The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1902-08-28
THE REWARDS OF LITERATURE.

for literary work are now far better
than they were a generation ago and
saws it is a pity that such authors as
Hawthorne and Poe, not to mention
others also desperately hard pressed Tor
money, could not have postponed them
selves to this more remunerative Pc
Rod" Poe lived and died in poverty
His first literary earning was prize
of 800 received for THE MS. Found IN
a Bottle" When he had acquired some
little fame he was glad to sell his tai
ents to the Southern Literary Maya
zine at SO per week. Later he worked
for several literary journals at the rate
of SO printed page. In 1s41 he wrote
to a friend in Washington that he
would be glad to secure any regular
work that would bring him $500 year.
The best pay Poe ever had for any artl-
Gle was 500. His greatest success.
THE Raven" was sold to second
class publication in 1913 for SIS. Writ
ing disconsolately about his hard life
he said: ITO coin ones brains into
silver, at the nod of master, is, to
nv thinking, the hardest task in the
world"
Mr. Stanford does not give us ex-
amples of the profits of modern literary
workers He might have noted. how
ever. that aside from a popular few,
literary men are still but poorly re-
warded; that majority of the publish
ed books return their writer's nothing;
that hundreds of them are published at
the authors loss, and that, word for
word, the newspaper writers receive
better pay than the poets and the ffc-
tion-makers. And this will not appear
anomalous to those experienced in the
newspaper profession. A genius for So
called literary work is far more plenti-
full than the capacity for quick writing,
coupled with inexhaustibility, which is
essential in the successful editor.
Returning to the interesting review
Of early authors given by Mr.. Stan
ford, we find it noted that Washington
Irving sold his Sketch Book" for $500
and that Harriet Beecher Stowe receiv-
ed but $500 for the rights of Uncle
Toms Cabin as serial. Most of
Hawthorne's Twice Told Tales" were
sold at S35 apiece. 1.-The literary pay of
Lowell and Longfellow,' says Mr.. STAN
ford was not sufficient to encourage
either to dispense with the salary of
professor, $500 year, paid at Har-
ward College. 1t is stated that John
Bartlett. author of 'Bartlett's Familiar
Quotations. realized more on three edi-
lions of that work than Lowell had re-
ceived for all he had published. 1t is
Inferred from a passage in Scudder's
biography that when Lowell had $500
in hand he felt easy in money affairs.
Longfellow enjoyed the labor of COM
position, pay or no pay. Although the
publisher of Hyperion failed and one
half the edition was seized by the cred
itors. the author wrote, No matter. I
had the glorious satisfaction of writing
it He also informed his friend Green,
in 1916, that all of the publishers,
whether of books or periodicals, We're
desperately poor just then and that the
editor of the Knickerbocker Magazine
had not paid him for his work the last
three years. A letter, though, from
Park Benjamin, at the beginning of
that year, makes it apparent that the
editor of The New World was not
without money. Your ballad. The
Wreck of the Hesperus,' he sent word
to Longfellow, is grand. Enclosed are
S25 the sum you mentioned for it, The
Skeleton in Armor' drew s25. A few
months later Sam Ward, who was then
in Wall street, began to act as Long
fellows literary broker in New York.
He wrote to Ward that Benjamin want
ed a couple of poems and offered $40
each. Mention should be made that it
was Ward who negotiated the sale of
The Hanging of the Crane with Rob-
ert Bonner for the Ledger in 1874. Long
fellow knew nothing Of the affair until
Ward carried him a check for $4,000 and
asked for the manuscript. The money
proved too tempting to resist. Bonner
made Ward a present of $1,000 for the
service he had rendered him. In 1877
Harper and Bros. paid Longfellow $1,000
for the right to publish the long poem
'Keramos' in their magazine. These
two amounts were the eliminating
prices for Longfellow's single produce
tions His executors estimated in their
that the plates and copy
worth about $50, O0O He was an indus
trious literary worker for more than ,
30 years" !,
Sir Walter Besant had accumulated +
SAC, 900 out of his writings by the time ;
he died Thackeray confessed the
of writing his weekly arti-
Gle for Punch, but said he could not
sacrifice the five guineas a week that
it brought him." In 1877 Bayard Taylor
wrote to a friend:
Emerson is now seventy-four years
old and his last volume is the only one
that ever approached a remunerative
sale. Bryant is in his eighty second
year and he could not buy a modest
home with all he ever received in his
life for his poems. Washington Irving