Ella Wheeler at Twelve

SOMEBODY has defined the bore as the man who talks of himself, while you want to talk of yourself.     Yet the editor of THE COSMOPOLITAN has requested me to talk of myself, and I obey, even at the risk of having my readers think me a bore.

Some one asked me, not long ago, when it was that I first conceived the idea of a literary profession and at what age I first found myself something of a celebrity.     I do not remember when I did not expect to be a writer, and I was a neighborhood celebrity at the age of eight.     The youngest of my mother's children, I seemed to have had my career arranged for me by conditions before my birth.

A Recent Photograph of  Ella Wheeler Wilcox

My father had been a music-teacher all his life, and when he attempted to become a business man and speculator, he made a failure of it. By the time I was a year or two old, he had lost the little competence he brought West with him, and the family (two parents and four children, including myself) was obliged to begin life anew, at the foot of the ladder, upon a Western prarie, distant twelve miles from the nearest town. This town was Madison, Wisconsin's capital.

A Photograph of Ella  Wheeler Taken in 1880.

We had few books and only a weekly newspaper. In an old red chest upstairs were religiously preserved copies of "The Arabian Nights," "Gulliver's Travels," "John Gilpin's Ride" and a few of Shakespeare's plays. The "New York Ledger" and the "New York Mercury" were sent to us by relatives for several years, and the first literary feasts I indulged in were the weekly serial stories of Mrs. Southworth and May Agnes Fleming. They were like tobasco sauce to the appetite--exciting but not healthful. They gave me false ideas of life and added to my discontent with my lonely environment. There was nothing in my situation to cultivate poetical talent, and I no doubt owe my early development as a poet to that fact--paradoxical as the statement may seem.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox's Latest Photograph

Ella Wheeler at Sixteen

During my thirteenth year the "New York Mercury" ceased to come to us. I missed its weekly visits with an intensity scarcely to be understood by one who has not known the same lonely surroundings and possessed the same temperament. There was not money enough floating about in those times to permit a subscription to the "Mercury," and if I were to possess it I knew I must either obtain a long list of subscribers, which would be a difficult and laborious undertaking, or earn it by my pen.

"She flew to her room, locked and bolted the door,
And in anguish and grief threw, herself on the floor."

   This was precisely what I did when I read the editor's cruel comment. Yet, after the first despair wore off, I set to work with new fervor and determination and sent poems and essays and stories to the "Saturday Evening Post," "Demorest's," "Peterson's" and "Arthur's" magazines, "Harper's," "Leslie's" and a score more of periodicals. My first poem published appeared in the "Waverley Magazine." 
   About the time I appreared in print, I left the country school. My record there had been wretched in mathematics, while excellent in grammar, spelling and reading. I lost interest in study, and my mind would not focus itself upon school-books. I lived in a world of imagination and pictured for myself a wonderful future. In this I was encouraged at home by the ambitions of my mother, who despised her life and felt herself and her family superior to all her associates, and was forever assuring me (and them as well!) that my future would be wholly apart from my early companions. 
   Fortunately for me and for all concerned, I was a healthy and normal young animal, and fond of my comrades and enjoying all their sports, into which I entered with zest, despite my mental aspirations and literary tendancies. I was passionately fond of dancing, and at fifteen attended the merrymakings of the grown-up girls and young men of the neighborhood, looking with disdain upon a boy of my own age. An elder brother and sister felt concerned at my lack of education and my propensity for pleasure, and the family made great sacrifices and managed to send me off to Madison University at about this time. 
   I was not at all happy there: first, because I knew the strain it put upon the home purse; second, because I felt the gulf between myself and the town girls, whose gowns and privileges revealed to me, for the first time, the different classes in American social life; and third, because I wanted to write and did not want to study. I had lost all taste for school-books. 
   On composition-day I undertook to distinguish myself by writing a "narrative," as the class was requested, but my ardent love-story only called forth a kind of rebuke from gentle Miss Ware, and I was told to avoid reading the "New York Ledger." 
   After one term, I begged my mother to allow me to remain at home and write and she wisely consented. 
   I turned to my profession with a new ardor and enthusiasm after that. 
   My first check came from Frank Leslie's publishing house. I wrote asking for one of his periodicals to be sent to me in return for three little poems I had composed in one day. In reply came a check for ten dollars, saying I must select which one of some thirteen publications they issued at that time. 
   This bit of crisp paper opened a perfect floodgate of aspiration, inspiration and ambition for me. I had not thought of earning money so soon. I had expected to obtain only books, magazines and articles of use and beauty from the editor's prize-lists; and I had not supposed verses to be salable. I wrote them because they came to me, but I expected to be a novelist like Mrs. Southworth and May Agens Fleming in time--that was the goal of my dreams. The check from Leslie was a revelation. I walked, talked, thought and dreamed in verse after that. A day which passed without a poem from my pen I considered lost and misused. Two each day was my idea of industry, and I once achieved eight. They sold--the majority--for three dollars or five dollars each. Sometimes I got ten dollars for a poem--that was always an event. Short love-stories, over which I labored painfully, as storywritting was an acquired habit, also added to my income, bringing me ten or fifteen dollars, and once in a while larger sums, from "Peterson's," "Demorest's," "Harper's Bazar" and the "Chimney Corner." 
   Everything in life was material for me--my own emotions, the remarks or experiences of my comrades and associates, sentences from books I read, and some phases of nature. 
   At a Thanksgiving Eve ball I recollect waltzing with a very good-looking young man whom I met there for the first time. The band played one of Strauss' waltzes. As we floated about the hall I thought to myself, "If I were desperately in love with this man and he cared for some one else, this waltz would sound like a dirge to me." So the next day I wrote a little poem called "The Dirge" (which paid for my slippers) which was widely copied. 
   "The Waltz-Quadrille," one of my most popular early verses, was similarly conceived. I had promised the quadrille at a commencement-ball at Madison University to a man on the eve of a journey, who was unable to find me when the number was called. Although I did not have the pleasure of a dance with him, I wrote the poem and sent him a copy of it, saying, "This is the way I should have felt had I been in love with you and had I danced the waltz-quadrille with you just before your departure from Madison." 
   The editors seemed to want these heart-wails, and one returned a historical poem I ventured to write, saying, "Send us little heartache verses--those are what our readers like." 
   A new line of railroad came through the county, and we had three mails a week and a post-office only three miles away. My good single-pacer was sold, but my father had taken an old horse, Burney, in trade, and my brothers had purchased a light top-buggy. I used to write my daily stint of several poems, and perhaps a story, and with a half-dozen manuscripts addressed to as many editors, I would harness old Burney and drive to the post-office with my brain wares, and great was the day when I brought home a check. Harper paid me fifteen dollars for one poem, Leslie sent me a check of forty dollars for ten poems and a short story, the "Saturday Evening Post" sent me a set of Dickens, all within a period of six months after my first money success. 
   It seemed wonderful to me, and to the family and to the neighbors. 
   Until I began to earn money, the neighbors had criticized my mother for keeping me out of the kitchen and allowing me to "scribble" so much. But when they found me able with one day's work at my desk to hire an assistant in the house for a
month, they began to respect my talent. 
   I often wish the scores of grown men and women who write me for "aid and influence" in getting into print, could know just how I found my way into the favor of editors. It was by sheer persistence. It never occurred to me to ask advice or assistance of strangers. I am glad it did not, for the moment we lean upon any one but the Divine Power and the divinity within us, we lessen our chances of success. I often receive letters now from writers in the West asking me to use my influence with editors in their behalf, and saying, "You must realize from your own early struggles how impossible it is to get a start in an Eastern periodical without a friend at court." No more absurd idea ever existed. Eastern editors are on the lookout for new talent constantly, and if a writer possesses it, together with perseverance, he will succeed, whether he lives in the Western desert or in the metropolis, and without any friend at court. 
   I frequently sent out ten manuscripts in one post, to have nine come back with drooping heads. But I set them forth on another voyage by the next mail. I kept a series of crude books with a list of the periodicals and the travels of each poem or story inscribed therein. Many a manuscript took nine or ten journeys to New York and Boston before it found acceptance. One story declined by nine editors (and ridiculed by the ninth on the margin) brought seventy-five dollars from the tenth-- the largest price I had ever received. 
   My world grew larger with each sunrise, it seemed to me. People from Madison, Milwaukee and Chicago began to write me and seek me out. I was invited to visit city homes, and while this was a delight bordering on ecstasy and a relief from the depressing atmosphere of home anxieties, it yet brought with it the consciousness of the world's demands, which, added to those of duty and necessity, made a larger income imperative. 
   A Milwaukee editor offered me forty-five dollars a month to edit the literary department of a trade magazine. I accepted, but the office hours and order of work were wholly distasteful to me. I was not sorry when the venture failed at the expiration of three months. It was the only experience of my life in attempting an office position. 
   Much of the very earliest work of my pen was devoted to poems on total abstinence--a subject on which the family was very enthusiastic. These verses, some fifty in number, were issued in book form, during my teens, under the title of "Drops of Water." I received fifty dollars for the copyright, and am sure Mr. Rockefeller feels no richer to-day with his millions than I did with my book and check. 
   A year or two later I published, by subscription, my first miscellaneous collection, "Shells," now out of print. Then I grew ambitious to write a story in verse, and devoted the best part of a summer to composing "Maurine." Even the name was my own creation--suggested to me by a short poem of Nora Perry's entitled "Norine." 
   When my book was completed, I made a visit to Chicago and called upon Jansen & McClurg, expecting that staid firm
eagerly to seize upon my proffered manuscript, which I thought was to bring me world-wide fame and fortune. Instead, it was declined with thanks, and I was informed that they had never heard of me. After repeated efforts and failures, I induced a Wisconsin firm to get the book out. It barely paid expenses. But two years later I was made happy by having Jansen & McClurg write and request the privilege of republishing the volume, with additional short poems. 
   Much of my earlier work was tinctured with melancholy, both real and imaginary. Young poets almost invariably write of sorrow. Naturally of a happy disposition, I had my moods of depression, veritable luxuries of misery. 
   There was continual worry at home. No one was resigned or philosophical. My mother hated her hard-working lot, for
which she was totally unfitted, and constantly rebelled against it, like a caged animal beating against iron bars; while she did her distasteful tasks with a Spartan-like adherence to duty, doubting the dominance of an all-wise Ruler who could condemn her to such a lot. Like thousands of others in the world, she had not learned that through love and faith only do conditions change for the better. 
   The home was prevaded by an atmosphere of discontent and fatigue. 
   From reincarnated sources and through prenatal causes, I was born with unquenchable hope and unfaltering faith in God and guardian spirits. I often wept myself to sleep after a day of disappointments and worries but woke in the morning singing aloud with the joy of life. 
   I always expected wonderful things to happen to me. 
   In some of the hardest days, when everything went wrong with everybody at home, and all my manuscripts came back for six weeks at a time without one acceptance, I recall looking out of my little north window upon the lonely road bordered with lonelier Lombardy poplars, and thinking, "Before night something beautiful will happen to change everything." There was so much I wanted! I wanted to bestow comfort, ease and pleasure on everybody at home. I wanted lovely gowns--ah, how I wanted them!--and travel and accomplishments. I wanted summers by the sea--the sea which I had read of, but had never seen--and on moonlight nights these longings grew so aggressive I often pinned the curtain down and shut out the rays that seemed to intensify my loneliness, and I would creep into my little couch under the sloping caves, musing, "Another beautiful night of youth wasted and lost." And I would waken happy in spite of myself and put all my previous melancholy into verses--and dollars. 
   Once I read a sentence which became a life-motto for me. "If you haven't what you like, try to like what you have." I wish I knew who wrote it--it was such a help to me just as I was nearing the borders of the family pessimism and chronic
discontent. I tried from that hour to find something I liked and enjoyed in each day--something I could be thankful for; and I found much, though troubles increased and conditions did not improve about me. 
   The elder children married and had cares of their own. I was so sorry for them--missing the beautiful things I knew life held.
   Slowly, so slowly, it seemed to me, my work and my income increased. I longed for suddent success, for sudden wealth. It was so hard to wait--there was so much to be done. There was a gentle hill south of the house; often one summer evenings, after writing all day, I climbed this ascent at sunset and looked eastward, wondering what lay for me beyond the horizon. I always had the idea that my future would be associated with the far West, yet it was to the East I invariably looked. My knowledge of the East was bounded by Milwaukee and Chicago--the goal of happy visits two or three times a year. 
   Sometimes I walked through the pasture and young woods, a half-mile, to call on Emma, the one friend who knew and
sympathized with all the family troubles. And Emma would walk back with me, and we would wonder how many years
longer these walks and talks would continue for us. I would tell her of my successes in my work, and she and her gentle
mother rejoiced in them as if they were their own personal triumphs. Such restful walks and talks they always were. Dear Emma! 
   When publishing "Maurine," I had purposely omitted more than twoscore poems of a very romantic nature, in order to save the volume from too much sentiment. Letters began to come to me requesting copies of these verses--ardent love-songs which had appeared in various periodicals. This suggested to me the idea of issuing a book of love-poems to be called "Poems of Passion." To think was to do--for I possessed more activity than caution in those days. 
   As just related, every poem in the book had been published in various periodicals and had brought forth no criticism. My amazement can hardly be imagined, therefore, when Jansen & McClurg returned the manuscript of my volume, intimating that it was immoral. I told the contents of their letter to friends in Milwaukee, and it reached the ears of a sensational morning newspaper. The next day a column article appeared with large headlines:--