Murray Leinster

by Billiee J. Stallings; Jo-an J. Evans

  Mr. Watts must have been a Methodist because the second set of children was brought up in the Methodist church and all were strict teetotalers.

  Will’s father, George Briggs Jenkins, was apparently a dashing suitor. A neighbor later told Mamie’s niece Grace Davis that, when he was a small boy, he used to follow George and Mamie, running after the carriage as they drove around town because he thought they were so elegant and glamorous. George and Mamie married on May 25, 1885. She was 22 years old, and he was 36

  with a twelve-year-old daughter Lula and a resident mother-in-law.

  Will’s story of his parents’ marriage includes a ghost. As his mother told the tale, right after she was married, she was resting in a room off the entrance hall of what would now be her home. While waiting for her new husband to finish overseeing the delivery of their luggage, she heard someone coming

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  Left: Mary Louisa “Mamie” Jenkins. Right: George Briggs Jenkins at 21.

  down the stairs. She rose to see who it was and saw a young woman cross the hall and go out the front door. When George came in, she asked who the woman was. George asked for a description and when Mamie gave it, he turned pale. Mamie had unwit tingly described Emma, his first wife and Lula’s mother, now long dead.

  Those first years must have been difficult for Mamie. Three little boys, Oliver, a second Oliver, and the first George, came quickly and died shortly after their births. George Sr. must have grieved deeply as well, having lost his first son, born to his first marriage, also in infancy. Mamie and George’s fourth son, George Jr., was born in 1890 and soon became his mother’s darling. Six years later, with this intricate family history, Will came along. Apparently he was a cranky baby, did not eat well, and was prone to temper tantrums. His traditional southern mammy doted on him, however, so it was a happy time for him. She often sang an old, rather gruesome lullaby, which Will remembered and sang to his own children when they were babies: Lammo, lammo, where’s the little sheep

  Down by the haystack fast asleep.

  The buzzards and the flies keep peckin’ at his eyes

  ’Till the poor little sheep cried, “Mammy.”

  Two • A Southern Family

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  His half-sister Lula, whom he always called S’Lula for Sister Lula in the southern tradition, also spoiled him. She was a schoolteacher, still single and living at home. She passed down a treasured memory of Will, sitting in his high chair with his soft brown hair curling around his ears and a delighted smile on his face. He had turned his cereal bowl upside down on his head and was enjoying his spot in the center of attention as the gooey mess made its way down to his shoulders.

  Will remembered a happy boyhood. One of his close childhood friends was Cornelius “Neely” Bull. They were bright and curious boys, and Will told stories of their playing with a pet raccoon and dropping a cat from a second story window to see if it would land on its feet, an early experiment. He was pleased when he and Neely reconnected many years later during World War II, and Will had a chance to share another invention with him.

  Life was happy and secure for the family of four. Lula, Will’s half-sister, married, and George Sr., Mamie and their sons, George Jr., and Will, were comfortable and surrounded by family and friends in Norfolk, Virginia. But the good times ended in 1910, and life changed dramatically for Will. The Norfolk and Southern Railroad, where his father, George, had been paymaster for 25 years, went into receivership, and

  George, 61 years old, lost his job. With the

  job went the life Will had known since

  birth.

  The next two years are hazy. We know

  from Will’s correspondence with Fly magazine that he was living in The Tazewell in

  late 1909 and early 1910. The Tazewell,

  located at the corner of Tazewell and

  Granby Streets in downtown Norfolk, was

  new at the time, and revered as the first

  hotel in the area with automatic elevators

  and air-conditioning. It was built in 1906

  on the site of the home of Littleton Walter

  Tazewell, a former governor of Virginia, in

  anticipation of the tri-centennial of the

  founding of Jamestown to be celebrated the

  next year. It exists today as a boutique hotel

  and is listed as one of the Historic Hotels of

  America, a program of the National Trust

  for Historic Preservation.

  In April 1910, the census found the

  George Briggs Jenkins in his 50s.

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  Mamie, Will, and George Jr. circa 1910.

  family living in New York City on West 139th Street. George Sr., was working as an accountant, and George Jr., as a bookkeeper, both in an accountant’s office. Mamie, Will’s mother, was at home, and Will, aged 14, is listed as

  “having attended school any time since September 1, 1909.” This was probably the three months of eighth grade he talks of attending before his formal education ended.

  There is evidence that Mamie and George Jr., and possibly Will, returned to Norfolk that year. The 1910 Norfolk city directory shows George Jr., living in The Tazewell and working as a clerk at the Norfolk and Southern Railroad, which had reorganized. In 1911, both George Jr., and Mamie are recorded as living at The York Apartments in Norfolk.

  Will talked of going to Cleveland with his father sometime during this period and reading and studying in the library there. He may have done so at this time, however, there are no records of either of them living in Cleveland.

  By 1912, according to the Newark, New Jersey, city directory, George Jr., was working for the Prudential Insurance Company there. Only George Jr.’s name is listed, probably as head of household. According to family members, all three of them lived together in Newark. George Jr., and Mamie were Two • A Southern Family

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  enumerated at the same address in the 1920 census. George Jr. was listed again in 1920, along with Will, in Norfolk at the home of their half-sister Lula.

  Where George Sr. was between 1910 and 1920 is unknown. He next appears in the 1920 census in New York City, living alone and working as an accountant. Later he went to live with his daughter Lula in Culpeper, Virginia, where she had moved, and he died in 1926.

  During this unsettled period, Will was unable to go to school regularly.

  Not surprisingly, as he often said, he failed English. He gave up, did not go back to school, and joined his brother at the Prudential Insurance Company in Newark as an office boy. He hated it, and, determined to find another way to earn a living, he decided to become a writer.

  • THREE •

  The Early Days:

  1910–1919

  Will said he read every book on writing in the Newark Public Library, where the now impoverished family of three — Mamie, George Jr., and Will —

  often spent time to keep warm. He undoubtedly devoured The Smart Set magazine as well.

  Its first issue was published March 10, 1900, with the subtitle “A Magazine of Cleverness.” It was the ultimate in sophistication and chic and certainly attracted this impressionable young man with literary aspirations.

  The Smart Set was launched by Colonel William D’Alton Mann, a wealthy and colorful speculator, who gambled that he could make money in publishing. His weekly tabloid, Town Topics, was very successful, and he reasoned he could appeal to the same audience with an entertaining magazine focused on the peccadilloes of New York’s high society, true or fictionalized.

  It would also include stories and verse. Its first editor, Arthur Grissom, was a hard working journalist with a literary flair. Although he died less than two years after its first issue, the magazine bore his imprint for a long time. It went through many changes in leadership over the next few years, perhaps facing its greatest challenge with Mann’s involvement in a libel s
uit he brought against Norman Hapgood, editor of Collier’s Weekly, and the Colliers (father and son) themselves. They had accused him and Town Topics of blackmail.

  The court found him “not guilty” but The Smart Set, even though not directly involved, suffered.

  In 1908 in order to economize, Mann took over the editorship himself.

  He decided to add a literary editor and a regular book review column and contacted 28-year-old Henry Louis Mencken, a Baltimore newspaperman, about the position. (Mencken later shortened his byline to the more familiar H. L. Mencken.) Mencken accepted with the caveat that he could do most 22

  Will may well have read this September 1911 issue of The Smart Set when he was 15 years old. His first epigram was printed two years later when he was 17.

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  of his work in Baltimore. The following year he was introduced to a new staff member, George Jean Nathan, who was to join the magazine as drama critic.

  Nathan had two years of experience in reviewing for newspapers and weeklies in Manhattan. Despite the difference in their backgrounds (Mencken, the stereotypical tough newsman, and Nathan, age 27, elegant and a bit snobbish, with Ivy League Cornell University and two years’ study in Italy under his belt), they bonded immediately. During their fifteen-year relationship, they transformed the magazine by recruiting new talent as well as soliciting work from well-known writers. Their policies made a significant impact on American literature.

  Some of the best-known writers of the time were published in the magazine. The Smart Set is credited with discovering F. Scott Fitzgerald, O. Henry and Eugene O’Neill. Edna St. Vincent Millay was a 22-year-old recent Vassar graduate when she submitted a short story, “Barbara on the Beach.” It was published in November 1914, her first appearance in an adult magazine, and she soon became part of the literary and Bohemian Greenwich Village crowd.

  Nathan used his contacts in Britain and France to solicit new material, and the poet Ezra Pound sent over a couple of new author James Joyce’s

  “Dubliner” stories which they printed. Joyce was a Pound protégé, so the proof pages of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man soon followed. It was rejected as “too long.” Mencken regretfully informed Joyce that they did not print serials, and it should not be cut.

  James Branch Cabell also appeared first in its pages. He was a Virginian who became notorious with the 1919 publication of his novel entitled Jurgen, a Comedy of Justice. Although it was labelled obscene by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, this did not seem to bother the usually straight-laced Will, who was so impressed by the description of a fantasy empire that he had a framed map of Jurgen hanging on the wall of his home for many years.

  When Mann had sold the magazine in 1911 to John Adams Thayer for $100,000, Thayer offered the editor’s job first to Mencken and then to Nathan.

  Both refused, fearing correctly that Thayer really wanted to be his own editor.

  By 1913, when Will was beginning to be published in The Smart Set, Thayer realized he needed help and brought in Willard Huntington Wright, a model of precocity. Wright had studied in three colleges between the ages of fifteen and eighteen when he left Harvard because “they had nothing more to teach me.” At nineteen, he was literary editor of the Los Angeles Times.

  He was a handsome man with a cleft chin and a magnificent upswept moustache. Mencken had encouraged him to apply for the editor’s position, and Wright got along well with both Mencken and Nathan, and their idea Three • The Early Days: 1910 –1919

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  to make their work fun. Will remembered their escapades with fond amusement.

  As The Smart Set editor, Wright was brilliant but flawed. His controversial editorial policies (some called them pornographic) and reckless spending left The Smart Set with financial and image problems. Thayer fired him, and the magazine struggled until it was taken on by Colonel Eugene R. Crowe (one of its chief creditors), and Eltinge Warner, who was then beginning to build a publishing empire. After many personal struggles, Wright became a very popular mystery writer under the name S. S. Van Dine, creating the hero Philo Vance.

  By chance, Eltinge Warner and his wife were passengers on the S. S.

  Imperator where Warner met Nathan while strolling on the promenade deck.

  The elegant Nathan (they used the same London tailor) impressed him. When The Smart Set deal came up, Warner immediately thought of Nathan, remembered he worked for The Smart Set, and offered him the editorship. Nathan, believing in Warner’s financial acumen and feeling that he would not interfere in editorial decisions, agreed, on the condition that Mencken would be co-editor. Mencken accepted but again reserved the right to work from Baltimore.

  He would be the first reader of manuscripts, and he and Nathan would meet twice a month to confer.

  Despite the demands of his growing stable of authors, Mencken found time to encourage an aspiring young writer, who had been successfully submitting epigrams, sending Will a letter: “You seem to know precisely the sort of epigrams The Smart Set needs, and we shall be very glad to have you submit them regularly.” He did so. Each sale brought him $5, and Will was on his way. There were no bylines on epigrams, so it is impossible to identify his.

  Will loved to tell of his first visit to The Smart Set offices (around 1913).

  He said George Jean Nathan almost fell off his chair when he saw the author of such pithy and sardonic sayings. “I’d been providing it with dabs of such writing, and had been asked for more. It was perfectly normal for me to be consulting with its editors, but I happened to be seventeen years old. I was a freak.”

  Each issue of The Smart Set included one novella, several short stories, poems and sketches, in addition to epigrams. Will began to submit other material, and his first longer piece, “My Neighbor,” appeared in the February 1916 issue under “William F. Jenkins” when he was 19 years old. This was followed by seven more contributions that year, including the short stories “The Anti-Climax” in July and “We Were in the Smoking Room” in December.

  At times, Mencken had trouble filling The Smart Set magazine and solved his problem by encouraging both his well-known authors and the new young 26

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  writers he was fostering to adopt a variety of pen names. Thus Murray Leinster was born.

  Soon, Will began appearing in The Smart Set as both William F. Jenkins and Murray Leinster (pronounced Len-ster).

  The name was derived from Will’s mother’s maiden name, Murry, and indirectly from his middle name, Fitzgerald. Wyndham Martyn, an English writer and friend later known for the Anthony Trent novels, told him that the Fitzgeralds in Ireland were descended from the Dukes of Leinster, so he adopted the name.

  In their sometimes-desperate solicitations of new manuscripts, even Nathan and Mencken felt some of the submissions were pretty bad. They decided to start new magazines to publish some of their rejects and nicknamed them louse magazines. One of these was The Parisienne, later edited by Wyndham Martyn . Story locales were changed to France to reflect the current infatuation with all things French, and the first issue came out in July 1915.

  Although Will’s epigrams had been appearing regularly in The Smart Set, what may have been Will’s first bylined piece, “Love” by Will F. Jenkins, was published in The Parisienne in August 1915 six months before the short story

  “My Neighbor” appeared in The Smart Set.

  “Love,” said the scholar, “is the product of the creative imagination, the process being the creation of a distorted and thereby improved image of the beloved object which is therefore substituted for the object itself.”

  “Love,” cried the jester, “is a nimble flea that bites me, and whose bites I cannot scratch.”

  “Love,” said the young merchant, “is the wakening voice in a nightmare of pettiness.”

  “Love,” said his father, examining his son’s accounts, “is the genius of bankruptcy and th
e Nemesis of bank accounts.”

  “Love,” said the theologian, “is excellent evidence of the divine origin of man.”

  “Aye,” answered the benedict, “and the absolute proof of his invincible sap-headedness.”

  * * * * * * *

  “Love,” quoth Zeus, “is my only rival.” So to crush his rival, he instituted marriage.

  A playlet, also bylined Will F. Jenkins, “On the Country Club Verandah,” appeared in the February 1916 issue. The Parisienne was very popular and financially successful, so Nathan and Mencken sold it at a profit and started another louse magazine, Saucy Stories, to compete with Snappy Stories, which was still published by Colonel Mann.

  Writers might submit a story to The Smart Set and find it later in The Parisienne or Saucy Stories, but no one objected because the latter were able to pay higher rates.

  Three • The Early Days: 1910 –1919

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  The August 1915 issue of Parisienne — probably Will’s first published byline, for

  “Love,” a poem.

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  Will had already sold to Snappy Stories beginning with “You Woman!” under the Murray Leinster byline in April 1917. When Mencken found out that his protégé was appearing in other magazines, he flattered the young writer by asking him to save “Will F. Jenkins” for his “better” work, such as that published in The Smart Set implying that he had a future in the better magazines.

  Will’s first story in Saucy Stories, “The Third Love of Aileen Duzant,” was published as by Murray Leinster in March 1917. Will’s brother George had watched the first checks come in and had become interested in writing, too. Many years later, Will complained in a letter to his daughter Jo-an: “My brother saw me getting money for such stuff, met the literary group I got into and proceeded to write. He sold his first five stories; I didn’t.” George had joined Will in writing epigrams, poems and sketches for The Smart Set and The Parisienne. One of George’s earliest pieces, “My Wife,” appeared in the November 1916 issue of The Parisienne. Interestingly, George was never married.