Atlanta --- As I Remember It

by DON MARQUIS

Member of The Atlanta Journal Editorial Staff, 1904-1907

No alumnus of The Journal has achieved greater distinction in his especial field of letters than Don Marquis, regarded by many as on of America's foremost humorists, and held in even higher esteem by some as a poet and philosopher.

His play, "The Old Soak", started in 1921 a run that became a Broadway sensation and drew national attention to t Mr. Marquis, but that adventure in playwriting had been preceded by many and diverse publications of prose and poetry which captivated an even more discriminating, if less numerous audience.

In his days on The Journal as editorial writer, Mr. Marquis was a prodigious worker, filling trunks and packing boxes with manuscripts. Some of those stories were destroyed by janitorial mistakes and similar calamities, but much of that fruit of early labor was revised and polished later to form the basis of some of his most successful essays.

I have many reminiscences of my old days in Atlanta which I do not quite dare to print, I regret to say. There are too many men who are fathers of families -- even grandfathers and looked up to with reverence and respect -- whose names I would have to leave out because they are now pillars of society.

I remember thinking, when I went to Atlanta in 1902, that I had never before struck such a hospitable and entertaining town. I went down there from Philadelphia, lured by a title -- the sob of associate editor of the Atlanta News. It was not in my nature to refuse a title like that! I got off the train and went immediately to the News office, and I had not talked with Colonel Graves for five minutes before he made me a major. "Major Marquis", he said, "is euphonious and alliterative. I do not think that you are old enough, or that you have been in Atlanta long enough, to be a colonel yet." As I had been in Atlanta about twenty minutes, I agreed with him that I cold well afford to wait for this promotion.

Afterward, I was introduced to the rest of the lads on the paper by the late Joseph Hitt, the sweetest soul who ever lived. Many of the boys still working for Atlanta newspapers must remember Joe Hitt.

Along towards evening of my first day in Atlanta, a little poker game stated in the office. Some person of authority came in and suggested that the newsroom was not the proper place for a poker game. One of the reporters spoke up and said to come on out to his house. I was never able to determine afterwards just where this house was. We learned the next day, anyhow, that it was not his house at all. It belonged to a preacher who was away on his vacation but had left it in charge of his son. The son thought he would take a little vacation also, with papa well out of the way, and turned it over to this reporter.

There were seven of us in this poker game, which was staged around the preacher's dining room table; and after a while some of the card players began to get hungry and thirsty. Somebody went down town and came back with a cab full of eatables and drinkables. It was before prohibition had struck the country and before state prohibition had descended upon Georgia. I remember this as the evening on which I first got acquainted with Randolph Rose's famous corn whisky -- a friendship that lasted for some years and has helped to make me what I am today. Relays of food and corn whisky continued to appear all during the night, and about 5 o'clock in the morning some kind of a barbaric dance was started. It was extended from cellar to the attic. I seem to remember that the minister's piano tried to climb the stairs. I woke up about 4 o'clock Sunday afternoon, sticking out of a trundle bed somewhere at the top of the house, and as I went down through the house to the street, I remember saying to myself: "Gosh, this is the town! Gosh, this is the life!"

I heard later that the preacher's neighbors had wondered that Saturday night just what kind of a church party was being pulled at the preacher's house. I do not remember where the house was, and I am not sure that I ever knew the minister's name, but after a lapse of thirty years, I do feel that it is about time to apologize for my own part in this affair.

I was in Atlanta seven years to the day, and I look back on my journalistic work there with the liveliest pleasure. It did not all consist of impromptu poker parties.

I remember, better than any other part of my service on The Journal, the primary campaign for the governorship between Clark Howell and Hoke Smith. It lasted, as I recall it, for eleven months, and I have never seen a community anywhere that got any more excited over politics than Georgia was that year. I wrote a great many of the editorials for The Journal during that period. What it was all about now, I cannot remember. A fellow most of you remember by the name of Sammie Dibble, was writing most of the editorials for the Constitution at that time. Sammie and I, in spite of the heated animosity which we expressed daily in print, were nevertheless very good friends personally. He knew everything that I was going to say in The Journal about Clark Howell's campaign and I knew everything he was going to say in the Constitution about Hoke Smith's campaign; so after a while, Sam and I -- just to relieve the monotony -- began to trade; that is to say, now and then I would write an editorial against my own side and Sammy would write one against his side, and we would meet up in Harry Silverman's cafe and trade copy. In this way, Sammy and I were able to keep our interest alive in the political principles of the time.

There was a joint debate between Mr. Howell and Mr. Smith, at Columbus, Ga. John Paschall and Ralph Smith and I were sent down to Columbus to cover it for The Journal. I got credit for a bit of journalistic efficiency on that occasion which I never deserved. Knowing exactly what Mr. Smith would say, and what Mr. Howell would say, because I had been so familiar with the subject for so many months, I wrote the entire debate before I started to Columbus. It came to between 7,000 and 10,000 words of copy, and I had it all in the inside pocket of my coat. We had a wire directly from the auditorium to The Journal office. All I had to do was to file the stuff that I had brought down there with me. John Paschall and Ralph Smith, not having taken this precaution, really did all the hustling at Columbus. The debate was not yet quite over when my copy was in type in The Journal office in Atlanta, and Senator Cohen, who then was managing editor of The Journal, sent me a highly complimentary wire for my speed in covering the debate. He said the copy read as well as if I had taken a week to write it and that the feat of writing it that well at high speed, under pressure, was truly remarkable. He missed me only about four days, for it had really taken me three days to get up that gorgeous bunch of copy. This, by the way, is the first time that I have ever told the truth about the matter.

Reminiscences concerning Atlanta came flooding in on me like a wave one Saturday afternoon about three or four weeks ago. At that time I had a play running on Broadway which I had backed with my own money. "Once a sucker, always a sucker," as the saying is. It had got good notices and people were beginning to come, but I needed $5,000 that afternoon to keep the show on the next week and give people a chance to get there. It was a play with a particular appeal to the church people and they were beginning to come -- in fact, the day after the show closed, preachers all over New York and New Jersey were haranguing their congregations to go to see it, and I took it off and slammed the door right in the face of a good many thousand dollars because I could not get hold of $5,000 quickly on Saturday afternoon. I wasn't very well at the time and so could not get around and high-jack the money out of any of my friends.

While I was sitting there thinking of the situation, I was called to the telephone.

"Mr. Marquis," said an unfamiliar voice, "this is Jake."

"Jake who?" I said. "I know a lot of Jakes."

"Jake who used to be your old office boy on The Atlanta Journal," said the voice, "years ago. I saw it in the papers where you had been pretty sick and I wondered if I could do something for you. I hear you got a show on. There isn't anything I could do for you like in the old days, is there?"

I remember that in the old days Jake used to lend me $2 on Saturday night and collect $3 from me the next Wednesday, which was pay day. "Jake," I said, "there is something a little like the old days. You could come over to see me with a certified check for $5,000 this afternoon, but don't make it quite like the old days. I don't want to owe $7,5000 next Wednesday."

"Mr. Marquis," said Jake, "the coats aren't moving from the racks so fast this season." He explained that he was in the fur business now. "Five thousand dollars would not be so easy to get hold of in the next hour or two, but I tell you what I will do for you. I will go right over to the synagogue and put up a special prayer for you right now, if you got no objections."

"Go to it, Jake," I said, "and good luck to both of us."

I had at that time two Catholic friends, a Methodist, and several others who were putting up special prayers for me, and I thought I might as well take all the traffic would bear. Anyhow, about two hours later, I began to get better. I don't know whether it was the weight of Jake's petition added to the others that did the business or not. It is impossible to do any exact bookkeeping in these matters.

I remember one evening, more than twenty-five years ago, observing Jake (who was then about 13 years old) lying gasping on the floor with another boy (who was known as Eddie Honk-Honk around the office) choking him, and choking him well nigh to death. I don't to this day know what they were fighting about, but when I pulled Eddie off of Jake, Jake sat down soberly in a corner, felt of his neck carefully a few times, and then said to me: "Mr. Marquis, when I am owner of this paper, I shall always see to it that you have a good editorial job."

"So you are going to own this paper, are you, Jake?" I asked him.

"I think I will," said Jake, "some day. I came to work as an office boy with the idea I should pretty soon be a reporter and then an editor, but since I have been here I have been looking around some, and it strikes me that being a reporter or an editor wasn't so good, if reporters and editors has got to borrow $2 every Saturday night from an office boy, so they can pay him $3 on Wednesday. Either I will get into the business end of the newspaper business, so I can own it later, or else I will get into some other business."

Jake was entirely right about the matter! I wish that I myself might have had this inspired wisdom at 13 years of age, instead of acquiring it in middle age when it is too late to change.

Atlanta, when I went there in 1902, was a small city compared to what it is now. There were a hundred thousand or possibly one hundred and twenty-five thousand inhabitants, but it was a lively town. Everybody seemed to know everybody else, and, as I remember it, half the town was out parading up and down Peachtree Street in the sunshine every afternoon from 4 o'clock on to dinner time. I suppose there were people who worked all day right up to dinner time, but I don't think I ever knew any of them personally. I suppose that, spasmodically, I must have done some work myself from time to time, but my recollection now of those days is all one long and glorious play-day.

One of the most attractive and courageous men I have ever known anywhere was the late James R. Gray, who was then editor of The Journal. I remember on the occasion of the joint debate at Columbus, which I have mentioned, I came back with a pretty sizable expense account. I had been in Columbus a couple of days and had met a thousand politicians and I thought I had to buy drinks for all of them. When I sat down to make up my expense account, there was about $45 which I could not account for in any other way except money for drinks, so I put down to "Whisky -- $45." The business office demurred and the account went up to Mr. Gray. He looked it over, laughed and said: "Well, Don is honest about what he spent the money for, at least, and I don't think it is unreasonable." He laughed again and O.K.'d the account. He was a man who could not be buffaloed or daunted by any situation which he found himself or the paper in, through political activities. He stood squarely back of every reporter and editor he had, so long as they were in the right, and he could not be swerved from what he conceived to be his duty to the community.

I have worked before and since for a good many newspapers and publications, but I have never been connected with one where the general spirit amongst the staff was so enthusiastic as on The Atlanta Journal. We all felt very consciously that we were helping to build a community, and put our best licks into the job. Nor have I ever been connected with any enterprise where the personal relations all up and down the line were so agreeable.

I understand that many southerners (Atlanta people among them) speak of Atlanta as more like a middle-western or northern town than a southern town. Being southern, they see its unlikeness to many other southern towns, I suppose. Being a northerner myself, I always see its likeness to the south more readily, and that is what I value most about Atlanta -- for, truly, no where else in the world exists such a kindly, agreeable and essentially civilized population as in the Southern States of America.

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