Genius of Place (18 page)

Dares
is an apt word choice. While Olmsted was drawn to writing, he knew it was a risky undertaking. He already had a book under his belt,
Walks and Talks
. It had received some favorable notices but had managed only modest sales. He was thirty-two now and well aware that writing was no sure route to financial independence. But then Olmsted learned about a promising opportunity.
Putnam's Monthly
Magazine
, the highly regarded and innovative publication, had just been sold. This was the magazine where his story “Gold Under Gilt” had earlier appeared. Apparently, the buyer, Dix and Edwards, was looking for another partner.

The principals of Dix and Edwards were very young and very green. They needed capital, and they needed experienced hands, even if the experience consisted merely of being older than they were.

Joshua Dix, just twenty-four, had worked in publishing for George Putnam during most of his brief career. He was also a friend of Charley Brace. Arthur Edwards, age twenty-six, was an upstart dry goods salesman, reputed to be a financial whiz. The pair had bought the magazine from Putnam, Olmsted's onetime Staten Island neighbor, the publisher of his book, and a distant relative to boot. (If it seems that people of this era lived in a tight nexus of interrelationships, that's because it was so. There were simply fewer people, and if one belonged to a particular cohort—cultured northeasterners, say—bumping into others of similar persuasion was ensured.)

Dix and Edwards approached Olmsted about joining their partnership. Becoming part of an outfit that published a magazine, particularly one as esteemed as
Putnam's
, held promise for Olmsted. He could step directly into the writing world but as part owner of a literary property. He'd have a chance to make some real money. During their discussions, Dix and Edwards also made it clear that they intended to expand into other areas, such as book publishing. And yes, the partners agreed: Olmsted's book-in-progress, a serious work about the slave states, would be a perfect fit. This was an added draw. If he joined the partnership, Olmsted might also line up a publisher for his book.

Enticed by this opportunity, Olmsted started making inquiries about selling Tosomock Farm. He was distressed to learn that it would fetch only a paltry $200 per acre. Once again, his father came to the rescue, this time with a plan designed to satisfy everyone involved. He would loan his son $5,000 to buy into the publishing partnership. Because that was a lot of money, even by his generous standards, this loan would need to be
repaid
.

Olmsted, in turn, would sign over the title of the farm to his brother, John. John didn't care a whit about farming. But his tuberculosis was growing worse, and he needed a place to live and a way to make a living. John had a wife to support along with two children now. A daughter, Charlotte, had just been born on March 15, 1855. Hired laborers could do most of the farmwork, and John and his family would be left with a modest income.

On April 2, Olmsted signed the papers, joining an outfit now rechristened as Dix, Edwards & Company. (He was to be a silent partner.) Within days, he moved to Manhattan and rented an apartment at 335 Broadway, two rooms for $200 a year, within easy walking distance of his new job at 10 Park Place. Because finances were tight, he outfitted the apartment with furniture purchased at flea markets and auctions.

John was sorry to see his big brother go. That feeling was mixed with some bitterness. Fred was moving to Manhattan, while he was stuck on Tosomock Farm with tuberculosis. John couldn't help feeling that he'd gotten the worse end of this bargain. “I regret to be left in the lurch,” John wrote to his half-sister Bertha.

The two brothers had been close as kids, and they'd built a special bond as adults during their sojourns across Europe and Texas. Staten Island was just a quick ferry ride away, though. Olmsted planned to visit on weekends.

 

As an owner of
Putnam's
, Olmsted joined another publishing revolution in progress, one equally as profound as the revolution that brought about the
New-York Daily Times
, the paper that sent him on his Southern swing.

An explosion of literacy among the masses had created a demand for inexpensive daily papers such as the
Times
.
Putnam's
, in turn, was part of an upsurge in magazines ushered in by the invention of the cylinder press in 1846. Before this, there had been very few magazines. When Ben Franklin launched his
General Magazine and Historical Chronicle
in 1741, for example, it was only the second magazine in the American colonies, and it was only four pages long. Printing was an arduous process. Creating a long publication for temporary consumption just wasn't very feasible.
Lengthy books were printed, of course, as were short newspapers and a handful of short magazines. Still, the whole concept of a magazine—a digest with fiction, reportorial pieces, humor columns, and so forth—couldn't really catch on in such an abbreviated format.

Against this backdrop, Richard Hoe's cylinder press was the biggest printing innovation in the four hundred years since Gutenberg had invented movable type. Now, it was possible to churn out thousands of printed pages an hour. By 1850, there were 650 magazines in the United States, and countless others had started and quickly folded, all part of a “veritable magazine tsunami,” in the words of John Tebbel and Mary Ellen Zuckerman, coauthors of a history of publishing.

Harper's New Monthly Magazine
began in 1850.
Putnam's
was launched in 1853. The two magazines quickly fell into a fierce rivalry, rooted in their divergent editorial approaches. Because no international copyright law existed yet,
Harper's
simply raided English magazines, obtaining much of the content by theft—
transfer
was the editors' preferred term. Not only was this financially savvy, but it also catered to the literary tastes and cultural insecurities of so many American readers. A steady diet of all things British—that was the road to refinement.

Putnam's
took an opposite tack. It chose to distinguish itself as proudly nativist, focused on a new wave of formidably talented American writers. The publication's subtitle further announced that this was a “Magazine of American Literature, Science and Art.” By the time Olmsted became an owner,
Putnam's
had already established itself, publishing work by such homegrown talents as Nathaniel Hawthorne, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Henry James Sr. Herman Melville's classic “Bartleby the Scrivener” was originally published in two installments that appeared in the November and December 1853 issues of
Putnam's
. The magazine paid its contributors, too. Melville received an unheard-of $5 per page—$85 for the whole story.

As a first step, Olmsted and Dix made a quick circuit through the Northeast, meeting with some of
Putnam's
regular contributors. They wanted to reassure these writers that the magazine, though under new ownership, would continue to pursue the same high literary standards. They also hoped to get some fresh pieces into the pipeline. Olmsted and
Dix traveled to Boston, where they met with James Russell Lowell and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. In Concord, they dropped in on Ralph Waldo Emerson. “This is more than half the battle,” Olmsted wrote his father. “If we can get the writers, there is little fear but that we shall get the readers.”

Olmsted also took the lead on recruiting an editorial staff. Although he had done some writing, he had zero experience editing and recognized that he and his partners were deficient in such skills as shaping someone else's work and figuring out the all-important mix of stories to go in an issue. The worldly and cultivated George Curtis agreed to act as the editor of
Putnam's
. Charles Dana, another experienced hand, signed on as a deputy. In an odd twist, both men insisted on keeping their existing jobs and working incognito for
Putnam's
. That way they could double-dip. Curtis actually wrote the popular “Editor's Easy Chair” column for
Harper's
, the competition. He was one of that magazine's few American contributors, and he was paid handsomely as well. Dana was second in command at the
New York Tribune
and wished to hold on to that job.

Putnam's
physical offices reflected this bizarre collaboration between three green owners and two secret editors. Olmsted, Dix, and Edwards had well-marked offices, accessible to all. They were the face of
Putnam's
, as it were. A door in Olmsted's office, meanwhile, led into Curtis's office. That door generally remained closed.

Curtis's office served as a kind of inner sanctum, the site where the real editorial decisions were made. He was often joined there by Dana. The two engaged in learned debates, centering on which pieces to bulk up and which to pare down, what to acquire and what to kill. Curtis and Dana rejected a short story called “The Cited Curate” simply because it was too English in flavor.

With two heavyweights as editors, Olmsted's duties were naturally limited. He acted as a kind of managing editor, crafting manuscript submissions guidelines, corresponding with authors on general subjects such as deadlines, and working with the printer. Another task was dealing with wannabe writers who stormed the
Putnam's
offices demanding
answers. “I had just now a call from a queer fellow whose poetry had been rejected,” wrote Olmsted to his father, “and who wanted to know why & who struck his breast fearfully and assured me that there must be some mistake for he knew there was no better poetry, and he felt that he had genius.”

Curiously enough, Olmsted's most hands-on editorial duty was proofreading. His shoddy schooling had left him an eccentric speller. For this task, fortunately, he could turn to
Webster's: The American Dictionary of the English Language
. In the United States,
Webster's
was quickly gaining favor over British dictionaries. Olmsted's use of it was only fitting since
Putnam's
was a proudly American magazine. What's more, a distant cousin, Denison Olmsted, while teaching at Yale, had been a consultant to the original 1828 edition of
Webster's
, helping craft definitions for technical terms from fields such as astronomy and meteorology.

One of the pieces that Olmsted proofread was the short story “Benito Cereno” by Melville. He made a number of changes such as
mould
to
mold
to reflect American usage as prescribed in
Webster's
. Apparently, though, Curtis was something of a traditionalist on spelling. “It is not yet good use to spell in this hideous Websterian manner,” he wrote in a memo. “And, unless you feel that it would too much harm the harmony of the Mag., I will, hereafter, have a U. in my ‘mould,' and
my
lustre shall be such and not ‘ter.'”

The hideous Websterian spellings stayed, however, and “Benito Cereno” ran in three installments during the autumn of 1855. A Melville story was but one bright flash during a dazzling period for
Putnam's
. The magazine ran a meticulously researched natural history of bees and a lengthy exposition on the Jesuit faith. Poems by Longfellow—“Oliver Basselin,” “Victor Galbraith,” and “My Lost Youth”—appeared in rapid succession. The magazine even published a Henry David Thoreau workin-progress that would eventually grow into the book
Cape Cod
. The
Hartford Courant
described
Putnam's
as “higher flight than the
Knickerbocker
, or even
Harper
.” At a posh Manhattan literary gathering, William Makepeace Thackeray declared it “much the best Mag. in the world, and
better than
Blackwood
is or ever was.” Thackeray was a lion of English literature,
Blackwood's Magazine
a much-venerated English publication. For an American magazine, this was high praise indeed.

 

Yet Olmsted was frustrated. His unusual owner-underling status wasn't the problem. He viewed his role at
Putnam's
as a kind of apprenticeship, little different from the agricultural apprenticeships he'd earlier served. When he wanted to learn about farming, he'd learned from the best, George Geddes. Now, he was learning about publishing from some of the top talent in the field.

The problem was money. Even though
Putnam's
was a hot magazine, generating much talk and interest, circulation was frozen at just under 20,000. Six months into his tenure, the partnership's funds had fallen so low that Olmsted was unable to draw his salary. He had to borrow money from a friend.

In November 1855, Olmsted finished writing his book. When he approached Dix and Edwards about publishing it, per their original discussion, his partners pointed to the depleted coffers. They asked Olmsted to bear the $500 cost of printing his own book. This was too much money to borrow from a friend. Ashamed, Olmsted approached his father again. In a letter, he tried to cast his request in a positive light: “There is a sort of literary republic, which it is not merely pleasant & gratifying to my ambition to be recognized in, but also profitable. It would for example, if I am so recognized & considered, be easy for me, in case of the non-success of this partnership, to get employment in the newspaper offices or other literary enterprises at good wages—to make arrangement for correspondence if I wished to travel, & so on.”

The conceit here—the words of a sheepish Olmsted trying yet again to borrow money from his father—is pretty circuitous. But in effect, Olmsted was suggesting that he hoped to crack a “sort of literary republic” that was also potentially “profitable.” Pouring more money into cashstrapped Dix, Edwards & Company to publish his book would provide a hedge in case the partnership failed. Then Olmsted would have the book as an entrée and could get a new job in “newspaper offices or other
literary enterprises at good wages.” John Olmsted Sr. allowed paternal love to trump logic. He put up the money.