History of Oregon Literature/Chapter 22
CHAPTER 22
Harvey W. Scott
A great nature is a seed. . . . Thus it is that man is the only being that cannot die. . . . The path of glory does not end in the grave. It passes through it to larger opportunities of service—into a spirit that it stimulates and feeds, and into the spirit that survives it, in men's minds forever.
HARVEY W. SCOTT
No book is as important as a big daily newspaper the day the paper is published. Almost any good book is more important the day afterwards. The man who writes an editorial writes literature of no longevity; there is convenient forgetfulness of the one today for the one tomorrow. It may have a long existence for the student or antiquarian, but for the average man it is as perishable as a banana.
The writings of Horace Greely once had the widest influence of any writings in America but out of their great mass most people of today remember only "Go west, young man, and grow up with the country." So it is with Harvey W. Scott. There are still thousands living who used to read his editorials, but how many can quote him, how many carry in the depths of their appreciation the felicity of his language, how many find comfort in the remembrance of his philosophy? A newspaper is unmatched as an agency for impressing a personality upon contemporary life; but it has no reach in time; it affords a poor liaison with posterity.
Harvey W. Scott came closer than any other man to being a successor to John McLoughlin. His ipse dixits had almost the same force and their reach was greater. The vast region of Old Oregon Territory, politically separated, he rejoined in fealty to his imperious journalism.
The professor of rhetoric at the University of Oregon used his editorials in the classroom as examples of pure English prose; candidates for governor came humbly to his office, anxiously watching his countenance for a favorable sign; leaders in social reform grew timid and postponed their plans when he frowned, as he often did; men died and he gave them a column or a paragraph and that was the world's appraisal of their deeds and their lives. He thundered through the columns of the Oregonian and the reverberations sounded from the Siskiyous to Puget Sound, from Astoria to Boise. He held in his strong grasp for 45 years the most powerful thing in Oregon—the public opinion of that broad commonwealth and of a wide fringe around it.
Does not such a man go on living beyond the grave? Does not such a personality continue in perpetuity? It has been 25 years since the impressive funeral ceremonies of the Scottish Rite Masons in an auditorium filled with people, and that quarter of a century does not give an entirely affirmative answer.
His life possessed a tremendous momentum, to carry it far beyond the tomb, and he left, more than most men, continuing aids for the extension of his fame into the future: Wealth, a newspaper which he made great, prestige in the recollections of a multitude. Selections from his writings were published in books and a bronze statue of heroic size was placed in Mt. Tabor Park in Portland. Perhaps a million people still know who he was.
It is a fame, however, which is too formal and aloof and already too much requiring adventitious promotion to be a literary fame—which receives its perpetuation in the hearts of men. Jesse Applegate, in the misfortunes of his old age, had to herd sheep, but A Day with the Cow-Column keeps gaining ground. Sam. L. Simpson at fifty was only the editor of the little Ilwaco Tribune, but his poem is as freshly assured to successive generations as the river it celebrates. If it is enduring life like theirs that we mean, it can come only through the eager, first-hand response to what he wrote by individuals of today and of the distant years ahead, and never through the fading echoes of a great previous response. Men of other achievements might live on in biography and history long after what served as the basis of their fame has perished; but the literary man is quick or dead with his works.
Seeing what his writings could do and did do every day, he did not perceive that one small book of essays, written in the fullness of his great capacity, in the spirit of literature and not of journalism, might have brought him into warm fraternity with the future much more than all this power he possessed and exercised for 45 years. His standards in many ways were the standards of literature. He had an "unwearying bent toward a thoroughgoing analysis of things" and he acquired a style "whose simplicity, sublimity and cogency are matched only in the highest models." Yet when, "with a desire to preserve for future uses the best and most permanent of Mr. Scott's subject-matter", six volumes of his writings were compiled, mostly from the Oregonian, and published in 1924, 14 years after his death, their impression on the public then and during the eleven years since has shown that some important quality is absent. For all the careful grouping of topics by the compiler, they still lack full unity and consecutiveness and they still incorporate much of stale timeliness, both of which, under the circumstances, would be expected. Something else, some basic ingredient, is missing. Does their disappointment to later readers come from their sketchy background and small units of size? Contemporary readers were familiar with what he was talking about, so that he could conveniently interpret situations without fully portraying them; and did he write so many short pieces during 45 years of professional journalism that he lost or never developed the ability to cover a subject with scope and fullness?
He had a literary style sufficient to take him any distance, but he did not otherwise possess enough of the high requisites of literature. Though he ascended to the summit of journalism, he did not step to the plane above it, largely because he found the other elevation so pleasant and so much to his taste.
The rank and file of the people have been somewhat indifferent towards his six volumes, available to them in a limited way, in public libraries, but there might be compiled from his writings one book of a few hundred pages that would have a general and a permanent appeal. This book would consist of his biographical sketches. It was to these that special reference was made by Dr. Joseph Schafer, an historian possessing rare literary appreciation and discrimination, in his address at the unveiling of the Scott statue in 1933:
No summary of Scott's writings on Pacific Northwest history, however concise, can omit a reference to that noble galaxy of biographical sketches dedicated to pioneers of the country, as old friends or acquaintances, or actors of distinguished parts on that stage, dropped out of the moving line one after the other. . . . The usual obituary notice is historically neglible because it is a fulsome, insincere eulogy. Scott's obituaries, on the contrary, while meeting every test that good taste prescribes, contain real information about the careers of his subjects, together with discriminating comments on their characters and their contributions to the common life.
If these and some of his descriptive articles were gathered together in a book, it should be a book for average men, such as in that earlier day subscribed for the Oregonian when he was the most widely read author in the Pacific Northwest. Samuel A. Clarke's delightful poems have been forgotten because he submitted them in a few copies of a pamphlet to "publishers and critics" instead of directly to the people. The present generation of readers, because they can get Harvey W. Scott's writings in public libraries, have had a better chance to see whether he who was their fathers' oracle has lost all flavor for them in the 25 years since his death, but they have not had a full chance to judge whether they might not respond to him in something of the old way. Such a plebiscite has been denied him, and on this account, while there is evidence that he cannot survive in all his original robustness, it cannot be conclusively stated that all of him was journalism and none of him was literature.
The six volumes that have been referred to, were compiled, edited and richly annotated by his son, Leslie M. Scott, who devoted 12 years to the task, so ably that he stands out in the pages as a gifted collaborator. They were entitled History of the Oregon Country and were printed in 1924 by the Riverside Press, Cambridge, in what was called The Pioneer's Edition of 500 sets, at $25 a set. They are now sometimes priced by second-hand dealers at $50 a set, and can seldom be found at all, indicating that they have been treasured and kept in the households where they were bought. Without heavy subsidy, they could not have cost less, in consideration of all the work that went into them, but they were too expensive to be the friendly occupants of ordinary family book shelves.
An availability restricted to limited editions is obviously not the best way to keep a literary reputation alive. It is a helpful condition for a first issue of Moby Dick to be worth a thousand dollars, as long as any interested reader can pick up a satisfactory copy for a dollar, but if only the former existed Herman Melville would soon recede to the sentence or paragraph he used to occupy in American literature texts.
The five other separate publications by Harvey W. Scott, two pamphlets and three books, have not been of a nature easily to reach the public or to gain its eager attention.
In 1890 he edited and partly wrote History of Portland, a 651-page book of large format, with 72 laudatory biographical sketches, which was printed by F. W. Baltes and Company of Portland, but which was put out as a subscription enterprise by D. Mason & Company of Syracuse, New York, who appeared on the title page as publishers. He told of his part in it
with protective candor and acknowledged the assistance of three helpers in the preface: Hitherto there has been no attempt to write a History of Portland. Slight sketches of the history of the city have, in- deed, been written, but nothing that answers to the importance of the subject has heretofore been undertaken. For conception and execution of the present work the city is indebted to D. Mason & Co., a firm of enterprising publishers of Syracuse, New York. Learning that no general history of Portland has yet appeared, these publishers offered to undertake the work and to collect the materials for it. Aware, however, that these materials should be subjected to local editorial supervision, they requested me to perform that duty. Though my own daily employments were very exacting, I consented to do so. The result is now submitted to the public.
My own work therefore has been that of editor rather than author. Some parts of the book I have written, and all of it, except portions of the biographical matter, I have re- vised with as much diligence as possible. Yet I cannot hope that the book is free from errors. Much has been handed down from memory, and inaccuracies therefore are unavoidable.
Acknowledgments are due chiefly to O. F. Vedder, H. S. Lyman and C. H. Carey for the'matter of this volume. All these have worked diligently in collection and preparation of the materials. . . .
He knew how to select assistants, the names of two of whom will be immediately recognized by all who read Oregon history—H. S. Lyman and Charles H. Carey. He went on to give full and explicit credit to each for the parts he had contributed, so that he not only knew how to pick good men but how to make them happy over their labors in association with him. This was an attractive characteristic—he did too much work himself to need to claim that of others. It was also characteristic that he should make clear and exact his relationship to a book that had a commercial auspices, accepting his full connection but not any more.
A 15-page pamphlet, entitled Religion. Its Permanent Substance and Transitory Forms, was printed in 1895 by F. W. Baltes and Company. It was first delivered as an address at a Thanksgiving service at the First Baptist Church of Portland on November 29, 1895, and again in indication of his precision in such matters the title page said: "Published By Request."
Religion, Theology and Morals, in two volumes with a total of 854 pages, preceded by seven years the six-volume collection on Oregon history. The work consists of editorial articles and public lectures selected by his son, Leslie M. Scott, and printed at The Riverside Press, Cambridge, in 1917. It was in a limited edition of 1000 copies and sold at $5. That such a quantity of writing of this character should have come from his pen is explained by Dr. Joseph Schafer, who said of him: "Scott, in his editorial policy, dealt with things of the spirit more, perhaps, than any other editor of a secular newspaper."
Another pamphlet, of 26 pages, The Pioneer Character of Oregon Progress, was printed by the Ivy Press, Portland, in 1918, eight years after his death. It appeared originally in the Oregon Historical Quarterly and is a compilation of two addresses, one article and five editorials.
Shakespeare, a small book of 160 pages, printed at The Riverside Press in 1928, consists of "Commentaries, most of which are reprinted from the editorial pages of the Oregonian." It also did not have a wide circulation.
These six items are what have been given to the public separately, outside of the Oregonian columns. It is a bibliography singularly unexciting to represent the published works of a man who in his day was the most popular writer in the Pacific Northwest. With the further restriction of one subscription and two limited editions, he has indeed lacked a fair plebiscite of post mortem appreciation. The ever fresh quality of his style and such perennial refreshment as may be in his subject matter, have had a confined existence in the books that have been mentioned and in the heavy bound volumes of the Oregonian in a few library stack rooms. He who in his lifetime enjoyed facilities beyond those belonging to anyone else for reaching a contemporary public, has had no chance fully to reach a later public and be appraised by it. Thus, as was remarked, a newspaper affords a poor liaison with posterity.
Renown while he lived was his by the grace of ability and hard work. Mrs. Frances Fuller Victor and Harvey W. Scott were two who kept on working, the former though unrewarded, the latter long after he had been given enough and could have stopped. On account of his unwearying labors, other toilers would withhold from him as undeserved no gain, including, if it should come, immortality. This he greatly wanted and, from signs in the biographies and eulogies, rather expected.
As a man he was lacking in sympathy and humanity and as a leader he held to outworn social theories. In some ways he was overestimated, his scholarship, for instance, being credited with too great a breadth and profundity. The manifestations of this, however, were among the greatest of his public beneficences, because these were through a widely-read newspaper, which, not only in what he wrote but in a general cultural tone, became a chronicle of the subjective lives of the people as well as their objective lives. That is what made the Oregonian, under his editorship, a great newspaper by the standards of any place or any time. To examine the old files is to do so with exultation that such a daily account could with so much journalistic interest reflect the dreams and aspirations of men as well as their practical economics and their sins. "Great old boy!" exclaimed William McKinley over the perfect order and adequacy of the memoranda left him by Grover Cleveland. A similar thrill if not a similar idiom of admiration comes to the one looking through the old volumes of the Oregonian edited by Harvey W. Scott.
In some ways he did not draw men warmly to him, but his personality, less magnetic than self-reliant and strong, had several engaging traits—generosity in giving credit to others for their work and his complete candor, both of which have been mentioned, and, corresponding to the latter, absence of artificial pose and airs; the reciprocal quality in his extreme individualism that let the other man go to the devil in his own way; his catholicity of interests; a habit of reading his editorials in manuscript to others, frequently to younger staff members, for their opinion; whimsicalities in his manner with friends and associates when he was in an unburdened mood; his love for books and study. It may be too broad a generalization to say that a liking for Shakespeare makes men likable—a recipe, at any rate, not easily applicable by the charm schools—and perhaps still too broad to say it was so of pioneers who liked Shakespeare, but, by way of example, there was Ewing Young, who carried his two volumes up and down and across the wilderness while he trapped, and Judge Matthew P. Deady, who bought his Theobold edition at an auction in Oregon City in the early 70's. With equal ardor and with more understanding, Harvey W. Scott made a close companion of the great Elizabethan.
His lifelong habit of labor was also an attractive force in his personality, though it was likewise an alienating force, because he preached that work would conquer all circumstances for all men, just as it had conquered a difficult set of circumstances for him. He discounted other factors, including ability and some rather good breaks, like Judge Deady's taking his pieces to the Oregonian and Pittock's offering him a job, and placed all emphasis on work. He saw "the individual deficiencies which lay behind personal distress, rather than the distress itself."
This efficacious philosophy may, in the ultimate of destiny, prove a boomerang in his own case. No lack of earnest and sustained toil, but a lack of a necessary final something to go with it, may keep him from the immortality that he cherished.
His life was so full of effort and success, often in a calm and confident struggle with obstacles, that in this book, the interests and judgments of which are literary, the main factual events of his career will only be listed, with his age at the time of his various activities and achievements: 0. Born on February 1, 1838, in Illinois.
14. Arrived at Oregon City and lived in Yamhill County.
16. Moved to a farm on Puget Sound.
17. Served as a private in the Indian wars at Puget Sound. Later worked on farms, in logging camps and with surveying parties. "But the realization of the need of an education was becoming more and more a dominant force in the life of Mr. Scott and ... he resolved to resume his studies."
18. "With his scanty supply of clothing and a few books tied in a pack swung over his shoulder, he started on foot for Oregon City."
18-19. Attended Pacific University at Forest Grove for four months, from December, 1856, to April, 1857.
20-21. Attended an academy at Oregon City during the winter.
21—25. Returned to Pacific University and remained there four years, from the fall of 1859 until he was graduated in 1863.
25—26. "His life work nor his ambition had not yet taken definite shape and, following his graduation, mining interests in Idaho and other general work claimed his attention for a short time, but in 1864 he returned to Portland."
26—27. "That summer he became librarian of the Portland Library, which at that time utilized one or two small rooms on the second floor of a brick building on the northeast corner of First and Stark Streets."
27. Admitted to Oregon Bar. Married Elizabeth A. Nicklin of Salem. Appointed editor of the Oregonian. While serving as librarian and studying law, he had written his first few articles for the paper. "He did this at the suggestion of the late Judge Matthew P. Deady, then President of the Portland Library Association. . . . The first article that he wrote for the paper was brought to the office by Judge Deady in February, 1865, and accepted by Mr. Pittock, the owner of the paper. Articles from the same pen were accepted from time to time and, while the author was unknown, the concise, clear and pointed style proved most pleasing." He was appointed editor on April 17, 1865, succeeding Samuel A. Clarke, and served until September 11, 1872.
32-38. From October, 1870, until May, 1876, collector of customs for the Port of Portland, for the first two years continuing to hold down his old job on the paper as well as the new one in the customs.
38. Married Margaret McChesney of Pennsylvania on June 28, 1876. They became the parents of two sons and a daughter.
39-72. Editor of the Oregonian. The first time he had been a hired editor. He now returned as part owner, having bought most of the stock of H. W. Corbett. He remained editor the rest of his life.
60-63. President of the Oregon Historical Society from 1898 to 1901.
65. Candidate for United States senator but defeated in the Oregon legislature in 1903. President of the Lewis and Clark Exposition from 1903 to 1904.
62-72. Director of the Associated Press from 1900 to 1910.
72. Died in Baltimore, Maryland, on August 7, 1910.
In 1933 a bronze statue of him was placed in Mt. Tabor Park, Portland, with the following inscription on the granite base:
HARVEY W. SCOTT
18381910
PIONEER
EDITOR
PUBLISHER
MOLDER OF OPINION IN
OREGON AND THE NATION
In this discussion of him as a man of letters, his lack of some literary qualifications has been indicated; whether he had others has been left without definite opinion, for time and changing tastes to prove; that he possessed one, not alone sufficient, but of great importance, is open to no doubt or qualification, and that is style.
In fuller description of this and how it was secured—whether with ease and facility, like Joaquin Miller's, or with agonies of search and alteration and weighing, like Flaubert's—two statements regarding it will be given. The first is by Alfred Holman, afterwards editor of the San Francisco Argonaut, who received his early newspaper training under Harvey W. Scott:
Writing was not to Mr. Scott a natural gift. His propensity was to thought rather than to expression. He had nothing of the light and easy grace, in the making of phrases, which, with many, renders the operation of writing little more than pastime. Literally he forged his matter into form, and if the form was always fine it was made less so by instinctive art than by unremitting labors. With many writers . . . the very process of expression oftentimes inspires and shapes the thought. With Mr. Scott the thought always dominated the expression. I question if he ever wrote a careless sentence in his life. Every utterance was first considered carefully, then —often very slowly—hammered into shape....
I have said that Mr. Scott was not by nature a writer; and, truth to tell, he was a bit contemptuous of those who were. He had a sneering phrase which he often applied to easy, graceful, purposeless work. "Feeble elegance," was his characterization of all such. .. . Oftentimes not only his desk, but the floor about him, would be littered by sheets of paper written over but rejected. He detested slovenliness in the form of a manuscript, and would laboriously erase words, phrases and whole sentences and rewrite over the space thus regained. His thought was definite, but he made serious work of getting it into form; and he never shirked any labor to this end, although to the end of his life it was always a labor.
Confirmation of this style by hard work, was given by Chester Rowell, editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, in his address at the unveiling of the Scott statue:
It is curious that so facile a reader should have been so laborious a writer, but all Mr. Scott's associates so describe him. Not that what he wrote was hard to read. On the contrary, precisely his hardest labors were devoted to making his writings easy. But he had a scorn of those fluent phrasemongers, to whom words are a delight and thought and substance superfluous. Oregon's great editor worked hard—hard in his library learning; hard in his office writing; even harder revising and rewriting—and the result was clarity, soundness, accuracy and independence.
The three selections here given were written in 1888, 1894, and 1909 and represent in general the kinds of essays which, though written as journalism, have the closest approach to literature.
Jesse Applegate
From the Oregonian of April 4, 1888
Death has removed another noted citizen of Oregon. Jesse Applegate bore a leading part in the settlement and making of Oregon; his individuality was a positive force; his generosity was proverbial, and his energy, though given often to eccentric courses, was as marked as his generosity and other virtues. As an original character he stood conspicuous, during forty years, in the life of Oregon, and he has an assured place in the history of those who came here as pioneers and laid the foundations of the state.
The Denny Pheasant
From the Oregonian of June 23, 1894
A Salem man writes to The Oregonian asking for a statement as to what year the Mongolian or Denny pheasant was introduced into Oregon, and as to the time during which it received continuous protection by the state. The history of this interesting and valuable game bird on this coast has never been written. It was imported by Judge O. N. Denny, and it has spread throughout Oregon and Washington until it is numbered by the thousands and probably hundreds of thousands. Some day, perhaps, its history will be traced. Meanwhile, the chief incidents in its career are of interest.
It was in 1880 that Judge Denny, then United States consul at Shanghai, sent over the first lot of Chinese, or Mongolian, pheasants. There were seventy of them, and they were sent over in a sailing vessel bound for Puget Sound. With them came explicit instructions as to their treatment: the cocks and hens should be kept separate, and only a certain limited number in each crate. . . . But the reshipping was carelessly done, so that, of the whole number, only eighteen survived—fifteen cocks and three hens—a proportion which the sender would have liked to see reversed. They were very unwisely put on Sauvie's Island, the place of all others to which sportsmen then, as now, resorted. Yet so industriously did they propagate that they soon were common sights in Multnomah County. A few went into Washington County, and some crossed the Columbia to the then territory of Washington. Since then they have spread north to Puget Sound and in various parts of Washington. All the pheasants in the state of Washington are credited to this first beginning—the three hens which survived the shipment of seventy, in 1880.
Having heard of the bad luck which attended his first venture, Judge Denny, in 1881, sent over twenty-eight more —eighteen hens and ten cocks. These were sent to Judge Denny's brother, who lived in Washington Butte, Linn County. He took proper care of them and put them adrift near his place. Thence they have gone into Southern Oregon, and, as Judge Denny thinks, have crossed the Cascade Mountains and appeared in Eastern Oregon.
Judge Denny was home in 1882 and visited the legislature, in session at Salem. His presence induced Judge Truitt ... to prepare a bill for the protection of the pheasant. . .
This provided absolute protection for the birds for five years. Before the five years had expired the protection was extended five more, making ten in all. Then they were placed on the same basis as other pheasants, though the season is a little different. The Chinook Wind
From the Oregonian of January 31, 1909
In its present acceptation, a Chinook is the equatorial trade wind that blows during the winter months from the southwest, and, laden with moisture, strikes the Pacific Coast from the northern boundary of California to the Alaskan archipelago. It is now the local name for the soft, balmy, south wind. But it is a misnomer. In early days in Oregon, and even as late as the early seventies, our summer wind from the northwest was called a Chinook, so named because it blew into the Willamette Valley from the coast region inhabited by the Chinook Indians north of the entrance of the Columbia. Among the pioneers and their descendants, a Chinook wind was a "clearing-up" wind. Now it signifies precisely the opposite—i. e., a wind from the south, followed by rain.
Within the past twenty-five years the word has been grafted into the speech and the written language of vast territory east of the Cascade Mountains and circulates freely throughout Wyoming. It has been carried into western Nebraska. In recent years it has crept into Boston newspapers, with local application. Any soft, balmy wind that springs up in winter, is called a Chinook.
Thus we see, in an age of high civilization and universal knowledge, the vicissitudes of written words. Within thirty years Chinook has been turned "end for end".