The foursome set out on a two-month Continental tour. They visited the French Riviera, then hardly known to tourists, and continued into Italy, following the usual itinerary of Americans abroad. Springtime on the Arno, the crumbling monuments of Rome, the ruins of Pompeii, the Grand Canal. What a change this was from Olmsted’s earlier journeys! Not a walking tour or a backwoods saddle trip, but traveling in style, escorting three attractive young women to boot. After a hard year of working on his book and the magazine, he had earned a vacation.
They took a turn through central Europe and visited Vienna and Prague. In Dresden, Olmsted left them and went to London. He remained there most of that summer, attending to business. He negotiated an agreement with the publisher of Fraser’s Magazine; he traveled to Scotland to meet with the editors of the Edinburgh Review. His aim was not merely to acquire literary properties. As he explained to Dix:
What I chiefly hope to do in the next year is to unobtrusively obtain the friendship and confidence of the publishing body for our house. To convert the present confidence of those who consign to us into a really active friendship, to make them desirous to serve us, and if we are to be (I hope not) considered here as the rivals of Bangs [a New York book dealer], to make them our partisans, to make them do our advertising, blow our trumpets, sound our praises, vindicate our character & advantages.
I find this an impressive statement coming from someone who would, until then, have been better described as impetuous rather than farsighted. This is the first real evidence of his long-headedness. Of course, he was now older—thirty-four—but this suggests that a new side of him was emerging: the planner. It is also evidence that Olmsted, far from being a poor businessman, had sound commercial instincts.
He found the time to do some writing of his own and started on an introduction to his new book on the saddle trip through Texas. He also resurrected “Yeoman.” Learning that a Southern congressman had caned an antislavery senator into insensibility on the floor of the Senate chamber, he wrote an article for the New-York Times: “How Ruffianism in Washington and Kansas is Regarded in Europe.”
The first glowing British reviews of Seaboard Slave States appeared during this period. This was no coincidence. He was promoting his book to English reviewers, even as he was discussing publishing business. As the author of a serious and well-received book on American slavery, and an editor of the esteemed Putnam’s, he was treated as a man of letters, not as a commercial representative. Thackeray invited him to one of his annual dinners for Punch contributors. Olmsted, who had already acquired several books from the publishers of Punch, recommended to his partners in New York that they consider distributing the humor magazine but cautioned: “I would not like to have you risk any financial embarrassment for it.”
He was astute enough to recognize that British humor might have a limited appeal in the United States, but there was another reason for his prudence. He was concerned about Putnam’s. His suspicions had been raised by an unpleasant incident arising from his acquisition of a set of woodcuts and electrotypes that he thought would make interesting illustrations in the magazines. His partners disagreed. They brusquely informed him that “there should be no more purchases on our account without our consent.” They pointedly added, “We can use our money to better advantage here.” Olmsted was always prickly when his judgment was called into question; moreover, “our money” was also his money. An acrimonious exchange of letters followed. He learned from his brother that the magazine’s circulation was declining. John also informed him that he and their father had been approached by Dix with a request to invest in the firm. (Neither had accepted.) All this suggested that Dix, Edwards & Company was not financially sound.
For the moment there was little Olmsted could do. His father, stepmother, and half brother Albert were arriving in England at the end of July. John Olmsted had sold his interest in the dry-goods store five years earlier. He had retired—he was only sixty—not on account of his health but of his principles; “one of the partners did something he did not approve of,” according to his daughter-in-law. He was financially comfortable and decided to spend a year traveling abroad with his family. It was his first visit to Europe. Frederick met them in Liverpool and, retracing the route of his walking tour, brought them to London. After a week in the city, they journeyed together through the Low Countries and Germany. This was like the family outings of his youth, except that now he was leading the party, playing tour guide, showing off his accumulated Continental lore. They eventually made their way to Dresden, where Bertha and Mary were waiting.
Olmsted returned to London. His plan was to spend another year consolidating his relationships with British publishers. However, there was more disturbing news from New York, this time concerning Arthur Edwards. Olmsted liked Dix, but his relations with Edwards, who had opposed his participation in the firm, had been cool from the start. They had had a serious row about the advisability of paying British authors. Olmsted, who was fastidious in financial matters, had been shocked to learn that Edwards believed in commercial expediency. So when Dix wrote that their partner had made serious bookkeeping “errors,” Olmsted was ready to believe the worst. Reading between the lines, and already concerned that he was being shut out of his own business, he worried that the firm was heading for insolvency. He reluctantly concluded that he was wasting his time in London.
• • • •
When he returned to New York in October 1856, he had a letter of resignation ready. He had lost confidence in Dix and suspected Edwards of downright dishonesty. But George Curtis, whom he greatly admired and who had become a fast friend, allayed his fears. Curtis had overcome his reticence and was now editor of the magazine and a full partner in the firm. He brought not only probity and experience to the venture, but additional funds. Mollified by Curtis, and persuaded by Dix that the financial irregularities were only a misunderstanding, Olmsted agreed to stay, though he chose not to play any further role in the day-to-day affairs of the firm. It appeared that he had added publishing to his growing list of failed careers, but this would be an unfair judgment. Whatever problems plagued the firm were not his doing. His editorial work on Putnam’s was a success; his representation on behalf of the firm in London was likewise fruitful. He was good at his job, but once it appeared that his long-range plans had little chance of being brought to fruition, he lost interest. Moreover, with Curtis now firmly—and publicly—in charge of the magazine, he could only play a secondary role. This did not attract him. He was not a good subordinate.
As was often the case, his loss of interest in one activity was accompanied by his intense involvement in another. A Journey Through Texas, as his next book was titled, was almost ready for publication. He had not dashed it off during his European travels. As usual, the Olmsted family were a team. The father helped his sons; Frederick took in John Hull and his family when they returned from Europe; now it was John who returned the favor. The preface explained: “Owing to the pressure of other occupations, the preparation of the volume from the author’s journal has been committed, with free scope of expression and personality, to his brother, Dr. J. H. Olmsted, his companion upon the trip.” It is hard to know how much the book owes to John, since Olmsted’s original travel journal has been lost. When the book is compared to his reports in the Times, the differences are small. It is likely that John was judicious in his use of the “free scope of expression and personality.” He did not insist on having his name included on the title page.
A Journey Through Texas is a considerably shorter book than its predecessor. The journey itself is described in about four hundred pages. John thought that the earlier book was much too long and did not add background research; he avoided ponderous blocks of statistics and long newspaper extracts. He could not stop his brother from including some supporting documentation, but since the book was complete by the time Frederick returned, this was simply added to the main body of the text as a final chapter, “Regional Characteristics,” a
nd a lengthy “Statistical Appendix.” The rest of A Journey Through Texas is a straightforward, readable narrative. Olmsted called it “my best book . . . because edited by my brother.”
At least one part of the book was entirely Olmsted’s—the long introduction, which he had written in London, titled “A Letter to a Southern Friend.” The “friend” is unidentified; he may have been apocryphal, or someone like Samuel Perkins Allison, with whom he and John had argued about slavery in Nashville. The literary device is ingenious, underlining Olmsted’s sympathy for Southerners. But this time his evenhandedness did not lead him to mince words. Here, for example, he describes the two chief reasons for the continued survival of an institution that he considers not merely immoral but irrational:
First: Slavery educates, or draws out, and strengthens, by example and exercise, to an inordinate degree, the natural lust of authority, common as an element of character in all mankind. To a degree, that is, which makes its satisfaction inconvenient and costly—costly of other means of comfort, not only to the individual, but to the community.
Thus, a man educated under the system will be disposed no longer than he is forced, by law or otherwise, to employ servants or laborers who may make demands upon him, and if those demands are refused, may in their turn legally refuse to obey him. He will prefer to accept much smaller profits, much greater inconveniences, than would a man otherwise educated, rather than submit to what he considers to be the insolence of a laborer, who maintains a greater self-respect, and demands a greater consideration for his personal dignity, than it is possible for a slave to do.
Secondly: The power of exercising authority in this way is naturally overmuch coveted among you. It gives position and status in your society more than other wealth—(wealth being equivalent to power). It is fashionable with you to own slaves, as it is with the English to own land, with the Arabs, horses; and as beads and vermilion have a value among the Indians which seems to us absurd, so, among you, has the power of commanding the service of slaves. Consequently you are willing to pay a price for it which, to one not educated as you have been, seems absurdly high. Nor are you more likely to dispense with slaves, when you have it in your power to possess them, than the Chinese with their fashion of the queue, Turks with their turban, or Englishmen with their hats.
We need no restrictions upon fashions like these, which are oppressive only to those who obey them. Such is not the case with the fashion of slavery.
The purpose of the introduction was to make an explicit connection between his experiences in Texas and the current debate about the expansion of slavery into the new Western territories. He leaves no doubt about where he stands. He makes the strongest possible case against the spread of slavery beyond the South. Finally, he comes down on the side of vigorous—and, by implication, violent—opposition. “Any further extension or annexation of slavery, under whatever pretense or covering it is attempted,” he writes, “will only be effected in contemptuous defiance of the people of the Free States.” Yeoman, like the rest of the country, is feeling obliged to take sides.
Dix, Edwards & Company sold out the first printing of twenty-five hundred copies in only a month. The brothers, who had decided to split the proceeds—John to get two-thirds—soon began to receive royalty payments. Or, rather, Frederick received the payments, for John was no longer in the United States. His health had deteriorated once more, and he had had enough of Tosomock Farm. In January 1857, shortly before the book appeared, he and his family left for the warmer climate of Cuba. From there, they planned to travel to southern Europe.
Laudatory reviews of A Journey Through Texas appeared in all the major newspapers. The description of the German settlements in Texas, which had not appeared in the earlier Times reports, made a strong impression. The critic of the North American Review voiced a common sentiment: “The German colonies of Texas, which [Olmsted] describes with minute fidelity, are a living refutation of the assertion that white men cannot work under a Southern sun, and that the culture of cotton requires the forced labor of black men.” The extensive coverage in the British press also focused on the German settlers. Indeed, a translation of the book appeared in Germany the following year.
The next phase of the free-soil fight between the pro- and antislavery forces could well take place in western Texas. Seeing a chance to advance his book at the same time as his principles, Olmsted sent pages of A Journey Through Texas, bound into pamphlets, to the New England Emigrant Aid Company. Through Hale he distributed copies of the book to various influential figures. This produced several supportive editorials in the Times. He also wrote to the Cotton Supply Association in Liverpool, urging them to send British settlers to western Texas. The response was less than enthusiastic; still, Olmsted planned a visit to England at the end of the year on behalf of the Emigrant Aid Company.
Olmsted convinced Dix, Edwards & Company to publish Thomas Gladstone’s The Englishman in Kansas: or, Squatter Life and Border Warfare. The author, a relative of the great politician, was a correspondent for the London Times who had reported to his paper on events in the disputed territory. Olmsted contributed a tough-minded introduction to the book, as well as a supplement that brought the reader up-to-date with recent events. He wrote with a sense of urgency. A pro-slavery legislature had been installed in “Bleeding Kansas,” where hundreds were being killed in the fighting. The Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision had effectively annulled the Missouri Compromise. Chief Justice Roger Taney himself had declared that blacks—free or enslaved—were not American citizens. The doors to compromise were rapidly closing. “It is the crime of a coward and not the wisdom of a good citizen to shut his eyes to the fact, that this Union is bound straight to disastrous shipwreck,” Olmsted warned in the introduction, “if the man at the helm maintains his present course.” “The man at the helm” was a veiled reference to President James Buchanan, a pro-slavery Democrat whose policies Olmsted found reprehensible. He ended on a distinctly militant note with a stirring quotation from Thomas Jefferson: “The time to guard against corruption and tyranny is before they shall have gotten hold on us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold, than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons, after he shall have entered.”
April had seen big changes at Dix, Edwards & Company. The financially troubled firm had finally been called to task. “The creditors exonerated Curtis and me and distinctly reproved D. and E. whom they obliged to withdraw, giving us all their interest and liabilities,” Olmsted wrote Kingsbury, reminding him to “throw jobs in our way.” Curtis asked Olmsted to stay on as a partner with him and J. W. Miller, a printer who was carrying the bulk of the company’s debt. Olmsted agreed, at least for the moment. Three months later he officially withdrew from the firm. He was not leaving a sinking ship. Miller and Curtis had secured a loan of ten thousand dollars from Curtis’s wealthy father-in-law, Francis George Shaw. Putnam’s circulation had not risen, but the magazine was turning a profit. The book publishing venture had expanded to include more than forty titles, including a uniform edition of Curtis’s own popular works, Melville’s The Confidence Man, Thoreau’s Cape Cod, and a reissue of Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England.
It was an amicable parting. Curtis agreed that Olmsted could return to work part-time at the end of the summer. This arrangement would allow him to pursue his own writing as well as his free-soil activities. For the moment, however, he wanted to complete his current book, A Journey in the Back Country, the third volume of his Southern anthology.
Morris Cove, Connecticut
Sunday, August 9, 1857
It is a lazy, late-summer afternoon. Facing New Haven Bay, four miles from the city, is a small seaside inn. It is the kind of place that attracts New Yorkers who want to escape the oppressive heat of the city. Olmsted is one of the guests.
He has been here for more than two weeks. He would have preferred to go to Tosomock Farm, now occupied by a tenant. The inn is convenient. This is not a vacation. He has been
working on his book as well as preparing the extracts that are currently appearing weekly in the New York Daily Tribune. It was good of Greeley to agree to run the series, which is called “The Southerners At Home.” Too bad he isn’t identified as the author. He wishes he could have signed it “Yeoman,” but Raymond would have had a fit.
He is sitting at a desk. Papers and travel notebooks are spread out untidily in front of him. He is not writing, however. He is leaning back in the armchair, reading a letter. It is from George Curtis, postmarked New York, three days ago. He has reread it many times, and he is still stunned by the words: “We failed today! It was unavoidable.”
The firm of Miller & Curtis has declared bankruptcy. The creditors just wouldn’t wait any longer. There is something in the air: bankers are getting edgy. People are starting to talk about a crash.1 Poor Curtis has lost his own money and also has to answer to his father-in-law. Olmsted himself is well to be out of it, although he may still be dragged into the bankruptcy proceedings. He may be found liable for some of the company’s losses. He wishes he could ask his father or John for advice, but they are both still in Europe. He’d better talk to Judge Emerson, his old Staten Island neighbor. He’ll know what to do.
The bad news has thrown his own plans into question. He was hoping to support himself by working with Miller & Curtis. That prospect is gone. What’s worse, when he quit the firm, he left his father’s investment as a loan, so now he owes him five thousand dollars. Where is the money to come from? The Texas book is doing well, but not well enough to cover his debts. In any case, sales will be stopped until the creditors finish disposing of the assets of the firm. And how long will that take? What a depressing business this all is.
He decides to go downstairs. It is teatime and the lounge is starting to fill up. He takes his usual table. He can see the sparkling waters of the harbor through the windows. A lady with a parasol accompanied by a little boy in a sailor suit comes through the door. The boy is carrying a kite. They must have been on the beach. Seaside, summer vacations, childhood: he could be back in Sachem’s Head.
A Clearing In The Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Cent Page 16
