Radio Script #1020

Little Talks on Common Things
October 6, 1974

Many times on this program I have referred to that favorite magazine in New England homes of my boyhood, the Youth’s Companion. I have often wondered what happened to it, though I did know that it discontinued publication in 1929. But what happened to the great mass of unprinted material then in its vaults, especially the stories by Maine author, C. A. Stephens?

While reading last summer the autobiography of Edward Weeks, the distinguished former editor of the Atlantic Monthly, I found at least a partial answer to my question.

Several years before its demise, the Youth’s Companion had been taken over by the Atlantic Monthly Press, a corporation created by the Atlantic editor Ellery Sedgwick to publish Atlantic books and hold ownership to several magazines. Besides the Atlantic Monthly and the Youth’s Companion, the corporation owned the Independent, a news-opinion weekly; the Sportsman, the House Beautiful, and the Living Age.

About the situation in 1927, Mr. Weeks comments as follows: “The Youth’s Companion, which Sedgwick had taken under his wing, was losing money, and he hoped to revitalize it. Though having still a circulation of 260,000, the magazine had lost its grip. It had retained its readership by making every inducement for renewals and new subscriptions by ingenious offers of catcher’s mitts, footballs, even bicycles, to entice eager beavers to induce their friends to subscribe. As a result, by the time it reached its hundredth anniversary, many of its readers were no longer youths. The magazine had been deserted by its advertisers and was losing half a cent on every copy printed. In 1929 the Atlantic Monthly Press sold the Youth’s Companion to the magazine’s rival, American Boy, for $80,000.”

Mr. Weeks added: “The Companion’s inventory of unprinted, old-fashioned stories was huge. When the editors combed it for specialties for the centennial issue, they were delighted to find lively pieces by Ben Ames Williams and H. L. Mencken, accepted but laid aside long before those writers achieved fame.”

In 1974, when magazines are so costly that most of us have had to reduce the number we receive into our homes, it is interesting to note what Edward Weeks says about the life and death of periodicals. He wrote: “Magazines don’t die. They are simply replaced by a more up-to-date model. Once Ross’s New Yorker had turned the corner, it cut the ground from under those old-fashioned comics, Life and Judge. The breadth of interest and the personal touch that Dewitt and Lila Wallace gave to Readers Digest would have made Literary Digest obsolete even if it had not predicted the election of Landon in 1936. Frank Crowninshield’s Vanity Fair was feeling the pinch even before Henry Luce’s new Life replaced it. Colliers went down under competition from Time and Newsweek. In the so-called Quality Group there were too many competitors for hard times, and those that clung to their aging editors succumbed early. First the Century, once the leader in the field, then the Forum. In the thirties, Mencken gave up his struggle to keep American Mercury afloat, and in 1939 Scribner’s gave up. When the smoke cleared there were only two minors among the literary monthlies – Harpers and the Atlantic Monthly.”

As preparations progress for the 200th anniversary of Arnold’s March to Quebec, to be observed next summer, new information keeps coming to light.

We have known that Arnold employed both white and Indian guides, who at one time or another, before 1775 had been over part or all of the route between the Kennebec and the Chaudiere, and we know that one of those guides was Nehemiah Getchell of Vassalboro, who 17 years later in 1792, together with his son-in-law Asa Redington, built the first dam across the Kennebec at Ticonic Falls.

It is now claimed that a man named John Marsh worked for the Arnold Expedition, not as a guide but as an advance scout. That man had been born in Bellingham, Mass. in 1751, so he would have been 25 years old when Arnold’s army came to the Kennebec. Marsh had come to Maine several years before that. In 1774 he guided two men up the Penobscot to its junction with the Stillwater. There the two men, Jeremiah Collins and Joshua Eames, erected log houses, the first buildings in what is now Orono. Marsh became a friend of Chief Orono of the Penobscot tribe, and the chief adopted Marsh as a blood brother and initiated him into many tribal secrets and lore of the woods. Two years after Arnold’s Expedition, Marsh took possession of a lot on what became known as Marsh Island in the Penobscot, where he developed a farm.

Marsh gained complete command of the Indian tongue as well as the red man’s skills. That led to his use by commanders in the Revolution on more than one occasion, and he may well have worked for Arnold. He was a messenger for Col. John Allen on the St. John River and for other officers he carried messages to the Massachusetts General Court in Boston. When in 1779, there was a British attempt to take Maine ports, Marsh was in Camden, but by 1783 he was back on his Penobscot farm.

Many stories are told about Marsh’s revolutionary exploits. One day a courier, carrying royal dispatches to Quebec, was halted on a lonely road, relieved of his papers, and released. The messenger afterward recalled that his assailants had been a party of Indians, but strangely the leader of the party had blue eyes. John Marsh, with some of his Penobscot Indian friends, had obtained the papers that proved valuable to the American cause.

On another occasion the British found Marsh skulking outside their garrison at Quebec. When he spoke, it was only to the chief of the Iroquois warriors allied with the British. He spoke of the log house and of secret rituals so convincingly that the Iroquois were convinced that Marsh was an Indian, but they admitted they had never known an Indian with blue eyes. The British decided that Marsh must be a clever imposter and part of Arnold’s Expedition encamped on the Plains of Abraham, and they sentenced him to be executed as a spy on the following morning. But when daylight came, Marsh was not to be found. The clever woodsman had made his escape.

This information about the Maine Revolutionary spy, John Marsh, comes from a pamphlet published in 1973 by the Bellingham, Mass. Historical Commission.

Now let us come back again to that grand old magazine, the Youth’s Companion. Not long ago I saw its issue for December 24, 1891, the Christmas issue for that year. I was just two months and eight days old when that issue came from the press.

The magazine contained the usual articles on odd subjects. One was entitled “Wintering in a Dugout”, depicting hardship of life on the western plains. Another described the Rocky Mountain Burro, the pack animal of miners and prospectors. The Companion was always sounding praise of the much abused Indians. This issue told about a noble red man named Chief Good Thunder. A long article described the work of Lord Shaftesbury among the poor of London. There were poems by the Amherst recluse Emily Dickinson and by Maine’s own Celia Thaxter. An editorial sounded praise for the Temperance Union.

The children’s page in this issue of the Companion was devoted entirely to Christmas, with many simple stories and directions for making simple gifts. The illustrations were mostly woodcuts.

In its masthead the Companion announced that it was an illustrated weekly of eight pages, with a few special issues of 12 or 16 pages. Subscription was $1.75 a year. Publication offices were at 41 Temple Street, Boston.

Some of the ads in that Youth’s Companion of 83 years ago are especially interesting. One announced a sale of surplus copies of Grant’s Memoirs, first published several years before. The ad said: “600,000 volumes of General Grant’s Memoirs have been bought by Cosmopolitan Magazine and are now offered to the public for only 70 cents for the two volumes originally sold for $7.00, if taken in connection with a year’s subscription to Cosmopolitan for $3.00.”

Skating was a popular winter activity in 1891, as attested by this ad: “Raymond Extension Runner Speed Skates, $2.50 a pair. Finest in the world. Will carry you forty miles an hour. Set of runners for fancy skating supplied free with each pair of speed skates. Any boy can change them in five minutes.”

Another ad offered the Lowell Decimal Bicycle with cushion tires, $35 for boys and girls, $85 for adults.

A Boston clothing store was giving away children’s sleds. “1000 Commonwealth sleds to be given away for the purchase of five dollars or more at the Commonwealth Clothing House, corner of Washington and Kneeland Streets, Boston. Boys, tell your folks.”

In those days before electricity, a lot of attention was paid to all kinds of kerosene lamps. My father featured their sale, especially at Christmas time, in his store in Bridgton, Maine. In that 1891 Youth’s Companion, N. W. Knott, at his store on Boston’s Bromfield Street advertised: “Christmas Lamps. Prism lamps, banquet lamps, table lamps, hanging lamps. See our gilt banquet lamp with onyx shade for only $9.00.”

Clothes were cheap in 1891. One ad said: “The Famous Plymouth Rock Pants, cut to order, $3.00.”

McAllister on Boston’s School Street offered magic lanterns for home use or public exhibitions. Men were advised to keep their razors sharp with Torrey’s Strap Dressing. Cushman on Court Street advised people to come in out of the wet and get an umbrella for Christmas.

And with that dry remark, we must say goodbye until next week.

Year: 1974