Paul Allen's revision
Just before going to press,
Biddle was elected to the legislature,
in
which he soon won an enviable reputation for statesmanlike
qualities. Being thus prevented
from paying
that attention to the book which he
thought it
deserved, he engaged Paul Allen, a Philadelphia
newspaper
writer, to supervise the issue. In a letter to Clark
(March 23), reviewing
some of the circumstances of the publication,
Biddle says: "The gentleman who received and prepared
it for the press, Mr. Allen, is a very
capable person, and
as I did not put the finishing hand to the volumes I
did not
think it right to take from him the credit of his own exertion
and care by announcing personally the part which I had in the
compilation. I am content that my trouble in the business
should be
recognized only by the pleasure which attended
it and also by the
satisfaction of making your acquaintance,
which I shall always value. I
could have wished that your
time had permitted you to revise the whole of
the work, as
no doubt some errors and inadvertencies have from the nature
of the volumes and the circumstances attending
the publication
crept into them. I hope
however that you will not
find
them very numerous or important . . . Henceforth you
may sleep upon your
fame, which must last as laong as books
can endurc. Mr. Bradford has I
presume sent you a copy of
the work."
Despite Biddle's
determination to claim no credit for the
narrative which has long been
regarded a classic in American
history, it is quite apparent that Allen's
connection with the
enterprise was but that of reviser for the press. He
himself
frankly states in the Preface, that he does not wish "to arrogate
anything from the exertions of others;" that "he found but
little to
change, and that his labor has been principally confined
to revising the
manuscript, comparing it with the original
papers, and inserting such
additional matter as appears to have
been intentionally deferred by the
writer [Mr. Biddle] till the
period of a more mature revisal." Allen
secured from President
Jefferson an admirable
memoir of Lewis; possibly, he also
blocked out the chapters; and in a
measure the mechanical form
may be due to him. His labors were doubtless
important from
the typographical and clerical side; but of course the
credit
for the enterprise should chiefly rest with Biddle. That the
latter had finished the work, ready for the final touches of a
practical reviser for the press, is evident from his own letters
to
Clark, as well as the confirmatory statement which has come
down to us
from Conrad.
In his richly annotated edition of theTravels (N. Y., 1893,
4 vols.) Dr. Elliott Coues spends
much space and energy in
persistently heaping vituperation on Allen for
fathering a work
mainly performed by another. Biddle had the undoubted
right to withdraw his name from public connection with the
narrative. We may consider his reasons Quixotish, but he
was
entitled to be guided by them, and they certainly bespeak
a nature more
generous than we are accustomed to meet. As
for Allen, it is evident that
he did his part with becoming
modesty; no doubt he well earned the fee of
$500—partly
taken out in trade—with which he was rewarded
by the publishers.
Press-revision and
proof-reading are no light tasks;
although we might wish that, while he
was at it, he had also
given us an index.
