CHAPTER SIX

Poetry by Prescription

When the Spring semester of 1919 had been followed by the fleeting Summer Session, I remembered my interview with Edmond Coblentz of the _Examiner_ and his invitation to see him again.

By way of equipment, I armed myself with a sequence of short poems which I had been writing--at least, I may call them poems by courtesy, though “satirical rhymes” would be a more appropriate designation. They were all based on animals, birds, fishes, or insects: one, for example, told of a “chimpanzee of science,” who expressed the belief that the apes were descended from mankind, and provoked “sneers and jeers and hoots” from his hearers, who did not wish to consider themselves the offspring of brutes. Another, no less in a vein of mockery, described a mole who had gained his eyesight, frolicked in the sun, and shouted to his fellows to join him, since it was good to have one’s sight. However,

The other moles responded, “Your theories are unsound. There is no sun or moon, for none Have seen them underground!”

The mole with eyesight therefore suffered the penalty for seeing too well; was put in jail, tried, and hung.

I do not know if these particular two offerings were among those which I showed to “Cobby” on that memorable second visit to the _Examiner_, but I do know that he seemed impressed by the ones I did show him.

“You say you have others like these?” he asked, bending toward me across his paper-strewn desk with an affable smile.

“About a hundred and fifty.”

His smile broadened. “Well, that’s a few too many for the present. But if you want to pick out twenty or thirty of the best, I’ll take time to look them over. When did you say you’re through college?”

“A week from Friday.”

“Well, step in here a week from Monday, at one o’clock, if you’d like to start work with us. Your salary, to begin with, will be twenty a week.”

I started to murmur my acceptance, my gratitude. But he had arisen; had cut me short with a hasty gesture; and had turned to receive a gaunt, bespectacled man, who, wearing a green eyeshade, and with a pencil cocked across one ear at the angle of a badly listing vessel, entered in rolled-up shirtsleeves and with suspenders showing from beneath his open vest, and waved a paper at “Cobby” as excitedly as one who has just discovered that the city is afire.

During the next week or two, I spent all my spare time selecting about thirty of my too-numerous animal satires; resisting the temptations of the tennis courts during the daylight-saving hours of the long summer evenings, I sat studiously typing out the chosen pieces. These I brought to “Cobby” when I began my new duties; and he took them with a noncommital grunt, but perhaps not with entire dissatisfaction, for during the next several months fifteen of them were to appear in the paper, with illustrations and a display two or three columns wide, beneath the caption--which I had no part of choosing--“Think it over!”

At this point, coincidence appeared very long-armed indeed. Many readers of the paper, on seeing these verses, chose to regard “Stanton A. Coblentz” not as a real person, but as a synthetic individual, formed by the collaboration of Managing Editor Edmond Coblentz with the publisher, whose surname happened to be “Stanton”--as for the “A.,” it was neatly accounted for as representing the “and” which linked the two.

Meanwhile, at regular intervals, the paper was printing other verses under the same confusing byline. I say “verses,” for though they looked like poems, it would be an unjustified exaggeration to call them that. As the clippings have long ago slipped into limbo, I can offer no documentary proof; and I can hardly think my obsolete doggerel would justify the labors of research required by a search of the old newspaper files. Perhaps, under the circumstances, I came as near to writing poems as most persons could have done; but the circumstances were not exactly propitious.

“Coblentz,” City Editor Hines would bawl, glaring at me where I sat in the City Room five or six rows of typewriters away, “here’s an item for you!” Knowing that haste was of the essence of discretion, I would hurry to Hines’ desk. And he would point to something in the day’s news--perhaps a sentimental note about a memorial to some war mothers, or perhaps a report in lighter vein, that a burglar alarm had been rung, and the police, upon arriving breathlessly, had found the culprit to be a stray dog who had wandered in through an open rear door. “Write me a poem on this, Coblentz!” he would prescribe, somewhat as he might say to a carpenter, “Build me a work-bench!”, or to a cook, “Make me some hash!” Not for a moment did he seem to doubt that the prescription would be filled.

And in all cases, the prescription _was_ filled, though I am not saying how well. Rhyme and meter were, assuredly, supplied; and I tried as well as I could to turn on the required sentiments, whether of awe or pity, applause or comedy. Under any circumstances, this would have been difficult if not impossible, at a moment’s notice, and with the finished product demanded the same afternoon; but in the frantic atmosphere of a newspaper office, to the accompaniment of clicking typewriter keys, shouts and calls and laughter, shuffling of hasty feet, telephone bells and fire alarms, it demanded a feat of concentration which, I fear, I would be unable to duplicate now.

Even in those budding days, despite the pleasure I took in my frequent appearances in print, I perceived the dangers of my position--a position in which my occasional reporting duties were subordinate to my specialty of writing verses on demand. I was not ungrateful for my job; I realized that I had, in fact, a privileged position, for how many youths just out of college are given an opportunity to make a living by weaving rhymes together? Nevertheless, this verse-writing to order, if long continued, could be deadening, stultifying; one might become little more than a poetic hack, a rhyme-machine.

At about this time, I was receiving other encouragements--slight ones, but enough to give me a real spur and stimulus. At last, after the many rejections, various poems had been accepted by different media: two by _Sunset_, then a general magazine; one or two more by the New York _Times_; and several by _Judge_ and _Life_, both of them leading national magazines of humor (the latter unrelated to the present periodical of the same name). Also, an article on poetry had been taken by the university quarterly, _The Texas Review_ (now long defunct), and the new-born magazine _True Stories_ had sent me a check for one of my narratives. With these and one or two other marks of favor from the editorial gods, I began thinking of wider fields.

But perhaps I was becoming too confident. I had not yet learned that most permanence is in appearance only; I did not foresee that my position with the _Examiner_, if I desired, might not be forever. A raise in salary to a princely twenty-five a week had assured me that my employers were not dissatisfied with my performance; and it may be that except for something quite extraneous--a by-product of the late war, in the nature of a paper shortage, which cut down the space available for newspaper features--I could have continued turning out custom-made poems for the _Examiner_ as long as I chose, which surely would not have been forever.

In any case, the serenity of one blue day was shattered by an unexpected blow. An innocent-looking little note informed me that my continued services were not required.

“Ah well,” I philosophized, “I suppose one goes through life as on a long stairway, first up two steps, then down one, or maybe even two or three. Now I’ll have to set about to climb again.”

My situation was far from desperate: I had saved a little money, and was still making a little from the book reviews which I continued to contribute to the _Argonaut_, at a gratifying five dollars a column. The question now was to find another job, at least temporarily. For some weeks I had a position on the _Call_, as editor in a limerick contest, until my eyes gave out beneath the reading of thousands of daily submissions--I mean, literally, thousands!--and I had no choice except to resign. I have sometimes thought that, except for the state of my eyes, this would have led to a permanent connection; but perhaps it is well that it did not, for this might have held out attractions that would have trapped me in San Francisco, when the route of destiny lay elsewhere.

But in San Francisco or its vicinity I must remain until I could see my path more clearly. And since the literary opportunities there were strictly limited, it is not surprising that my footsteps led me to the doors of that once-popular but now decrepit magazine, _The Overland Monthly_, which had boasted the work of Bret Harte, Jack London, Mark Twain, and many another notable, and which continued publication as if by force of habit, though now little more than the ghost of its old-time self.

The office of the _Overland_, significantly, was located in a back street half blocked with great drays and trucks, and much less redolent of the odor of printers’ ink than of brewing and manufacturing. And there I had a successful interview with the editor, a portly Irishman whom I may call Finnegan, a man of sixty-seven or sixty-eight, with a round bespectacled face that was perpetually red. There was something I immediately liked about him, though his slouching ungainly figure, with the frayed collar and soiled shirt, did not conform to my notions of how an eminent editor should look.

I began, tentatively, by showing him a poem--or rather, a rhymed satire on a political theme. And he liked it well enough to accept it on the spot--which surprised me less when I came to know more about the magazine, and learned how little in the way of worthwhile material it ordinarily received. What was most astonishing was that Finnegan eventually let me have five dollars for the poem.

After this encouraging start, I went on to divulge my principal reason for visiting him.

“Oh, so it’s work you’re looking for, is it?” he demanded, running a set of gnarled stubby fingers through the scanty remnants of his gray hair. “Well, young man, there’s lots better places to look than here. Why don’t you go somewhere where they pay wages?”

“Don’t you pay wages?”

His owlish, inflamed eyes looked out at me half seriously, half humorously from their sunken sockets.

“Pay wages, young man? Now you’re expecting too much. Do you think I’d be staying here myself if I could get a job anywhere else?”

“But you’re the editor!”

“Sure I’m the editor! Also, managing editor, assistant editor, chief make-up man, manuscript reader, proofreader, stenographer, and office boy. I don’t have one job, young man. I have a dozen.”

“In that case,” I contended, seeing my opportunity, “you need someone to take part of the burden off your shoulders.”

He fumbled unconsciously at his left shoulder, where there was a conspicuous rip in his coat.

“Right you are, young man! I could use half a dozen to take the burden off my shoulders. There’s only one trouble. People in this town don’t like working without wages.”

“Surely, you could pay something.”

“Our something would be almost nothing.”

“How much, for example?”

His eyes wrinkled together and narrowed, and he stared at me in silence, as if debating with himself. Several seconds passed ... then, with an air of a man proposing the magnificent, he announced, “Well, all we could afford would be afternoons only, at two dollars a half-day.”

“Two dollars? But you couldn’t expect a man to live on that!”

“Just what I’m telling you,” he agreed, turning back to the huge shears and pastepot on his untidy, paper-strewn desk. “I’d advise you not to take it.”

“Maybe it’s good advice, but I don’t intend to follow it,” I decided, with a smile.

And thus I made my connection with the _Overland_, and simultaneously with the _News Letter_, a local weekly published under the same management, and for which I served as dramatic critic, copy reader, and general office hand.

In part my tasks were connected with poetry, since in my capacity as chief manuscript reader I had the duty of picking any acceptable verses as well as acceptable stories, and of writing to inform the lucky contributor that he would have a free two-year subscription to the _Overland_ (payment of cash, as in the case of my rhymed satire, was an extravagance not repeated so long as I remained with the magazine).

Before I had been in my new post a month, Mr. Finnegan inaugurated a poetry contest. Readers of the _Overland_ were to send in their favorite poetic quotations, not exceeding four lines each; cash prizes were to be given for the five best submissions, and free subscriptions were to be awarded for the twenty-five runners-up. There were to be three judges: two designated writers of local reputation, and the assistant editor--namely, myself. However, as things worked out, all the labors of selection fell upon the assistant editor, the two local celebrities being congenial souls, willing to utter a loud approving “YES!” in return for the honor of some free publicity.

My problem was, to say the least, peculiar. It is hard enough to decide among the submissions of unknown contributors: but here I was, obliged to say which was the best from among selections by Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Wordsworth, Landor, Keats, Browning, and other outstanding poets. Should first prize go to Shelley or to Byron? Should Tennyson come out third, or only fifth? Should Burns be placed above Coleridge, or Blake above Emily Dickinson? Questions like these, of course, would defy the judgment of any critic, and certainly would not be answered alike by any two readers. But I unblushingly had to give _the_ correct answer.

At last, however, after much brain-racking and sifting and weighing and comparing, I showed Finnegan my choices for the five winners of cash prizes.

He glanced over them, and groaned. His heavy puffy form sagged forward at his desk in discouragement.

“My God, Cob,” he complained, “this is awful!”

“Awful? What’s awful?” I protested, prepared to defend my choices. “Aren’t the quotations good enough?”

“Good enough, be damned!” he snorted, shoving the papers at me in disgust. “Look at these winners, will you! Just look at them! Four from California, and the fifth from Arizona!”

“That’s natural enough,” I reminded him, “considering that ninety-nine per cent of our subscribers are westerners.”

“Hell, but do we have to let that be known?” he growled back. “We claim a national circulation, don’t we? How the deuce we going to make good that claim if we award all the prizes to Californians? Here, let’s see those poetry contributions!”

For the next twenty minutes, Finnegan was busy exploring the piles of manuscripts. Finally he looked up, his big round face beaming his triumph, and thrust five papers toward me. “There--that’ll do it!”

I glanced hastily over five contributions of indifferent quality, and saw that only one was from California. The others came from Wyoming, Texas, New York, and Wisconsin.

For a few months I remained with the _Overland_, and doubtless could have stayed as long as the tottering old magazine retained the breath of life, which was not to be very long. But my two dollars a day, even with the addition of various stray earnings, were barely enough to keep me alive in the style to which I was accustomed (which required a monthly expenditure of all of sixty or sixty-five dollars). Here, I saw more clearly than ever, there was no future. And so once again my thoughts ranged to wider horizons.

“Go East, young man!” was the injunction whispered into my ears by my hopes and ambitions; and the East, of course, meant New York, that Rome to which all literary aspirants sooner or later make their pilgrimage of reverence. By degrees my plans took shape; and on one never-to-be-forgotten day of September, 1920, I bade a heart-wrenching farewell to my father and to the younger brother who stood beside him at the railroad station in Stockton. I shall never forget how my father’s words clutched at me as I saw him approach the porter, slip a crumbled bit of paper into his hand, and mumble, brokenly, “Take good care of the boy, Sam. Take good care of the boy.”

Then, safeguarded by a round-trip ticket, I had boarded the train that was to bear me toward new poetic and personal adventures.