AN INTRODUCTION
This is a difficult task. I agreed to
write an introduction to Will Bradley,
His Chap Book before I had seen the
book’s text itself. Now I have encountered
here the gaiety, courage, vitality
of this man who romped like a breeze
through American graphic arts for several
decades—and I feel that my part
should be little more than the opening
of a door to this perennial springtime
freshness.
But still there is something to talk
about that he, modest man, hasn’t even
mentioned. And that is the impact of
his work on his time. It should be
talked about, because it is hard to realize
today, in our state of emancipation,
what a closed and stuffy room
Bradley entered—and opened to the
sun and air.
Across the Atlantic, the Nineteenth
Century was bursting its seams: Morris
failing to revive medievalism but startling
his world with a revival of fine
craftsmanship; Beardsley, the Yellow
Book and their avant garde galaxy
startling their world in quite a different
way; Toulouse-Lautrec spreading
modern art in the kiosks of Paris when
only a handful knew anything about
Cezanne, Van Gogh, Seurat; barriers
being demolished everywhere.
In America, these goings-on were
known to a few connoisseurs amid a
vast indifference. It was Bradley in the
Nineties who made the American public
stir in its sleep and at least crack an
eye. In the next decade he and the
many who followed him were well
advanced in the lively morning of a
day that isn’t over yet.
There were derivative traces in Bradley’s
early work—and whose hasn’t?—but
when he hit his stride it wasn’t
Europe’s leadership he followed. He
discovered American colonial typography,
bold and free, and from that
springboard he took off into a career of
non-archaic, non-repetitive, exuberant
and exhilarating design. In its way it
was as American as the Declaration of
Independence. In this field we have
never had any more indigenous art
than Bradley’s.
He was a native, corn-fed American
in another way, too. It was a time when
Kelmscott House had set a pattern, and
the only pious ambition for a serious
typographic designer was to produce
meticulous limited editions for equally
limited collectors. Bradley may have
had some such idea in mind when he
started the Wayside Press, but thank
God it didn’t work. There was a lusty,
democratic ambition in that slight
body, and it thrilled him to speak to
thousands, even millions, instead of
just scores. The turbulent current of
American commercial and industrial
life appealed to him more than any
exquisite backwater.
So he spread his work over magazines,
newspapers, the advertising of
such houses as the Strathmore Paper
Company, his own lively but not limited
publications, even the movies. So
he enormously enriched our arts; and
he smashed more false fronts and took
more liberties—successfully—than
anyone has done before or since.
Now his retirement has lasted almost
as long as his active career. His
work has been absorbed into our culture
so completely that many of the
young men cavorting brilliantly in his
wake today are scarcely aware of their
debt to him—the pioneer and pacemaker.
They should be—he is aware
of them: he closes here with chuckling
praises of the fine, free-handed job
they are doing. There was always a
giant’s spirit in this powerful little
man, and it’s as strong and generous
now as it ever was. My memory is long
enough that I can say for all these latecomers,
“Thank you no end for everything,
Will Bradley.”
Walter Dorwin Teague
New York
May, 1954
THE BOY PRINTER OF ISHPEMING
It is graduation day in the little
brown schoolhouse on Baltimore Street
in Lynn, Massachusetts, just outside
Boston. Miss Parrot is the teacher—a
dear! You are six years old; next month
you will be seven. The blackboard is
covered with chalk drawings: sailboats,
steamboats, ferryboats, trains of cars,
houses, people and animals. You are
the artist. Your mamma, with other
mammas, is sitting on the platform,
proud of her Willie—who is probably
plenty proud of himself.
Lynn is a shoe town. This is 1875.
Most of the work is done by hand. The
employees are all natives—Universalists
and Unitarians, probably. Many
women work at home, binding uppers
and tongues of high, lace shoes. You
have a little express wagon. You carry
finished work back to the factories and
return with a supply of unfinished. For
each trip you are paid five cents. With
your savings you buy a printing press.
It is the kind you place on a table and
slap with the palm of your hand. In
business offices it is used to stamp date
lines. Your father is drawing cartoons
for a Lynn daily—perhaps the Daily
Item. He brings you a box of pi. When
you succeed in finding a few letters of
the same font you file them to fit the
type slot in the press.
Your father is ill, an aftermath of the
Civil War. You have moved to the section
called Swampscott. This is too far
away for you to attend the school to
which your class has gone. Your mother
goes out every day to do dress-making.
A playmate takes you to his school. But
most of the time you remain at home
with your father. He tells you he hasn’t
long to live, says you have been a good
boy and that when you grow up you
will want to be an artist and there will
be no money for your education. He
gives you much fine advice which you
never forget. Then he sends you out to
play. You go to Fisherman’s Beach and
watch the fishermen take lobsters out
of the boiling pot. They give you the
little ones the law forbids selling. You
crack them on a rock, and have a feast.
Sunday mornings, or occasionally on a
Saturday night, you go to the baker’s
and get your warm pot of baked beans
and buy a loaf of brown-bread—always
an event of delicious anticipation.
Between meals, when you are hungry,
there is often a cold cod-fish cake to be
found in the pantry.
Your mother and you are now alone
in the world and you are on the “Narrow
Gauge” on your way to Boston.
You are sucking a “picklelime,” always
found in glass jars at the candy counter
of every railroad and ferry waiting
room. It will be made to last until you
reach Boston and are at the Park Street
corner of the Common watching the
Punch and Judy show while your
mother is shopping. At noon you sit in
a booth and eat clam chowder at a restaurant
on Corn Hill. After the meal
your mother takes you to a wholesale
house where she has a friend. Here you
are bought a suit of clothes.
“But isn’t it too big, Mamma?”
“Yes, dear; but children grow very
fast and soon it will fit you—and Mamma
can’t afford to buy you a new suit
every year.”
And now you are on your way to
Northern Michigan, where your mother
has a sister whose husband is paymaster
at the Lake Superior Iron Mine.
En route you stop at Providence where
you are intrigued by the teams of
twenty or more horses that pull freight
cars through the downtown districts.
You think it would be fine to be a teamster.
At Thompsonville, Connecticut,
you go to school for a few weeks. On
circus day you are allowed to have a
vacation. You ride a pony in the parade
and ask your mother if you can’t join
the circus and ride in the parades every
day.
It is your first day in the little mining
town of Ishpeming. You are standing
in the middle of the road watching children
going home from school; the girls
giggle, the boys laugh at the new boy
in a too-big suit. One little girl has cute
pigtails. You like her. You are now quite
grown up, nearly ten. At a Sunday-school
picnic you tell the little girl you
are someday going back to Boston and
learn to be an artist. You ask her to wait
for you. She promises. With this important
problem settled you can now give
all of your attention to the question of
how you are to get an art education.
In the fall you go to school and somehow
manage to pull through. Your
uncle and aunt go for a visit “back
East.” Your mother keeps house for
your cousins. Every night when you
go to bed you kneel down and ask God
to tell your uncle to bring you a printing
press, the kind with a lever, like the
ones shown in the Youth’s Companion.
Your uncle brings you an Ingersoll
dollar watch.
It is your second year in school. You
now have a step-father. He is a fine man
and you like him and he likes you—but
of course you can’t expect him to pay
for your art education. You are having
trouble with arithmetic—something
in division. Teacher says, “Take your
books and go home, Willie, and remain
until you have the correct answer.”
You don’t like arithmetic, anyway.
“Mother,” you ask, “may I go to
work and earn money so I can learn to
be an artist?”
Your mother is troubled. Finally she
says, “Perhaps it will be for the best.”
You go to the office of the Iron Agitator,
that later became Iron Ore. George
A. Newett is the owner and editor. This
is the George A. Newett and the newspaper
that were later sued for libel
by Theodore Roosevelt. The trial took
place in Marquette, Michigan, and Mr.
Roosevelt won a verdict of six cents.
You are put to work washing-up a
Gordon press. Then you receive your
first lesson in feeding. There is power,
a small engine mounted on an upright
boiler, for the newspaper press. The
two jobbers are kicked. Having half an
hour of leisure you learn the lay of a
lower-case beside the window—where
you can proudly wave to the schoolchildren
as they are going home to
their noon meal. You are now a working
man—wages three dollars a week.
Country newspaper shops train and
use local help for straight matter. For
job work, ads and presswork they depend
upon itinerant job printers, who
seldom remain as long as six months
in any one town. When the Iron Ore
job printer leaves you are sorry. He has
been a kind and patient teacher. You
are now twelve. Mr. Newett employs a
new devil and you set jobs, advertising
display, make up the paper and are responsible
for all presswork. Your wages
are increased to six dollars a week.
When the motor power fails, as it does
frequently, you go out on the street and
employ off-shift miners to operate the
press by means of a crank attached to
the flywheel.
At this early date the print shop is
above a saloon and in one corner of a
big barn of a room that had been a
lodge hall. In winter it is heated (?)
with one stove. You go to work at seven
and quit at six. The outside temperature
is below zero. You and your devil
forage in the snowdrifts of the alley
back of the building and “borrow”
packing boxes to get kindling for the
stove and boiler.
The Peninsula Record, across the
street, is a four-page tabloid. It is printed
one page at a time on a large Gordon.
The owner and editor is John D.
West. He offers you eight dollars a
week. You are not that important to
Mr. Newett—and the extra two dollars
will enable you to begin saving after
paying board and buying your clothes.
In a few months Iron Ore moves into
a new store-building. You are now thirteen
and Mr. Newett offers you ten
dollars a week and the acknowledged
position of job printer. At fourteen this
wage is increased to twelve. At fifteen
you are spoken of as foreman and are
receiving fifteen dollars a week—in
’85 a man’s wages.
This is the early Eighties. Small
towns such as Ishpeming are “easy
pickings” for traveling fakers. Their
advance is always heralded by the exchanges.
They clean up at the expense
of local merchants. All editors warn
them to keep away. Iron Ore print shop
is on the ground floor. The editor’s sanctum
is at the front. His desk is at the big
window. It is nearly nine o’clock on a
Friday night—“make-up” time. Mr.
Newett has written his last sheets of
copy and is reading proof. At the corner
of Main and Division, diagonally
across from the office, a faker is selling
soap. In one wrapper he pretends to
place a five dollar bill—a version of the
“old army game.” He is standing in a
market wagon and has a companion
who strums a guitar and sings. Attached
to an upright and above his
head is a kerosene flare. Mr. Newett
walks leisurely to where there are several
guns and fishing rods in a corner.
He is an inveterate sportsman in a land
where game, deer and fish, is plentiful.
Selecting a rifle he walks to the door
and casually puts a bullet through the
kerosene tank, then returns to his proof
reading. Thoroughly likable, this pioneer
editor—a fine boss, a true friend!
You and a compositor now have control
of the town bill posting. When
there are no theater or patent medicine
ads to put up you cover the boards with
blank newsprint and letter and picture
advertisements for the stores.
You are sixteen, almost seventeen.
A sheet of newsprint is tacked on the
printing-office wall and, using marking
ink and a brush, you are picturing
and lettering a masquerade poster for
the roller rink.
“Who is this young artist?”
The speaker is Frank Bromley, a
well-known landscape painter from
Chicago.
You tell him about your father and
that you are going back to Boston to
study art. He suggests your stopping off
in Chicago to see him. Says he can perhaps
help you.
You are nearly seventeen and already
you have saved more than fifty
dollars. By the early fall you have four
twenty-dollar gold pieces under your
socks in the top till of your trunk. Wages
are always paid in gold and silver. You
are now ready to start for Chicago. Two
weeks later you are on your way.
The artist has a studio near the
McVickar Theater on Madison Street.
It is the typical atelier of the Victorian
Eighties: oriental drapes, screens and
pottery. Jules Guerin, then an art student
and later a contributor to Century,
Harper’s and Scribner’s, is clearing up
and tidying for the day.
Mr. Bromley takes you to Lyon &
Healy. Yes, Mr. Lyon, or maybe it was
Mr. Healy, can start you as an apprentice.
However, a young man beginning
a career should be most careful in making
his selection. You have been careful.
You want to be an artist. But the
business of Lyon & Healy is musical
instruments, not art.
Next morning you are introduced to
Mr. Rand, or Mr. McNally. A Mr. Martin
then sends you upstairs, a couple of
flights, to Mr. Robinson in the designing
and engraving department. Beginners
do not receive any pay, but you
are put to work at a long table facing
a row of windows and with yards
and yards of unbleached cotton-cloth
stretched on a wire at your back. You
are now learning to engrave tints on
wood-blocks—under the erroneous impression
that designers and illustrators
engrave their own blocks.
Mr. Bromley has found a room for
you at the home of a friend, an art
dealer. It is at Vincennes Avenue and
Fifty-ninth Street. You walk to and
from Rand McNally’s, located on Monroe
Street, dreaming happily.
One morning, after a few weeks of
getting nowhere, for you are no master
of tint-cutting, it percolates through
your skull that inasmuch as wood-engravers
never seem to be doing any
designing probably designers never do
any engraving.
A momentous discovery, this, for
you have broken into your last twenty-dollar
gold piece—as a matter of fact
there is just about enough left to pay
for taking your trunk to the depot and
to buy a second-class ticket back to that
printing shop in Northern Michigan.
“Sometime, if you care to come
back,” states Mr. Robinson, in a letter
which must have been written immediately
after your departure, “and if
you will remain half an hour later in
the evening and sweep out, and come
in a half hour earlier in the morning
and dust, Rand McNally will pay you
three dollars a week.”
SECOND SOJOURN IN CHICAGO
A few months later, when you
have just turned into your eighteenth
year and have saved sixty dollars, three
twenty-dollar gold pieces, it is time to
return to Chicago. You tell Mr. Newett.
He wishes you well and says that if you
care to remain with Iron Ore he will
take you into partnership when you
are twenty. This is a big temptation.
You admire and like your boss. He is a
grand person—your idol. Saying goodbye
involves a wrench.
You are now back with R-M staying
half an hour at night and getting to
work a half hour earlier in the morning
and all is well with the world.
At the time of your first visit to
Chicago, line photo-engraving was not
even a whisper, and halftones were
not even dreams. On your second visit,
pen drawings are beginning to receive
direct reproduction.
Folding machines are unknown; and
in a large loft, at long tables, dozens
upon dozens of girls are hand-folding
railroad timetables. This loft is on a
level with the designing department.
Between the two there is a brick wall
through which, about two feet up from
the floor, has been cut an opening in
which there is a heavy, tin-covered sliding
door. When you take 14 × 22 metal
plates down to the foundry to be routed—by
someone else, for you don’t like
machines—you pass through this loft,
between the girl-adorned tables. You,
in turn, are adorned with the side-whiskers
known as mutton-chops—trying
to look older than your years.
Also, in accord with the custom of the
times, you wear tight-fitting pants. One
day, in returning from the foundry
with a metal plate on your shoulder,
you pull back the sliding door and
when you lift one leg to step through
the opening the pants rip where the
cloth is tightest. On another occasion
when again carrying a plate on your
shoulder your jacket pocket catches on
a key at the end of a paper-cutter shaft
and the shoddy that had once proved so
disastrous in your pants now probably
averts a serious accident.
Web presses and automatic feeders
are also absent. In the basement at
Rand McNally’s there is a battery of
drum-cylinders printing James S. Kirk
“American Family Soap” wrappers.
The stock is thin, red-glazed paper, and
the sheets a double 24 × 36, or perhaps
even larger. You marvel at the skill
with which boys do the feeding; but
even greater is your wonder at the
hand-jogging and cutting of these slippery
and flimsy sheets.
Invitations are sent out for an inspection
of the composing-room of the
Chicago Herald, now newly equipped
throughout with Hamilton labor-saving
furniture. You attend. Compositors
are sticking type for the next edition.
A little later the Herald places on display
its first web press. This showing is
in a ground-floor room, a step or two
down from the street, next door to the
Chicago Opera House, where Kiralphry’s
Black Crook is now playing and
Eddie Foy is putting audiences in
“stitches.” The press is a single unit
standing in a shallow pit surrounded
by a brass rail.
Comes now the winter. It is a Saturday.
You are at the home of your boss.
He has invited you to spend the afternoon
learning how to paint. His easel
is set up in the basement dining room.
He is talking to you about religion,
gravely concerned at learning that
you sometimes attend the Universalist
church. He believes you to be a heathen
and suggests that you become
converted and join a fundamentalist
church—says that as long as you remain
outside the fold and thus are not
a Christian he cannot be interested in
helping you become an artist.
The dear man! He wants so much to
save your soul. Meanwhile, his good
wife is laying the table for their evening
meal. Her smile is motherly. Maybe
she has guessed you were counting
the plates. Pleasant odors come from
the kitchen. Our gracious host brings
your coat, helps you put it on, hands
you your hat, opens the door and you
step out into a Chicago snowstorm.
At this point the script calls for slow
music and heart-rending sobs—another
Kate Claxton in the Two Orphans.
Also for melodrama! This is a beautiful
snowstorm. The evening is mild
and the flakes are big. They sail lazily
through the amber light of the street
lamps, feather the bare branches of
trees that print a fantastic pattern
against the red-brick housefronts. The
drifts must be at least an inch deep.
And tomorrow ... tomorrow, you will,
as always happens on Sunday, go to a
restaurant on Clark Street where you
will be served two pork tenderloins,
flanked by a mound of mashed potatoes
topped with gravy, and one other vegetable,
and supplemented by bread and
butter and a cup of coffee—all for
twenty cents. Joy bells ringing!
A couple of weeks later you are
standing at a case in the printing plant
of Knight & Leonard. Mr. Leonard happens
to be passing. He stops and glances
at your galley, type arrangement for a
catalog cover. He is interested and asks
where you learned job composition. In
one graphically condensed paragraph,
dramatically composed, for it has been
prepared in advance in anticipation of
this much wished-for opportunity, you
tell the story of your life—and make a
momentous proposition.
The next morning you are seated at
a flat-top desk in the second-floor office.
You have your drawing material and
are designing a new booklet cover for
the stationery department of A. C.
McClurg. It is understood that when
orders for drawing fail you will fill in
by setting type.
Now you are, at nineteen, a full-fledged
designer and working at a window
opposite Spalding’s. On playing
days you watch Pop Anson and his
be-whiskered team enter a barge and
depart for the ball park.
One day a young man appears at K
& L’s with proofs of halftone engravings.
He has been with the Mathews
Northrup Press in Buffalo, where he
had learned the process. He is now
starting an engraving plant in Chicago.
K & L print some specimen sheets on
coated paper. These are probably the
first halftones ever engraved in Chicago,
also the first printing of halftones.
K & L are Chicago’s leading commercial
printers, quality considered. Mr.
Knight is a retired Board of Trade
operator. Mr. Leonard is the practical
printer. He is also the father of Lillian
Russell. Once, when she is appearing in
Chicago, Miss Russell visits at the office.
You are thrilled.
A man, trained in Germany, grinds
ink for K & L. He is located on the floor
above the office. You occasionally visit
him. He gives you much good advice.
The Inter Ocean, located on the next
corner, installs a color press. The K &
L ink expert helps get out the first
edition.
For two years or more you occupy
that desk and never again see the composing
room. During this period, while
receiving twenty-four dollars a week,
you marry that young lady of your
ten-year-old romance.
The J. M. W. Jeffery Co., show printers,
is turning out some swell posters
designed by Will Crane. They are
printed from wood-blocks and are wonders.
An artist by the name of Frank
Getty is designing labels in the Chicago
sales-office of the Crump Label Company.
They are a glorious departure
from the conventional truck of the
label lithographers.
Joe Lyendecker is designing covers
in color for paper-bound novels. They
are gorgeous. There are no art magazines
or other publications helpful to
designers. You, like others, have a
scrap-book made up of booklet covers,
cards and other forms of advertising.
A designer by the name of Bridwell is
doing some thrilling work for Mathews
Northrup in Buffalo, a concern that is
setting a stiff pace for other railroad
printers. Abbey, Parsons, Smedley,
Frost and Pennell, and Charles Graham
in Harper’s Weekly, are models
for all illustrators.
You are now free-lancing and making
designs for Mr. Kasten of the McClurg
stationery department. You have
a studio in the new Caxton building on
Dearborn Street. You work all of one
day and night and part of the next day
on some drawings for Mr. Kasten. He
comes to get them at four o’clock on
the afternoon before Christmas. You
tell him you haven’t eaten since the
previous night.
He takes you and your drawings in a
cab and stops at a saloon in the McVickar
Theater building and buys you
an egg nog. “Drink this,” he says. “It
will put you on your feet until you
reach home and can get dinner.” It is
only a glass of milk and egg—and
looks harmless. You get on the Madison
Street horse-car, and take a seat up
front. There is straw on the floor to
keep your feet warm. You promptly go
to sleep. The car bumps across some
tracks and you wake long enough to
know your stop is only two blocks
away. In getting off the car the straw
tangles your feet and you seem to be
falling over everyone. The sidewalk is
not wide enough for you. This being a
new section, the planks are a foot or
more above the ground. You walk in
the road.
In these early Nineties no cash is
needed to buy a printing outfit, just an
agreement to pay a monthly installment.
You buy a Golding press, a type-stand,
a small stone and a few cases of
Caslon and an English text. You are
probably itching to play a little with
printing. You do not find time to do
more than lay the type. A letter comes
from your wife’s sister in South Dakota.
It states that a neighbor’s son or
brother, or some near relative, is in
Chicago, that he is interested in art,
and it asks will you look him up. He is
a bookkeeper and cashier in a ground-floor
real-estate office at the corner of
Clark and Dearborn. His name is Fred
Goudy. He wants to get into the printing
business, in a small way. You tell
him of your small outfit and that he
can have it and the benefit of payments
made if he will assume future installments.
He agrees.
THE GAY NINETIES
Chicago a phoenix city risen from
the ashes of its great fire; downtown
business buildings two, three and four
stories high, more of former than latter,
few a little higher, elevators a rare
luxury; across the river many one-story
stores and shops with signs in
large lettering, pioneer style, on their
false fronts; streets paved with granite
blocks echo to the rumble of iron-tired
wheels and the clank of iron-shod
hoofs; a continuous singing of steel car-cables
on State Street and Wabash
Avenue; horse-drawn cross-town cars
thickly carpeted with straw in winter;
outlying residential streets paved
with cedar blocks; avenues boasting
asphalt. Bonneted women with wasp
waists, leg o’ mutton sleeves, bustles,
their lifted, otherwise dust-collecting,
skirts revealing high-buttoned shoes
and gaily-striped stockings; men in
brown derbies, short jackets, high-buttoned
waist-coats, tight trousers without
cuffs and, when pressed, without
pleats; shirts with Piccadilly collars
and double-ended cuffs of detachable
variety (story told of how a famous
author’s hero, scion of an old house,
when traveling by train, saw a beautiful
young lady, undoubtedly of aristocratic
birth, possibly royal, and
wanting to meet her, love at first
sight, object matrimony, first retires,
with true blue-blood gentility, to wash-room
and reverses cuffs. Romance, incident
ruthlessly deleted by publisher,
proves a best seller). Black walnut furniture
upholstered in hair-cloth, pride
of many a Victorian parlor, is gradually
being replaced by golden oak and
ash; painters’ studios, especially portrait
variety, are hung with oriental
rugs and littered with oriental screens
and pottery. High bicycles, the Columbia
with its little wheel behind and the
Star with the little wheel in front, soon
to disappear, are still popular. Low
wheels, called “safeties,” are beginning
to appear, occasionally ridden by
women wearing bloomers. Pneumatic
tires unknown.
Recognized now as a period of over-ornamentation
and bad taste, the Nineties
were nevertheless years of leisurely
contacts, kindly advice and an appreciative
pat on the back by an employer,
and certainly a friendly bohemianism
seldom known in the rush and drive of
today.
Eugene Field has just returned from
a vacation in Europe and in his column,
Sharps and Flats, Chicago is reading
the first printing of Wynken, Blynken
and Nod. Way & Williams, publishers,
have an office on the floor below my
studio. Irving Way, who would barter
his last shirt for a first edition, his last
pair of shoes for a volume from the
Kelmscott Press of William Morris, is
a frequent and always stimulating
visitor.
“Will,” says Irving, “be over at McClurg’s
some noon soon, in Millard’s
rare book department, the ‘Amen Corner.’
Field will be there, and Francis
Wilson, who is appearing at McVickar’s
in The Merry Monarch, and other collectors.
Maybe there’ll be an opportunity
for me to introduce you—and
Francis Wilson might ask you to do a
poster.”
I go to the Press Club occasionally
with Nixon Waterman, the columnist
who was later to write his oft-quoted,
“A rose to the living is more, If graciously
given before The slumbering
spirit has fled, A rose to the living is
more Than sumptuous wreaths to the
dead.” We sit at table with Opie Read,
the well-loved humorist; Ben King, who
wrote the delightful lament, “Nothing
to eat but food, nowhere to go but
out”; Stanley Waterloo, who wrote The
Story of Ab and, with Luders, the
musical comedy, Prince of Pilsen, and
other newspaper notables whose names
I have forgotten.
Two panoramas, Gettysburg and
Shiloh, are bringing welcome wages to
landscape and figure painters who will
soon migrate to St. Joe across the lake
and return in the fall with canvases to
be hung at the Art Institute’s annual
show.
Only one topic on every tongue—the
coming World’s Fair.
Herbert Stone is at Harvard. He and
his classmate, Ingalls Kimball, quickened
with enthusiasm and unable to
await their graduation, have formed
the publishing company of Stone &
Kimball. On paper bearing two addresses,
Harvard Square, Cambridge, and
Caxton Building, Chicago, Herbert
commissions a cover, title-page, page
decorations and a poster for When
Hearts Are Trumps, a book of verse by
Tom Hall—my first book assignment.
This pleasing recognition from a publishing
house is followed by a meeting
with Harriet Monroe and a Way &
Williams commission for a cover and
decorations for the Columbian Ode.
Your studio is now in the Monadnock
building. It is the year of the
World’s Fair. You have an exhibit that
has entitled you to a pass. Jim Corbett
is in a show on the Midway. When he
is not on the stage you can see him
parading on the sidewalks. Buffalo Bill
is appearing in a Wild West show. An
edition of Puck is being printed in one
of the exhibition buildings.
You design a cover for a Chicago and
Alton Railroad folder. The drawing
goes to Rand McNally for engraving
and printing. Mr. Martin asks you to
come and see him. His salary offer is
flattering. But, aside from Bridwell’s
designs at Mathews Northrup’s in Buffalo,
railroad printing is in a long-established
rut, void of imagination.
You prefer free-lancing. Later Mr.
Martin buys the K & L plant. Herbert
Rogers, the former bookkeeper, establishes
his own plant and you hope he
will continue the K & L tradition.
Mr. McQuilkin, editor of The Inland
Printer, commissions a permanent cover.
When the design is finished I ask:
“Why not do a series of covers—a
change of design with each issue?”
“Can’t afford them.”
“How about my making an inducement
in the way of a tempting price?”
“I’ll take the suggestion to Shephard.”
Suggestion approved by Henry O.
Shephard, printer and publisher, and
the series is started—an innovation,
the first occasion when a monthly
magazine changes its cover design with
each issue. One cover, nymph in pool,
is later reproduced in London Studio.
Another, a Christmas cover, has panel
of lettering that four American and
one German foundry immediately begin
to cut as a type. Later the American
Type Founders Company, paying for
permission, names the face “Bradley.”
A poster craze is sweeping the country.
Only signed copies are desired by
collectors and to be shown in exhibitions.
Designs by French artists: Toulouse-Lautrec,
Chéret, Grasset, etc.,
some German and a few English,
dominate displays. Edward Penfield’s
Harper’s Monthly and my Chap-Book
designs are only American examples at
first available.
Will Davis, manager of the Columbia
Theater, has just completed the
Haymarket, out on West Madison at
Halstead. You design and illustrate the
opening-night souvenir booklet. This
you do for Mr. Kasten, of McClure’s.
Thus you meet Mr. Davis. He introduces
you to Dan Frohman who commissions
you to design a twenty-eight
sheet stand for his brother, Charles,
who is about to open the new Empire
Theater in New York. So you design a
poster for The Masqueraders, by Henry
Arthur Jones. This is probably the first
signed theatrical poster produced by
any American lithographer. Then Dan
suggests that you visit New York. You
do, and meet Charles. Dan takes you to
the Players for lunch. There you see
show-bills set in Caslon. They influence
all of your future work in the field
of typography.
We now move to Geneva, Illinois,
and I have my studio in a cottage overlooking
the beautiful Fox River.
Holiday covers for Harper’s Weekly,
Harper’s Bazaar, Harper’s Young People,
later named Harper’s Roundtable,
page decorations for Vogue, a series of
full-page designs for Sunday editions
of Chicago Tribune, Herbert Stone’s
Chap-Book article and other favorable
publicity—plucking me long before
I am ripe, cultivate a lively pair of
gypsy heels; and believing myself, perhaps
excusably, equal to managing a
printing business, editing and publishing
an art magazine, designing covers
and posters, I return to Boston, then
settle in Springfield, start the Wayside
Press, and publish Bradley: His Book.
SPRINGFIELD: THE WAYSIDE PRESS
Typography, with nothing to its
credit following Colonial times, had
reached a low ebb during the Victorian
period; and by the mid-Nineties typefounders
were casting and advertising
only novelty faces void of basic design—apparently
giving printers what they
wanted; while, adding emphasis to bad
taste in type faces, compositors were
never content to use one series throughout
any given piece of display but appeared
to be finding joy in mixing as
many as possible.
During the Colonial period printers
were restricted to Caslon in roman and
italic, and an Old English Text. What
gave me my love for Caslon and the
Old English Text called Caslon Black
I do not know. It may have happened
in the Ishpeming print shop where I
worked as a boy, or it may have come
as a result of some incident or series of
incidents that occurred later and are
not now remembered. At any rate, for
many years I knew nothing about the
history of types or the derivation of
type design and probably thought of
“Caslon” as merely a trade designation
of the typefounder, and my early
preference for the face may have been
merely that of a compositor who found
joy in its use—as I always have.
One day in 1895, while busy with
the establishment of the Wayside Press
in Springfield, Massachusetts, I was inspired
by some quickening of interest
to make a special trip to Boston and
visit the Public Library. There I was
graciously permitted access to the Barton
collection of books printed in New
England during the Colonial period;
and, thrilled beyond words, I thus
gained some knowledge of Caslon’s
noble ancestry. The books were uncatalogued
and stacked in fireproof
rooms which were called the “Barton
Safes.” I was allowed to carry volumes
to a nearby gallery above the reference
room, where, at conveniently arranged
lecterns along an iron balustrade, I
examined them at my leisure and was
given the outstanding typographic experience
of my life.
Such gorgeous title-pages! I gloated
over dozens of them, making pencil
memoranda of type arrangements and
pencil sketches of wood-cut head and
tail pieces and initials. Using Caslon
roman with italic in a merry intermingling
of caps and lower case, occasionally
enlivened with a word or a
line in Caslon Black, and sometimes
embellished with a crude wood-cut decoration
depicting a bunch or basket of
flowers, and never afraid to use types
of large size, the compositors of these
masterly title-pages have given us refreshing
examples of a typography that
literally sparkles with spontaneity and
joyousness. Apparently created stick-in-hand
at the case, and unbiased by
hampering trends and rules, here are
honest, direct, attention-compelling
examples of type arrangements reflecting
the care-free approach of compositors
merrily expressing personalities
void of the self-consciousness and inhibitions
that always tighten up and mar
any mere striving for effect.
This Colonial typography, void of
beauty-destroying mechanical precision,
is the most direct, honest, vigorous
and imaginative America has ever
known—a sane and inspiring model
that was to me a liberal education and
undoubtedly the finest influence that
could come to me at this time—1895.
I now become a member of the newly
formed Arts and Crafts Society of
Boston, possibly a charter member, and
contribute two or three cases and a few
frames of Wayside Press printing to the
society’s first exhibition in Copley Hall.
This showing wins flattering approval
from reviewers—laughter from printers
who comment: “Bradley must be
crazy if he thinks buyers of printing
are going to fall for that old-fashioned
Caslon type.”
At this time the Caslon mats, imported
from England, are in possession
of one or two branches of the American
Type Founders, probably those in New
York and Boston, possibly the Dickenson
Foundry in Boston. Less than a year
after my original receipt of body sizes
of Caslon in shelf-faded and fly-specked
packages, these foundries cannot keep
pace with orders and it is found necessary
to take the casting off the slow
“steamers” and transfer mats to the
main plant in Communipaw, New Jersey,
where they can be adapted to fast
automatic type-casters. Here additional
sizes are cut and a new series, Lining
Caslon, is in the works—and, with
novelty faces no longer in demand,
foundries outside the combine, not possessing
mats, are hurrying cutting.
“When the tide is at the lowest, ’tis
but nearest to the turn.”
That quotation certainly applies to
the year 1895 that had started with so
little to its credit in the annals of commercial
printing and in which we were
now witnessing an encouraging æsthetic
awakening in the kindred field
of publishing. Choice little volumes
printed on deckle-edge papers were
coming from those young book-making
enthusiasts—Stone and Kimball in
Chicago and Copeland and Day in Boston—and
were attracting wide attention
and winning well-earned acclaim.
Also there were the Kelmscott Press
hand-printed books of William Morris,
especially his Chaucer, set in type of
his own design and gorgeously illustrated
by Burne-Jones; the Vale Press
books, designed by Charles Ricketts and
for which he also designed the type; the
exotic illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley
in John Lane’s Yellow Book, all
coming to us from London. Then there
was the excitement occasioned by our
own “poster craze,” with its accompanying
exhibitions giving advertisers
and the general public an opportunity
to see the gay designs of Chéret and the
astounding creations of Lautrec. All
these were indicative of a thought-quickening
trend due to have a stimulative
influence in the then fallow
field of commercial printing.
The Wayside Press which I opened
in this year of transition was so named
for a very real reason. I had worked in
Ishpeming and Chicago so as to earn
money to take me back to Boston where
I hoped to study and become an artist,
the profession of my father. I had always
thought of printing as being
along the wayside to the achieving of
my ambition. And I chose a dandelion
leaf as my device because the dandelion
is a wayside growth.
On the main business street in
Springfield there was a new office
building called the Phoenix. In two
offices on the top floor of the Phoenix
Building I had my studio. Back of the
office building there was a new loft
building on the top floor of which I
was establishing my Wayside Press, a
corridor connecting it with the top
floor of the Phoenix Building and thus
making it easily accessible from my
studio. It was an ideal location, and
with windows on two sides and at the
south end insuring an abundance of
sunshine, fresh air and light, the workshop
was a cheerful spot and one destined
to woo me (probably far too
often) from my studio and my only
definitely established source of income,
my designing.
My first Wayside Press printing, before
the publication of my magazine,
was a Strathmore deckle-edge sample
book. Heretofore all Connecticut Valley
paper-mill samples, regardless of
color, texture or quality of paper, had
carried in black ink, usually in the upper
corner of each sheet, information
as to size and weight. No attempt had
been made to stimulate sales by showing
the printer how different papers
might be used. But one day just after
the Press opened, I had a visitor who
changed all that.
I had a bed-ticking apron that had
been made for me by my wife, copying
the apron I had worn when at the ages
of fifteen to seventeen I had served as
job printer and foreman of that little
print shop in Ishpeming, where I used
to proudly stand, type-stick-in-hand, in
the street doorway to enjoy a brief chat
with my wife-to-be, then a school-teacher
and my sweetheart, as she was
on her way to school. Wearing that
apron, and at the stone, is how and
where Mr. Moses of the Mittineague
Paper Company, first of the Strathmore
Paper Company units, found me
on the occasion of our first meeting.
In my mind’s eye I can see Mr.
Moses now as he entered from the corridor.
He was wearing a navy blue
serge suit that emphasized his slight
build and made him appear younger
than I had expected. I was then twenty-seven
and undoubtedly thought of myself
as quite grown up, and I marveled
that a man seemingly so young should
possess the business knowledge necessary
to have put him at the head of an
even then well-known mill. The contrast
of that natty blue-serge with my
striped bed-ticking apron should have
made me self-conscious. Perhaps it did;
but, filled with the youthful enthusiasm
and glorious hopes of a dreamer,
I probably had thoughts for nothing
but my new print shop and publishing.
Seeing me unpacking type, my visitor
may have thought my time could have
been employed more profitably at my
drawing-board, as of course it could—though
in my then frame of mind it
could not have been employed more
enjoyably. Displaying samples of his
new line, Mr. Moses asked if I would
lay out and print a showing for distribution
to commercial printers and
advertisers.
I explained that the Wayside Press
was being established for the printing
of Bradley: His Book, an art and literary
magazine, and for a few booklets
and brochures—publications to which
I planned to give my personal attention
throughout all details of production,
and that I had not contemplated undertaking
any outside work.
However, after a moment’s brief
consideration, I became so intrigued
with the printing possibilities of these
new Strathmore papers, their pleasing
colors and tints, together with their
being such a perfect, a literally made-to-order,
vehicle for Caslon roman and
Caslon Black, that I enthusiastically
agreed to undertake the commission—a
decision for which I shall always feel
thankful.
The favorable publicity won by the
use of these “old-fashioned” types on
Strathmore papers, convinces me that
to attain distinction a print shop must
possess personality and individuality.
At any rate, my continued use of
Strathmore papers with appropriate
typography and designs aroused such
widespread interest among merchants
and advertisers and brought so many
orders for printing that it soon produced
the need for more space. My
plant was then moved to a top loft in
a new wing that had been added to the
Strathmore mill at Mittineague, across
the river from Springfield.
Caslon types on Strathmore papers
having proved so popular, business was
humming. A “Victor” bicycle catalog
for the Overman Wheel Company, involving
a long run in two colors on
Strathmore book and cover papers, and
an historically-illustrated catalog for
the new “Colonial” flatware pattern of
the Towle Silversmiths of Newburyport,
for which Strathmore’s deckle
edge papers and Caslon types were
strikingly appropriate, together with
the increased circulation of Bradley:
His Book, now a much larger format
than the original issues, necessitated
the addition of another cylinder press,
the largest “Century” then being made
by the Campbell Press Company; and
also the employment of an additional
pressman and two additional feeders,
and keeping the presses running nights
as well as days, often necessitating my
remaining at the plant throughout the
full twenty-four hours—quite a change
from the humble beginnings of the
Wayside Press when one “Universal”
and two “Gordon” job presses were believed
sufficient for the magazine and
booklet printing then planned.
In this growth of the commercial
printing involving lay-outs and supervision,
together with trying to edit and
publish an art magazine, I had waded
far beyond my depth. When I was
starting my Wayside Press in Springfield
a business man had advised:
“Learn to creep before you try to walk,
and learn to walk before you try to
run.” I had tried to run before even
learning to creep. Mr. Moses gave me
what I am now sure was much good
business advice—but, alas, I was temperamentally
unfitted to listen and
learn and, knowing nothing about finances,
was eventually overwhelmed
and broke under the strain and had to
go away for a complete rest. With no
one trained to carry on in my absence
it was necessary to cease publication of
Bradley: His Book and in order to insure
delivery on time of the catalogs
and other commercial printing, forms
were lifted from the presses and transferred
to the University Press at Cambridge;
and the Wayside Press as a unit,
including name and goodwill and my
own services, soon followed—a hurried
and ill-conceived arrangement that
eventually proved so mutually unsatisfactory
that I faded out of the picture.
This was a heart-breaking decision
for me, and one that but for the wisdom
of my wife and her rare understanding
and nursing could have resulted
in a long and serious illness. No
printing and publishing business ever
started with finer promise and more
youthful enthusiasm than did the
Wayside Press and the publication of
Bradley: His Book, that are now just
memories.
Among other magazine covers designed
during this period there is one
for a Christmas number of Century. It
brings a request for a back-cover design.
Both designs are in wood-cut style
and require four printings—black and
three flat colors. The DeVinne Press,
familiar only with process colors, hesitates
to do the printing. That issue carries
a Will Bradley credit. When John
Lane imports sheets of the Studio,
edits an American supplement and
publishes an American edition, I design
the covers.
INTERLUDE IN NEW YORK
And now we are in the Gay Nineties,
the mid Gay Nineties, when a
hair-cloth sofa adorns every parlor and
over-decoration is running riot; when
our intelligentsia are reading Anthony
Hope’s Prisoner of Zenda, Stanley
Weyman’s Gentlemen of France and
George McCutcheon’s Graustark; when
William Morris is printing Chaucer,
with illustrations by Burne-Jones, and
Aubrey Beardsley is providing an ample
excuse for the Yellow Book; when
LeGallienne’s Golden Girl is brought
over here by John Lane and established
in a bookshop on lower Fifth Avenue,
and Bliss Carman is singing his songs
of rare beauty; when the Fifth Avenue
Hotel and the nearby Algonquin are
flourishing Madison Square hostelries;
when Stern’s and McCreery are across
the street from Putnam’s and Eden
Musee, and the modern skyscraper is
only an architect’s vague dream.
Into this glad era a young man steps
off a Twenty-third Street horse-car. This
young man, now an ambitious designer,
printer, editor and publisher, is
yourself.
At the age of twenty-seven you are
sporting the encouraging beginnings
of a mustache, still too thin to permit
of twirling at the tips. There is also the
brave suggestion of a Vandyke. These
embellishments are brown, as is also
true of abundant and wavy hair of artistic
and poetic length. Your waistcoat
is buttoned high, and your soft, white
collar is adorned with a five-inch-wide
black cravat tied in a flowing bowknot.
Your short jacket and tight-fitting pants
quite possibly need pressing. A black
derby and well-polished shoes complete
your distinguished appearance. Many
scrubbings have failed to remove all
traces of printing ink from beneath and
at the base of your finger nails.
You are on your way to Scribner’s. A
few moments later we find you seated
in a leather-upholstered chair in the
editorial department of this famous
publishing house. You are waiting patiently
and hopefully while an editor
is penning a note of introduction to
Richard Harding Davis, the popular
writer of romantic fiction.
Now, the note safely bestowed in
your breast pocket, the envelope showing
above a liberal display of silk handkerchief
and thus plainly in view of
passing pedestrians who would doubtless
be filled with envy did they but
know its contents, you are crossing
Madison Square Park on your way to
one of the Twenties, where Mr. Davis
has his lodging. You reach the house,
walk up the steps and rap.
“Is Mr. Davis at home? Why ...
why you are Mr. Davis. I ... I didn’t
recognize you at first. Seeing you portrayed
in Mr. Gibson’s illustrations to
some of your romances—”
“And now seeing me in this bathrobe
you naturally were a bit confused?”
“Yes, I was.”
“I’m not at all surprised.”
“Here, Mr. Davis, is a letter, I mean
a note introducing me to you.”
“How about coming inside while I
read the note?”
“That’s ... that’s what I was hoping
you’d say, Mr. Davis.”
And now our favorite romantic author
is seated with one leg thrown over
the corner of a table. “Of course. Of
course,” he exclaims, cordially, “I
know your posters and your cover designs.
And now you are starting a magazine
and you would like one of my
stories for your first number?”
“Yes, Mr. Davis. That is what I
should like.”
“Of course I’ll write a story for you.
I shall be happy to write a story; and I
have one in mind that I think will be
just the kind you will like for your new
magazine.”
“Well, Mr. Davis, that’s something
that’s just about as wonderful as anything
that could possibly happen to
anybody. Only ... only—”
“Only you are not really started and
your magazine hasn’t begun to earn
money, and so you are wondering—”
“Yes, Mr. Davis—”
“Well, lad,” and now Mr. Davis has
his arm about your shoulders. “Well,
lad, just go home to your Wayside Press
print-shop in Springfield and don’t do
any worrying about payment. Sometime
when you are rich and feel like
sending me something,—why, any
amount you happen to send will be
quite all right with me—and good luck
go with you.”
(At this point it should be stated that
when a small check goes to Mr. Davis,
with an apology for it being just the
first installment and that another check
will go a month later, the return mail
brings a pleasant letter of thanks and
an acknowledgment of payment in
full.)
And now, as you are recrossing Madison
Square Park, your head so high
in the clouds that not even the tips of
your toes are touching the earth, all
the birds in the neighborhood, including
the sparrows, have gathered and
are singing glad anthems of joy; and
all the trees that an hour ago were just
in green leaf are now billowed with
beautiful flowers.
Well, that is that, and of course you
are now sitting pretty. But presently
we see you on a Fifth Avenue bus, returning
from Fifty-ninth Street where,
in a sumptuous Victorian apartment
overlooking Central Park you have
asked William Dean Howells for a
story—and on this incident we will
charitably draw the curtain.
Meanwhile Bradley: His Book met
with kind reception—advance orders
for the second number being: Brentano’s
New York, six hundred copies,
Old Corner Bookstore, Boston, four
hundred, etc.; the first issue being out
of print except for the supply being
held for new subscribers. Pratt, Sixth
Avenue, New York, sent check to pay
for one hundred subscriptions.
There being no joy in doing today
what one did yesterday, or what another
did yesterday; and creative design
in which there is no joy or laughter
being of little worth, a new lay-out and
change of stock were provided for each
issue of Bradley: His Book; the fifth
number started a change of format.
But as a business tycoon Will Bradley
was a lamentable failure despite
this auspicious start—a story I have
already told.
NEW FIELDS
At the turn of the century, after
saying a sad farewell to fond hopes and
feeling older at thirty-two than is now
true at eighty-two, I finally gave up trying
to be a publisher and printer. While
covers for Collier’s were bridging an
awkward gap Edward Bok appeared on
the scene and commissioned the laying-out
of an editorial prospectus for the
Ladies’ Home Journal, the printing to
be done at the Curtis plant. For this I
used a special casting of an old face not
then on the market, Mr. Phinney of the
Boston branch of ATF telling me it
was to be called Wayside. When the
prospectus was finished Mr. Bok invited
me to his home just outside Philadelphia
and there it was arranged that
I design eight full pages for the Journal—eight
full pages of house interiors.
These were followed by a series of house
designs. Finding it difficult to keep to
merely four walls I added dozens of
suggestions for individual pieces of
furniture—this being the “Mission”
period when such designing required
no knowledge of periods, only imagination.
Then Mr. Bok suggested that
I move to Rose Valley, start a shop to
make furniture and other forms of handicraft
in line with designs shown in
my Journal drawings; and assume art
editorship of House Beautiful, which
he was considering buying. But having
failed in one business venture, there
was little excuse to embark on another.
The roman and italic face, used later
for Peter Poodle, Toy Maker to the
King, was now designed for American
Type Founders; and while building a
home in Concord, adjoining Hawthorne’s
“Wayside,” and working every
day in the open, regaining lost health,
the story, Castle Perilous, was written—also
outdoors. These activities were
followed by a request from Mr. Nelson,
president of American Type Founders,
that I undertake a campaign of type
display and publicity for the Foundry,
with a promise to cut any decorative or
type designs that I might supply, also
to purchase as many Miehle presses as
might be required for the printing—an
invitation to which I replied with
an enthusiastic “Yes!” [In this way
Bradley’s famous set of Chap Books was
inaugurated—Ed.]
During this type-display and foundry-publicity
period Castle Perilous, as
a three-part serial, with illustrations
made afternoons following mornings
spent with American Type Founders
at Communipaw, was published in
Collier’s; and in 1907 I became that
publication’s art editor. Sometime during
the intervening years—I can’t
remember where or when—time was
found for designing several Collier’s
covers.
From 1910 to 1915, again with my
own studios, I took care of the art editorship
of a group of magazines: Good
Housekeeping, Century, Metropolitan
and others, also an assignment from
the Batten Advertising Agency and,
as recreation, wrote eleven Tales of
Noodleburg for St. Nicholas.
THE MAGAZINE WORLD— COLLIER’S AND OTHERS
On a Saturday afternoon in 1907,
believing myself alone, for the offices
and plant had closed at twelve, I was
standing at a drafting table making
up the Thanksgiving issue of Collier’s
when Mr. Collier entered. He became
intrigued with proofs of decorative
units being combined for initial-letter
and page borders, as had earlier been
done with similar material in designing
a cover, and asked for some to take
home and play with on the morrow.
Robert Collier was that kind of a boss—a
joy!
Of the Thanksgiving issue Royal Cortissoz
wrote: “This week’s number has
has just turned up and I cannot refrain
from sending you my congratulations.
The cover is bully; it’s good decoration,
it’s appropriate, it’s everything that is
first rate. The decorations all through
are charming. More power to your elbow.
It does my heart good to see Collier’s
turning up in such splendid
shape.” There were other favorable
comments—but no noticeable jump in
newsstand sales.
My joining Collier’s staff has been
under circumstances quite exceptional,
even for that somewhat pioneer period
in which the streamlined editorial and
publishing efficiency of today was only
a vague dream. I had been asked to
give the weekly a new typographic
lay-out. When this was ready Mr. Collier
suggested that I take the art editorship.
He said I would be given his office
in the editorial department and he
would occupy one in the book department,
where he could devote more
time to that branch of the business, an
arrangement he knew would please his
father. I was to carry the title of art
editor but in reality would be responsible
for make-up and other details that
had been demanding too much of his
own time.
At the age of twelve I had begun to
learn that type display is primarily for
the purpose of selling something. In
1889, as a free-lance artist in Chicago,
I had discovered that to sell something
was also the prime purpose of designs
for book and magazine covers and for
posters. Later I was to realize that salesmanship
possessed the same importance
in editorial headings and blurbs.
These never-to-be-forgotten lessons,
taught by experience and emphasized
by the sales results of the publicity
campaign I had lately conducted for
the American Typefounders Company,
would classify that Thanksgiving number
as a newsstand disappointment.
However, it pleased Robert Collier
who, even to hold a guaranteed circulation—when
a loss would mean rebates
to advertisers—would not permit
the use of stories by such popular writers
as Robert Chambers and Zane Gray
nor the popular illustrations of such
artists as Howard Chandler Christy!
My tenure at Collier’s gave me a new
experience. There I always worked under
conditions inviting and stimulating
imagination, and there I probably unknowingly
shattered many a precious
editorial precedent.
Collier’s had one of the early color
presses akin to those used on newspapers.
We decided to use this to print
illustrations for a monthly “Household
Number” carrying extra stories. The
editorial back-list showed no fiction
suitable for color; the awarding of one
thousand dollars a month for the best
story, judgment based upon literary
merit, had resulted in the purchase of
nothing but literary fog. Mr. Collier
told Charles Belmont Davis, fiction editor,
to order what was necessary. Charley
asked me who could write the type
of story needed. I said, “Gouverneur
Morris.” Mr. Morris, then in California,
sent a list of titles accompanied by
the request: “Ask Will Bradley to take
his pick.” We chose The Wife’s Coffin,
a pirate tale. During an editorial dinner
at his home Robert Collier read
a letter from his father, then out of the
city, in which P. F. (his father) wrote:
“If you continue printing issues like
this last our subscription-book salesmen
report the weekly will sell itself.” Robert
said: “Mr. Bradley can make this
kind of a number because he knows the
people from whom the salesmen obtain
subscriptions. I don’t, and any similar
undertaking by me would be false and
a failure.”
During this period of art editorship,
and following the lay-out of a booklet,
Seven Steps and a Landing, for Condé
Nast, advertising manager of Collier’s,
a color-spread for Cluett-Peabody, lay-outs
for the subscription-book department,
and pieces of printing for Mr.
Collier’s social activities (also a request
from Medill McCormick that I go to
Chicago and supply a new typographic
make-up for the Tribune; a suggestion
from Mr. Chichester, president of the
Century Company, that if I were ever
free he would like to talk with me about
taking the art editorship of Century;
and from Mr. Schweindler, printer of
Cosmopolitan and other magazines, an
expression of the hope that I could be
obtained for laying-out a new publication),
Robert Collier proposed the
building of a pent-house studio on the
roof near his father’s office where, relieved
of much detail, I could give additional
thought to all branches of the
business. This promised too little excitement,
and instead I rented a studio-office
on the forty-fifth floor of the then
nearly-finished Metropolitan Tower.
At this time Condé Nast had just purchased
Vogue, then a small publication
showing few changes from when I had
contributed to it in the early Nineties.
In this new environment I handled
the art editorship and make-up of
Metropolitan, Century, Success, Pearson’s
and the new National Weekly,
which was given a format like that of
present-day weeklies and a make-up
that included rules. Caslon was used
for all headings except for Pearson’s
which, using a specially-drawn character,
were lettered by hand.
Among some discarded Metropolitan
covers I found one by Stanislaus—the
head of a girl wearing a white-and-red-striped
toboggan cap against a pea-green
background. By substituting the
toboggan-cap red for the pea-green
background, with the artist’s approval,
we obtained a poster effect that dominated
the newsstands and achieved an
immediate sellout.
ENTER MR. HEARST
In the Nineties I had been asked
to provide a lay-out for the Sunday
magazine section of Mr. Hearst’s New
York paper. I could not do this properly
except at my Wayside Press. This
the typographic union would not permit,
but in the years that followed, I
enjoyed an intermittent part-time association
with Mr. Hearst—working on
magazines, papers and motion pictures.
One of these assignments was Good
Housekeeping. This magazine had been
published by the Phelps Company, and
had achieved a circulation of 250,000
copies. Additional sales would tax the
plant and necessitate more equipment
and the magazine was sold to William
Randolph Hearst. I was asked to design
a new lay-out and to take over the art
editorship during its formative period.
For the new venture Mr. Hearst ordered
a Winston Churchill serial—Inside the
Cup if my memory is not at fault. Mr.
Tower, the editor brought from Springfield,
said this would mean taking out
departments and a loss of half the circulation—but
the departments came
out, the serial went in, Mr. Tower resigned,
Mr. Bigelow became editor, and
circulation mounted into the millions!
In 1915 Mr. Hearst asked me if I
could arrange to give him all of my
time and art-supervise production of
the motion picture serial, Patria, starring
Irene Castle. I agreed.
In 1920, after writing, staging and
directing Moongold, a Pierrot fantasy
photographed against black velvet, using
properties but no pictorial backgrounds—an
independent production
launched with a special showing at
the Criterion Theater in Times Square,
I returned to Mr. Hearst in an art
and typographic assignment including
magazines, newspapers, motion pictures
and a trip to Europe where commissions
were placed with Edmund
Dulac, Arthur Rackham and Frank
Brangwyn. Somewhere along the trail
Spoils, a drama in verse, and Launcelot
and the Ladies, a novel, were written—the
former printed in Hearst’s International
and the latter destined to
carry a Harper & Brothers imprint—but
not to become a best seller.
Another Hearst project in the early
Twenties was a new format and the
creation of a typographic lay-out for
Hearst’s International. For the lay-out,
the headings of which would have to
be different from those provided earlier
for Cosmopolitan, I designed a set of
initial letters, later catalogued by the
foundry and called “Vanity.” Knowing
that Mr. Hearst would want to use
portrait heads for covers and that they
would all have to be made by a single
artist whose style did not permit of confusion
with the Harrison Fisher heads
used on Cosmopolitan, I approached
Benda with the suggestion that if he
would use one color scheme for both
head and background he could probably
get the contract. On seeing the first
Benda cover Mr. Hearst asked how it
happened that this was the only Benda
head he ever liked! He was told, and
authorized a contract.
These Hearst International changes
led to my being asked to give thought
to strengthening Cosmopolitan headings
in 1923. The request came on a
Monday morning. The issue then in
hand closed at Cuneo’s in Chicago on
the following Friday. Mr. Hearst never
urged hurry, but early results were appreciated.
Obtaining a current dummy
with page proofs, I headed for the ATF
composing room at Communipaw, N. J.
About half-past four I had personally
set, without justification, every heading
in the issue—using Caslon in roman
and italic in the manner it had been
assembled by uninhibited compositors
of the Colonial period. That night, at
home, I trimmed and mounted proofs
in a new dummy. The mixing of roman
and italic in radically different sizes
and with consideration for desired emphasis,
with possibly a 96- or 120-point
roman cap starting a 48- or 60-point
italic word, resulted just as I had visualized
while the type was being set in
fragmentary form. No changes were
necessary, and every minute of the afternoon
had been good fun. Tuesday I
left for Chicago; Wednesday was spent
at Cuneo’s where, using this reprint
copy, all headings were set, made-up
with text pages, and proved; Thursday
the new lay-outs were enthusiastically
approved in New York; Friday,
at Cuneo’s, Cosmopolitan’s managing
editor closed the forms according to
schedule. It had been a grand
lark—and
within a few weeks that free
style of typography began to appear in
national advertising.
One morning a request came from
Mr. Hearst to use color at every editorial
opening in Hearst’s International—a
startling innovation at a time when
illustrators were accustomed to drawing
or painting only for reproduction
in black and white or for an occasional
insert in process colors. Closing day on
the current dummy was only two weeks
away. With the aid of editorial substitutions
it was thought we could make
the date. Taking a dummy showing possible
signature distribution of colors, I
made the round of studios to find artists
agreeable to the use of one extra color.
After ten days’ work I arrived at the
Blackstone Hotel in Chicago, where Mr.
Hearst was holding conferences. I had
an appointment for noon of the next
day. Spending the intervening time at
Cuneo’s, I finished the dummy and appeared
for my appointment, asking at
the hotel that Mr. Hearst’s secretary be
informed. The clerk shook his head;
orders had been given that no phone
calls were to be put through to that
floor. The manager was called, I pointed
to my brief-case lying on the counter,
and said that Mr. Hearst was waiting
for its contents. The manager took a
chance, made the call, and I was told
to go right up.
The conference was in a large room
with window seats overlooking the lake.
We sat on one of these seats while the
dummy was viewed—page by page—twice.
Mr. Hearst was pleased and asked
if he might keep the dummy so he could
enjoy it at his leisure. I told him the
closing date would not permit this. He
understood, and saying so in an appreciative
manner suggesting a pat on the
back, he sent me off to catch the afternoon
limited so I could reach New York
in the morning. There I was shown a
wire evidently written and sent as soon
as I had left. It was to Ray Long, editor-in-chief,
saying: “Shall be pleased if
future numbers are as attractive as the
dummy I have just seen.” That is the
“Chief”—always stimulating and appreciative!
TOWARDS A NEW STYLE
After retiring from the Hearst
organization I was recalled and asked
to go to Chicago and see if something
could not be done to improve the printing
of illustrations. A trip to Chicago
was not necessary, there being an obvious
change long overdue in the New
York art departments, and not in the
Cuneo printing plant. This fact was
reported to Mr. Hathaway, who had
relayed the request from Mr. Hearst in
California; but Chicago was in the cards
and I went. Upon my return a written
report, the substance of which had received
Mr. Cuneo’s approval, was given
to Mr. Long. In lay language, briefly
expressed, it said: “Illustrators should
be cautioned about an over-use of fussy
and valueless detail and asked to restrict
their compositions to only so
much of the figure or figures, backgrounds
and accessories as are required
for dramatic story-telling and effective
picture-making; requested to forego a
full palette when subjects are to be presented
in only one or two colors, and to
simplify renderings and avoid so many
broken tones. Full-page and spread reproductions
will then not only solve
your press-room worries but create a
new and finer type of magazine.”
Mr. Long read the report—thoughtfully,
I believe—talked with his art
editors, and finally decided the suggestions
were too radical. But had Mr.
Hearst been in New York, and had the
report gone to him, his Cosmopolitan
and Good Housekeeping would have
led the field in adopting principles of
illustration that are now universal.
When asked to provide a new lay-out
for McClure’s magazine, then a recent
purchase by Mr. Hearst, I reveled
in an opportunity to apply the suggestions
presented in the report. Making
photographic enlargements of available
illustrations and eliminating all
non-essentials I used full pages and
spreads and prepared the dummy with
a new note in typographic headings.
Ray Long looked at it and gasped.
“Will,” he said, “a magazine like that
would outshine and humble Cosmo.”
Mr. Hearst was still in California. Too
bad! I had made suggestions of worth
and Mr. Hearst, running true to form,
would have weighed their values—not
for a revived McClure’s, perhaps, but
for his other magazines.
* * * * *
And now there is little more to tell,
unless you want to listen to the way
I enthuse about our present-day illustrators,
their delightfully imaginative
composition and masterly use of color.
They are grand campaigners! God love
them and the editorial lads who give
them opportunity and encouragement.
They are making an old man mighty
happy—yes, making him envy their
fun while he is relegated to sheer laziness
in the siesta sun of California.
Before final retirement I managed to
lay out a new Delineator, a new Sunday
magazine for the Herald Tribune
(about 1925), and a lay-out suggested
by early New England news-sheets for
the Yale Daily, and ... well, I guess
that’s about all. No! Listen. In these
last three lay-outs I continued to use
my beloved Caslon!
TODAY IN 1954
Do conditions today give the ambitious
young designer and printer the
same opportunities I enjoyed back in
the late Victorian period? Not the same,
of course, but even greater.
While it is true that the Nineties
were literally made to order for a boy
who had acquired only such training
as was to be had in the sparsely equipped
print-ship of a weekly newspaper
in a pioneer iron-mining town, today is
made to order for the ambitious young
designer and printer who is availing
himself of the training to be had by
even the small-town beginner.
Back in my boyhood days a study of
such examples of design and printing
as now reach even the most remote out-posts
of the printing industry, would
have taught me more than I learned
during a year in the art department,
so-called, of the publishing house of
Rand McNally in Chicago.
The inspiration to be derived from
the text and advertising pages of our
standard magazines, together with the
creative art of school children and the
art magazines, quite unknown at the
turn of the century, supplies a liberal
education teaching the beginner how
to appreciate and use the printing and
designing advantages of today.
What are these advantages, and why
do they open a door to exceptional opportunities
not known in the Nineties?
First, and perhaps of greatest importance,
is the typographic consciousness
now prevalent, especially in the advertising
and business world, where it is
universally recognized that effective
typography and design increase sales.
Another advantage is to be found in
the significant mechanical advances of
the last few years, the significance of
the growing importance of offset printing,
presenting so many opportunities
yet to be grasped by the designer. And,
an infant industry now, but one of vast
possibilities, is commercial silk-screen
printing.
But upon my return to New York
after many years in California I think
my greatest thrill came when I witnessed
the mechanical setting of type
by photography. Always I have liked
the feel of putting type into the stick,
and I liked to see the composition growing
on the galley. In all my years of
working with type I have never made
a preparatory lay-out, except when the
composition had to be done by another,
which happened only on magazine
headings after a style had been determined
in advance.
But this is an age of lay-outs, and in
this new photographic process with
the use of photographic enlargements,
there are possibilities for display composition
of any required size, and great
variety, presenting intriguing possibilities
for the creative designer and
typographer.
All such steadily growing advances
present opportunities which were nonexistent
back in my own youthful days.
Together with the superior training
enjoyed by the youth of today, they
have changed conditions into a new
world fraught with wonderful opportunities
far beyond any I knew in the
Nineties.
w b
Short Hills, New Jersey
May, 1954
AN AFTERWORD
Few names in the annals of American typography
gleam as brightly as Will Bradley’s.
Even fewer have made so varied a graphic contribution
as this gentle man, now eighty-six
and revered as dean of American typographers.
In May, 1954, he was awarded the coveted
gold medal of the American Institute of
Graphic Arts. The citation, necessarily brief
around the rim, recalled one phase of his accomplishments:
“To Will Bradley for a half-century
of typographic achievement.”
A more revealing summary would be found
in the commendation of the Rounce and Coffin
Club award, presented at the Huntington
Library in October, 1950. The Club held its
special meeting to honor Mr. Bradley (then
living in nearby Pasadena), and preview the
Huntington retrospective Bradley exhibition,
which included examples of his book design
and illustration; articles and stories written;
cover and poster design; type and type ornament
for American Type Founders; and printing.
Some seventy items were displayed, ranging
from the Ishpeming (Michigan) Iron Ore
masthead, designed in 1886, to a Christmas
greeting drawn in 1948.
The award, for distinguished contributions
to fine printing, read: “Because he has for
seventy years been a source of creative inspiration
in all the varied arts to which he has
put his mind and hand; Because he found
American printing at the end of the last century
in a dreary condition, held up to it the
examples of the early colonial printers, revived
the simplicity and dignity of Pickering and
caused to flourish again the use of Caslon and
the other old style types; Because he created
a wealth of new ornamentation and by his own
demonstration introduced many original uses
of ink, paper and bookbinding; Because he redesigned
the American magazine and gave to
it the charm of a new outer garment with each
appearance; Because he cast the illumination
of his talents upon the art of the poster, the
children’s book, and even the motion picture;
Because his great direct aid and even greater
inspiration have been acknowledged by many
American typographers, including such leaders
as Frederic W. Goudy, W. A. Dwiggins,
Oswald Cooper and T. M. Cleland; And finally
because he has not ceased to be for the printers
of our day, as for those of two previous generations,
an inexhaustible fountain of kindly encouragement
and new discoveries.”
Despite their glow, these words spell a clear
appraisal of this man’s talents and graphic
spirit. Ahead of his times, Mr. Bradley proved
a pace-setting pioneer whose work was so fresh
that its vitality is as measurable in the specimens
of Strathmore and ATF, as in the Hearst
periodical pages. Particularly when compared
with that of his contemporaries, as Walter
Dorwin Teague points out in his perceptive
introduction.
Mr. Bradley was born in Boston in 1868. His
father, a newspaper cartoonist, died when he
was eight. Four years later his mother moved
to Ishpeming, a small iron-mining town in
northern Michigan. Here, he became a printer’s
devil on the local newspaper.
The brief chronology of events in his legendary
career (pp. 92-96) reveals pertinent details
of the early years as art department apprentice
with Rand McNally, Chicago map-makers, and
as free-lance artist. He soon won recognition
for his cover designs and drawings for Harper’s
Weekly and The Inland Printer, and posters
for Stone and Kimball’s Chap Book.
In 1895 he returned to New England to set
up his Wayside Press in Springfield, Mass. He
was twenty-seven then, had just designed his
first sample book for Strathmore, and developed
publishing plans for Bradley: His Book.
Volume one, number one was dated May,
1896; the subscription price, one dollar the
year. The cover was a poster treatment of a
tree on a grassy hilltop; the frontispiece was
by Edward Penfield, himself the subject of a
lead article. Center spread pages, decidedly in
the Kelmscott manner, were devoted to a poem
by Harriet Monroe, with a floriated border
surrounding the text in caps. The body type
was the ATF version of the Morris Golden
face.
Bradley: His Book was planned as an art and
literary magazine, and also “a technical journal
for those engaged in the art of printing.”
Seven issues comprised its life span; the first
four varied slightly from the initial 5¼ × 10½
inch size; the last three (of volume two) were
8 × 11 inches. A note indicated that “advertisements
are newly prepared for each number
without extra cost.” Products promoted included
writing and printing papers, type, ink,
periodicals, a “talking” machine, auto tires,
baking and washing powder, and soap. A further
note evidenced concern for design and
typography, mentioning that “advertisements
may be appropriately illustrated by any artist,
provided the character of design and execution
are suitable for pages of this magazine. Text
on electrotypes will be reset in type from
Bradley: His Book fonts.”
From this point on, the Bradley career
moved into high gear. In 1900 he was commissioned
by the Ladies’ Home Journal to design
eight full pages of house interiors; he also designed
a roman and italic type.
Three years later, at thirty-five, he headed a
typographic and publicity campaign for ATF
(1903), and wrote and designed their famous
Chap Books. In 1907 he was art editor of Collier’s;
and from 1910 to 1915 the simultaneous
art editor for Good Housekeeping, Metropolitan,
Success, Pearson’s and National Post.
Then in his early forties, he dipped into the
field of the motion picture as art supervisor of
serials for William Randolph Hearst. In 1918
he was writing and directing motion pictures
independently. Two years later he rejoined
the Hearst organization as art and typographic
supervisor for their newspapers, magazines
and motion pictures. In 1930, age sixty-two,
he retired to southern California.
* * * * *
Of the Bradley renaissance a quarter-century
later, a single design accomplishment seems
significant: The 1954 Portfolio in the Strathmore
distinguished designer series, begun in
California in 1951, completed early in 1954
and introduced at a luncheon sponsored jointly
by the Typophiles and Strathmore, held at the
New York University Club. The date was just
a few months short of sixty years from that
significant day when the first paper-use specimen
was issued by Strathmore in Mittineague.
Among the speakers paying tribute were
Edwin H. Carpenter of the Huntington Library;
Thomas Maitland Cleland, designer
and artist; A. Hyatt Mayor of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art; Frederic G. Melcher, dean
of American publishers; Carl Purington Rollins,
printer emeritus to Yale University;
Walter Dorwin Teague, industrial designer,
F. Nelson Bridgham, Strathmore president,
and the undersigned reporter, who served as
toastmaster.
* * * * *
The first-hand account of the fabulous years
recorded in this book has been assembled from
separate papers written by Mr. Bradley at different
times since 1949. No attempt has been
made to unify the varying tenses, or modify
the sometimes first-person sometimes second-person
style of the author in these different
memoirs. An attempt has been made to connect
these papers into one continuing narrative.
To this end, some editing of over-lapping
material and cutting of repetitious passages
seemed essential.
The sources: A booklet titled Memories:
1875-1895, printed for the Typophiles and
other friends by Grant Dahlstrom in Pasadena,
1949; another titled Picture of a Period, or
Memories of the Gay Nineties, printed for the
Rounce and Coffin Club of Los Angeles (also by
Dahlstrom) in 1950; the Huntington Library
hand list, Will Bradley: His Work, 1951 (again
printed by Dahlstrom). The fourth source
item is “Will Bradley’s Magazine Memories,”
from the Journal of the American Institute of
Graphic Arts (Vol. III, No. 1, 1950).
Like most Typophile projects, this has been
in process for many months. Though obviously
a cooperative effort, much of the muscle and
mind needed to shape and form it has been
contributed by Peter Beilenson. He not only
attended to the design and printing at his Peter
Pauper Press, but also helped materially in its
editing.
The alluring prospect of additional illustrations
for these pages was reluctantly passed
by. Our physical limitations and resources
proved inadequate to reflect the qualities, and
the scope and variety of Mr. Bradley’s work.
Examples of his colorful designing and illustrating
may be seen in the comprehensive collections
at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York, and the Huntington Library, San
Marino, California. A brief selection is shown
in The Penrose Annual, 1955.
Despite his years, Mr. Bradley generously
offered to develop the typographic plan of this
book, and rewrite the entire text to further
illumine certain passages. He also suggested he
make new drawings to replace those on chapter
pages, which were drawn in 1949 to enhance
the solid text pages of the Memories
booklet (The type ornaments on these pages
were drawn in 1953 for ATF.) This considerable
task seemed an unnecessary burden, particularly
since Mr. Bradley had reflected with
characteristic charm and candor the recollections
of his great years. Like every artist and
craftsman of stature, he remains his own
severest critic.
Numerous other friends have helped with
this book: Among them, Arthur W. Rushmore
and Edmund B. Thompson in its early planning;
Robert B. Clark, Jr., and his colleagues
at Strathmore; Nicholas A. Meyer, David
Silvé, Stevens L. Watts and Robert H. Wessmann—each
has been quick to answer every
call, as has Will Bradley. For myself, it has
been a memorable and rewarding book-making
experience to work with these good friends, as
it is a privilege to record here the indebtedness
of The Typophiles for their invaluable and
generous assistance.
Paul A. Bennett
