was
moonshine whiskey
vari-
supply in the community, particularly
on Saturday nights. There was also aged bourbon to be had
much more
but this was
illegally,
costly.
The moonshine came from stills, movable from one location to another when Federal "revenooers" demolished them or got too close for continued production.
The aged bourbon was
acquired from drugstores
by medical prescriptions, although few were bonafide issues of the
physicians by
whom they were pur-
ported to have been signed. For in our community the practicing doctors
met the highest standards
of
the Hippocratic oath and professional capacity.
So outstanding were Glasgow's physicians that vividly
remember
down to their very lineaments One was Dr. Leech, who ami-
five,
and turns of speech.
ably endured the obvious tion of his
name and
pun evoked by the connec-
his profession.
He encouraged
me to extend my reading to the natural And whenever I met him on the street in pany
of
someone unknown
introduced
me
I
as "a
member
to
sciences.
the com-
me, he invariably
of one of
Glasgow's
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG oldest families
and
I
87
— an acknowledgment on which he
11
both set store.
Three
of the other physicians
who
live
in
my
memory were Dr. Trabue, Dr. Grinstead and Dr. Garnett. Like Dr. Leech they were men of great dignity and compassion, holding themselves com-
mitted to answer any
however humble, without regard and
distant
my
But
difficult the
from persons
for help,
call
to race
and however
journey to their bedsides.
were with our
closest relations, of course,
family G.P., Dr. Jepson.
He was
by
so
a long, flowing
drawn by
its
—
or at least
cause often they awakened
by reason of
my
white beard.
buggy, meticulously
known
as himself.
wheels and the clop-clop
from
of his horse's hoofs apart
combinations
a
a horse as well
recognized the sound of
so
His head was magnifi-
courtly.
visited his patients in
kept, I
and
made more
cent,
He
tall
I
me
all
other vehicular
thought
I
could
in the night.
—
be-
This was
grandmother's concept that good
citizenship required her to help the indigent ailing,
and Dr. Jepson's reliance on her unfailing willingness to demonstrate
and
at
it
by attending
any time his patients
at
any distance
who were
in
need of
their skills.
These were the country doctors vanishing species. fully
went unpaid
They made
little
of the time, a
money and
for their services
cheer-
by patients of
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
88
meager means. Despite the grear subsequent advancement in medical expertise, and the financial aid to the ailing provided
by Medicare and other
aspects of the Welfare State,
I
think in their virtual
disappearance the American people have lost more in social values
than they have gained in the dubious,
wasteful and confused benevolences of the paternalistic superstate.
To
Horatio,
who found
the appearance of the
Ghost "wondrous strange," Hamlet are
more things
in
replied,
"There
heaven and earth than are dreamt
The eternal truth of this is borne out every day in human experience everywhere, and in Glasgow we had our share of eviof in your philosophy."
dences of the supernatural.
recall three in particu-
I
lar.
The Edmunds family owned a known as the "madstone." Small, slightly reddish tinge,
it
a rabid dog.
when and how
and of a
soil.
But the Ed-
Why
personal experience that,
without great delay to a
if
was bitten by was so was an un-
a person this
solved mystery. But there were
it
rock
stone possessed the mysterious quality of
averting hydrophobia
dog
flat
of
did not differ in aspect from
thousands of others found in the
munds
piece
many
to
swear from
the stone were applied
wound
inflicted
by a mad
healed normally and quickly. This firm con-
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG viction
was sustained by
the fact that hydrophobia
had positively attacked others had not been to
89
to
whom
the stone
enough
available, not always, but often
engender absolute confidence
in its recondite vir-
tues.
Though
the local doctors were not prepared to
accept the belief as scientifically demonstrable, they
were not prepared
Hence
credibility.
to repudiate
my
in
it
as entirely lacking
boyhood the community's
Edmunds madstone was as strong as cripples w ho throw away their crutches
faith in the
that of the at
r
Lourdes, or as the faith of Chinese surgeons in
acupuncture.
A
second mystery was supplied by Princess, one
of our
two matriarch
St.
Bernards.
One
of her ap-
was to lead our cows to the morning and bring them back
pointed duties each day
town pasture
in the
in the late afternoon.
this office flawlessly.
Time
after time she
performed
But one evening one
charges was missing.
of her
Perceiving this on arrival
home, without a word having been spoken
to her,
she rushed back to the pasture, and, after inspecting the premises
by nose, she proceeded
to the residence
my Aunt Victoria. There she found the missing cow and duly chivvied her back to the place where
of
she belonged.
Could Princess count? only being absentminded
In
which
when she
case,
was she
first
returned
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
90
Or was Princess responding
some arcane prompting in performing something wondrous strange? I don't know the answer. But I do
her charges?
know the tale is true. The third instance
to
of the existence of the strange-
was the presence in She was a Negro, old
nesses Hamlet cited to Horatio
our community of a seeress.
and
totally blind.
But she had, among other
ability to locate lost articles. I recall that
mother, having lost a twenty-dollar the seeress and
was
gifts, the
my
bill,
grand-
consulted
told that the missing item
would
be found "between two pieces of paper." After a long
was discovered between two pages
search
it
which
my
a
week
grandmother had
of a
book
laid aside while reading
same inexplicable fashjewelry and other valuables
or two before. In the
ion missing pieces of
were located for
their owners.
In the hope of being credited with at least some
fragment of discretion,
I
shall leave these mysteries
for others to try to solve. I realize I
County
in
of Utopia,
have portrayed Glasgow and Barren
my boyhood and so
companions. But
it
as a
was
for
community on the
me and my
slopes
like-situated
in retrospect I also realize that the
corruptions inherent in
human
nature were suppurat-
ing there on the general scale of
mundane
behavior.
Beneath the roofs of the large, comfortable houses there doubtless
was
the going percentage of crime,
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG misery of
spirit, incest,
91
drunkenness, cruel gossip,
discrimination against and exploitation of the ble, lust
and greed. The drunkenness
since every
I
hum-
was aware
of,
Sunday morning the town hummed with toll alcoholic excess had taken of life
accounts of the
and property the night before. sion jail
when
—
I
— hiding
in
And
on the one occa-
an outhouse near the town
watched a mob take from his
accused of rape,
cell a
Negro
beheld the horrid spectacle of
I
lynch law in action.
But these matters sciousness: to
me
have described
it.
lay on the far fringes of
the
Perhaps because
I
community
at large
was seldom the
my con-
was
as
I
victor in those
which boys fall to in the course of their upgrowing, I developed a fascination for champions in the "manly art of self-defense," as the promoters fistfights
of professional
years "art,"
I
boxing describe
From my
it.
informed myself of developments
and could
reel off the
names
in
early this
of principals in
bouts which ranged from the flyweight to the heavy-
weight divisions.
Who
won, and how, and
round, were statistics ever at the tip of
And when ol*
in
the great
the
time
I
came
champions
admiration
of
the
to
know
my
in
tongue.
personally
of the ring,
I
what
felt for
some them
crowd that makes public
idols of actors, military heroes
and those politicians
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
92
imbued with what
a recent cliche designates
as
"charisma."
My
first
recollection of a prizefight concerns one
morning, when
My
was about five years old (1892). grandfather was sitting on the porch, reading I
the Courier-Journal of Louisville.
As he turned
a
page he suddenly said "what a pity."
"What's a pity, Grandpa?"
"Why,
that upstart
James
J.
Corbett has knocked
out the great John L. Sullivan."
Many
decades later
World
the
office in
ager, Florence
He
I
New
was
listening one day, in
York,
to the general
man-
D. White, on the subject of boxing.
told of a time, long after the fight with Corbett,
when, as a young reporter, he was sent the great John L.
The
to interview
old paladin of the ring
was
enthroned in his saloon and casting aspersions on all
his successors.
"How would you
handle them?"
White said he inquired, to which Sullivan replied, "With one hand." Then, White added, "Sullivan loosened his belt and his belly
fell
out."
But this anecdote was no longer disillusioning for me; long since I had transferred my allegiance to Robert (Ruby Bob) Fitzsimmons who in 1897 had taken the championship away from Corbett at Carson City, Nevada, with the famed punch to the solar plexus. I
"heard," or,
more
accurately, "read" the fight at
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
was proceeding. In those days, and television, the Western Union
Carson City while long before radio
93
it
and the Postal Telegraph Company sent running accounts of such events on their wires, and, as the strips arrived, they
father took
me
to
were pasted on the windows.
town
to join the
My
crowd before the
Western Union office that was raptly watching each tape as it was put on the glass. When a bulletin, "Knockout by Fitzsimmons," appeared, followed immediately by the detail of the solar plexus blow, my treble voice arose among the baritones and the basses in jubilation.
This early-acquired interest
in professional box-
when
was working on the World and the Times in New York in the Nineteen Twenties and Thirties I became a ing, unusually served
by the
friend of the great promoter
fact that
Tex Rickard,
I
led to
personal acquaintances with the great ring fighters of three generations.
grimage
to
he
I
had made
a pil-
Bensonhurst, Long Island, where Fitz-
simmons was while
Years before
living in retirement,
reminisced,
in
and
sat spellbound
strong Australian
his
With Corbett at Carson City. With James J. Jeffries, when he lost the heavyweight championship. With Kid McCoy, "strine,"
on his ancient battles.
the most brilliant like
of
— master
whom
— and most dubiously sportsman-
of ring strategy.
Fitzsimmons had said
With
Peter Maher,
to reporters before
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
94 the bell I
will
Maher and
hit
floor."
In
"There
:
be only two blows
the other
— one when
when Maher
hits the
And it was so.
New York
I
knew Corbett
slightly.
By
that
time "Gentleman Jim" had long since lost the championship to Jeffries and was earning a good living as
an actor, an excellent one. Once he was describing
when, as was then the custom of
his experiences
champions between
fights,
he was traveling with a
road-show burlesque troupe. His contribution box-office
draw
of the
show was
to offer to
to the
box two
one-minute rounds with anyone in the audience and present the challenger with one hundred dollars
if
he lasted the route.
remember
was in Cincinnati," said Corbett, "and at the time the manager announced the proposition I was most heavily hung over. Up from the audience came a big, muscular boy, much bigger "I
than
I,
it
assistant to a local butcher as I learned after-
ward. His cheeks were rosy, his eyes were bright.
thought to myself, 'My God, suppose this kid I
could barely see)
champion "But
I
(whom
knocks out the heavyweight
of the world.'
knew something he
scared of me, but he didn't
him. So after I
I
we came
on the shoulder.
know
I
together and shook gloves,
him and gave him Thinking it was the
tottered toward
knew he was was scared of
didn't. I
a playful tap
right thing to
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG do, he tapped
me
back.
The
turned his head in surprise. system.
I let
him have
got a punch in
first, I
it,
95
audience booed, the kid I
had one punch
and he dropped.
fear that audience
in
he had
If
would have
seen the heavyweight champion asleep on the
Among
my
floor."
whom
the other masters of boxing with
became acquainted were Paul Berlenbach, Tommy Laughran and Jimmy Slattery, all light heavyweight I
champions; Jack and
whom
Tom
Sharkey (the former of
barely missed knocking out Jack
McCoy, Mickey Walker, long king weights; Joe Jeannette, the great
Dempsey),
of the middle-
Negro
fighter;
Marvin Hart; Packy McFarland; Joe Choyinski, the skinny, stouthearted near-nemesis of Corbett; and
both
Dempsey and Gene Tunney. Thomas
Hitch-
cock, the greatest polo player of this century, once invited
me
to dine at the
Links Club
in
New
York,
where his guests of honor were Dempsey and Tunney, and their
comments on
their
two contests
for the
heavyweight championship made the evening
mem-
orable because of the respect and friendship they
showed
to
each other.
grew to know Tunney quite well, to the point where we arranged that he extend his acquaintance I
from managers, trainers and boxers by dining with
some
of the
many prominent New York men who
had expressed
a
evening, with
my
wish
to
meet him. Accordingly one
close friend J.
Cheever Cowdin,
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
96
the seven-goal polo player on the Milburn and Hitch-
cock teams as co-host, to
I
invited a group of these
meet the champion. He was the
prizefighter
most
of
first
them had met, and
pressed with him as an individual.
He
men
professional all
were im-
spoke well and
familiarly of matters of general interest, including their
own, and certainly he was the handsomest
man
among them. After dinner
all
but two of the group gathered in
another room for cigars and brandy, the two being
Tunney and George Gordon Moore,
"break
it
at the table,
still
up," saying that
all
with Tunney. As
to talk
in
When half an hour had passed
for his erudition.
with the pair
magnate
renowned as a polo player
the rapid transit industry,
and
a
Cowdin urged me
to
the other guests wanted
I
approached the table
I
Tunney saying: Gibbon was not an enemy of
heard, with no particular surprise,
"But, Mr. Moore,
if
the Catholic Church, why, on page so-and-so, Vol-
ume X,
did he write
.
.
.
Later Moore said to me:
?"
"Was that really Tunney, One of knock him out
the heavyweight champion of the world?
these nights
somebody
is
going
to
with a book!"
Another champion, a lightweight,
Ruby
Goldstein,
now
I
admired was
a referee of professional box-
ing.
For several months the senior Allan A. Ryan
and
I
followed
him from one
fight club to another
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG as he
mowed down
97
his victims in short order.
Then
came a night when he was booked at Coney Island in a match with a clumsy Nebraska farm boy named Ace Hudgkins. Ruby played with his opponent for a couple of rounds and, believing that the usual knockout din
was
closely impending,
who was with us There was
another.
and we three turned I
began
and Corbett
a
Ryan and
— looked
I
— and Cow-
exultantly at one
sudden roar from the crowd, our hero
to see
flat
with Sullivan
this aficionado chronicle in the Nineties.
end
I
it
on his back.
with Dempsey,
A. Charles Schwartz and Harry Greb. Charlie Schwartz, of
Wall
Street,
was
a fairly
good amateur boxer, his diversion from the hectic
mosphere
of the
summer,
a project for charity
Exchange. So when,
at
Saratoga one
was undertaken,
idea entered the nimble brain of Herbert
Swope a light
that an exhibition
the
Bayard
match between Schwartz,
heavyweight, and
large and
at-
Dempsey
could draw a
most generous audience. Both were agree-
There were to be two one-minute rounds. Throughout the first Schwartz was blasting the air with punches aimed at (but missing) Dempsey, which the latter never tried to return in kind. able.
Yet when the
bell
rang for the second round,
Schwartz, after vainly trying not rise from his corner,
I
to raise his
asked
arms, did
Dempsey why.
"Well, you see," he said, "we have a trick
in profes-
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
98 sional boxing:
arms,
if
you just lean on thet)ther guy's
you can,
until
fore-
you have worn him down.
I
just leaned on Charlie's forearms."
Harry Greb had an unconquerable fighting heart. He also was a good boxer with a potential knockout blow in each hand. With this equipment he had won the light heavyweight championship of the world,
and
in fifteen
rounds had outpointed his most formi-
dable challenger,
improved
in skill
Gene Tunney. But Tunney, much and with more poundage, overcame
Greb to win a return match which left indelible marks on both. On Tunney, because to win he was obliged to punish Greb severely, and this has distressed him ever since. On Greb, because the punishment he took was irreparable. It was after this second fight that Tunney left the light
heavyweight
to join the
from which he eventually
heavyweight
division,
retired as unbeaten
cham-
pion.
Out
of the ring
Greb was
a modest and gentle
creature. I can testify to this because, with
Philip Boyer,
together in
Greb and
Jimmy
I
my friend
often spent the late hours
Kelley's speakeasy in
Greenwich
Village, in the blighted years of national prohibition.
At the end of these evenings we were always joined by Boyer's favorite chauffeur, who at the time was running a taxicab business in Jersey City but came over to New York to see after Boyer whenever
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
99
Boyer was having a night on the town. The deference this big black to
him were
man showed to Greb and Greb showed
affecting
and
fitting testimonials to the
greatness each had displayed in the ring.
The
Jersey City taxicab company owner was Joe
Jeannette.
Chapter Ten
The
thoughts of youth
are
long,
long
thoughts," noted Mr. Longfellow, with the
sound reservation that "a boy's will." In
both respects
will is the wind's
qualified.
I
As
I
dreamed
in-
trospectively over the pages of the standard novelists
and historians library
was
to
whose works
largely devoted,
I
my
grandfather's
conjured up myself
successively as a successor to D'Artagnan, Charles
James Fox, Montrose, Marmion, Ivanhoe, William Dobbin, Sydney Carton, Blackstone, David Copperfield, Mark Hopkins of Williams College, the Poe brothers of Princeton, Robert Fitzsimmons, Leibnitz (
because he stood on the summit of
omnium knowl-
edge), Midshipman Easy, the Boy on the Burning
Deck and many
others
whose
lives, real or
had captured my fancy. But as the realities in which
imagin-
ary,
bore in on
me more and
more,
visions, ambitions settled
come
a professor of
must be
life
expense of
at the
down, and
lived
I
my
decided to be-
American history or a lawyer.
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
By
time
the
autumn
of
matriculated at Princeton
I
1904
had decided
I
temperament and
And
ing.
to
I
equipment
intellectual
the
in
lacked the studious for teach-
the family financial assets having declined
where
to the point
way
101
had
I
to
maintain myself, the only
do this was to get a paying job. This auto-
matically terminated lege to law school
—
my I
idea of going on from col-
had neither the years
to devote
nor the fortitude of character to attend classes
to
it
at
night after the long working days customary in
that period.
At school and college which suggested
I
had written several papers
to professors
of English that
might have
a talent for
essential to
newspaper reporting, and even
and
literate
I
good observation of the kind
narrative style.
On
opinion, plus an interest in the
a clear
the basis of this
news
of events
which
arose from their constant discussion in the family, I
decided to try to get a job on a newspaper. But the
problem was, how
to elude a certain
city editors of daily
papers in those days: an appli-
cant for payroll status field
requirement of
must come
to
them with some
experience or train for six months without pay.
For a number of reasons Louisville was choice to begin a newspaper career. lis
of
It is
my
only
the metropo-
my home Commonwealth, Kentucky,
in
which
the natives feel inordinate pride. Its great journalistic
figure,
Henrv Watterson, was then an
idol
in
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
102
every Kentucky family, including mine; his edi-
had been read
torials
me
to
before
could read;
I
and the Courier-Journal was our bible of current
had to pretend previous experience, and the managing editor, Graham Vreeland
events. But, since
I
a family acquaintance this
was
a
—
— would know
foredoomed venture. Also,
had none,
I
was hardly
it
managing editor of the Louisville owned by the Courier-Journal Company,
likely that the
Times, also
would not learn Accordingly,
of this
represented otherwise.
if I
my
carried
I
deceit to the city editor
of the Herald, a paper which,
though ever on the
brink of bankruptcy, was a lively shop, whose liant
managing
editor
and page one columnist, A. T.
Macdonald, daily stuck enough thorns jestic seat of the Courier- Journal to
to
weaken
When I fifty
and
its
I
my
expended
in
field.
had
just spent
to get
on a payroll as quickly as
free food
by train to my grandGlasgow where I could count on
a round trip
mother's house in
Two
not
My remaining four dollars and fifty cents I
possible.
and lodging while awaiting the decision
Herald whether
reporter
I
it, if
ma-
small capital for a night's lodging,
was obliged
of the
in the
annoy
domination of the morning
asked the Herald for a job
cents of
bril-
to
employ the experienced
vowed myself to be. weeks later I got a telegram I
offering
reporter's job at fifteen dollars a week.
And
me
it
a
was
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG not until
I
failed the intricate
assignment of covering
fundamental
test of reportorial ex-
a big fire
—
pertise
that
—
103
a
my deception was unveiled.
shown enough promise
But
had
I
induce the Herald to keep
to
me on. The Herald occupied Market
Street, near Fifth.
to the third floor
There were no elevators
where the news and composing
partments adjoined first floor,
crumbling building on
a
—
the business office
was on the
and the basement was given over
to the
which were the best the
creaking old presses, poverty-stricken
Like
establishment could afford.
every other city room of the period with which familiar
— even
de-
I
was
those of the prosperous Courier-
Journal and Times
—
the place
was musty and
strewn with the trash of reportorial activity.
But none
of its inhabitants
was concerned by
these
attendant circumstances of their labors. If any of us,
including Mr. Macdonald bicle of
an
office)
(who
actually
had been taken forward
the swept and gleaming suites in
had a in
cu-
time to
which reporters
work today, he would have thought he was
in the
throes of a particularly bad hangover. I
was assigned
to a battered old
desk on which
knew
stood a battered old typewriter, and, though
I
how
did not
to
manipulate the
latter
mechanically,
I
11
must
be surmounted bv a "slue." This consists of the
name
know that the
first
page of newspaper "copy
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
104
(in small letters) of the producing reporter line giving the subject of the story: for
and a
examples,
"Fourth Street Murder," "Wreck on the Daisy" (a trolley connecting Louisville
with
New
Albany, In-
diana, across the Ohio)
The that
I
preservation of
my masquerade
should "act" like a reporter. So
to the slang of the trade, city editor
I
also required
bent
my
ear
such as knowing what the
meant when he ordered me
to write
my
was lengthy and the "deadline" was near, and even what a deadline was. I tossed my jacket onto a peg, whether or not the room was cold, cast the ashes from my four-cent cigar El Toro into the nearest of a battery of spittoons, by name and depreciated the fame of the star reporter with the story in "takes,"
if it
—
—
others this
whom
to asperse his right to
eminence.
A common first
envy prompted
jest
among
itinerant reporters in that
decade of the twentieth century, when discuss-
ing other newsrooms, was that the pace at the
New
Orleans Times-Picayune was so leisurely, the only noise to be heard
was
the crackling of the logs in
the fireplace, and that the reporters and editors wrote in
longhand by candlelight. But,
actually,
on the
Herald, the clacking of the linotype machines in the next room, added to the noise of our typewriters and
loud conversational exchanges, conditioned us for writing in the most distracting circumstances
— an
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
105
whose value under the pressure of a developing event cannot be overemphasized. Bare and dusty illuminating bulbs, mostly hanging from the ceiling, ability
suffused the quarters with a fishbelly light such as invests the paintings of El Greco. spells of
And
in the
long
stewing weather, typical of the climate of
most riverine American
cities,
the feebly revolving
fans served only to incandesce the hot gusts that
came
in
through the open windows.
Old men but old
men
King Harry
at
Agincourt,
also are prone to believe that stouter
emerge from hardships and discomforts
spirits
early
forget, said
working
life
than amid such luxuries as
in air
conditioning, fluorescent lights, wall-to-wall carpet-
and
ing, contour chairs
electric typewriters.
ever the soundness of this postulate,
learned
my
I
am
Whatglad
I
trade in harsher working circumstances.
— and
the
absence of union-enforced equality of earnings,
re-
Long hours, with only one day
off a
week
gardless of superior talent, industry and character
— produced,
in
my
judgment, a
professional devotion that
is
in
self-discipline
and
shorter supply in
journalism today.
Like
many young
had high marks I
reporters, especially those
at school
burned with the ambition
with the "literary
in
English composition,
to invest
11
touch.
delusions, for not only are
It is
who
the
my news
stories
most juvenile of
news reporting and
litera-
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
106
ture wholly different vehicles of written expression:
they are mutually destructive to their objectives. Because
had the good fortune
I
who made
editors
this
rapidly from the fever.
had
it
begin work under
to
clear to
But while
me, it
recovered
I
possessed
me
I
bad.
The
first
stage of
my
convalescence was marked
by a strange and unexpected sensation. As I typed I began to laugh at the obscure words and recondite
had selected to give literary quality to my product, and no cure of posturing is more effective
phrases
I
than self-laughter.
remember pouncing on a word I at first found delicious, intending to weave it into a profile of a citizen who exercised great power in the affairs of the State. The word was "puissant." But when I I
spoke
it
out loud
it
sounded convulsingly funny.
And
so (in order) did "pusillanimous," "hebetate" (that
most stupid synonym as "the scene
with in
my
torial at the
By
frillings of rhetoric that I toyed
brief attempt to be literary
and repor-
same time.
this experience I realized,
the unadorned adjectives,
and such phrases
beggared description," "a somber hush
— fancy
descended"
for "dull"),
and
for keeps, that
word and phrase, with
and only those
fitly
And
on
chosen, are the pure
stuff of informative, honest, readable
distinctive journalism.
restraint
and
—
that, if a reporter
yes
—
wants
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG to
107
be a novelist, a poet, a dramatist, a philosopher or
whatever, he must do
it
on his
own time
damage
or
both commodities.
Before the pretense of previous reportorial experience was shattered by
my poor performance
ing out the assignment to cover a big
man
of the
composing room
exposed me. Suspecting
was, he had easily proved to
work by
practice a
it
a
among newspaper
look at "type-lice," and,
form
jamming
to
Herald could have
after
I I
in the city
went
when
room. This con-
he wanted to have a
if
when
really
which was standard
linotype operators
sisted of asking the recruit
closely over a
the fore-
an amateur
few days
a practical joke
new boy was taken on
tures,
of the
how raw
fire,
in carry-
the innocent
had bent
observe these reputed crea-
the type together and inundating his
face with a spray of inky water.
But, having had his joke to the great delight of the watching printers, the foreman and his crew
magnanimously forbore to relay the story to the newsroom. Had they done so I might instantly have been reduced to
my
true status as an unpaid "cub,"
posing a problem of financial survival for which at the time
The
I
had no immediate
solution.
incident illustrates the fraternal relations be-
tween compositors and reporters that, experience, does not
now
at least in
my
exist with respect to the
pressmen, stereotypers and the personnel of the busi-
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
108 ness
office.
Perhaps
because newsmen and
this is
printers consider their callings to be a sort of art not
shared with the other departments. At any rate, on the Herald, and later
when
of the Courier- Journal
I
was
editorial
manager
and the Louisville Times,
harmony was a firm condition. And of all my associates, in more than half a century of activity in newspapering, I had none more helpful in the newsroom, or more enjoyable in the saloons to which we repaired in common, than the mechanical workers this
and their foremen.
The foremen were good news and
editorial staffs
terrible goofs averted,
closed forms, on the vital corrections
publication.
them
have owed a debt for
many
and for miracles
way
wound
in overtaking
to the stereotypers, so that
Jackson, the foreman of the
of the Louisville
Times, had a talent
which not only was unique, but living
and
and additions could be made before
And Frank
composing room
to
editors, too,
in the
inflicted
amour propre
sister paper, the Courier- Journal.
of the
an ever-
haughty
For Jackson alone
could, with total accuracy, decipher the scrawl
which
was the handwriting of the Courier- Journal's celebrated editor, Henry Watterson. Watterson, before he was thirty, had become so outstanding in American journalism and politics that the Associated Press distributed his national and international editorials to
all its clients
throughout
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
109
Henry T. Watterson led
the nation and abroad. Together with
Grady, of the Atlanta Constitution,
movement
the
Between the
He was
to
"bury the bloody flag" of the
War
States.
either the keynoter or
chairman of the
Resolutions Committee of several Democratic National Conventions.
He
traditional party policy
led in the formulation of the
which he phrased as
"tariff
As an orator and lecturer he was demand than nearly all his contempora-
for revenue only." in
greater
ries.
The
conclusion of his lecture on Lincoln, for
example, thrilled audiences in
parts of the coun-
all
try:
Born
as lowly as the
Son
of
God,
in a hovel; reared in
penury, squalor, with no gleam of light or fair surrounding; without graces, actual or acquired; without
name
was reserved for this strange being, late in life, to be snatched from obscurity, raised to supreme command at a supreme moment, and
or
fame or
official
training;
it
intrusted with the destiny of a nation.
The
great leaders of his party, the most experienced
and accomplished public men of the day, were made
to
stand aside; were sent to the rear, while this fantastic figure
was
led
by unseen hands
the reins of power. for him, or against
It
is
as the
and given
immaterial whether
we were
him; whollv immaterial. That, dur-
ing four years, carrying with sponsibility
to the front
them such
a
weight of
re-
world never witnessed before, he
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
110
him in the eyes and actions of mankind, is to say that he was inspired of God, for nowhere else could he have acquired the wisdom and filled
the vast space allotted
the virtue.
Where
did Shakespeare get his genius?
Mozart get
his
music?
Whose hand smote
the Scottish ploughman, and stayed the
man
life
Where
did
the lyre of of the Ger-
God, God, and God
alone; and as surely as up by God, inspired by God, was Abraham Lincoln; and a thousand years hence, no
priest?
these were raised
drama, no tragedy, no epic poem greater wonder, or be followed by feeling than that
which
tells
will be filled
with
mankind with deeper
the story of his
life
and
death.*
Watterson's countenance
— with
its
one blazing
blue eye (he had lost the other in youth), ting jaw,
its
its jut-
martial white mustache and goatee
badges of the old Confederates
— was
lure to cartoonists for over fifty years.
—
a constant
The
fact that
he preferred beer, champagne and brandy
to the
bourbon whiskey of his homeland was a news story
whenever rediscovered, as often
it
was, by the metro-
And, though the legend also had it that Watterson lunched on mint juleps at the Pendennis Club, his actual noonday habit was to repair politan press.
Henry Watterson, The Compromises of Life, and Other Lecand Addresses, Including Some Observations on Certain Downward Tendencies of Modern Society (New York: Fox, Duffield & *
tures
Co., 1903), pp.
179-180.
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG to the
backroom
for a fare of chili
Among
111
of a saloon near the Courier -Journal
and beer.
his diversions
was poker, and each Satur-
day night for many years he joined an equally posed group
at the Louisville
Hotel on
Main
dis-
Street.
Since he rarely remembered to carry any cash, he
would stop by the business of the Courier- Journal
sum he might
on the ground
office
and extract from the
till
a
considered sufficient to defray any losses he
sustain.
"Mr. Watterson" he called himself;
him when
it
disgusted
surname was prefixed by "Colonel."
his
But he enjoyed being referred
which invariably he was in
floor
cartoons,
editorials,
around the newspaper
to as
"Marse Henry,"
in the political
approaches
personal offices,
community, and
including his own,
and he so entitled his autobiography. In figure he
was
of
middle height and stocky. His
walk was a quickstep; his voice was somewhat on the high side. Six days a trolley
in
the interurban
from "Mansfield," his home outside the town
in Jefferson
way
week he rode
County,
to the office
and back.
On
the
he read his copy of the Courier- Journal and
made notes on what pleased or displeased him, or gave him an idea for an editorial. In the office he did no more than glance
at the
Herald.
he read the Louisville Times and
its
On
his
way
out
competitor, the
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
112
Evening Post, taking
little time for these with the usual remark that " a short horse is soon curried." I
did not meet Mr. Watterson, or even see him,
until the
summer
of 1910, after I
had become the
Washington correspondent of the Louisville Times. Some field reports I had written, of the political situation in several states prior to the elections that fore-
shadowed the fatal Republican party split in 1912, had attracted his attention. He summoned me to the
was
I was appointed Washington also and instructed to report the 1910 campaign in the Haldeman paper of more general circulation. I found the famous editor, for all his reputation as
Presence, and the upshot
that
to represent the Courier- Journal in
and devastator of whatever
a fire-eater of politicians
professional conceit his reporters had
them room"
referred to editor's
and
civility.
was
his
as "the long-legged boys in the city
—
In
— he always
man of extreme consideration time we became intimate friends. I a
companion
in his
hours of leisure, including
those spent with the Watterson family at "Mansfield"
and annual
revelry at the
visits to
New
York
for evenings of
Manhattan Club, the Lambs and the
Lotus. In the
first
in the third
he mingled with
with
artists,
professors and authors. But
above these he enjoyed the of his life
Tammany politicians;
Lambs because
for
most
Watterson was a patron and familiar of the
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG stage, being
113
Among
something of an actor himself.
were Nat Goodwin, Maurice Barrymore
his cronies
and John Drew. In Louisville he
was responsible
for the early en-
couragement of the talent he discerned
in a local girl,
Mary Anderson, who in turn became the first lady of the American stage. And the reason Macauley's Theatre presented in Louisville the finest plays of every
season as long as John Macauley, proprietor of the theater,
and Watterson were
Henry used
his influence to that
Mark Klaw and
ville-born
alive
was
that
Marse
end with the Louis-
other moguls of Broad-
way. Years
later,
New York
on one of the occasions when
Sardou's drama Diplomacy lette
we
with Watterson, ,
in
at the
was
in
attended a revival of
which William
and Marie Doro played the leading
had dined well
I
Cafe Lafayette —
I
roles.
recall
Gil-
We mar-
veling at Watterson's consumption of a goblet of yel-
low Chartreuse
— and my distinguished companion
drowsed through most of the three tain fell,
however, he sat up brightly
comment on
As each curand made a
the performance as follows:
Act One. Of course, done as when Georgie were the
acts.
this is
nothing
like as well
Drew and Maurice Barrymore
stars.
Act Two. This
is
certainly better done than
when
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
114
Georgie
Drew and Maurice B anymore were
the
stars.
Act Three. Of course, done as when Georgie
were the
As
nothing like as well
Drew and Maurice Barrymore
stars.
the last curtain
would
this is
visit
fell,
"William"
speculation as to
Watterson announced we
in his dressing
room.
what he would say was soon
My re-
solved. "William," he exclaimed, clapping Gillette
much better perwhen Georgie Drew and Maurice
on the shoulder, "of course this
formance than
Barrymore played the
is
a
leads."
His extraordinary energy having been fully
re-
we end the Mouquin's, and we did. Per-
stored by his naps, Watterson proposed
evening by supping
haps
I
at
should have asked his
final choice
two judgments he had alternately and so
I shall
never know.
stated.
between the
But I
didn't,
Chapter Eleven
One
dividend of working on the Herald was
its
proximity to inexpensive places of
re-
freshment that nevertheless were of the high quality
which characterized most Louisville restaurants and
made possible office when throat
saloons in those days. This proximity
merely a short absence from one's or
stomach called for instant succor. Less than
fifty
yards of pavement separated the Herald from Sullivan
&
Brach's, as pleasant a saloon-restaurant as
my
has been
privilege to frequent
it
— including 21
West Fifty-second Street, Moriarty's and Cavanagh's in
New York. Each
sitely
afternoon, precisely at four o'clock, exqui-
baked Kentucky hams
—
am
of the school
—
them superior to Virginia's were loaded table across from the bar, and fifteen cents
that holds
onto a
I
bought not only
all
the
ham
a patron desired to eat,
but a shot glass of Spring Hill, one of the noblest straight
bourbons that ever was
where nobility
is
the
minimum
there a fledgling reporter
distilled in a state
for whiskey.
met and came
to
know
And cer-
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
116
tain leaders of the city
and the Commonwealth
whom
otherwise he might never have encountered.
East of the Herald
office,
on Fourth Street, was
emporium of Humler & Nolan where, although there was a line of the finest Ha-
the elegant tobacco
vanas, impecunious smokers such as
out a hint of patronage,
I
could, with-
buy cheaper brands,
includ-
ing the aforementioned four-cent El Toros. Excellent
and inexpensive late-night meals
for reporters on
American Restaurant on the same block on Market Street; with the kindly proprietors of Alsatian nationality your credit was duty were served
good ment. if
at the
for even long periods of financial embarrass-
And
just
around the corner on Fourth
luck at a crap or poker
rary affluence, of its
Street,
game had provided tempo-
was the Vienna, with
a cuisine worthy
name, including kaffee-mitschlag, true Wurz-
burger and Pilsener, and such wiener schnitzels as
might win the approval
of
any chef along the Ring-
strasse.
We had few things to boast about on the Herald, though we beat "the Old Lady of Green
Street," the
Courier-Journal, with some frequency on the local
news run, and Mr. Macdonald's sharp column on local affairs was not matched by any comparable feature of the competition. But there is a sense of vocation in the staff of an underdog newspaper that, on the Herald, was almost a tangible thing. It was a
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
117
happy day on the Herald when the lordly CourierJournal was humbled by a Herald "beat," as an exclusive
news
story
outsiders better
is
known
pened enough times
though
styled in the trade, as a "scoop."
And
to
this hap-
to dispel the sensitivity
which
accompanies the status of the poor relation. Also,
Herald reporters, such as of gaffes
I,
were encouraged by
by Courier-Journal
pened before our time. One
I
tales
editors that
had hap-
remember
as giving
us extreme pleasure concerned a night telegraph editor
on the other morning newspaper. His
name was
Beriah Griffin; he was described as resembling a stuffed It
owl
in
appearance and a rooster in pomposity.
seems that on the night of January
2,
1905, just
before closing time of the three a.m. edition, an Associated Press bulletin
came
to his
desk that
ported one of the great military events of times: the capture of Port Arthur Griffin,
who had put on
his hat
re-
modern
by the Japanese.
and risen
spiked the bulletin with the comment:
to
"To
go home, hell
with
Port Arthur."
And
only the readers of the Herald
next morning
knew
of the event which, with the de-
feat of the
Russian
fleet in
Tsushima
Strait in
May
1905, marked the collapse of Russia in the 1905-
1906 war.
The
city editor of the
Herald was Ben
S.
Washer,
w ho for looks might have competed with King David if
Bathsheba had made that the criterion for the
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
118
grant of her favors.
On
the model" of Kipling's "Six
Honest Serving Men," he patiently impressed on his crew that a proper news story, in the early paragraphs, must always give the
What and Why
and
When and Where and How and Who. This mandatory formula has been supplanted
in
some degree by that exercise of "advocacy reporting," which accepts slanting and other coloring of the news on the theory that straightforward reporting is for the Dullsville Gazette. And, in untalented hands, it is. But reporters like Frank O'Malley of Dana's New York Sun, Herbert Bayard Swope of the World and Edwin L. James of the New York Times did not pass without leaving a professional posterity. And its members could, if asked, show those who slant and color the news to achieve reflection of their personal prejudices and political doctrines,
how
to
produce an accurate and absorbing
story without neglect of the essential factors.
Representatives of the
new journalism now
fre-
quently commit what are, and always will be, cardinal
— applauding
at press conferences
some statement they approve,
or putting questions
reportorial sins
to the person
being interviewed
in the vein of prose-
cuting attorneys; employing pejorative or laudatory personal terms (the "able" Mr. Roe, the "evasive"
Mr. Doe, "admitted"
as a description of
what was
merely a "concession" of the obvious, and so on).
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG Such
acts
119
and attitudes by reporters were inad-
missible as a matter of course on the newspapers
where
learned the trade.
I
These
attitudes include the formula of recording a
news event
in
terms of the reporter's view of
cial significance," etc.
that the
news
reliable.
And
is
The
inevitable consequence
in a period of history is
when
journalism,
highly suspect for
"advocacy reporting" puts both more
deeply on the defensive. This distrust
when an
is
slanted and the report factually un-
both printed and electronic, credibility,
its "so-
editorial
is
intensified
columnist with clear commitment
to a particular point of
view turns reporter
in a field
of his editorial interest.
In
newspapers
in Louisville
and elsewhere when
I
was plenty of distortion in playing up the welcome news and playing down the unwelcome; of pressures by big advertisers and joined the trade there
favored politicians to omit certain details in a report; of favoritism to individuals; of biased headlines; of
and
denying readers the publication of sound griev-
But these were dictated from the offices of publishers and editors: the poisons were not adminances.
istered
And
by the source of the news, the reportorial in those days, too, there
the antidote of competition
munity
:
was ever
staff.
available
the presence in the com-
of watchful rival newspapers.
This presence
served well as a restraint on practices which take un-
MYSELF WHEN YOUNG
120 fair
advantage of the guarantee of freedom of the
press in the First
Amendment
—
and
responsibility
honesty being assumed as the exchange for this guarantee.
Now,
many communities, newspaper
in far too
readers no longer have the protection of this punitive
rod of competition from the arrogance and bias that tend to develop in newspapers with a monopoly of their field.
of
And in
monopoly
such situations, while the strength
is sufficient to
reject pressures
advertisers, these pressures in the period
from big
am
I
re-
cording were rarely more than such requests as eliminating the
name
of a store in
which occurred
something that would be "bad for
business.'"
In
terms of news manipulation they were insignificant
when compared with
the pressures of the present
that have induced newspapers, in reports of crime, to
omit details essential
to identification of the crimi-
nal and to public awareness of the population groups
from which crime
is
more
Washington, when the
likely to
emerge. Thus
in
police ask for public assist-
ance in apprehending rapists, burglars and murderers, the readers of
one of
denied knowledge of a
and
its
vital factor in correctional
self-protective activity
The newest member staff, I
was
also the
newspapers are usually
if
the criminal
is
a
Negro.
of the Heral