Byanby
Mayer, Milton
Byanby by MILTON MAYER George Bye died last month, and I may die next month, so I'd better tell you about him this month. George was a literary representative, or, as they call themselves when...
...I can not violate the canons of my art," said George, just as primly...
...First I will tell you how I happened to be George's client, and then I will tell you how it almost killed him...
...His clients included, over the last twenty-thirty years, Pershing, Lindbergh, Mrs...
...Bye," said Jasper...
...George, when Bill found him, was, and remained, a small rosy man with a mustache...
...In February of 1942 I finished an assignment for the Saturday Evening Post...
...But I am authorized to tell you that if you will submit an expense account for $2,000 on that assignment, it will be honored...
...The morning the magazine appeared with me all over the cover, George wired, "We're wonderful...
...You have only the chains of ignorance to lose, and a world of goodies to win...
...but I don't like to receive them...
...My duties were to read the Great Books and assist Mr...
...If I wrote anything down—a grocery list, for instance-—I had to be careful to destroy it or it might fall into George's hands and appear in a magazine...
...He sometimes comes in on Wednesdays," said Jasper...
...Young man," said Hutchins, "your trouble—or, at least, the only trouble you have that I can cure—is that you are ignorant...
...Forty...
...McCarthy...
...I was his only obscure client...
...The only one it could find was Wendell Willkie, who wrote an article saying that the Jews were as wonderful as the Gentiles, which I hadn't said they weren't...
...It was impossible to say when George retired from business—there were so many Wednesdays when he didn't come in anyway—but in 1954 he sold The Spirit of St...
...I don't mind making dishonorable proposals—" "I know it," said George...
...He didn't get rich off me...
...He had put Zone of Quiet signs all around the place...
...He was just doing what, when it came unexpectedly to him, came naturally...
...said George...
...I had sold myself for money, and with money I got integrity, popularity, and peace of mind...
...Then I gave it—I should have known better—to George to read...
...You will be an administrator...
...All he'd have had to do would be to take me off his list of clients...
...Forty a week," he said...
...There are those of whom we say, when they die, that we shall not look upon their likes again...
...William V. Morgenstern...
...just sold it...
...A couple of years before, Bob had hired me away from Hearst's Chicago American...
...A man has to live...
...Sincerely yours," Sometimes they reported on his teeth, with which he had trouble, sometimes on the Roosevelts, with whom he didn't...
...He can't keep quiet," said Bob...
...They sent the final manuscript back for me to do a little cutting for space, and I did the cutting and sent it back...
...Roosevelt, Al Smith, and (this will kill you, as it almost killed George) M. Mayer...
...Jasper Spock, in a green eye-shade and a pair of black satin sleeves from his elbows to his wrists...
...in those days, without inflation, it was worth ten thousand...
...If he had anything important to communicate—anything, that is, about money—he telegraphed...
...The case consisted of their being no better than the Gentiles, but they didn't read the case...
...Heywood Broun, known to those who admired him as Old Red-Eye...
...I had never been worth much to him...
...But George was an agent—the biggest in the business— and the business is not meant to be stood up in...
...For a few years at least—until the hysteria blew over—I would be out of the slicks...
...But you're getting it back in this morning's mail with a form rejection slip signed, 'The Editors.' There is no use trying to communicate with them...
...His clients included Westbrook Pegler, known to those who admired him as Old Beady-Eye...
...Dollars...
...I don't know how to do it...
...The Curtis Publishing Company was terrified...
...It was long afterward that I learned that George, too, had been threatened, like the Curtis Publishing Company, with the loss of his business if he didn't disown me...
...George was a lover of wild men, and that was enough for me...
...I am & Company," said Jasper, who was...
...I was not only his most obscure client...
...In New York he asked who the three biggest agents were...
...Homer who...
...usually fifteen hundred a crack...
...Pegler's agent and F.D.R...
...The relation of an agent to an editor, like that of an editor to an owner, is said to be sycophantic...
...and Alec Woollcott, known to those he admired...
...He bought a modest lunch and a modest drink...
...Of course I paid a price, besides George's ten per cent...
...So Bill took the train—I mean the Century-—to New York and made a memorandum, en route, to have the physics department figure out a faster way to get to New York, maybe by rocket and call it Sputnik...
...I have never before encountered such ignorance except at Yale University, and only among the faculty there...
...And you'll be another Homer...
...we knew each other instantly rather than well...
...Orthodox Jews couldn't see anything wrong with it, but Orthodox Jews don't advertise...
...What would Benjamin Franklin say...
...Theirs were friendships, and, since the success of a publication has nothing to do with what it publishes, his friends bought his client's stuff from him, including mine...
...McCarthy says I'll be another Pegler...
...I'll deliver it," said George, and he did, and the Saturday Evening Post is still on the hook...
...But I never got to read a Great Book, although I memorized all the titles and condensed a few of the books for, of course, the Reader's Digest...
...Howe's duty was to assist Mr...
...George organized a softball team around New Canaan, Conn., where they all lived, with both Broun and Pegler on it...
...Standing up to the kind of pressure that was put on George would be nothing for anyone whose business it is to stand up...
...It was the story of the typical small college, Muskingum, in New Concord, Ohio, "The College on the Hill...
...You are a desperate case, but a red-hot brand from the burning...
...Off the ante-room opened two cubicles...
...George could afford to say it straight...
...George was a literary representative, or, as they call themselves when they can afford to say it straight, a writer's agent...
...In, maybe, 1939, young Bill Benton, who had made a million in the advertising business, got tired of the advertising business and told his old Yale classmate Bob Hutchins about it...
...A week, and a hundred if I stay...
...Make it forty-five," I said...
...Today, with inflation, that would be worth three thousand...
...Hutchins will just turn it over to the university," said Bill, "where it will be wasted...
...He was Santa Claus...
...They don't dare talk to you...
...When I sold a piece to The Progressive for $25, I would send George a check for $2.50, and he would send me a $3 necktie...
...I don't suppose I saw him twenty-five times in all...
...I would like to get them off the hook," I said, "but I am too old to start faking expense accounts...
...a week, and forty if you stay...
...A few days after the storm had broken—George is dead now, and nobody else matters— George called me from New York and said: "Mildew, you know and I know that the Post accepted the Muskingum article before the one on the Jews hit the stands...
...His cable address was Byanby...
...Who the hell is Mr...
...I had tried to sell it, unsuccessfully, first to the Nation and then to Harpefs...
...Morgenstern, the public relations director, was under the illusion that a university was an institution of learning...
...They knew there was nothing wrong with the article, but they couldn't get Jews to read it— not, that is, the Jews who matter...
...Not George's...
...But my collection of George Bye letters, scattered through my files, is sizeable, and I hope that Arlene Bye will gather and publish them...
...Stick with me, kid, and you'll have money, fame, and power...
...Independence Square rocked like a drunkard, and some of the people in Independence Square went out and got drunk so as to rock with the Square...
...John P. Howe...
...I know it," said George...
...But," I said, "my expenses to New Concord, Ohio, were $37.58...
...How much are you getting at the American...
...Who are you...
...George's middle name was Thurman, but everybody assumed it was Ten-Per-Cent...
...You will get ideas for magazine articles from the Great Books, and because no editor has ever read a Great Book the editors will think your ideas are original and will buy your articles...
...I guess he was one of the few men in or anywhere near the publishing business who could afford to be fond of anybody...
...Where is Mr...
...He didn't have to entertain the editors...
...Bill decided that Bob should tell the world, in a Saturday Evening Post series, how he did it...
...Mr...
...They were raising me to $2,000...
...They were all unset jewels, loving little masterpieces of irrelevance like, "I've been thinking of you, dear...
...Woollcott was umpire...
...said Bill...
...What's his name...
...I know it," said George...
...So he went to George T. Bye & Company, at 535 Fifth Avenue, and walked into an unattended little anteroom with cracked and bleeding imitation leather upholstery...
...Well, I'm the boss of the University of Chicago, which is bigger and richer than the American and will soon be better, and I'll give you forty—" "Dollars...
...I will pay you to get an education," said Bob to Bill, and he hired him as vice president of the University of Chicago...
...The Post accepted it and said, in writing, that it was peachy...
...But on March 2 my article, The Case against the Jew, appeared in the Post, the title on the cover...
...Ninety...
...They are scared to death...
...said Bill...
...He looked like Santa Claus...
...Can he talk...
...Who's baby...
...Bob and Bill were so disappointed in me that they both quit academic life and entered monasteries, the one in New York, the other in Washington...
...He would say," said George, "that the Saturday Evening Post prefers dishonor to death...
...George and I—and the Post—were caught unawares...
...But March of 1942 was no time to tell the Jews of America (who were suffering vicariously for the Jews of Europe) that there was a case against the Jew...
...But," I said, "forty dollars a week isn't enough to live on...
...On his way out he tripped in a hole in the rug and, as he picked himself up, saw the pictures of Lindbergh, Pershing, Roosevelt, Smith, et al, on the wall...
...And it was true...
...he was fond of me...
...Forty a week...
...I bought it back from them...
...Think it over...
...What bothers me about George is that I shall not look upon him again until I find him taking ten per cent as agent for Holy Writ and turning over the rest to the Author...
...said George...
...That is how the name of Mayer was added to that of Lindbergh, Roosevelt, Pershing, Smith, et al...
...I will not try," he went on, "to persuade you of the worth of intelligence in se, because you are too ignorant to apprehend it...
...It was the only important thing I ever wrote...
...He wouldn't and he didn't...
...George was as anti-pretentious as his office indicated, and, with no trouble at all, he was rich...
...He asked which was the biggest of these, and he was told Bye...
...One was empty...
...The editors came to see him, not he them, and not just on business, but on their day off...
...Louis to the movies for a million dollars...
...He didn't have to entertain his clients...
...The editors all sent word to me that they knew the article was all right, but please don't come to see them...
...But you would have to be intelligent already, like me, to want to read them even for pay...
...It fired its editor, reversed its editorial policy, reconstructed its format (and doubled its price), spent a fortune running big ads in newspapers all over the country explaining Just How It All Happened, and looked for a prominent Jew to answer me in the new Post...
...When we cut wa^es around here, we cut administrative wages...
...he was the biggest man in the business...
...The money was, while it and I lasted, astounding...
...This is not what bothers me about George...
...And Mr...
...I said...
...I have a wife and child...
...he let the publishers do that...
...We will charge the Post a few thousand dollars for these articles...
...Pegler hated Broun, Broun despised Pegler, and Woollcott regretted both of them...
...And to accept this one would be to contribute to the delinquency of a major...
...Mayer," said Bob...
...They were all autographed the same way: "Baby, I love you...
...The boss of the American...
...Mor-genstern's duty (until Bill Benton arrived) was to keep the public from knowing that the university was there...
...But only consider the perquisites...
...A couple of those fifteen-hundred-dollar deals a year took me a long way, and then I would write articles for The Progressive, and other little rags, where you say what you want to say and nobody eats...
...He was told (if I remember rightly) that they were Brandt, Ober, and Bye...
...A few years later I met Willkie and he said, "You know, Mayer, 7 couldn't find anything wrong with that article of yours...
...I don't mean that he was a hero...
...He can't even read," said Bob...
...The administrators are idealists...
...So do they...
...That's what I told them, Mildew," said George, "but that is their ultimatum...
...Hutchins does not want money for these articles," said Bill, primly...
...Can he write...
...The title was enough...
...got along handsomely...
...he said...
...But you will be able to use expressions like in se, which my associate, Mr...
...Bob said that there was only one hitch: "If you take me, you have to take my dog...
...This would put the university on the map, and, since the university needed money, Bill thought that there should be something on the map that the donors could point to...
...There was a legend that he never read anything...
...That is what I am paying myself to do...
...But I remained George's client, no longer obscure, only costly...
...It was a case of symbiosis rather than organically grown intimacy between us...
...By afternoon we—and the Post—were mud...
...In the ensuing pogrom of me by my fellow-Jews, the Post retreated in shameful disorder to a series of unprepared positions...
...Mr...
...Bill took one look at the tennis courts and said, "This is a greater university than Harvard, and nobody has heard of it...
...The Digest wanted me to tone it down and I wouldn't...
...Not necessarily," said Bob...
...Bob had told him always to say, "Greater than Harvard," never "Greater than Yale...
...Then," I said, sententiously, "I can not get them off the hook, and that is my ultimatum...
...Bill also noticed that the university had been turned upside down, and when he asked who had done it everyone gnashed his teeth and said, "Hutchins...
...George's house at New Canaan was called Ten-Per-Cent Hollow...
...Somebody has to...
...It must have been the title...
...Mortimer Adler, taught me...
...What else is there...
...And another that he studied every manuscript very carefully, with his genius for figuring out just which magazine it was best suited to, and then sent it to the Reader's Digest, where he got the most money...
...But," I said "that is a dishonorable proposal...
...Bill turned to leave...
...It was a good story...
...If you've been thinking of me, we've been thinking of each other...
...But he never neglected me for the others...
...Bob then met George, and they adored each other...
...Within a couple of years I was rich...
...Bob told Bill—as he told everybody—that Bill's trouble was that he had gone to Yale and was therefore uneducated...
...We can not cut faculty wages because the faculty loves money...
...said Bill...
...The team was called The Nine Old Men...
...He kicked my feet off the desk...
...I can make you intelligent by paying you to read the Great Books...
...The other contained Mr...
...asked George...
...And," he went on, "with every probability of a wage cut...
...he let the publishers do that...
...Don't be a chump...
...He wouldn't leave New York unless he had to, and he never had to except to go to the White House, where he had a couple of busy clients, and I wouldn't go to New York unless I had to, and I managed not to have to often...
...But on its way back George intercepted it and sold it to the Post...
...Now I was a liability...
...I have a wife and two children," said Bob, "and their tastes are a hundred times more expensive than yours and I am not paying myself a hundred times as much as I am offering you...
...They were both zanies in sordid jobs that required straight faces...
...He sold it immediately to the Reader's Digest...
...I was a ruddy imitation of Bob, and that was enough for George...
...Not all of it," said George, "only ninety per cent...
Vol. 22 • February 1958 • No. 2
