Genius of Place (19 page)

An unusual arrangement was struck with Dix, Edwards & Company whereby Olmsted would pay the cost of printing his book and also hand over a small percentage of the sales proceeds to cover expenses such as distribution and marketing. A large percentage of any proceeds would flow back to Olmsted, which was only fair since he—or, rather, his father—was taking all the risk. This was the reverse of the standard agreement, where the publisher bears the upfront costs and the author gets a smaller royalty.

Olmsted put the finishing touches on his book. By now, he'd gone through quite a change in thinking since his initial
Times
dispatches. As a consequence, he stiffened some of his original gradualism, pumping up sentiments such as
slavery is an evil that must end now
and downplaying sentiments such as
allow the South to change over time
. Some of his jabs at Northern hypocrisy, like the passage about how the downtrodden in cities like Boston sometimes starved to death, were simply removed. Still, the book was sprawling. Concerned about the reception awaiting such an overstuffed tome, he wrote a wry note to his father: “This ponderosity becomes a goblin of botheration to me.”

A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States
was published on January 16, 1856. The 723-page book had an initial run of 2,000 copies.

Olmsted need not have worried. He had made strides as a writer since
Walks and Talks
. He received excellent notices and in a much wider range of publications than his previous title. The
New York Post
wrote: “This remarkable book ... is certainly the most minute, dispassionate, and evidently accurate description of the persons, places, and social institutions of the southern portion of our confederacy, that we have yet seen.” Said the
Boston Daily Advertiser
: “By far the most valuable book we have on slavery and the Southern social system. That book will gradually assume the position of a standard book of reference among all persons, of whatever opinions, whose interest in slavery or in anti-slavery is more than a pretence.”

The reviewer's use of the word
gradually
proved somehow prophetic.
Seaboard Slave States
was a big book on a serious topic. The price, $1.25, was five times the cost of
Walks and Talks
. While reviews were uniformly
glowing, sales were very slow. Writing wasn't going to pay the bills, apparently; it wasn't going to pay back his father, either.

 

Meanwhile, things were changing fast in the intrepid new world of magazine publishing.
Harper's
was growing more cautious about stealing English content. Starting with the January 1856 issue, the magazine ran an exclusive serial of the Dickens novel
Little Dorrit
. This generated great excitement and sold tons of magazines, and
Harper's
paid the author for the privilege. Angering Dickens by pirating his work would not have been wise editorial policy, especially because he was immensely popular in the United States. At the same time,
Harper's
was starting to publish a great deal more work by American writers.

When
Harper's
zigged,
Putnam's
zagged. Putnam's editors decided to abandon the patriotic focus, the proud emphasis on American writers and American subjects. It was just too limiting. A new formula was needed, especially in light of the magazine's stagnating circulation and money woes. Time to forge some British literary relationships.
Putnam's
needed a coup to equal its rival's exclusive
Little Dorrit
serial.

On February 13, 1856, Olmsted set sail for England aboard the
Arabia
. The purpose of Olmsted's trip was pretty amorphous, but boiled down to:
obtain some British content.
In addition, he had family responsibilities. Olmsted was joined on the trip by Mary, his twenty-four-year-old half-sister, and he was charged with looking after her. This was an era when it was considered untoward for a young woman to visit a strange city alone. In London, Olmsted met with British magazine publishers, trying to strike deals to reprint their stories in
Putnam's
. He scouted for writers who could become Putnam's contributors. Maybe Dix, Edwards & Company could further diversify into book publishing, printing their works. Or perhaps an English publisher would agree to pay a fee to Dix, Edwards & Company for distributing its titles in America. He explored a number of possibilities. Nothing really took.

When Mary set off for Italy, Olmsted dutifully accompanied her. This was to be a quick travel interlude, and then he planned to return to London and hopefully better luck. In Rome, Mary met up with her younger sister Bertha and Sophia Hitchcock, a family friend. Bertha and Sophia
had been living in Italy as students. Olmsted wound up acting as a kind of chaperone, squiring three young women as they took a whirlwind tour through Italy, then on to Vienna and Prague.

Ordinarily, Olmsted thrived on travel. But he didn't really enjoy this trip and was instead dogged by concerns both personal and political. His personal dismay related to the fact that his half-sister Bertha had just rejected a marriage proposal from a man named Edward Bartholomew. Bartholomew was a Connecticut native, living in Rome and working as a sculptor. Olmsted appears to have been put off by what he perceived as a cavalier attitude on Bertha's part. How could she and the other two women jaunt about Europe after something so momentous as a broken engagement? “I should not be much surprised if Bartholomew, supposing he understands Bertha as she meant he should, should be made insane. He is just the man to be ruined by it,” wrote Olmsted to a relative.

After parting company with the three women, on his way back to London, he wrote a letter directly to Bertha: “But then it troubles me that the state of mind or conviction on which you acted decisively was but one day old, while as you say your instinct or unreflective ‘dream' (state of mind) had all been for weeks previously of an opposite character.” Olmsted's prose here is particularly tortured, but he seems to be demanding an explanation. If Bertha felt love for Bartholomew for weeks, how could she decisively break with him based on one day's reflection? Olmsted seems strangely overinvested in the love life of his much younger half-sister. Maybe, behind the judgmental airs, he was still smarting from his own broken engagement to Emily Perkins.

On the political front, a horrifying event occurred in the United States while Olmsted was traveling, and it also colored his experience. On May 22, 1856, Preston Brooks, a South Carolina congressman, walked up to Charles Sumner, a Massachusetts senator, during a recess and proceeded to strike him in the head with a gutta-percha cane. Incredibly, tensions between the North and South had erupted into violence in the very halls of Congress. On about the sixth blow, the cane broke, but Brooks kept whacking Sumner. “Hit him, Brooks, he deserves it,” yelled a fellow Southern senator. Meanwhile, a Northern congressman rushed to Sumner's aid. “I'm dead,” cried Sumner. “Oh, I'm most dead!” Sumner lived,
but he was never the same. It would be more than three years before he was sufficiently recovered to return to his Senate seat.

With the Brooks-Sumner incident as a backdrop, Olmsted found his journey disconcerting. Things felt so much different from his recent walking tour. America was supposed to be a beacon of democracy in hidebound old Europe, but instead his country was an object of scorn. He recorded the following impression: “The position of an American traveling in Europe is just now a most unpleasant one. In railway carriages and other public places when he is not known as an American, he is obliged to hear language applied to his country which it is difficult to allow to pass in silence, and yet which he cannot deny to be just.”

Back in London, Olmsted hoped finally to stir up some business for
Putnam's
. He dropped in on John Parker, the editor of
Fraser's
, a supremely serious magazine that featured the work of John Stuart Mill, George Henry Lewes, and the Reverend Charles Kingsley. Olmsted walked away from the meeting with Parker feeling like maybe some kind of deal had been struck. But the details were vague.

A more enticing possibility involved Thomas Gladstone. Gladstone, older brother of the future British prime minister, was a correspondent for the
Times of London
. While Olmsted was in London, Gladstone was in the United States, covering events in Bleeding Kansas. Olmsted read his dispatches with great interest. What if Dix, Edwards & Company were to publish a book based on Gladstone's reportage? Olmsted wondered. This had potential: An Englishman's perspective on Bleeding Kansas was kind of an ideal property for an American publisher seeking to tilt more British.

Olmsted also attended a party that Thackeray threw each year at his home for the editors of
Punch
, a brilliant and merciless British humor magazine. Olmsted showed up at the event overdressed. Absolutely everyone present was in black tie save for Olmsted, who appeared in white tie and tails. “Here comes Olmsted, in a white stock,” called out Thackeray. Everyone laughed. Thackeray giveth—with his earlier high praise for
Putnam's
—and Thackeray taketh away. Olmsted was embarrassed. Still, he recovered sufficiently to chat up various
Punch
editors, white tails and all. He sent a letter home suggesting to his partners that maybe it would
make sense to publish an American edition of
Punch
. This would come to nothing.

Besides trying to further the interests of Dix, Edwards & Company, Olmsted also used his time in London to promote his own book. He hand-delivered copies of
A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States
to the many editors with whom he met. Like clockwork, reviews began to appear in the months ahead in such publications as the
Athenaeum
,
Fraser's
, and the
Times
. In England, too, Olmsted received glowing notices, but still the book sold slowly. But he was starting to build a small and influential overseas audience for his unique ideas about slavery and the South.

Back on Tosomock Farm, meanwhile, John was using his brother's travel notes and
Times
pieces to stitch together a second book, covering their Texas journey together. The book was to feature Fred's byline, but John would receive two-thirds of any royalties. This easy collaboration speaks to the special bond the brothers shared. What's more, by working in this fashion, Olmsted would appear to all the world to be a literary juggernaut. He'd be able to churn out a second lengthy book in the space of a year!

 

While Olmsted's writing was going well, so well that it didn't even require his physical presence, things at
Putnam's
were going very poorly in his absence. Olmsted received a letter from Joshua Dix, his publishing partner. Apparently, the magazine's finances were much more precarious than anyone had suspected. Dix was in such a dither that he contacted John at Tosomock Farm, pressing him to write his brother as well. Immediately following Dix's letter, Olmsted received another letter from John, saying that
Putnam's
circulation had “fallen off alarmingly” and that he should return to the United States at once.

Then came another letter from Dix. This time, Olmsted's young partner said that everything at
Putnam's
was copacetic. He'd merely panicked. Ignore my earlier letter, Dix urged, and don't rush home on account of my overreaction. Stick around—enjoy England. The turnabout enraged Olmsted: “Write me in a fever of fear & trembling & what not one week—all going to the devil & no hot pitch to be had at any price unless I come home in my shirt tail to help you heat it up & then next day—all
as smooth & jolly [as] a summer's sea of champagne and icebreezes. Damn you for a high pressure hypochondriac.”

Olmsted had lost thirteen pounds from the anxiety caused by Dix's first letter, or so he claimed. He was getting very little accomplished. How could he enjoy England? He sailed for home. Back in New York, he quickly ascertained that Dix's initial dire account of
Putnam's
was more accurate than his second rosy one. The enterprise was losing $1,000 a month. Circulation had gone off a cliff, plummeting from a high near 20,000 to around 14,000. The falloff appeared to be due to a decrease in quality. There were whisperings that
Putnam's
had simply lost the magic of its earlier issues.

More bad news: John's health was getting worse. When it came to tuberculosis, one school of nineteenth-century medical thought urged sufferers—at least during the initial stages of the disease—to try to live a normal life, even engage in vigorous outdoor activity. The other school stressed the necessity of a quiet life in a suitable climate. John—himself a doctor by training—had alternated between these two approaches. He'd earlier tried living in Europe, but found that the invalid life sapped his spirit just as surely as the disease. He'd also taken a demanding trip through Texas. Now he was growing weaker. He was spitting up blood. Add to that, his wife, Mary, was now pregnant with a third child. Desperate, he chose to switch course once again. John set off from Staten Island along with his family, bound for Havana and a warmer climate. A renter was found for Tosomock Farm.

In a sad twist, John left just days before the publication of
A Journey Through Texas.
This was the account of the trip with his brother. It was also the book on which John had done much of the work. This latest Olmsted title was published by struggling Dix, Edwards & Company. It received great reviews but sold slowly—by now, an all too familiar pattern. Olmsted would always call
A Journey Through Texas
“my best book . . . because edited by my brother.”

Putnam's
continued to flail and was soon at the edge of bankruptcy. Dix, Edwards & Company was dissolved, and Olmsted's young partners scurried off. A new firm was formed, headed by George Curtis,
Putnam's
editor. Curtis borrowed $25,000 from his father-in-law. The
magazine's printer, J. W. Miller, joined the venture for the purpose of protecting a large debt he was owed. He knew that if
Putnam's
went bankrupt, it would become almost impossible to collect the money. The new firm was called Miller & Company. Olmsted, stuck in a defensive position similar to the printer Miller, also stayed on. He'd already sunk $5,500 into
Putnam's
, money that he owed to his father. He needed some kind of bounce back.