Under the Moons of Mars: A History and Anthology of "the Scientific Romance" in the Munsey Magazines, 1912-1920 (56 page)

A column in the March, 1904, issue, "A Chat with Our Readers," appeared to cast the shroud over the use of tales of fantasy in the future. It read, "We greatly admire Poe, and we think his work worthy of a very prominent niche in the halls of fame, but we do not believe the Poesque class of literature is what our readers want. And we will say, further, that the gruesome, the grotesque, the repellent, the blood-creeping tragic, will not find a place in these columns. Life is far too short to be able to spare any part of it for the perusal of gloomy stories."

Apparently the editor of the magazine had not carefully read the contents of that very same issue, because it contained
After the Paper Went to Bed
, by M. J. Reynolds, which nerve-shatteringly delineates how a performing kitten triggers a nervous breakdown in an overworked reporter.

Among the other stories in the March issue was one by Charles Agnew MacLean,
Seven-Nine-Cipher
, a pathetically inept attempt involving a planned theft in a railroad yard. The majority of the stories in the early issues of THE POPULAR MAGAZINE were scarcely better. Though MacLean showed small promise as a writer, he was to become one of the most distinguished of editors, replacing Lewis during 1904 as the guiding light of THE POPULAR MAGAZINE.

Whoever wrote the policy statement against tales of the bizarre and supernatural, it could not have been MacLean. He came up with one of the scoops of the publishing season when he secured first American publishing rights for H. Rider Haggard's sequel to
She
, titled
Ayesha
. Haggard had always intended to write a sequel, though as the years passed he doubted his ability to work himself into the same romantic mood that had assisted in creating the literary magic that made
She
a classic. A letter of his outlines the plot as early as 1898, and his working title was
Hes
, an alternate appellation for the Goddess Isis.

The British book publisher Ward, Lock & Company had paid one thousand pounds (about five thousand dollars) for rights to the book and issued a first printing of twenty-five thousand copies in 1905. THE WINDSOR MAGAZINE serialized it in England in its issues December, 1904-October, 1905. They ran fifty-two interior illustrations, making the issues collectors' items. THE POPULAR MAGAZINE, which featured the novel in the numbers of January-August, 1905, had no interior illustrations, but for the first three installments still life was abandoned on the covers and three outstanding artists, Hamilton King, E. Hering, and F. X. Chamberlain, offered graphic, colorful scenes from the novel.

Editor MacLean offered substantial biographical and associational information with
Ayesha
, which was a real adventure thriller with its locale in the mountain fastness of Tibet. "She," who appeared to wither and age in the flame in the original book, has not died, but lives again with her passion for Leo, whom she regards as the reincarnation of her ancient love. "She," or "Ayesha," is an immortal woman of extraordinary powers who has the chemical wizardry to convert iron into gold and is prevented from flooding the world with this metal only through the protestations of Leo that it will cause havoc and grief. Ayesha has the ability to bring into her presence scenes that are occurring distances away, and can even transmit these "visions" to her guests. She has the capability to hypnotize and even to call down the lightning and storm of the heavens at her command. Her kiss brings death to Leo, and her true origin and meaning is lost in allegory.

If any single story "made" THE POPULAR MAGAZINE, it was
Ayesha
. Before it began, the magazine had little more than seventy thousand circulation. By its conclusion, it was well on its way to the quarter-million mark.

The transition of THE POPULAR MAGAZINE to a publication of broader interest was not confined to
Ayesha
alone. While that novel was still running, MacLean secured first American serialization of H. G. Wells'
The Crowning Victory
(February-July, 1905). Wellsians may indeed start in wonder at the title of a novel by that distinguished author that they had not previously heard of, but they need not, because the story had actually been published more than live years earlier as
Love and Mr. Lewisham
. A pleasant love story of a youthful "assistant master" at Whitley Proprietory School in England, it lent a further literary tone to a pulp adventure magazine that also ran a poem by Theodore Dreiser,
Bondage
, in its January, 1905, issue.

Charles Agnew MacLean had become good friends with Dreiser, when that "moody giant" was doing articles for Street & Smith's
Ainslee's
and editing dime novels for them at fifteen dollars a week. MacLean also advanced the five hundred dollars to buy back the plates of Dreiser's
Sister Carrie
from Doubleday. When Street & Smith was looking for an editor to manage its new magazine, SMITH'S, it was MacLean's endorsement that got Dreiser the job.

The magazine, which was launched April, 1905, would eventually have as a contributor of short stories an eccentric, puffy little man named Charles Hoy Fort, whose interest in bizarre and inexplicable phenomena meshed with that of Theodore Dreiser. They had both been cub reporters on New York newspapers and they became firm friends. Dreiser would eventually publish Fort's first book of fiction and in later years seriously intended to write the man's biography. In the interim he helped him polish his work and encouraged MacLean to publish him. THE POPULAR MAGAZINE ran four short stories by Charles Fort in June, August, September, and December, 1905, none fantasy or science fiction, and none particularly outstanding. Several others by Charles Fort would appear in THE ARGOSY during 1905 and 1906.

One of the most popular characters in popular magazine fiction 1897 to 1903 had been Captain Kettle, a cocky and imaginative sprite of a sea captain. That character made its author, Cutcliffe Hyne, one of the most solicited magazine fictioneers of his time. The presentation of a completely new series built around the character of Commander John Kelly McTurk, USN, was a circulation winner for THE POPULAR MAGAZINE, beginning with the September, 1905, number. To the staff of contributors were also added that outstanding spinner of tales of the sea, Morgan Robertson; the acclaimed mystery story writer, Richard Marsh; one of the most popular authors of historical adventure who ever lived, Rafael Sabatini; and such strong figures of the time as Louis Joseph Vance, Louis Tracy, and Francis Lynde, the latter especially noted for his fine railroad stories.

These strong authors and features were not rationed out, but ran side by side. Most of the twelve covers for 1905 were strong action scenes from lead stories. The advent of 1906 found the publication so strong in circulation that it could safely revert to family-type and still-life covers, offering an acceptable appearance for any drawing-room table.

THE POPULAR MAGAZINE made a dramatic move in ending the year 1906 with an increase in price to fifteen cents and an increase in pages to 224. It was counting on catching and holding the American middle class who would pay the fifty-percent increase. The estimate of appeal was correct. The magazine held its readership and climbed to three hundred thousand copies a month. Additionally, there were forty or more pages of advertising, printed on slick paper in the front and rear of the magazine. THE POPULAR MAGAZINE was indeed a threat to the leadership of THE ARGOSY.

No one was more acutely aware of this than Frank A. Munsey, THE ARGOSY'S publisher. He had watched THE POPULAR MAGAZINE from its first issue, and even before it hit its stride with the H. Rider Haggard serial, had come to an accurate conclusion. There was room for more than one fiction pulp in the field, possibly room for a number. To capitalize on it, he had the alternatives of either increasing the frequency of publication of THE ARGOSY or issuing another pulp magazine. If there was going to be competition, he might just as well compete with himself.

Rather than tamper with the successful formula of THE ARGOSY, he decided to issue a companion, one that would be a carbon copy in size, price, and story mix, and also published on a monthly basis. It would be called THE ALL-STORY MAGAZINE.

FRANK ANDREW MUNSEY, at the time he placed the first issue of THE ALL-STORY MAGAZINE on sale, dated January, 1905, was already making one million dollars a year net, primarily from two publications, MUNSEY'S MAGAZINE and THE ARGOSY; he would go on to publish other magazines, and at one time or another own eighteen different newspapers. The ruthlessness with which he killed or merged newspapers that didn't pay their way earned him the enmity of both the publishers and the reporters of the nation. He did not make friends easily, had little personal warmth, never married, devoted all his time to his business, and when he died from a burst appendix on December 22, 1925, was worth forty million dollars, the bulk of which he left to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which some contend he had never entered.

Born August 21, 1854, near the town of Mercer, Maine, his father, Andrew Chauncey, was a farmer-carpenter, and his mother, Mary Jane Hopkins, always felt she was a linear descendant of someone who came over on the
Mayflower
. A wealthy Munsey later set a genealogist on the track and not only verified
five
ancestors who came over on the
Mayflower
bill also located the most incredible (but factual) group of generals, governors, and judges on both sides of the Atlantic that ever graced the family tree of any American.

His family skirted the thin edge of poverty, and Frank A. Munsey received no higher education. He said that as a boy he was a "visionary," speaking of his dreams of "a brighter and more beautiful world." As a youth he "had a knack for mechanical gadgetry," and as he grew older and more prosperous, "was a pioneer automobilist and one of the very early passengers in an airplane. He craved things modern and up-to-date." These two qualities, utopianism and a love for invention and novelty, go a long way toward explaining his toleration of an inordinate amount of science fiction in his publications, considering that they were aimed at a general audience. Though in later years it was said that he read little in his magazines, there is no question that he set policy. He hired no one to tell him what
kind
of magazine to publish, nor was he grateful for such suggestions. He would change the approach of his magazine either through careful deliberation or through whim. Often he made all the magazines alter simultaneously to comply with his desires.

If he decided his pulps should have interior illustrations, they
all
had interior illustrations and all started the new policy the closest possible month. If he decided it was time to raise the price to fifteen cents,
all
his publications went to fifteen cents, and if possible, the same month.

He loved his mother devotedly and did not leave his home town until she died in 1882. He had little respect or admiration for his father, who he theorized had never amounted to anything because marriage had trapped him with a wife and children. This is offered as a psychological explanation of why he never married, though his own explanation, that he was too occupied with business when young and too old when rich, appears more logical.

Nearby Augusta, Maine, was a publishing center of some importance. PEOPLE'S LITERARY COMPANION and VICKERY'S FIRESIDE VISITOR, dollar-a-year publications with tremendous reception in the rural communities, were headquartered and printed there. They were intended primarily as advertising media, with a leavening of stories, religion, fashion, agriculture, and pictures. By today's standards they were pabulum, but hundreds of thousands of readers across the nation found pleasure in them.

Securing a job as manager of the Augusta telegraph office for Western Union, Munsey found the magazines among his most active customers and became fascinated by the publishing business.

He took a prospectus of a magazine to be called THE ARGOSY to businessmen in Augusta and received promises of loans that would bring his working capital up to four thousand dollars, of which five hundred was his own savings. Most of the five hundred dollars was gone by the time he arrived in New York, having been spent on manuscripts. Then the Augusta businessmen reneged on their loans and left him to start the magazine with forty dollars.

He went to E. G. Rideout, another former Maine resident, now established in New York as a publisher with RIDEOUT'S MONTHLY, THE HOUSEHOLD GUEST, and THE HOUSEHOLD JOURNAL, and convinced him to publish the magazine. It appeared as GOLDEN ARGOSY, a boys' weekly, with the issue dated December 9, 1882. Munsey wrote, edited, sold ads, and did the clerical work on it himself, but in five months bankruptcy was the fate of E. G. Rideout. In exchange for uncollected back salary, Munsey was given the title of the magazine and continued publication with the issue of September 8, 1883.

For the next ten years he experienced a heartbreaking series of ups and downs, induced to some degree by continuous and imaginative promotion of his property.

The editor who was to become most identified with THE ARGOSY was Matthew White, Jr., and he would be involved in a variety of capacities until his retirement on June 2, 1928. White was the editor and chief contributor and may even have been the publisher of a monthly titled BOY'S WORLD, launched with the issue of December, 1885, and discontinued with the issue of May, 1887. He used to exchange advertisements with GOLDEN ARGOSY, and when his magazine collapsed, he gave the title and unexpired subscriptions to Munsey in exchange for an editorial job. An unfinished serial by White,
Camp Blunder
, was reprinted in its entirety and completed in GOLDEN ARGOSY.

In 1886, Munsey had offered a writing and editorial position to Richard H. Titherton, a teacher who had lived for several years at the same boardinghouse, at 237 West 49th Street, New York City, and who from 1884 on would come down and help him with clerical and editorial work at no fee. Titherton accepted the twenty dollars a week proffered and filled in wherever needed. He worked with John Kendrick Bangs for a while as an editorial writer on the short-lived Munsey tabloid, THE DAILY CONTINENT, and when MUNSEY'S WEEKLY, which had been started with the issue of February 2, 1889, was made a monthly with the issue of October, 1891, he was its editor.