Number 4 Park Street

IN the days before the souvenir postal card was employed to advertise every corner of the globe, it was always a pleasure to receive one of those tinted cards, decorated with a sprawling picture of some German town, and bearing a word of hearty German greeting.Gruss aus Heidelberg ! Or perhaps it was Jena, Munich, or Nuremberg which furnished the cheap little picture and the friendly word that wished you welfare and good cheer. How that pleasant custom warmed one’s heart toward the far-away, thrifty city, and the old friends and old ways. It refreshed one’s memory better than any Baedeker, — that simple, big-chested, deepthroated word Gruss ! And it emboldens the Atlantic’s Toastmaster to voice in similar fashion the salutation of the magazine to its readers, as the New Year again comes round. Greeting, Cheerful Readers all! Let it be a greeting from Number 4 Park Street.

And what and where is Park Street ? The Atlantic prints those words upon its cover, but gives no souvenir picture of the place. It is a short, sloping, prosperous little highway in what Rufus Choate called our “denationalized ” Boston town. It begins at Park Street Church, on Brimstone Corner. (If you ever happened to read, on a chilly Sunday afternoon in boyhood, the sermons of the Rev. Dr. Edward Dorr Griffin, the first minister of Park Street Church, you will perceive how Brimstone Corner won its name.) Thence it climbs leisurely westward toward the Shaw Memorial and the State House for twenty rods or so, and ends at the George Ticknor house, on the corner of Beacon. The street is bordered on the south by the Common, and its solid-built, sunward-fronting houses have something of a holiday air, perhaps because the green, outdoors world lies just at their feet. They are mostly given over, in these latter days, to trade. The habitual passer is conscious of a pleasant blend of bookshops, flowers, prints, silverware, Scotch suitings, more books, more prints, a club or two, a Persian rug, — and then Park Street is behind him.

Number 4 is the round-arched doorway halfway up the street, between the Scotch suitings and the Book Room. Poets often pass it with haughty and averted face, — the face of the Temporarily Rejected, — and yet sometimes, on the Atlantic’s publication days, they may be detected standing outside the show windows of the Book Room, and reading their names upon the fresh cover of the magazine with that bland emotion of publicity which makes the whole world kin. The present editorial room is two dights up, fronting the Common. It is a more quiet abiding-place than the early home of the magazine in the Old Corner Bookstore, or the later quarters on Tremont Street. Even within the substantial walls of Number 4, built as it was for a family mansion, and long identided with a widely honored name, the magazine used to flit upstairs and down like a restless guest. Mr. Howells’s tiny sanctum was on the second floor; and many a delighted caller remembers that third-floor back room, looking out upon the Granary Burying - Ground, where Mr. Aldrich was wont to mitigate the severities of his position with an Irish setter and a pipe.

But the restless guest has settled down at last in this spacious sunny room on a level with the elm-tops. Once, at least, in its century-old history, the room was the chamber of a bride. Here are her initials, scratched upon the window-pane with her ring, while she was waiting for the carriage to bear her to the church, more than forty years ago. Later it was the nest of a quaint old pair of abolitionists, who, when the days of their warfare were accomplished, here lived out their lives in peace. Many pairs of eyes have gazed into the plain marble fireplace, or out across the treetops toward the open country, without leaving behind them any memory or sign. The walls of the room now speak of literary associations merely. They are hung with portraits of former editors, and with autograph manuscripts of the brilliant group of writers who gave to the Atlantic its early fame. Yet some human quality other than literary, some touch of the ardor, the curiosity, the silent endurance of the men and women who have lived within the stout brick walls of Number 4 may still be present here, secretly fashioning the fortunes of the Atlantic of to-day.

Does this lurking genius loci affect the magazine, whether its conductors will or no ? Take, for instance, the view from these sunny windows. They look down upon the mild activities of Park Street, to the left upon the black lines of people streaming in and out of the Subway, in front toward the Common with its fountain that never flows and its Frog Pond gleaming through the elms, and to the right toward the monument to Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. Is all this fairly typical of American life, — its work and play, its resourcefulness and its carelessness, its tolerant respect for the past, its posthumous honors gladly paid to the leaders of forlorn hopes? Or is it merely a view of Boston, something local, provincial; and our outlook from the Park Street windows, instead of summarizing and symbolizing the American, the human spectacle, is it only “ Frogpondium" as the scoffers have dubbed it — after all?

It is an interesting question, and one which the readers of the magazine must answer for themselves. Very likely they can determine, better than any observer stationed at Number 4 Park Street, whether the Atlantic is provincial or national. Or rather, since every magazine is necessarily provincial in some sort, it is for them to say whether the Atlantic’s provincialism is of that honest kind which is rooted in the soil, and hence is truly representative of and contributory to the national life.

Certain it is, on the one hand, that the Atlantic has always been peculiarly identified with Boston. “Our Boston magazine, ” Emerson called it somewhat proudly, shortly after the first number was published. “Of Boston, Bostonese,” wrote a New Orleans critic the other day, — “full of visionary ideals, impressed by a certain dogmatic scholarship, and when not riding any one of its literary hobbies, profoundly intellectual. ” Other contemporary notices are not always so gracious in their identification of Bostonian characteristics with the traits of the Atlantic. The faithful clipping bureaus furnish a choice collection of denunciatory epithets, aimed partly at Boston, partly at Number 4 Park Street, whenever the politics and philosophy of the magazine are not such as our journalistic friends approve. For instance — but no ! One should not begin the New Year by “talking back.”

Yet neither the original founders of the Atlantic Monthly, nor any of its conductors, have ever purposed to make it an organ of Bostonian or New England opinion. Its aim from the first has been national. It has striven to give expression to the best thought of the whole country, and an examination of the long rows of its bound volumes is the most convincing evidence of the cosmopolitan character of its articles. In the earlier years of its existence, it is true that the majority of the best known American writers were living within twenty-five miles of the Massachusetts State House. These authors, by reason of their unsigned, but easily recognized contributions, gave the magazine the reputation which it has been fortunate enough to maintain. But before the civil war was over, the number of different writers for the Atlantic had greatly increased, and the “red-eyed men ” who examined the manuscripts which were submitted to it found themselves struggling, like their successors to-day, with a flood of blackened paper from every quarter of the country. There is no longer any “literary centre ” in America. The publishing centre is New York, but our writers cannot now be “rounded up ” in the old easy fashion.

In the twelve issues of the Atlantic during 1902 there were printed 317 different contributions. Sixty per cent of these contributions came from outside of New England. More than sixty per cent of its present circulation is likewise outside of New England. Among the special features announced for 1903, only Mr. Howe’s Chapters of Boston History are devoted to local themes; and even these papers derive their chief interest from the light they throw upon typical factors in the growth of the American nation. But such facts reveal nothing that is exceptional. All of the greater American magazines disclaim a special “sphere of influence.” They pride themselves upon their national quality, and fear the provincial note.

The publishers of many periodicals have reasoned that the readiest way of acquiring the air of cosmopolitanism was to give their magazine the imprint of the commercial capital of the country. Witness the opinion of that shrewdest of prospectus makers, Edgar Allan Poe. In the last year of his life he was invited by a Mr. E. H. N. Patterson to become the editor of a new magazine. In Mr. Patterson’s judgment, “The Boston Reviewers are, generally, too much affected by local prejudices to give impartial criticisms ; the Philadelphia Magazines have become mere monthly bulletins for booksellers.” He therefore proposes to found, under Poe’s editorship, an “influential periodical” at Oquawka, Ill. “Oquawka,” he admits, “is comparatively an unimportant point, but I think that such being the case would not injure at all the circulation of the magazine. . . . Here I can enjoy every mail advantage that I could at St. Louis, being but thirty hours’ travel from that city, and being situated immediately upon the Mississippi, with daily connection with the Northern Canal and St. Louis, and directly upon the great daily mail line from the East, through Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. ” This is very charming. But Poe, while assenting to the proposal, and incidentally borrowing from his new publisher $50 on account, balks at that ominous word Oquawka. “I submit to you, ” he replies, “whether it be not possible to put on our titlepage Published simultaneously at New York and St. Louis — or something equivalent.”

There speaks, with unashamed frankness, your seasoned editor and author. To live in Oquawka, and yet to convey the impression of being “ Published simultaneously at New York ” ! What a dream it is! And how it makes cowards of us all! The Atlantic, at least, owns to its Oquawka; it puts “4 Park Street, Boston ” in bold-faced type upon its cover, and prints “New York ” in diminutive italics.

But rusticity will betray itself; your man from the provinces remains a provincial to the end. Very possibly that lurking genius loci controls the Atlantic, and makes it, not an All-American, as one would like to think it, but only a Boston magazine. In vain, perhaps, does it summon men reared in Ohio, North Carolina, or New York to become its editors; in vain does it select its writers from every state in the Union, — including Pennsylvania. Doubtless the influence of the old brick mansion, in the pleasant provincial street, pervades, like a subtle spell, every editorial act of invitation, acceptance, or rejection. One cannot escape it even by that simple device of putting a few hundred miles between himself and his desk. Number 4 Park Street still keeps its viewless, immitigable grip upon the fleeing editor. It gives him what the Atlantic’s prosperous Christian Scientist neighbors call “absent treatment.” In vain does he mingle with “common fowlers, tobacco-takers, and other persons who can give no good account of how they spend their time; ” in vain does he seat himself at noontide upon some stump in the North Country, light an innocent pipe, and count the fish in his basket. Telegrams find their way through; the very birds of the air keep twittering of articles; Park Street and “the traditions of the Atlantic” are with him still. The skies change, but not that habit of trying all things — even the trout in one’s basket — by the test of “availability.” It is a case of cœlum non animum.

Well, so let it be! The New Year’s season preaches a cheerful acceptance of one’s lot, whether he be editor or reader. Here is the Atlantic for 1903, — for better or worse, —stamped ineffaceably, it may be, with the characteristics of its physical environment. An up-to-date journal has just remarked that “the venerable Park Street publication has bats in its belfry.” Very likely. But is not its habitation just back of the steeple of Park Street Church? Do not its rear windows look out upon a graveyard, and its front windows upon that sorriest symbol of New England sterility, a fountain which has long since forgotten how to flow? Is a mere magazine to be luckier than the New Englander himself ? He too, poor soul, tries to be friendly with all the world, but he cannot learn that trick of the “glad hand,” so easily acquired elsewhere. He would like to be hospitable, but somehow his fountains do not spontaneously bubble with oil and wine. By nature he is no hater of his kind, and yet Heaven has placed him in a climate best described by Cotton Mather: “New England, a country where splenetic Maladies are prevailing and pernicious, perhaps above any other, hath afforded numberless instances, of even pious people, who have contracted these Melancholy Indispositions, which have unhinged them from all service or comfort ; yea, not a few persons have been hurried thereby to lay Violent Hands upon themselves at the last. These are among the unsearchable Judgments of God.”

If the Atlantic shares these inexplicable defects of the New England qualities, will not its readers, on New Year’s Day at least, accept its greetings none the less? For the Atlantic, upon the word of the Toastmaster, means well. Jesting aside, it is mightily proud of its own little corner of the world. It has a stubborn affection for the simple ways of the older American life. It loves the memory of the gentlemen and scholars and men of letters who once frequented Park Street. It is housed more happily in the ancient Quincy mansion than in any tall office building of Gath or Askelon. The skyscraper has not yet become the sacred emblem of America, nor has it been proved that the vortex of the mob is the best place wherein to observe and comment upon the growth of our civilization. Park Street is somewhat apart from the insane whirl which is miscalled “progress.” Yet the magazine published at Number 4 somehow made a place for itself before the days of “commercial invasions ” and “worldrecords ” and “Anglo-Saxon domination; ” and it will continue to prosper long after the fads of the present hour have given place to others. If ghosts of dead abolitionists still haunt its sanctum, they are honest ghosts, and will do the editorial policy no harm. And if the outlook from its windows is only upon Boston Common instead of upon one of the great arteries of the world’s trade, here, nevertheless, upon the corner of that Common, is something which far more than makes amends. No magazine that has the Shaw Memorial before its windows can be quite indifferent to human liberty, or be persuaded that commercial supremacy is the noblest ideal of an American citizen.

But the Toastmaster is already betraying the common weakness of his office, in talking quite too long. It is time to push back the coffee cups, settle the chairs at a more comfortable angle, and listen to the other voices. There are many of them waiting for their turn ; some familiar, others as yet unknown to the Atlantic’s friendly table. Will you listen to that veteran who shares with Professor Norton alone, among living men, the honor of contributing to the first number of the magazine? After delighting millions of his countrymen with stories about imaginary personages, he has been persuaded to tell us his Own Story at last. Or will you turn first to that younger writer, — yet a veteran, too, so swiftly do the years glide by, — the author of But Yet a Woman and Passe Rose? Or would you prefer to hear what the West has contributed to American Democracy, or about Charles Dickens as a Man of Letters, or about The Land of Little Rain ? You will have your own preferences, no matter what the Toastmaster may say. As for him, his duties allow him no preferences, except that ineradicable one of liking best what is best of its kind. So he takes his seat, too tardily, wishing all the Atlantic’s readers, scattered up and down the world, an untroubled hospitality of spirit, windows — like those of Park Street — facing sunward, and a Happy New Year.

B. P.