PHILLIPS, DAVID GRAHAM: 1867-1911.
"David Graham Phillips, American novelist, journalist, and reformer, was born in
Madison, Ind., on Oct. 31, 1867, the fourth child and the first son of
David Graham Phillips, a banker, and his wife,
Margaret Lee Phillips, who came from the family made famous
by 'Light-Horse' Harry Lee.
"After attending the Madison public schools, and studying foreign languages
under a tutor at home, he attended Asbury College (now De Pauw
University) in Greencastle, Ind., for two years, and then transferred to Princeton
University, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in June
1887, the youngest member in a class of eighty-six.
"Phillips had already begun to write while in college, and in the summer
following his graduation, he visited the office of James A.
Green, city editor of the CINCINNATI TIMES STAR,
to ask whether there was an opening for which he might be considered. His statement
that he had 'just graduated from Princeton' had no startling
effect on Green, who looked at the 'conspicuously patterned suit, the
eighteen-inch trousers, the dangling cigarette, and shuddered,' before
answering in the negative. The city editor's reply, however, had no more
effect on Phillips than Phillips' qualifications had on Green. With no
trace of disappointment, Phillips made a very innocent request: he
asked–and readily received–permission to come to the office to
read the daily papers. The next morning, when Green arrived at the office at
seven-thirty, he found Phillips ahead of him, calmly reading the exchanges. This
performance continued for several weeks, and Green, and all the members of his
staff, conceived a hearty dislike for the over-dressed Princetonian who refused to
believe that a newspaper could exist without his services.
"The endurance contest that followed, in which Green's problem was
to keep his temper, finally ended with Princeton as the winner, when the opportunity
that Phillips was waiting for arrived. Some one committed a murder at the time best
calculated to aid Phillips: when all the reporters were out on assignments, and the
city editor was alone in his office. Unable to leave his desk, Green asked Phillips,
who was busily engaged in reading a paper, to find out the facts and to return with
them by twelve-thirty, so that he (Green) could write the story. At twelve
twenty-five, Phillips stood in front of Green's desk, not with the facts,
but with the complete story of the murder written in the approved TIMES-STAR manner. Green, who was above
professional jealousy, printed it without changing a word, and, after another look
at his trousers, offered Phillips a position.
"Phillips worked on the TIMES-STAR staff for less than a year, not because he was not good enough, but
because he was too good. He soon became the 'talk of the town,'
and Murat Halstead, editor of the CINCINNATI COMMERCIAL
GAZETTE, and the father of a classmate of Phillips, offered him double the
salary that Green could afford to pay. In speaking of the affair, Green said,
'Halstead told me that I had done remarkably well in training the young
man, but he did not need any training: he was a born reporter.'
"Phillips remained with the COMMERCIAL GAZETTE for
three years, constantly duplicating the successful performances that had induced
Halstead to send for him. Only a few years before, the reporting staff had been
honored by no less a writer than Lafcadio Hearn, and Halstead and his associates
held him up as an example to be followed by young reporters. To Phillips, who paid
attention to style, it was enjoyable to work for a paper that definitely encouraged
literary merit, as well as mere form.
"His relations with Halstead were so pleasant that Phillips might have
remained with him for a considerably longer period, had it not been for the
continual urging of his married sister, Mrs. Carolyn Frevert,
who was always telling him that New York was the 'only place' for a man anxious to make a name
for himself as a writer. Finally, in the summer of 1890,
he decided to accept her advice and to come to New York, to widen his experience and to avail himself of the better
opportunities offered by a large city. After a very short time on the TRIBUNE, he joined the staff of the SUN, at a salary of fifteen dollars a week, his assignment being to cover
the 'human interest' stories of the Jefferson Market Police Court.
His first real chance came when the city editor, Daniel F.
Kellogg, sent him to investigate the story of a child lost in the
Catskill Mountains. Phillips' highly dramatic account –'the kind of story that
makes editors cheer and women weep'–attracted attention
throughout the country, gave him a national reputation as a reporter, and brought
him an increase in salary. It was not long before his superiors began to give him
dull ordinary assignments that seemed to promise nothing, as a tradition arose in
the SUN office that 'D. G. could see a story where
no other reporter would believe one existed.' An illustration of this is
offered by a statement in an after-dinner speech by Joseph Choate: 'it
would be a good thing for this country if all the Irishmen, instead of trying to
control politics here, would go back to Ireland and govern their own sorely
misgoverned land.' Phillips made a feature story out
of it, while other reporters struggled for half a column.
"Early in 1893, he left the SUN for the WORLD, where he came under the notice
of Joseph Pulitzer. Besides his genius for news,
Phillips, according to all accounts, was an exceedingly
likeable personality, and Pulitzer's respect for his talent soon deepened
into affection for his character. He sent him to London as a special correspondent,
and in June 1893, Phillips
'achieved one of the historic beats of the decade' in his
exclusive report of the sinking of H. M. S. Camperdown, in
collision with the H. M. S. Victoria off the coast of Asia
Minor. Upon his return to New York, he was rewarded by promotion to the WORLD'S editorial staff, and he frequently took charge of the
editorial page in the absence of William H. Merrill when he was
ill or away on vacation.
"In 1901, as 'John
Graham,' he published his first novel, The Great God Success, an
appropriate title in view of the enthusiastic reception it gained from readers and
critics. The general verdict that it was one of the best 'newspaper
novels' ever written, and the urging of his sister encouraged him, early in
1902, to give up daily journalism for freelance
magazine writing. An interesting feature of the novel is that Pulitzer figures in it
prominently as one of the characters. He was not especially pleased with the
fictional presentation of his personality, and he was wounded when he found out that
Phillips was the author, not only because of the way in which he was portrayed, but
because he felt that employees of the WORLD should devote
their talents exclusively to his organization.
"Phillips began his magazine experience with a series of articles on some
unpleasant aspects of journalism, for the SATURDAY EVENING
POST. He also contributed to McCLURE'S,
MUNSEY'S, EVERYBODY'S, SUCCESS, HARPER'S
WEEKLY, the DELINEATOR, and many others. It was as a
magazine writer that he aroused the anger of Theodore Roosevelt, earning from him
the title of 'muck-raker' for his sensational articles, The
Treason of the Senate, in which he exposed the political corruption of that body.
The title is still remembered, and it is to be feared that it does him, today, more
harm than it did when it was first applied. Phillips is, and always was, much more
than a 'muck-raker' and the name has done its share in unjustly
lowering his reputation.
"From 1901 to 1911, Phillips
wrote twenty-three novels and a four-act play. His drama, The Worth of a Woman, was
produced, with only moderate success, at the Madison Square Theatre in February, 1908, with Katherine Grey
as Diana Merivale, the heroine. Historically it is of interest
as being one of the first plays to exploit what is now one of the staples of
American entertainment: sex appeal. He also wrote a one-act play, A Point of Law,
that was popular with amateur dramatic societies.
"On Jan. 23, 1911, Phillips was shot in the
street without warning, by a paranoiac, Fitzhugh Coyle Goldsborough, of a well-known
Washington, Boston, and Maryland family, and the son of Dr. Edmund K.
Goldsborough, a prominent Washington physician. Goldsborough, who had
a quixotic strain in him, resented the novelist's portrayal of American
women in general, and was under the ridiculous impression that Margaret Severence,
in The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig, was intended
as a portrait of his sister. Although he had no radical interests, Goldsborough
lived in a small room on the top floor of the Rand School of Social
Science–opposite 119 East 19th Street, where Phillips lived with his
sister Carolyn– and it appeared that he had been watching his intended
victim for several weeks. As for Phillips, who was walking in the direction of the
Princeton Club to keep a luncheon engagement, he was entirely unaware of the
existence of his assassin, or of the latter's sister. He was almost at the
entrance of the club, when Goldsborough emerged from his hiding-place and fired six
shots into Phillips' body, crying 'Now, I have you.' The
assassin then shot himself in the temple. Phillips died in Bellevue Hospital on Jan.
24 …
"Phillips' place in American fiction is still to be determined. He
has been called America's greatest novelist by Frank
Harris and H. L. Mencken, an 'American
Balzac' by J. C. Underwood, and an 'American Zola' by his
friend and biographer, I. F. Marcosson. Granville Hicks, on the other hand, holds
that Phillips was a journalist from beginning to end, a journalist and nothing
more."
Condensed from H. S. R., Authors Today and Yesterday.
- The Great God Success. (John Graham, pseud.)New York, 1901.
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1903.
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1905.
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Indianapolis, 1906.
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1907.
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1907.
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1908.
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1908.
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York, 1909.
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1910.
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New York, 1913.
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Close X - Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise. New York, (Feb.) 1917.
2 vols.(On demand of John S. Sumner and the Society for the Suppression of Vice
the second edition, Sept. 1917, was cut to 474 and 490 pp.)
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