Back at the hotel Roger came into closer contact with a group of newspaper reporters who shared a row of cubicle-like rooms on the top floor near his own. This corridor had long since lost its institutional uniformity. Most of the doors had been shattered in rage or horseplay and removed. The management had prudently replaced the chairs with benches and packing cases. For men without women a cave is sufficient.
A smell of gin, lemon peel, mash, cubebs, and medication filled the air. The men seldom ate, slept, washed, or fell silent. They were ill paid and only intermittently ambitious, but they were convinced that they belonged to the greatest profession in the world. They knew everything; all men except themselves were the dupes of appearances. They were privy to corruption in public office, the farce of philanthropy, the hypocrisy of the clergy, the wolves’ raids of big business—especially of the railroads and of the stockyards. They were rich in all the knowledge they were not permitted to print. Knowledge, like courage and virtue, isolates a man; they were thrown back on one another’s company. Barred from publishing what they knew, they were driven to seek out some other mode of expression: they were conversationalists. Conversation was their brightly lighted stage and their battlefield. There they knew their triumphs and their massacres. Day by day and night by night they strove for the palm of the unparalleled jest, the supreme verbal acrobacy. Under the guise of comradeship they flayed one another. They rifled the dictionaries for words and images of intoxicating precision; they demanded ever stronger accents from blasphemy and obscenity. They were untalented reporters because their ambitions lay elsewhere; they were conversationalists. Roger listened. They were quick-witted; they had a wide if heterogeneous field of information. Above all they had a point of view: the abject condition of man and the futility of his efforts to improve himself. Any confrontation with fortitude, heroism, piety, or even dignity rendered them uncomfortable. They prided themselves on being impressed by nothing. Any impulse toward admiration or compassion they promptly converted into ribaldry and persiflage. Several of these reporters had been present at the Coaltown trial and recognized the hotel clerk. They handled him roughly about it for a while, then forgot it. They could not take him seriously. He was a country yokel, a rube. He was still wet behind the ears.
Roger had two qualities, however, that recommended him to them. He was an attentive though unsmiling listener and he was reliable. Virtuosi stand in need of fresh audiences. “Old Trent listens with his eyes and ears and nose—damn it, he listens with his chin.” Dissipated men need one trustworthy friend. He became their banker and their message center. “Keep this money for me until tomorrow, Trent. I don’t know what will be happening to me tonight.” “Tell Herb to keep out of sight. Gretchen’s looking for him.” “Tell Spider the caucus is at ten o’clock in St. Stephen’s Hall.”
If journalism was the greatest profession in the world Roger resolved to look into it. He could not understand why reporters held all action and all human beings, except themselves, in contempt. He could not understand why, seeing corruption everywhere, they were not moved to report the whole of it. One afternoon Spider, returning to the hotel, laid a large envelope before Roger. It contained scores of stories and editorials about the Ashley-Lansing case. During the trial the Ashleys read no papers. He now read these pages several times. He was astonished to see how accurately they reported the proceedings in the courthouse and yet how feeble and unfocused the editorial comment was, even when it inveighed against the verdict and the conduct of the trial. During a solemn midnight walk beside Lake Michigan Roger resolved to become a newspaperman.
Years later Roger was able to acknowledge the extent of his indebtedness to the group of reporters on the top floor of the Carr-Bingham: his introduction to journalism, to opera, to one of those devil’s advocates that are so important in any education—that is, to the conversation of T. G. Speidel—and to reading.
The reporters were readers, as time permitted. There were many books to be found on the top floor of the Carr-Bingham Hotel—under the beds, over the wardrobes, in the toilet and broom cupboard, beside the mousetrap. Most of them were pocket size—a child’s pocket size. Their covers were of spongy blue paper or of imitation leather. They bore such titles as The Wit and Wisdom of Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll, Great Thoughts from Plato, The Best Pages of Casanova, Nietzsche on Superstition, Tolstoy on Art, Nuggets from Goethe, Nuggets from Voltaire, Confucius on The Center. Roger read them. He entered reading by the back door. He paid a visit to the Public Library, but was displeased with it. He began to haunt second-hand bookstores. Reading became for him a great adventure. He told no one of his rewards and of his defeats.
Even before he arrived at his decision to become a journalist Roger learned that the profession enjoys an inestimable privilege: newspapermen can occasionally obtain free admission to the theatre. One evening a reporter gave him a ticket to the opera. He attended a performance of Fidelio. It was an overwhelming experience.
He had endured much. He was at no time near to any breaking point, but he was starved of food for the spirit. It was time that he gazed on larger images of perseverance and constancy. A man can produce fortitude from his own vitals, but the true food of valor is example. Before the Kangaheela braves went into battle they listened—eyes fixed on the distance—to songs that recalled the exploits of their ancestors. It was perhaps not incidental that on that occasion he followed the story of a woman who descended into a dungeon to rescue a husband unjustly condemned to death. A week later another opera offered him the spectacle of a young man who endured trials of fire and water to win the hand of the girl he loved. At the end of it the young man was received into the fellowship of the wise and the just. If operas were like that—if they concerned themselves with things that really mattered (rendered all but unendurably convincing by such wonderful noise)—he must so arrange his life as to be constantly present at them.
He persuaded his friends on the top floor of the hotel to find work for him on a newspaper. He became a “printer’s devil,” or “pie monkey,” as the job was called there. His hands and face and apron were covered with ink. His ears were deafened by the presses. In a maze of iron staircases he rushed copy from the reporters to the editors. He rushed copy from the editors to the typesetters. He soon learned what was needed before it was called for; he foresaw blockages; he eased the recurring crises. The halls resounded with his name. “Trent! Trent! Where’s that damned Trent?” “Trent, carry this poop downstairs and be quick about it.” A reporter, short of time between two stories, would thrust his notes on Roger: “Run it up! And remember WHAT, WHO, WHERE, WHEN.” He was awaiting his opportunity and his opportunity came. All the reporters were out on assignment. It was learned that a man had strangled a woman behind Heffernan’s Livery Stable. “Get that story and get it right! Run!” Another opportunity arose and another. In late August, 1903, he became a reporter. He had been in Chicago thirteen months. He was eighteen years and eight months old.
At last he was not only doing his duty and feeding his curiosity, he was making a thing. His youthful and countrified air enabled him to be present at occasions from which an older and more knowing man would have been thrown out. He stood against the wall at closed political meetings; he slipped past the guards in the training quarters of boxing champions; he re-entered his old hospital by the employees’ entrance and obtained a confession from a dying man. He arrived before the police and put questions to women who did not yet know that they were widows. He was taking notes at a Greek patriotic banquet in the Olympia Restaurant while the guests, stricken with food poisoning, lay about on the floor like brightly colored clothes bags. By December, 1903, he was writing his sister, “I bet I know four hundred Chicagoans by names and faces.” Soon he was submitting special articles to the editor; they were known as “pudding pieces.” They were signed TRENT: “Chicagoans, Save Your Waterfront!” “Know Your Polish Neighbors,” “The Swop Market on Wisconsin Avenue,” “Know Your Chinese Neighbors.” He sent them
to Sophia. Notices would appear on the assignment board: “TF—500 words—Friday—Women’s interests.” The editor was bewildered by Roger’s contributions and rejected half of them as unlikely to interest readers, or as capable of giving offense. When a new editor joined the paper, Roger resubmitted them. He was inventing a new kind of journalism. Readers began to keep scrapbooks of these pieces; the offices of the newspaper were plagued with requests for old issues. He received a bonus of twenty-five cents for each.
Here are some further titles. Sympathy was stirring; he was beginning to see through walls and through skulls.
“A Day at Hull House.”
“A Child Goes to the Stockyards” (twice rejected).
“A Fourth-rate Hotel.”
“The Statues in Our Parks.”
“Thanks, Bettina!” (“Trent” interviewed the last horse to have drawn a streetcar in Chicago. The concluding sentence read: “By the time these words have been set in print Bettina’s hoofs will have been bottled for glue.”)
“Seagoing Adventure.” (The night boat to Milwaukee.)
“Know Your Hungarian Neighbors.” (The “Ungaria Eterna Association” promptly sent him an invitation to a banquet in his honor which he courteously declined.)
“Kennels for Babies.” (Twice rejected. Shocked readers canceled their subscriptions.)
“Pat Quiggan and Il Trovatore.” (A scene shifter at the auditorium gives his account of what takes place in the famous opera. Roger had little sense of humor, but an unerring ear. Truth is funnier than fiction. Like a number of the other puddings this was reprinted from coast to coast, much embellished.)
“A Pleasant Evening to You, Gentlemen.” (A visit to the newly opened “St. Casimir’s Home for the Aged.” Roger received a letter of appreciation from the Archbishop.)
“Milly and the Treadle.” (A visit to a seamstresses’ sweatshop. A score of readers sent the author the text of a poem he had never read, “The Song of the Shirt.”)
“Who Are Chicago’s Seven Best Preachers?” (Three articles. Roger had unwittingly put his head into a hornets’ nest of sectarian enthusiasm and strife. For weeks he received from fifty to a hundred letters a day.)
“A Cap for Florence Nightingale.” (October, 1905. This was written in great trouble of mind to give pleasure to Sophia. Roger had just heard from Porky that she had been taken to the Bell Farm for rest. He wrote her every day, finally enclosing this “pudding” and announcing that he was returning to Coaltown for Christmas. The editor first refused this piece as too silly for print, whereupon Roger resigned, declaring that he would take his work to another paper. The editor relented. In it Trent reproduced the thoughts of a father as he watched his daughter being “capped” on graduation from a nurses’ training school in Chicago. The girl was named Sophia and had lived in a house in southern Illinois called “The Elms.” The father recalled his daughter’s love for animals, the splints she had made for squirrels and birds, the fledglings she had fed from an eye dropper. The author seemed to know a great deal about the duties, the trials, and the rewards of nursing. The piece was widely reprinted and brought many letters. A big cake was delivered to the newspaper office; it had been baked by the sister at Misericordia Hospital who, they said, had long been praying for him.)
Roger had a rickety ink-stained table in the City Room, but was seldom there. There was a rumor in the city that he was the son of a famous criminal; it was attributed to envious gossip. Rumor also said that he was under twenty, which was preposterous. It was generally believed that he came of an old Chicago family and was well on in life. He lived in a beautiful home in Winnetka or Evanston, surrounded by a large family and many animals. Roger had a considerable acquaintance, however, among people who “worked,” to whom he was known as “that boy who writes those things in the paper.” He had made a number of enemies also, particularly in the sporting and political circles, and had had occasion to defend himself from violence. All this activity, to him, bore little resemblance to the lifework in journalism that was forming in his mind. He was looking forward to inventing a journalism that had never been seen before. He was not impatient. He did not take these “puddings” seriously. Besides, their spelling and grammar were deplorable. He took the precaution of submitting them to old Mr. Brant of the green eyeshade, who prepared them for print. Roger studied and digested Mr. Brant’s emendations. In Chicago “Trent” was beginning to be famous, but those who have never wished for fame in early youth are slow to recognize it when it arrives and scarcely know what to do with it. As far as he was concerned he wrote solely for money.
During the spring of 1904 his face narrowed, his voice descended half an octave, his glance sharpened. His inner weather became less troubled. Perhaps he learned laughter from Demetria, Lauradel, and Izumi—of whom we shall hear more; perhaps it sprang from his pleasure in his work. His characteristic movements were swift; he crossed and recrossed the city as though he had wings on his heels. At Christmas he sent his mother a sheaf of his “puddings” and gave for the first time an address to which she could reply. He made no apology for having withheld it so long—ostensibly to escape annoyance from the police—and she made no allusion to it: at any distance this mother and son could read each other’s thoughts. She expressed her pleasure in his articles. She thanked him for his remittances and assured him that they were no longer necessary. She gave him an account of the boardinghouse’s success, particularly stressing Sophia’s helpfulness. She told him that Lily had left Coaltown to study singing in Chicago. Lily sent her money regularly, but she did not know what name she had taken nor any address for her. (The Ashleys were odd folk.) She hoped that Roger would visit them in Coaltown before long. His room had been rented to many guests, but it would be readied for him. She made no mention of the ordeals they had undergone together two and a half years ago. She concluded her letter in German: she asked for a photograph of him.
Both had written many drafts for these Christmas letters; the emotion had been consigned to the wastepaper baskets.
The reporters spent a large part of their days and nights in Krauss’s, a German saloon on Wells Street, equidistant from their several newspapers’ offices. There they wrote their stories and carried on their week-long, month-long card games, and there they wrestled for the conversational crown. Roger needed their conversation, though he soon outgrew it. The rewards were intermittent as information or insight, but the vocabulary was rich. The talk turned largely on liquor (after-effects of last night’s consumption), women (rapacity of, their staggering over-self-estimation, Schopenhauer’s matchless essay on), politics (gorgonzola in the City Hall, populace led by the nose), their editors (exposure and downfall predicted), literature (Omar Khayyám, greatest poet that ever lived), philosophy (Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll, towering intellect of), Chicago’s rich men (hands and feet in the trough), religion (farcical character of, opiate of the masses), venereal disease (wonder doctor reported in Gary, Indiana). Roger endured much browbeating. For a time they were able to ignore his rapid advancement. His youthfulness, ignorance, illiteracy, and countrified air rendered it incredible. It was assumed that some mysterious person, or persons, wrote the pieces for him. By June of 1904, however, there could no longer be any doubt. Their condescension turned to violent dislike. Twice he pushed a tormentor against the wall and demanded a retraction. He was no longer welcome at Krauss’s. Before that privilege was denied him, however, he had made a friend and taken a profit. The dean and Nestor of the round tables, Thomas Garrison Speidel, “T.G.,” had adopted him as audience, pupil, and doormat.
T.G. was a nihilist. For a time he had belonged to both anarchist and nihilist clubs and had addressed them—first to their admiration, then to their mounting bewilderment and fury. He was duly thrown out of both organizations. On the one hand he was eloquent on the necessity of razing all political and social institutions, but on the other he insinuated many a sneer at the enthusiasms of the revolutionary dream. His pre-eminence among the reporter
s reposed upon the purity with which he hated “everything” and upon the fact that he seldom spoke. He was a dean at forty-five and a mastiff among puppies. He had a fine head, lined and furrowed, and freckled with light blue stains like gunpowder marks. He was the son of circus performers, who had found him, at the age of five, unadapted to acrobatic training. He had been farmed out to foster homes, flogged, scalded, locked up in cupboards, and always starved. There had been a history of running away, of stealing for hoboes’ dens, of reformatories, of being adopted by kindly and unkindly farmers, of more escapes. He had earned his living in many ways. He had followed county fairs and been a mesmerist in a side show. He had even dabbled in quack healing. In a camp meeting in Kentucky he had effected three cures so remarkable that a sacred rage descended on the congregations; he barely escaped their enthusiasm with his life. He never ventured into healing again. Finally he came to rest as a reporter: the occupation was not sedentary; it admitted of drinking at all hours; its demands on sustained thought were intermittent; it flattered a delusion of omniscience. He had been married four or three times. Occasionally a child or two would be waiting for him at the door of the newspaper office or at Krauss’s. They were well-behaved and bright—all T.G.’s wives had been, as his daughters proved to be, exceptional women. There is a limit to the number of ten-cent pieces a drinking man can dispense on a salary of twelve dollars a week. He talked to them with gravity and great charm. (He reserved his contempt for persons whom he knew well.) The children went away pleased; they had merely wanted to look at their father.
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