The Wilmington morning star., 1946-11-12
As Pegler Sees 1t
BY WEsTBROOK PEGLER
Copyright, 1916, by King Features,
Syndicate, Incl

NEW YORK, Nov. 11.-Harr1son Smith, a
speaker at a book show had something to
saw about the effect of big incomes on young
writer's. He thought the effect was not good.
At first, was going to agree with him.
Then I was going to disagree. But, 1 find that
l do and I don't.
A man for his team would be CerVantes
who wasn't young when he did Don Qulxote,
but so poor that he lived ir the garnet OF
a brothel. He was so poor that, as Marcel
Weber tells US in his great biography, Ger
~vantes,' the master was on the point OF
suicide one day when a mouse stole his last
morsel of cheese but, in angry despair, killed
the mouse with an empty wine-bottle, aimed
by fate, no doubt, and ate it up. Otherwise,
Don Quixote would have been a much shorter
story which would not have been a bad idea,
either.
AS a matter of fact, I just made that UP and,
as far as I know, there never was a biographer
named Marcel Weber, but if there had been
he probably would have told us something
like that because biographers are the worst
liars in the world and often give us direct
quotes from people who have been dead a
hundred years or more, they make a lot o.
money, though, and, excuslng that hctlonal
make-believe with which they dress up their
Henry's and Louies and Katherines, they are
e l KUN dllo - v NO o-'
considering the time and reading they have
to put in on a book and then the writing on
top of all that, l know because, in collabora-
ton with the late George Phyffe. OF the old
Evening World, l did not a mere biography
but an autobiography OF Babe Ruth back
in 1922. After l had chased The Babe all over
the western wheel with the Yankee club
and had nailed him for only fifteen minutes
one Sunday morning after Mass in Chicago
for the only personal touch we had to go
on, George and ! sat in his apartment with
S~palding guides and records and the envelopes
out of the morgue and did 90, 1000 words in
three days. I would wait tor the Babe like a
private detective in the hotel lobbies until all
hours of the morning but he wouldn't show
up until about nine when he would come
busting in with a silly little cigar-box ukelele
that he used to carry around for social eve
nings, get a little breakfast and barge in on
Ping Bodie, his roommate, to catch a little
sleep before time to 60 to the ball-yard. Then
nothing doing, of course, until night when he
would disappear again. He did promise to talk
to me On the train from st. Louis to Chicago,
but instead he got into a game o. hearts in a
drawing-room that didn't bust up until Engle-
wood that Sunday morning. Then I got sore at
the big babboon because, after all, he was get.
ting 81, 900 and so per cent Of the gross. and
he finally listened to reason and gave me that
fifteen minutes. l asked him a few questions
W1lCI L Liz . e IIdIllC y |
him he said Babe" Then Meusial stuck his
face in the room and said they were waiting
to play hearts some more and that was all
there was to it.
Long afterWard, I was talking with George
Creel about the difficulty of ghosting auto
biographies and George recalled that, back
In 1915, he went way out to Kansas to inter-
view Jess Willard for his lie story and asked
him what he had called a dog that he had had
yNhpo ho Hroe a 1ift1o how loco coid ttPovor ~ |
and that was about all George got, too. Thej
just couldn't give.
This must have been a very fine autobio.
graphy Of Ruth, in the spots that l did, at
least, ii Harrison Smiths theory has any merit
because we were having a gaudy initiation just
then and I was getting $50 a week. Phyte
was way up around $3.50 a week but he was
like Charles Dickens, who made an awful lot
Of money, too. Max Perkins, of Scribners, a
great editor whom you never heard of, prob
ably, because he isn't a celebrity, told me that
Dickens used to write those long-winded jobs
OF his in parts or instruments which were
sold by themelves, not in magazines like our
present day serials. He said that when the sale
of the early intalments Of Martin ChuzzleWit
were dropping, Dickens and his publishers
held a story conference, such as We have in
Hollywood now. and decided that the way to
hop it up and stimulate business was to knock
Americans. Dickens was very good at this
and up he went.
The profit motive and wealth didn't hurt
Dickens delivery; Shakespeare got so rich
that he retired and l have heard that when
Tennyson' was under contract for a guinea a
word and wrote Break, break, break, on thy
cold, grey stones, oh, seal" the publisher want
ed to use ditto marks and dock him two gins.
Max Perkins said Dumas had a kind of story
factory with a lot Of assistants to do the hack
work and just put in the hot ticks and purties
himself, like some comic strip artists who get
so lazy after they pass $25, 900 a year that
they buy their britolboard already ruled
in squares and just sketch the drawings from
script done by scenario men and turn them
over to ink-monkeys for finishing.
1t was told along Park Row in my time that
when Joe O'Neil, of the Old World, went out
to Dearborn to jazz up Henry Ford's In
dependent, Mr.. Ford baked at buying custom.
made fiction from Kyne and Cobb and Mary
Roberts Reinhardt, and proposed something
like the Dumas system. Old Henry told Joe
to get one of the staff men 20 write the doings
and another one the sayings and to assemble
it, himself. He said it wasn't sensible to pay
high price for made-up stories without a grain
of truth in them. Anybody could think up a
pack OF lies.
I have been hedging away from the argu-
ment here because it seems to be such a yes
and no proposition. In his cub days, Paul Gal
leo used to sit in a cell in his basement in
L%archmont and beat out fiction for cheap