The Brass Check: A Study of American Journalism — John Shaqi
The Brass Check: A Study of American JournalismSinclair, Upton
General
The Brass Check: A Study of American Journalism
Sinclair, Upton
Associated Press; Journalism -- United States; Press -- United States
Also there were the two Yale boys who ran away from college and came to
tend our furnaces, and then ran back to college and wrote us up in the
“New York Sun.” They were Allan Updegraff and Sinclair Lewis, both of
whom have grown up to be novelists. What they wrote about us was
playful, and I would have shared in the fun, but for the fact that some
of our members had their livings to think about. For example, there was
a professor of philosophy at Columbia. Once or twice a week he had to
give lectures to the young ladies at Barnard, and the Dean of Barnard
was a lady of stern and unbending dignity, and after those articles had
appeared our professor would quiver every time he saw her. We were
trying in Helicon Hall not to have servants, in the sense of a separate
class of inferior animals whom we put off by themselves in the basement
of the building. We tried to treat our workers as human beings. Once a
week we had a dance, and everybody took part, and the professor of
philosophy danced with the two pretty Irish girls who waited on the
table. The fact that his wife was present ought to have made a
difference, even to a Dean, but the stories in the “Sun” did not mention
the wife.
So before long we began to notice dark hints in the newspapers; such
esoteric phrases as “Sinclair’s love-nest.” I have since talked with
newspaper men and learned that it was generally taken for granted by the
newspaper-world that Helicon Hall was a place which I had formed for the
purpose of having many beautiful women about me. Either that, or else a
diseased craving for notoriety! I remember Ridgway of “Everybody’s”
asking the question: “Couldn’t you find some less troublesome way of
advertising yourself?”
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