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Illustration by Ward Schumaker |
In Boston in the 1930s and 1940s, the name of Walter Howie resonated only in very limited circles, even though Ben Hecht, who had worked for Howie in Chicago, had immortalized him in The Front Page under another name as the hard-driving, unscrupulous editor who aroused mingled loathing and affection wherever he was. Howie had come to Boston, it was said, on a mission from William Randolph Hearst to take over the Hearst-owned Record-American and knock off the Boston Post, which then enjoyed a circulation of a million and a quarter.
I knew none of this in November 1942 when I received a phone call from the managing editor of the Hearst papers, who told me that Mr. Conant wanted me to come down to see Walter Howie. That information totally bewildered me. I did not believe that President Conant knew who I was or was even cognizant of my existence, as an instructor in the history department. But yes, I learned, they'd been on the telephone with Mr. Conant in Washington, and the summons was out.
I thereupon hustled down to Winthrop Square to the old building which then served as the seat of the local Hearst enterprises. Mr. Howie was busy. But he had assigned the editor of the Sunday Advertiser, the Record's Sunday edition, to deal with me--a tough Irishman whose name I have forgotten. He sat me down and said, "Now, it's not like Harvard here. We have a deadline and when the deadline comes, the copy has to be there." I nodded agreement. "And the deadline is December first." No dispute. And then he said, "We keep a strict count of words. We've got to have 20,000 words, and that means not 19, not 21--20,000, exactly. That's not like Harvard either."
I took a deep breath and asked, "Well, what is it?"
It thereupon emerged that the subject was not terribly important. They never counted on anyone actually reading the text, which they intended to serve as a respectable framework for the pictures. (They were wrong; I had an uncle in California who did read it in due course.) In any case, December 7 would be the first anniversary of Pearl Harbor, and they wanted me to write 20,000 words giving an account of the first year of the war. And being a very meek and cooperative fellow, I went home and did it!
On December 1, I brought the piece in and handed it to Win Brooks, the assistant managing editor, who flipped casually through it and said, "Well, neatness doesn't count," and sent it down to the copy desk. And that was that.
A few days later, I ran into my former history department colleague Paul Buck, then dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and about to be provost of the University--very important--whom I rarely saw any more. He asked, "Did those people from the Record ever get in touch with you?" I answered, "Yes, and I did it." He said, "Well, they called Conant, and Conant told me to find someone who might use a few hundred dollars and suggest his name to the newspaper." And indeed Paul had nominated me.
All this differed somewhat from the imperative tone of the initial phone call. But the operative phrase in the little conversation was the reference to a few hundred dollars, a matter that had never occurred to me. Nor had it come up in the conversations in Winthrop Square. Nor had anything happened since then.
Early in January, Walter Howie himself called and expressed a desire to talk with me. I thought, now it comes, although I did not know what it would be. I went downtown again. Howie, it seems, had gotten word from San Simeon. Mr. Hearst himself was now interested in some big scheme to promote American history. The editor's conversation then drifted off into a long colloquy about the wretched state of writing on that subject. I did not disagree. But at a little pause in his running commentary, I asked, "About that article I wrote in December, was there anything attached to that?" Pause. "Like compensation?" I continued. He looked at me coldly and answered, "That was Harvard's contribution to the war effort."
I just sat there. I was, after all, out of my league in all such transactions. But I felt that I had to say something. Perhaps I could not imagine what I would respond when some day Paul Buck asked what had happened. Or perhaps my response was mimetic; I had some sense of how newspapermen behaved, and thought that I should conform. Tough! Or perhaps this was one of those cases in which the fast talkers outsmart themselves. I kept quiet and Howie went on. "Look," he said, "you did it on Harvard time, you used a Harvard office, you had a Harvard secretary, a Harvard typewriter, typewriter ribbon, paper, and so on..." I had no desire to argue with him. But in the interest of getting the record straight, I said, adopting his own style, "Look, you know I've got 30 undergraduate tutees; that's my full-time Harvard obligation. If I did this, I did it on my own time; if I want paper, I buy it; if I use a secretary, I pay her; I work at home, and I use the same ribbon over and over again." Fine!
Well, Howie stared hard at me. Perhaps he was thinking about Mr. Hearst's interest in American history. Perhaps he was just bemused. He said, "We'll give you a thousand dollars."
By then I was so dazed, out of my depth, I just looked at him, not knowing what to say. At last he broke the silence, "We'll give you two thousand." I agreed.
The whole episode gave me to think. Two thousand dollars was just about the amount of my annual Harvard salary--for 10 months of teaching. Then, too, I had learned something about the power of promotion. For two weeks, the Hearst delivery trucks had run about town--on their panels big displays: Harvard professor tells all; Handlin reveals...(Professor!--a promotion the University would not recognize for a decade more). At Leverett House and the Faculty Club, people spoke about it as if it meant something, although no one had actually read the article.
Periodically thereafter I heard the serpent hiss--from advertising agencies, from Time-Life and Look and Collier's, and always the same refrain: all educational after all, and how many more would learn than in the classroom. Supply bits of information; help guard against error; nudge the inquirers toward truth. I asked for no reward other than getting the record straight, and was always surprised when and if the mail brought some monetary token of appreciation. Just as it did in my conversation with Walter Howie, it still gives me to think. And at the time, it induced me, amid many distractions, to focus on the goal: teaching.
In retrospect, my mind drifts along the paths not followed when luck or prudence or want of imagination--or perhaps the inertia of a cozy rut--deafened me to the more tempting alternative.
Wartime brought its own challenges, which, however, did not intrude upon my commitment to teaching. Twice the summons came by telegram. Washington needed me. I begged off from what would likely have been inconsequential bureaucratic posts. On the other hand, I willingly went along when the cast of the dice brought in the navy's V-12 program in the hope of turning out not only competent officers but also gentlemen tinged by Cambridge. It fell to my lot to impart a knowledge of American history to several squads, a familiar, not unpleasant, duty. I asked one such section to read a pleasant little novel written in 1938 by Clyde Brion Davis, The Great American Novel, for the light it might throw on the era just closed--the central subject a hapless journalist buffeted by hard luck who clung persistently to the illusion that his ship would come in when he wrote the great American novel. The most interesting essay the assignment elicited mocked the book's protagonist--what a sap, who thought he could make it when all along he played the puppet in a big system over which he had no control. Then a concluding paragraph which I long cherished--"Why am I laughing? I am in the same position. No control of my own life." He had learned something; I had taught something.
I stayed out of trouble as long as I focused on my calling as a teacher. Early in the Eisenhower administration, then presidential assistant Maxwell Rabb '32, LL.B. '35, called from the White House to ask whether I would be interested in a post as a commissioner of immigration--certainly a matter of interest to me, but not really in my line. Later, at the behest of civic activist Joseph Willen, I ran some seminars in Arden House on the problems of voluntary agencies in philanthropy, again a subject of interest to me. But I saw no virtue in proceeding further in that direction.
The paths not taken might have led to more interesting, more profitable careers, but early experience had taught me to beware the serpent's hiss that might divert me from my proper goal.