12/22/03

New York. An impresario in the making. Among the prima donnas. Purchase of the Washington Sunday Herald and National Intelligencer. I start the Washington Morning Herald. The panic of '93.

It was the fall of 1892 that we made our home in one of the apartment houses on Fifty-second Street. Next door lived a theatrical man, Charles E. Bolt, with his wife and children, a son, Campbell Bolt, who had become a New York lawyer, and a daughter, Enid. A friendship sprang up between Mrs. Bolt and Ida, and we learned that Bolt was then promoting a series of Sunday night concerts at the Lenox Lyceum, for which enterprise he was looking for an “angel” to furnish the wherewith. I became interested in the proposition and advanced some two thousand dollars necessary to get the concert inaugurated. Bolt had no money, but in return for my investment I was to receive a payment of $150 a week and a share in the profits.

On the opening night, which was heralded with great éclat, the house was crowded to the doors to hear Seidel’s orchestra of eighty pieces and such stars as Melba, Nordica, Campanini, Fischer, and many other great artists of the day. Mr. Bolt conducted my wife and I behind the scenes, where he formally introduced us to Madame Melba and Campanini, who had just arrived. Melba was regal in her appearance, but at the time I did not consider her the beauty that she was reputed to be. Campanini was a handsome fellow and a pleasant conversationalist. I liked him, and he in nowise the unapproachable chap he was said to be. My company paid him $400 for each night’s performance, while Fischer got $450. Bolt told me that Melba received $600 and Nordica $550. Seidel’s orchestra cost $600 for each performance. Besides these stars there were other luminaries of lesser degree, so that the box office did not show much profit, although the receipts ranged from $4000 to $4500 for each Sunday performance, and after the first payment of $150 to me I received no further return on my investment.

After a run of several months Bolt put on an opera “parsifal,” giving performances in Philadelphia, Wilmington, Baltimore, and Washington, chartering for the occasion a special train to carry the company. My wife and I accompanied the troupe, and while the run was a success from a financial standpoint, Bolt always had a plausible excuse for not reimbursing me. His Nemesis never did overtake him, however, for although on returning to New York to resume the concerts he was unable to renew his lease on the Lyceum, which put him out of the opera business, the Spanish war came on, and with a powerful connection with the administration, he and Abner McKinley secured a lucrative contract to supply the army with “fresh” meat, from which he emerged with a fortune that enabled him to buy a palatial residence on Seventy-second Street, New York.

The loss of my investment in New York and the fact that my wife was a Washington girl impelled us to move to the capital city, where my thoughts naturally reverted to the newspaper business. The era of typesetting by machinery and the great Sunday editions was only just starting, so I thought there would be plenty of time, if begun in a modest way, to develop with the crowd. The Sunday Herald and National Intelligencer, a weekly newspaper of twenty-four pages, owned by Soule & Hensey, was then on the market. The national Intelligencer was the oldest newspaper in Washington, and was doing business when Washington was invaded by the British in 1814. It had been merged with the Sunday Herald and was enjoying a wide circulation, with offices on the corner of Eleventh and E Streets, the site of the present Hotel Harrington.

In less than ten days after our arrival the paper passed into our possession. My wife was a natural-born politician and versatile writer, and when she took the editorial chair with myself as business manager, we were sure that the road was open to success. In addition to our large acquaintance with the statesmen “on the hill,” my wife’s brother-in-law, Robert A. Hathaway of Missouri, and a cousin, Thomas Updegraf of Iowa, were both in Congress, while Wade Hampton, the war governor of South Carolina, was one of our most intimate friends. Our staff included Clarence B. Rheem, later of the firm Swartzel, Rheem & Hensey Company, as dramatic critic, John F. Doyle, sporting editor, and several local writers.

The paper was not a moneymaker, in spite of a reasonable circulation. After continuing the paper as a weekly for a year, the competition of the big dailies began to have its effect, and I decided to turn the paper into a daily. Thereupon, the first issue of the Washington Morning Herald made its appearance on October 7, 1893. It consisted of four pages, six columns to the page, and sold for one cent. Its politics were Democratic, and it printed all the news up to the hour of going to press in a much more condensed form than was usual with other morning newspapers. The paper started with a circulation of 5000 copies, and from the first morning of its publication it was a favorite with the newsboys. For quite a while the sheet looked as if it would make a go. However, small as it was, the expense was enormous. There apparently were not enough Democrats to make the paper self-supporting, and although Mr. Cleveland, who was then in office, issued orders to the department to use the Herald for the government printing, even this support failed to provide enough revenue to put the paper on a paying basis. Therefore, when a syndicate made me a cash offer I accepted the inevitable. The Herald is still running, and has grown to be one of the most influential newspapers of the nation.