University of Virginia Library

Owen Wister's Roosevelt: A Case Study in Post-Production Censorship
by
Elizabeth A. Swaim

An interesting case study in the bibliographical variations possible in an ordinary twentieth-century American trade book occurs in the story of Macmillan's last-minute recall before publication of Owen Wister's Roosevelt: The Story of a Friendship 1880-1919 (1930) and their hasty and expensive replacement of an entire sixteen-page section, before redistributing the expected best-seller with a new publication date. Investigation of the circumstances of this unusual post-production editing sheds light on yet another aspect of publishing which may prove a trap for unwary bibliographers. Wesleyan University Library was recently given a copy of the early uncensored state of Wister's reminiscences of the colorful President by the former Macmillan West Coast manager, who had kept out this copy after receiving the publisher's telegraphed request for a return of the shipment unopened and who believed his action—and consequently this copy—to be unique (although in fact they were not). The threat of a lawsuit, made only after the first printing of Roosevelt had been distributed to booksellers and reviewers all over the country, necessitated Wister's eleventh-hour rewriting of more than five full pages of text as an innocuous substitution for a potentially libelous episode, the consequent reprinting of an entire section (that comprising pages 91 through 106), and its insertion in place of the original in the already bound volumes.[1]

A comparison of this new acquisition with the copy of the first printing which has been in Wesleyan's stacks since July 21, 1930, reveals the offending material as an episode taking place during Roosevelt's 1902 visit to Charleston, South Carolina. At line 9 on page 98, following the words "the strict orders that the President was to enter no private house in Charleston," the early state went on: "and the steps which a very clever and ambitious lady took in consequence." This latter phrase was deleted from the published version, in which no further mention was made of Theodore Roosevelt in a private house while in Charleston. Pages 100 through the first two lines on page 105 in the early state elaborated on the earlier allusion; in them, Wister (who was then living in Charleston) recounted the ruse by which this clever and ambitious lady, married to a Charlestonian

but regarded by the local ladies with suspicions both general and specific (including the paternity of her child and the authenticity of a visiting French female novelist), persuaded the President to take a cup of tea in her house by telling him that such a gesture would make happy the last days of an old servant of hers, a former slave. Mention of the lady was entirely omitted from the published version of Wister's book, in which pages 100 through the first two lines on page 105 were newly written and devoted to several harmless anecdotes describing what was left of "the ancient Charleston of fine traditions and fierce prejudices."[2] No other changes were made in the text of the sixteen-page section, although the makeup of pages 98 and 99 was revised to close up the two-line deletion on page 98. No indication of any amendment appears in the book; the versos of the title-pages in both states read: "Set up and electrotyped. Published May, 1930." The lack of an index precludes any faulty references.[3]

A book on such a popular subject as the former President by such an established writer as Owen Wister was bound to attract attention in 1930. Excerpts from it had appeared in five consecutive issues of the Saturday Evening Post beginning on March 22, as well as in the May and June issues of Harper's Magazine. Widely reviewed,[4] the biography was assigned to the front page of the Sunday New York Times book section on the 15th of June, two days before its scheduled publication. Obviously difficulties over its publication would be newsworthy. A story in the New York Times for Friday, June 20 (p. 48), reported that Wister's Roosevelt had been with-held from circulation because of an anonymous complaint made through an attorney and that both the family and the publishers denied that the objections came from the Roosevelts. A week later (June 27, p. 26) it was reported that Macmillan had recalled the book from booksellers and reviewers, and the "persistent rumor" was cited that the objections came from the family of the late President Wilson, Roosevelt's unfavorable remarks about whom had been quoted by Wister; the official reason given by Macmillan for the recall was "so that changes which Mr. Wister desired could be made." The next day (June 28, p. 16) a denial of the Wilson rumor was made by Ray Stannard Baker, speaking in a telephone interview for members of the Wilson family, who he said were in the habit of

ignoring such critical remarks which "are inclined to die of their own venom." The front page of the Times for the 9th of July carried a two-column story headed "Tale of a southern hoax on Roosevelt caused the recall of Owen Wister's book" and announced that the book would go on sale the next day in a revised form. "It was, after all, no weighty revelation of State secrets, no criticism of contemporary statesmen that led to the book's withdrawal," wrote the anonymous reporter; instead it was a "pretty story told against a background of wistaria vines, garden parties and pompadours" of an alleged ruse to get the President to visit a certain hostess' house during his visit to an unnamed Southern city a quarter of a century earlier. The reporter quoted some lines from the end of the offending episode and hoped that they were not removed (they were). Where he got his information for the story is unclear, since he noted that Macmillan was maintaining a policy of silence about the real nature of the circumstances.

The thick folder on Owen Wister for 1930 in the Macmillan Company Records[5] sheds further light on the situation. A letter from a Washington attorney, threatening a libel suit on behalf of his client, her daughter, and her husband, because of the material on pages 98-105,[6] arrived on Monday, June 16th, the day before the book's scheduled publication. George P. Brett, Macmillan president, had gone to Florida for several weeks, after writing to Wister on the 11th that advance reviews looked good and that they were going into a second printing that day, even though 1930 was a dull year for the book business and summer was a slow time in any year. Wister himself was in Europe, and it took several days for a frantic cable to reach him. In a long letter to Brett dated June 19th, Wister wrote that he was astonished at the idea of a libel suit and thought it was probably a bluff, since the joke was entirely on the President and the lady would be identified by few after nearly three decades, but that it seemed wiser to change the text than to risk a suit. On June 23rd George Brett, Junior, Treasurer and General Manager of Macmillan, and Wister's three children cabled Wister that legal advice recommended omitting the episode and asked him to write nineteen hundred words about Charleston which might fit in; the book could be published a week after receipt of his cabled substitution. On June 26th the attorney wrote a letter of appreciation to Brett, in reply to his of the 24th saying the change would be made and a new date of publication set.[7] Wister's thirty-seven page cablegram, sent for discretion's sake through the Bankers Trust offices in Paris and New York,

was received on Saturday, June 28th, marked up as printer's copy, and sent to the printer on Monday; the new publication date was set for the tenth of July.

That others were aware of the early Roosevelt's rare book value is seen from an initialed note dated July 8th, apparently from a reviewer, saying that he was returning his copy to Macmillan by ordinary mail, although "as it may some day be worth untold millions in the hands of Dr. Rosenbach I suppose I should register it." In late August a Tulsa bookseller who had faithfully returned his early copies wrote Macmillan complaining that he had been offered one by a leading New York bookseller for a hundred dollars. By mid-September Whitman Bennett wrote the publisher that the supposed rarity had become quite common. A reply from Brett said that they too had been offered copies, at prices ranging from five to a hundred dollars, that two or three hundred were unaccounted for, and that they supposed most of them were reviewers' copies, since few of these had been returned. Such speculation was short-lived, largely because public interest in such a minor controversy could not be sustained. American Book Prices Current listed three sales of the book during 1931 at prices from $20 to $37.50 and one in 1932 for $15.50. Copies of the first issue sold in 1936 and 1939 for seven and five dollars respectively and have been recorded once or twice in each succeeding decade at similar prices. The biography is not, however, a title which would ordinarily be checked for price record or bibliographical history, and one wonders whether most present-day owners of the remaining uncensored copies know of the book's history and the complications arising from a comparatively unimportant and soon-to-be-forgotten episode in the narrative. While the censorship involved in Wister's Roosevelt is no different from that performed on many books by their editors before setting up in type, its occurrence is unusual after a book has been produced and initially distributed. And since there is little chance of recovering this history except through accident, the interesting larger question is raised as to how many other such seemingly ordinary books have had similar bibliographical histories which we may never discover.[8]

Notes