CHICAGO’S ’SAVING REMNANT’: FRANCIS FISHER BROWNE, WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE,AND THE DIAL (1880-1892)

495 Pages·030.207 MB·English

by  MOSHER, FREDRIC J

COPYRIGHTED
by
FREDRIC JOHN MOSHER
1951
CHICAGO'S "SAVING REMNANT":
FRANCIS FISHER BROWNE, WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE,
AND THE DIAL (1880-1892)
BY
FREDRIC JOHN MOSHER
A.B., University of North Dakota, 1934
A.M., University of North Dakota, 1935
B.L.S., University of Chicago, 1948
THESIS
SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN ENGLISH
IN THE GRADUATE COLLEGE OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS. 11)60
URBANA, ILLINOIS
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
THE GRADUATE COLLEGE
/3 , /W
^^cJtx^JUs
I HEREBY RECOMMEND THAT THE THESIS PREPARED UNDER MY
SUPERVISION rcv Fredrlc John Mosher
ENTTTT.FD Chicago's "Saving Bemnant"; Francis Fisher Browne, William
Morton Payne, and the Dial (1880-1892)
BE ACCEPTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR
THE DEGREE OF Doctor of Philosophy in English
iX*>«-9.
A
Charge of Tlfesls
HeaQ of Department
Recommendation concurred inf
Committee
on
Final Examinationf
t Required for doctor's degree but not for master's.
M440
\
TO
JOHN T. FLANAGAN
who Suggested and Directed This Study of the Dial
AND
STANLEY PARGELLIS
Librarian of The Newberry Library
Who Made It Possible
111
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
I. HISTORY OF CHICAGO PERIODICALS BEFORE 1893 1
II. CHICAGO AUTHORS AND THE DIAL, 1880-1892 47
III. THE PUBLISHER OF THE DIAL, 1880-1892 87
IV. THE EDITOR OF THE DIAL, FRANCIS FISHER BROWNE 107
V. WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE, ASSOCIATE EDITOR OF THE DIAL 174
VI. THE CONTRIBUTORS TO THE DIAL, 1880-1892 239
VII. THE LITERARY CRITICISM OF THE DIAL, 1880-1892 343
VIII. THE EDITORIAL POLICY OF THE DIAL 426
APPENDIX A.
The Dial's Contributors 467
APPENDIX B.
List of Contributors Who Signed Their Names to
Dial Articles, May, 1880-August, 1892, with
Biographical and Other Data 470
APPENDIX C.
Bibliography. A List of the Most Important Sources
for a Study of the Dial and Its Editors 484
VITA 488
iv
I. HISTORY OF CHICAGO PERIODICALS BEFORE 1893.
Chicago may well be called a "graveyard of literary magazines."
during the 104 years since the founding of the first genuine maga
zine in Chicago, hundreds of periodicals devoted to the interests of
Literature have been launched in the literary capital of the Midwest,
sut today only one with any real pretensions to literary quality, the
leavily subsidized little magazine Poetry, Is still being published.
Et is true that Esquire Magazine and Coronet are Chicago periodicals,
Dut they can hardly be considered literary magazines. During the
nineteenth century 258 periodicals of a dominant literary Interest
were established in Chicago; not one of them is alive today. Most of
them lived very short lives: nearly 45 percent died within a year of
1
their birth.
The high mortality rate of literary periodicals is, of course,
lot a phenomenon peculiar to Chicago. Similar statistics could
loubtless be compiled for Boston, New York, Philadelphia, San Fran-
1
These figures are taken from Herbert E. Fleming's Magazines of
a Market-Metropolls. Being a History of the Literary Periodicals and
[literary Interests of Chicago (Chicago, 1906), pp. 112-14. This
Jniversity of Chicago dissertation is a reprint of papers entitled
"The Literary Interests of Chicago" from the American Journal of
Sociology, XI, 377-408, 499-531, 784-816, and XII, 68-118^ ^The
nost general cause for the shortness of life for the great majority
Df the periodicals attempted in Chicago," concluded Fleming, "has
been disregard of their commercialization. In detail, the reason
why so many have been ephemerals is that they were merely outbursts
showing personal aspirations of ambitious writers—this being con
spicuously so with the bibelots. Further, the degree of potency In
the sentimental demand of western people for a western magazine—an
often expressed demand whose validity Is diminishing with the closer
contacts of the nation—has been constantly overestimated. Inciden
tally, business malpractice, in converting magazines that started out
with dignity and promise into 'write-up' sheets, has caused some
failures. These are some of the reasons why Chicago is sometimes
called 'the graveyard of magazines.' «
2
Cisco, and every other metropolitan publishing center in the country.
Perhaps the most surprising feature of Chicago's magazine history is
not the high percentage of quick failures, but rather the fact that
so many magazines were projected, that not a few of them exhibited a
ligh literary character, and that at least one, consecrated to the
ilghest ideals of literary criticism, not only was founded in Chicago
nut survived and prospered in the most crassly materialistic city on
the American continent. Herbert E. Fleming, who wrote in 1906 a hie-
tory of Chicago literary periodicals, declared as a result of his
survey that "in Chicago the literary interest has been greater in
quantity, and more varied and interesting in quality, than is gener-
2
ally supposed, even among the local litterateurs." Anyone who has
3arefully investigated the literary history of Chicago in the nine
teenth century will feel himself compelled to agree with Fleming's
Judgment. A resident of present-day Chicago cannot help thinking
that the literary Interest exhibited by the educated circles of nine
teenth-century Chicago puts to shame the comparatively little contem-
porary interest and activity in promoting and encouraging the liter
ary life of the city. Surely If noble attempts to promote the love
Df literature be better than slothful indifference and dull apathy,
Lf enthusiasm and ambition for the cause of letters in one's native
3ity be more praiseworthy than an attitude of resignation and despair
the history of Chicago letters in the nineteenth century furnishes
sonsiderable cause for reproach and embarrassment to the literary men
3f Chicago in 1950.
Although the high rate of magazine failures in Chicago is not
_
Ibid., p. 378.
3
exceptional, it does seem singular that the second largest city of
the United States should not today support a single general literary
magazine, that every periodical of literary worth founded in the ninej
teenth century should have expired, and that the only magazine of any
consequence now being published in the city is Poetry. To ascertain
the causes of this mid-twentieth-century decline in the literary for
tunes of Chicago is not the purpose of this investigation, but one of
its aims will be to illustrate the comparatively high quality and the
surprising extent of the literary interests of the city from 1880 to
1892, when it was as yet only a rapidly growing Midwestern trade cen
ter.
"Efforts to establish literary magazines and periodicals in
Chicago," attests the first historian of Chicago magazines, "were be
gun as far back as the early prairie days. These attempts were the
earliest budding of the creative literary desire in this locality;
and similar undertakings have been its most constant expression since
3
then." The first monthly literary magazine to be published in the
prairie city was the Western Magazine (October, 1845-September,1846),
4
founded and edited by William R. Rounseville. It was established to
3
Ibid., p. 378.
4
The first ten numbers were published by Rounseville & Company.
Although In the first number Rounseville had declared that "we shall
be slow to believe that there is not talent enough in the West, to
maintain a character for a work of this kind" (Western Magazine, I,
32), he sold the periodical to John J. Moon, who suspended publica
tion after issuing only two more numbers. Rounseville himself had
been, his own best contributor. William H. Bushnell and J, T. Trow
bridge were also frequent writers for the Western. See Fleming, op_.
cit., pp. 385-86; Franklin William Scott, Newspapers and Periodicals
of Illinois 1814-1879, (Collections of the Illinois State Historical
Library, VI; Bibliographical Series, I), rev. and enl. ed. (Spring
field, 111., 1910), pp. 57-58; Frank Luther Mott, A History of Amer
ican Magazines 1741-1850 (New York and London, 1930),p. 389.
provide a periodical medium for the literature of the West, and its
editor's chief interest was in the development and discovery of West-
5
ern literary talent. This Western slant has always been predominant!
for most of Chicago's magazines have been intended to promote the litj
srary interests of the Midwest—the great prairie area of the Mis-
6
jissippi river basin. Rounseville1s brave attempt to supply Western
Literature for Western readers came to grief within a year because of
7
poor business management.
The history of the periodical press in Chicago, however, really
aegins with the pioneer weekly newspaper to be published in the tiny
Drairie hamlet—the Democrat, the first issue of which was dated
8
November 26, 1833. The first daily newspaper, the Dally American,
tfas established on April 9, 1839, shortly after the advent of the
9
telegraph. Even before the Western Magazine was attempted in 1845,
5
"We have never been able to discover," he wrote in the first
humber, "why a taste, or talent for this species of writing, should
>e peculiar to the Eastern world. Those who peruse this number, we
;hink will discard such an Idea, if they have ever entertained it."
3ee Western Magazine, 1,32. Most of the contents were crudely ama-
;eurlsh.
5
The regional quality of Western magazines has always been
fcarked. Mott remarks: "The western magazines of literary inclina-
;ionb and general appeal were practically all local: their mission
\ras to bring the gentle charm of the arts into their brash and exub-
srant communities and so leaven the loaf of commercialism. But their
'orty-eight page idealism usually starved to death in a dozen or two
lumbers." See his volume, already cited, on American magazines,
.741-1850, p. 113. "The keynote to which the literary publications
>f the midland metropolis have been attuned is westernism," declared
Fleming. "In the sweep of six decades of local, national, and inter
national development, the character of this western spirit has un
folded in various modifications. It has passed, with shading empha
sis, through western sectionalism to national westernism and western
nationalism, and has come, finally, to cosmopolitan westernism and
irestern cosmopolitanism. " See Magazines of a Market Metropolis, pp.
$79-80.
^Fleming, op_. cit. , p. 386.
pp 5g 53
Ifeifr. s*nSP- - - -
5
a weekly literary newspaper, the Gem of the Prairie (1844-52), had
been founded. The Gem of the Prairie provided its readers with lit
erary miscellany, stories, and poems, together with general informa
tion and local news, by printing original contributions from such
able Chicago writers as William H. Bushnell and Benjamin F. Taylor
and a great many stories and miscellaneous excerpts of prose and
verse selected from books and other magazines. It was so sagaciousli
managed by its publishers that they were enabled to found the Chicagq
Dally Tribune in 1847. In 1852 the Gem of the Prairie became a Sun
day weekly and, absorbed by its offshoot, changed its name to the
10 11
Chicago Sunday Tribune. The still existent Prairie Farmer,
first published under the name of the Union Agriculturist and West
ern Prairie Farmer in 1841 by the Union Agricultural Society, began
as a monthly agricultural Journal with a strong literary flavor, but
it long ago abandoned literature for successful farming.
After the brief career of the first real Chicago literary maga
zine, the Western, the most important literary periodicals to be
founded there before the Civil War were the Lady's Western Magazine
(1848-49), the Literary Budget (1852-55), Sloan's Garden City (1853-
54), the Chicago Magazine: The West as It Is (1857), and the Chicagc
Reoord (1857-62). Benjamin Franklin Taylor (1819-87), Chicago's
first poet and man of letters, edited the Lady's Western Magazine,
which, published by Charles L. Wilson, imitated the popular "ladies'
10
First edited by Kiler K. Jones and James S. Beach. See Scott,
op. ci_t., pp. 55-56; Fleming, op. cit., pp. 387-89.
11
See Scott, op_. cit., pp. 53-54; Fleming, op_. cit., pp. 380,
389.