Henry Watterson, Monumental Liar
Title
Henry Watterson, Monumental Liar
Creator
O'Sullivan's Weekly
Identifier
WWP16000
Date
1919 October 18
Description
Article crticizing journalist Henry Watterson’s editorals and other writings as not being fabricated and unappealing.
Source
Cary T. Grayson Papers, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library, Staunton, Virginia
Language
English
Text
If it be true that the Saturday Evening Post and the Courier-Journal paid Henry Watterson$30,000.00 for his “Looking Backward” lucubrations, then some one should be prosecuted for obtaining money under false pretenses. It is the most amazing olla podrida of invention that ever flowed from a fluent pen. Baron Munchausen chortles in his grave, and the ghost of Joe Mulhattan shakes its skeleton side with mirthful reverberations, while all the other liars, living and dead, that the world has produced, proclaim Watterson the peerless king of prevaricators. He has no fellow. He is unique and unapproachable.
The readers of his picturesque screed wonder, from number to number, if his power of invention will never flag. Nothing can stale his infinite variety. A universe of notables wait upon his beck and call, the great and the near-great, poets, scientists, kings, princes and presidents link arms with him, share their confidences with him, eat and drink with him, seek his companionship and reveal to him secrets their biographers have never heard.
When a mere boy in his teens he met Abraham Lincoln, discussed the issue of slavery with him, held converse with Stephen A. Douglas, was present at the inauguration of the President, and sat so close to him that Mr. Lincoln handed him his hat, but just as Watterson reached for it, some prospective cabinet officer grabbed the coveted stove-pipe and deprived the future star-eyed goddess of immortality.
Early in the war he found himself “Chief of Scouts” of the Confederacy, and there followed romantic experiences that would have made the “Three Guardsmen,” or Sergeant York himself pale with envy. Of course it will not do to spoil a good story by intimating that Watterson never smelled powder except when he shot rabbits to keep himself from starving; that he was not a soldier in the Southern army and that he eked out a bare existence as a camp follower editing “The Rebel,” a ridiculous newspaper that was printed on a cider press, with axle grease for ink and with a circulation that a tobacco-chewing Kentuckian could spit outside of.
Later he was detailed on an important mission by the Confederacy to sell cotton to England, but he got no farther than Nashville, where somebody suggested a game of poker, and he clean forgot what Jefferson Davis had sent him abroad for.
When he finally got to London, after the war, the first thing he did was to take breakfast with Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill, Huxley and Tyndall, who happened to be waiting for him at their boarding house so that he could tell them all about the Civil War, which he saw looking over his shoulder as he fled to the safe precincts of his press room.
He carried the “Great American Novel” abroad with him and would have startled the world and made “Vanity Fair” look like a farmer’s catalogue, but the rats ate his manuscript, and a slatternly servant girl used the scraps for curl paper.
Returning to this country, he renewed his acquaintance with Andy Johnson, then President, reminding the Chief Executive that the last time he saw him he patched the seat of his pantaloons in his tailor shop in Tennessee.
James G. Blaine knew him so well that he ran his fingers through his hair, and asked his advice about how to write his “Twenty Years in Congress.” Blaine submitted the Mulligan letters to Watterson, who promptly advised him to burn them.
He knew Garfield in Congress, had a joint debate with him on the tariff over the telephone, dined with him frequently in the White House, and refused a place in his cabinet.
Roscoe Conkling was as exclusive as the Czar, but he took Watterson into his confidence and told him the secret reason of his resignation from the Senate.
In his last chapter, he confides to a waiting world that he knew well Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Lincoln, and that for a whole week before the murder he was drunk (Booth, not Watterson).
Mr. Watterson played in Adelina Patti’s back yard, and a passing impresario first knew she had a voice when she heard her heaven-sent soprano calling “O Henry!”Grover Cleveland, who despised him him, wrote him letters explaining his break with his party, and was very happy when Watterson took his wife back of the wings at a Washington theatre and introduced her to an actress.
Ben Butler gave him one of the souvenir spoons he secured at New Orleans; General Grant told him how he lost his fortune in Wall street; Robert E. Lee asked him to write his biography; every leader on both sides of the civil conflict confided to him some special message for posterity.
James Gordon Bennett came to him for advice; Joseph Pulitzer kept him on his yacht for weeks at a time; Horace Greeley never forgave him for nominating him for the Presidency at Cincinnati.
He could have settled the Tilden-Hayes controversy, but the 100,000 unarmed Kentuckians with which he threatened Washington refused to march, and the democratic party lost its opportunity.
There is only one serious omission. Mr. Watterson fails to print a photograph of the boat with which Woodrow Wilson presented him when he suggested that Thomas Fortune Ryan would be glad to finance Mr. Wilson’s presidential campaign.
These inocuous ramblings must be drawing to a close for Mr. Watterson is filling space in the Saturday Evening Post with second-hand editorials on woman suffrage, that were not very inviting originally, and which, warmed over, are stale indeed.
The readers of his picturesque screed wonder, from number to number, if his power of invention will never flag. Nothing can stale his infinite variety. A universe of notables wait upon his beck and call, the great and the near-great, poets, scientists, kings, princes and presidents link arms with him, share their confidences with him, eat and drink with him, seek his companionship and reveal to him secrets their biographers have never heard.
When a mere boy in his teens he met Abraham Lincoln, discussed the issue of slavery with him, held converse with Stephen A. Douglas, was present at the inauguration of the President, and sat so close to him that Mr. Lincoln handed him his hat, but just as Watterson reached for it, some prospective cabinet officer grabbed the coveted stove-pipe and deprived the future star-eyed goddess of immortality.
Early in the war he found himself “Chief of Scouts” of the Confederacy, and there followed romantic experiences that would have made the “Three Guardsmen,” or Sergeant York himself pale with envy. Of course it will not do to spoil a good story by intimating that Watterson never smelled powder except when he shot rabbits to keep himself from starving; that he was not a soldier in the Southern army and that he eked out a bare existence as a camp follower editing “The Rebel,” a ridiculous newspaper that was printed on a cider press, with axle grease for ink and with a circulation that a tobacco-chewing Kentuckian could spit outside of.
Later he was detailed on an important mission by the Confederacy to sell cotton to England, but he got no farther than Nashville, where somebody suggested a game of poker, and he clean forgot what Jefferson Davis had sent him abroad for.
When he finally got to London, after the war, the first thing he did was to take breakfast with Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill, Huxley and Tyndall, who happened to be waiting for him at their boarding house so that he could tell them all about the Civil War, which he saw looking over his shoulder as he fled to the safe precincts of his press room.
He carried the “Great American Novel” abroad with him and would have startled the world and made “Vanity Fair” look like a farmer’s catalogue, but the rats ate his manuscript, and a slatternly servant girl used the scraps for curl paper.
Returning to this country, he renewed his acquaintance with Andy Johnson, then President, reminding the Chief Executive that the last time he saw him he patched the seat of his pantaloons in his tailor shop in Tennessee.
James G. Blaine knew him so well that he ran his fingers through his hair, and asked his advice about how to write his “Twenty Years in Congress.” Blaine submitted the Mulligan letters to Watterson, who promptly advised him to burn them.
He knew Garfield in Congress, had a joint debate with him on the tariff over the telephone, dined with him frequently in the White House, and refused a place in his cabinet.
Roscoe Conkling was as exclusive as the Czar, but he took Watterson into his confidence and told him the secret reason of his resignation from the Senate.
In his last chapter, he confides to a waiting world that he knew well Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Lincoln, and that for a whole week before the murder he was drunk (Booth, not Watterson).
Mr. Watterson played in Adelina Patti’s back yard, and a passing impresario first knew she had a voice when she heard her heaven-sent soprano calling “O Henry!”Grover Cleveland, who despised him him, wrote him letters explaining his break with his party, and was very happy when Watterson took his wife back of the wings at a Washington theatre and introduced her to an actress.
Ben Butler gave him one of the souvenir spoons he secured at New Orleans; General Grant told him how he lost his fortune in Wall street; Robert E. Lee asked him to write his biography; every leader on both sides of the civil conflict confided to him some special message for posterity.
James Gordon Bennett came to him for advice; Joseph Pulitzer kept him on his yacht for weeks at a time; Horace Greeley never forgave him for nominating him for the Presidency at Cincinnati.
He could have settled the Tilden-Hayes controversy, but the 100,000 unarmed Kentuckians with which he threatened Washington refused to march, and the democratic party lost its opportunity.
There is only one serious omission. Mr. Watterson fails to print a photograph of the boat with which Woodrow Wilson presented him when he suggested that Thomas Fortune Ryan would be glad to finance Mr. Wilson’s presidential campaign.
These inocuous ramblings must be drawing to a close for Mr. Watterson is filling space in the Saturday Evening Post with second-hand editorials on woman suffrage, that were not very inviting originally, and which, warmed over, are stale indeed.
Original Format
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Citation
O'Sullivan's Weekly, “Henry Watterson, Monumental Liar,” 1919 October 18, WWP16000, Cary T. Grayson Papers, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum, Staunton, Virginia.