The Americanization of Edward Bok

Episode 1

To the American woman I owe much, but to two women I owe more, My mother and my wife.

And to them I dedicate this account of the boy to whom one gave birth and brought to manhood and the other blessed with all a home and family may mean.

An Explanation This book was to have been written in 1914, when I foresaw some leisure to write it, for I then intended to retire from active editorship.But the war came, an entirely new set of duties commanded, and the project was laid aside.

Its title and the form, however, were then chosen.By the form I refer particularly to the use of the third person.I had always felt the most effective method of writing an autobiography, for the sake of a better perspective, was mentally to separate the writer from his subject by this device.

Moreover, this method came to me very naturally in dealing with the Edward Bok, editor and publicist, whom I have tried to describe in this book, because, in many respects, he has had and has been a personality apart from my private self.I have again and again found myself watching with intense amusement and interest the Edward Bok of this book at work.

I have, in turn, applauded him and criticised him, as I do in this book.

Not that I ever considered myself bigger or broader than this Edward Bok: simply that he was different.His tastes, his outlook, his manner of looking at things were totally at variance with my own.In fact, my chief difficulty during Edward Bok's directorship of The Ladies' Home Journal was to abstain from breaking through the editor and revealing my real self.Several times I did so, and each time I saw how different was the effect from that when the editorial Edward Bok had been allowed sway.Little by little I learned to subordinate myself and to let him have full rein.

But no relief of my life was so great to me personally as his decision to retire from his editorship.My family and friends were surprised and amused by my intense and obvious relief when he did so.Only to those closest to me could I explain the reason for the sense of absolute freedom and gratitude that I felt.

Since that time my feelings have been an interesting study to myself.

There are no longer two personalities.The Edward Bok of whom I have written has passed out of my being as completely as if he had never been there, save for the records and files on my library shelves.It is easy, therefore, for me to write of him as a personality apart: in fact, Icould not depict him from any other point of view.To write of him in the first person, as if he were myself, is impossible, for he is not.

The title suggests my principal reason for writing the book.Every life has some interest and significance; mine, perhaps, a special one.Here was a little Dutch boy unceremoniously set down in America unable to make himself understood or even to know what persons were saying; his education was extremely limited, practically negligible; and yet, by some curious decree of fate, he was destined to write, for a period of years, to the largest body of readers ever addressed by an American editor--the circulation of the magazine he edited running into figures previously unheard of in periodical literature.He made no pretense to style or even to composition: his grammar was faulty, as it was natural it should be, in a language not his own.His roots never went deep, for the intellectual soil had not been favorable to their growth;--yet, it must be confessed, he achieved.

But how all this came about, how such a boy, with every disadvantage to overcome, was able, apparently, to "make good"--this possesses an interest and for some, perhaps, a value which, after all, is the only reason for any book.

EDWARD W.BOK

MERION, PENNSYLVANIA, 1920

Along an island in the North Sea, five miles from the Dutch Coast, stretches a dangerous ledge of rocks that has proved the graveyard of many a vessel sailing that turbulent sea.On this island once lived a group of men who, as each vessel was wrecked, looted the vessel and murdered those of the crew who reached shore.The government of the Netherlands decided to exterminate the island pirates, and for the job King William selected a young lawyer at The Hague.

"I want you to clean up that island," was the royal order.It was a formidable job for a young man of twenty-odd years.By royal proclamation he was made mayor of the island, and within a year, a court of law being established, the young attorney was appointed judge; and in that dual capacity he "cleaned up" the island.

The young man now decided to settle on the island, and began to look around for a home.It was a grim place, barren of tree or living green of any kind; it was as if a man had been exiled to Siberia.Still, argued the young mayor, an ugly place is ugly only because it is not beautiful.And beautiful he determined this island should be.

One day the young mayor-judge called together his council."We must have trees," he said; "we can make this island a spot of beauty if we will!"But the practical seafaring men demurred; the little money they had was needed for matters far more urgent than trees.

"Very well," was the mayor's decision--and little they guessed what the words were destined to mean--"I will do it myself." And that year he planted one hundred trees, the first the island had ever seen.

"Too cold," said the islanders; "the severe north winds and storms will kill them all.""Then I will plant more," said the unperturbed mayor.And for the fifty years that he lived on the island he did so.He planted trees each year;and, moreover, he had deeded to the island government land which he turned into public squares and parks, and where each spring he set out shrubs and plants.