Perkins of Portland: Perkins The Great
“Tut!” he cried presently. “All in good time! The novel is easy. Anything will do. I’m no literary man. I don’t read a book in a year. You get the novel.”
“But I don’t read a book in five years!” I exclaimed. “I don’t know anything about books. I don’t know where to get a novel.”
“Advertise!” he exclaimed. “Advertise! You can get anything, from an apron to an ancestor, if you advertise for it. Offer a prize – offer a thousand dollars for the best novel. There must be thousands of novels not in use.”
Perkins was right. I advertised as he suggested, and learned that there were thousands of novels not in use. They came to us by basketfuls and cartloads. We had novels of all kinds, – historical and hysterical, humorous and numerous, but particularly numerous. You would be surprised to learn how many ready-made novels can be had on short notice. It beats quick lunch. And most of them are equally indigestible. I read one or two, but I was no judge of novels. Perkins suggested that we draw lots to see which we should use.
It really made little difference what the story was about. “The Crimson Cord” fits almost any kind of a book. It is a nice, non-committal sort of title, and might mean the guilt that bound two sinners, or the tie of affection that binds lovers, or a blood relationship, or it might be a mystification title with nothing in the book about it.
But the choice settled itself. One morning a manuscript arrived that was tied with a piece of red twine, and we chose that one for good luck because of the twine. Perkins said that was a sufficient excuse for the title, too. We would publish the book anonymously, and let it be known that the only clue to the writer was the crimson cord with which the manuscript was tied when we received it. It would be a first-class advertisement.
Perkins, however, was not much interested in the story, and he left me to settle the details. I wrote to the author asking him to call, and he turned out to be a young woman.
Our interview was rather shy. I was a little doubtful about the proper way to talk to a real author, being purely a Chicagoan myself; and I had an idea that, while my usual vocabulary was good enough for business purposes, it might be too easy-going to impress a literary person properly, and in trying to talk up to her standard I had to be very careful in my choice of words. No publisher likes to have his authors think he is weak in the grammar line.
Miss Rosa Belle Vincent, however, was quite as flustered as I was. She seemed ill at ease and anxious to get away, which I supposed was because she had not often conversed with publishers who paid a thousand dollars cash in advance for a manuscript.
She was not at all what I had thought an author would look like. She didn’t even wear glasses. If I had met her on the street I should have said, “There goes a pretty flip stenographer.” She was that kind – big picture hat and high pompadour.
I was afraid she would try to run the talk into literary lines and Ibsen and Gorky, where I would have been swamped in a minute, but she didn’t; and, although I had wondered how to break the subject of money when conversing with one who must be thinking of nobler things, I found she was less shy when on that subject than when talking about her book.
“Well, now,” I said, as soon as I had got her seated, “we have decided to buy this novel of yours. Can you recommend it as a thoroughly respectable and intellectual production?”
She said she could.
“Haven’t you read it?” she asked in some surprise.
“No,” I stammered. “At least, not yet. I’m going to as soon as I can find the requisite leisure. You see, we are very busy just now – very busy. But if you can vouch for the story being a first-class article, – something, say, like ‘The Vicar of Wakefield,’ or ‘David Hamm,’ – we’ll take it.”
“Now you’re talking,” she said. “And do I get the check now?”
“Wait,” I said, “not so fast. I have forgotten one thing,” and I saw her face fall. “We want the privilege of publishing the novel under a title of our own, and anonymously. If that is not satisfactory, the deal is off.”
She brightened in a moment.
“It’s a go, if that’s all,” she said. “Call it whatever you please; and the more anonymous it is, the better it will suit yours truly.” So we settled the matter then and there; and when I gave her our check for a thousand, she said I was all right.
IIIHalf an hour after Miss Vincent had left the office, Perkins came in with his arms full of bundles, which he opened, spreading their contents on my desk.
He had a pair of suspenders with nickeldiver mountings, a tie, a lady’s belt, a pair of low shoes, a shirt, a box of cigars, a package of cookies, and a half a dozen other things of divers and miscellaneous character. I poked them over and examined them, while he leaned against the desk with his legs crossed. He was beaming upon me.
“Well,” I said, “what is it – a bargain sale?”
Perkins leaned over and tapped the pile with his long forefinger.
“Aftermath!” he crowed. “Aftermath!”
“The dickens it is!” I exclaimed.
“And what has aftermath got to do with this truck? It looks like the aftermath of a notion store.” He tipped his “Air-the-Hair” hat over one ear, and put his thumbs in the armholes of his “ready-tailored” vest.
“Genius!” he announced. “Brains! Foresight! Else why Perkins the Great? Why not Perkins the Nobody?”
He raised the suspenders tenderly from the pile, and fondled them in his hands.
“See this?” he asked, running his finger along the red corded edge of the elastic. He took up the tie, and ran his nail along the red stripe that formed the selvedge on the back, and said, “See this?” He pointed to the red laces of the low shoes and asked, “See this?” And so through the whole collection.
“What is it?” he asked. “It’s genius! It’s foresight!”
He waved his hand over the pile.
“The Aftermath!” he exclaimed.
“These suspenders are the Crimson Cord suspenders. These shoes are the Crimson Cord shoes. This tie is the Crimson Cord tie. These crackers are the Crimson Cord brand. Perkins & Co. get out a great book, ‘The Crimson Cord’! Sell five million copies. Dramatized, it runs three hundred nights. Everybody talking Crimson Cord. Country goes Crimson Cord crazy. Result – up jump Crimson Cord this and Crimson Cord that. Who gets the benefit? Perkins & Co.? No! We pay the advertising bills, and the other man sells his Crimson Cord cigars. That is usual.”
“Tes,” I said, “I’m smoking a David Harum cigar this minute, and I am wearing a Carvel collar.”
“How prevent it?” asked Perkins. “One way only, – discovered by Perkins. Copyright the words ‘Crimson Cord’ as trademark for every possible thing. Sell the trade-mark on royalty. Ten per cent, of all receipts for ‘Crimson Cord’ brands comes to Perkins & Co. Get a cinch on the Aftermath!”
“Perkins!” I cried, “I admire you. You are a genius! And have you contracts with all these: – notions?”
“Yes,” said Perkins, “that’s Perkins’s method. Who originated the Crimson Cord? Perkins did. Who is entitled to the profits on the Crimson Cord? Perkins is. Perkins is wide-awake all the time. Perkins gets a profit on the aftermath and the math and the before the math.”
And so he did. He made his new contracts with the magazines on the exchange plan. We gave a page of advertising in the “Crimson Cord” for a page of advertising in the magazine. We guaranteed five million circulation. We arranged with all the manufacturers of the Crimson Cord brands of goods to give coupons, one hundred of which entitled the holder to a copy of “The Crimson Cord.” With a pair of Crimson Cord suspenders you get fire coupons; with each Crimson Cord cigar, one coupon; and so on.
IVOn the first of October we announced in our advertisement that “The Crimson Cord” was a book; the greatest novel of the century; a thrilling, exciting tale of love. Miss Vincent had told me it was a love story. Just to make everything sure, however, I sent the manuscript to Professor Wiggins, who is the most erudite man I ever met. He knows eighteen languages, and reads Egyptian as easily as I read English. In fact, his specialty is old Egyptian ruins and so on. He has written several books on them.
Professor said the novel seemed to him very light and trashy, but grammatically O. K. He said he never read novels, not having time; but he thought that “The Crimson Cord” was just about the sort of thing a silly public that refused to buy his “Some Light on the Dynastic Proclivities of the Hyksos” would scramble for. On the whole, I considered the report satisfactory.
We found we would be unable to have Pyle illustrate the book, he being too busy, so we turned it over to a young man at the Art Institute.
That was the fifteenth of October, and we had promised the book to the public for the first of November, but we had it already in type; and the young man, – his name was Gilkowsky, – promised to work night and day on the illustrations.
The next morning, almost as soon as I reached the office, Gilkowsky came in. He seemed a little hesitant, but I welcomed him warmly, and he spoke up.
“I have a girl I go with,” he said; and I wondered what I had to do with Mr. Gilkowsky’s girl, but he continued: —
“She’s a nice girl and a good looker, but she’s got bad taste in some things. She’s too loud in hats and too trashy in literature. I don’t like to say this about her, but it’s true; and I’m trying to educate her in good hats and good literature. So I thought it would be a good thing to take around this ‘Crimson Cord’ and let her read it to me.”
I nodded.
“Did she like it?” I asked.
Mr. Gilkowsky looked at me closely.
“She did,” he said, but not so enthusiastically as I had expected. “It’s her favorite book. Now I don’t know what your scheme is, and I suppose you know what you are doing better than I do; but I thought perhaps I had better come around before I got to work on the illustrations and see if, perhaps, you hadn’t given me the wrong manuscript.”
“No, that was the right manuscript,” I said. “Was there anything wrong about it?”
Mr. Gilkowsky laughed nervously.
“Oh, no!” he said. “But did you read it?”
I told him I had not, because I had been so rushed with details connected with advertising the book.
“Well,” he said, “I’ll tell you. This girl of mine reads pretty trashy stuff, and she knows about all the cheap novels there are. She dotes on ‘The Duchess,’ and puts her last dime into Braddon. She knows them all by heart. Have you ever read ‘Lady Audley’s Secret’?”
“I see,” I said. “One is a sequel to the other.”
“No,” said Mr. Gilkowsky, “one is the other. Some one has flimflammed you and sold you a typewritten copy of ‘Lady Audley’s Secret’ as a new novel.”
VWhen I told Perkins, he merely remarked that he thought every publishing house ought to have some one in it who knew something about books, apart from the advertising end, although that was, of course, the most important. He said we might go ahead and publish “Lady Audley’s Secret” under the title of “The Crimson Cord,” as such things had been done before; but the best thing to do would be to charge Rosa Belle Vincent’s thousand dollars to profit and loss, and hustle for another novel – something reliable, and not shop-worn.
Perkins had been studying the literature market a little, and he advised me to get something from Indiana this time; so I telegraphed an advertisement to the Indianapolis papers, and two days later we had ninety-eight historical novels by Indiana authors from which to choose. Several were of the right length; and we chose one, and sent it to Mr. Gilkowsky, with a request that he read it to his sweetheart. She had never read it before.
We sent a detective to Dillville, Ind., where the author lived; and the report we received was most satisfactory.
The author was a sober, industrious young man, just out of the high school, and bore a first-class reputation for honesty. He had never been in Virginia, where the scene of his story was laid, and they had no library in Dillville; and our detective assured us that the young man was in every way fitted to write a historical novel.
“The Crimson Cord” made an immense success. You can guess how it boomed when I say that, although it was published at a dollar and a half, it was sold by every department store for fifty-four cents, away below cost, just like sugar, or Vandeventer’s Baby Food, or Q & Z Corsets, or any other staple. We sold our first edition of five million copies inside of three months, and got out another edition of two million, and a specially illustrated holiday edition, and an “edition de luxe;” and “The Crimson Cord” is still selling in paper-covered cheap edition.
With the royalties received from the after-math and the profit on the book itself, we made – well, Perkins has a country place at Lakewood, and I have my cottage at Newport.
VIII. THE ADVENTURE OF THE PRINCESS OF PILLIWINK
PERKINS slammed the five-o’clock edition of the Chicago “Evening Howl” into the waste-paper basket, and trod it down with the heel of his Go-lightly rubber-sole shoe.
“Rot!” he cried. “Tommy rot! Fiddlesticks! Trash!”
I looked up meekly. I had seldom seen Perkins angry, and I was abashed. He saw my expression of surprise; and, like the great man he is, he smiled sweetly to reassure me.
“Diamonds again,” he explained. “Same old tale. Georgiana De Vere, leading lady, diamonds stolen. Six thousand four hundred and tenth time in the history of the American stage that diamonds have been stolen. If I couldn’t – ”
“But you could, Perkins,” I cried, eagerly. “You would not have to use the worn-out methods of booming a star. In your hands theatrical advertising would become fresh, virile, interesting. A play advertised by the brilliant, original, great – ”
“Illustrious,” Perkins suggested. “Illustrious Perkins of Portland,” I said, bowing to acknowledge my thanks for the word I needed, “would conquer America. It would fill the largest theatres for season after season. It would – ”
Perkins arose and slapped his “Air-the-Hair” hat on his head, and hastily slid into his “ready-tailored” overcoat. Without waiting for me to finish my sentence he started for the door.
“It would – ” I repeated, and then, just as he was disappearing, I called, “Where are you going?”
He paused in the hall just long enough to stick his head into the room.
“Good idea!” he cried, “great idea! No time to be lost! Perkins the Great goes to get the play!”
He banged the door, and I was left alone.
That was the way Perkins did things. Not on the spur of the moment, for Perkins needed no spur. He was fall of spurs. He did things in the heat of genius. He might have used as his motto those words that he originated, and that have been copied so often since by weak imitators of the great man: “Don’t wait until to-morrow; do it to-day. Tomorrow you may be dead.” He wrote that to advertise coffins, and – well, Li Hung Chang and Sara Bernhardt are only two of the people who took his advice, and lay in their coffins before they had to be in them.
I knew Perkins would have the whole affair planned, elaborated, and developed before he reached the street; that he would have the details of the plan complete before he reached the corner; and that he would have figured the net profit to within a few dollars by the time he reached his destination.
I had hardly turned to my desk before my telephone bell rang. I slapped the receiver to my ear. It was Perkins!
“Pilly,” he said. “Pilly willy. Pilly willy winkum. Pilliwink! That’s it. Pilliwink, Princess of. Write it down. The Princess of Pilliwink. Good-by.”
I hung up the receiver.
“That is the name of the play,” I mused. “Mighty good name, too. Full of meaning, like ‘shout Zo-Zo’ and ‘Paskala’ and – ”
The bell rang again.
“Perkins’s performers. Good-by,” came the voice of my great friend.
“Great!” I shouted, but Perkins had already rung off.
He came back in about half an hour with four young men in tow.
“Good idea,” I said, “male quartettes always take well.”
Perkins waved his hand scornfully. Perkins could do that. He could do anything, could Perkins. “Quartette? No,” he said, “the play.” He locked the office door, and put the key in his pocket. “The play is in them,” he said, “and they are in here. They don’t get out until they get the play out.”
He tapped the long-haired young man on the shoulder.
“Love lyrics,” he said, briefly.
The thin young man with a sad countenance he touched on the arm and said, “Comic songs,” and pointing to the youth who wore the baggiest trousers, he said, “Dialogue.” He did not have to tell me that the wheezy little German contained the music of our play. I knew it by the way he wheezed.
Perkins swept me away from my desk, and deposited one young man there, and another at his desk. The others he gave each a window-sill, and to each of the four he handed a pencil and writing-pad.
“Write!” he said, and they wrote.
As fast as the poets finished a song, they handed it to the composer, who made suitable music for it. It was good music – it all reminded you of something else. If it wasn’t real music, it was at least founded on fact.
The play did not have much plot, but it had plenty of places for the chorus to come in in tights or short skirts – and that is nine-tenths of any comic opera. I knew it was the real thing as soon as I read it. The dialogue was full of choice bits like, —
“So you think you can sing?”
“Well, I used to sing in good old boyhood’s hour.”
“Then why don’t you sing it?”
“Sing what?”
“Why, ‘In Good Old Boyhood’s Hour,’” and then he would sing it.
The musical composer sang us some of the lyrics, just to let us see how clever they were; but he wheezed too much to do them justice. He admitted that they would sound better if a pretty woman with a swell costume and less wheeze sang them.
The plot of the play – it was in three acts – was original, so far as there was any plot. The Princess of Pilliwink loved the Prince of Guam; but her father, the leading funny man, and King of Pilliwink, wanted her to marry Gonzolo, an Italian, because Gonzolo owned the only hand-organ in the kingdom. To escape this marriage, the Princess disguised herself as a Zulu maiden, and started for Zululand in an automobile. The second act was, therefore, in Zululand, with songs about palms and a grand cakewalk of Amazons, who captured another Italian organ-grinder. At the request of the princess, this organ-grinder was thrown into prison. In the third act he was discovered to be the Prince of Guam, and everything ended beautifully.
Perkins paid the author syndicate spot cash, and unlocked the door and let them go. He did not want any royalties hanging over him. “Ah!” he said, as soon as they were out of sight.
We spent the night editing the play. Neither Perkins nor I knew anything about plays, but we did our best. We changed that play from an every-day comic opera into a bright and sparkling gem. Anything that our author syndicate had omitted we put in. I did the writing and Perkins dictated to me. We put in a disrobing scene, in which the Princess was discovered in pain, and removed enough of her dress to allow her to place a Perkins’s Patent Porous Plaster between her shoulders, after which she sang the song beginning, —
“Now my heart with rapture thrills,”only we changed it to: —
“How my back with rapture thrills.”That song ended the first act; and when the opera was played, we had boys go up and down the aisles during the intermission selling Perkins’s Patent Porous Plasters, on which the words and music of the song were printed. It made a great hit.
The drinking song – every opera has one – we changed just a little. Instead of tin goblets each singer had a box of Perkins’s Pink Pellets; and, as they sang, they touched boxes with each other, and swallowed the Pink Pellets. It was easy to change the song from
“Drain the red wine-cup —Each good fellow knowsThe jolly red wine-cupWill cure all his woes”to the far more moral and edifying verse, —
“Eat the Pink Pellet,For every one knowsThat Perkins’s Pink PelletsWill cure all his woes.”When Perkins had finished touching up that opera, it was not such an every-day opera as it had been. He put some life into it.
I asked him if he didn’t think he had given it a rather commercial atmosphere by introducing the Porous Plaster and the Pink Pellets, but he only smiled knowingly.
“Wait!” he said, “wait a week. Wait until Perkins circulates himself around town. Why should the drama be out of date? Why avoid all interest? Why not have the opera teem with the life of the day? Why not?” He laid one leg gently over the arm of his chair and tilted his hat back on his head.
“Literature, art, drama,” he said, “the phonographs of civilization. Where is the brain of the world? In literature, art, and the drama. These three touch the heartstrings; these three picture mankind; these three teach us. They move the world.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Good!” exclaimed Perkins. “But why is the drama weak? Why no more Shakespeares? Why no more Molières? Because the real life-blood of to-day isn’t in the drama. What is the life-blood of to-day?”
I thought he meant Perkins’s Pink Pellets, so I said so.
“No!” he said, “advertising! The ad. makes the world go round. Why do our plays fall flat? Not enough advertising. Of them and in them. Take literature. See ‘Bilton’s New Monthly Magazine.’ Sixty pages reading; two hundred and forty pages advertising; one million circulation; everybody likes it. Take the Bible – no ads.; nobody reads it. Take art; what’s famous? ‘Gold Dust Triplets;’ ‘Good evening, have you used Pear’s?’ Who prospers? The ad. illustrator. The ad. is the biggest thing on earth. It sways nations. It wins hearts. It rules destiny. People cry for ads.”
“That is true enough,” I remarked.
“Why,” asked Perkins, “do men make magazines? To sell ad. space in them! Why build barns and fences? To sell ad. space! Why run street-cars? To sell ad. space! But the drama is neglected. The poor, lonely drama is neglected. In ten years there will be no more drama. The stage will pass away.”
Perkins uncoiled his legs and stood upright before me.
“The theatre would have died before now,” he said, “but for the little ad. life it has. What has kept it alive? A few ads.! See how gladly the audience reads the ads. in the programmes when the actors give them a little time. See how they devour the ad. drop-curtain! Who first saw that the ad. must save the stage? Who will revive the down trod theatrical art?”
“Perkins!” I cried. “Perkins will. I don’t know what you mean to do, but you will revive the drama. I can see it in your eyes. Go ahead. Do it. I am willing.”
I thought he would tell me what he meant to do, but he did not. I had to ask him. He lifted the manuscript of the opera from the table.
“Sell space!” he exclaimed. “Perkins the Originator will sell space in the greatest four-hour play in the world. What’s a barn? So many square feet of ad. space. What’s a magazine? So many pages of ad. space. What’s a play? So many minutes of ad. space. Price, one hundred dollars a minute. Special situations in the plot extra.”
I did not know just what he meant, but I soon learned. The next day Perkins started out with the manuscript of the “Princess of Pilliwink.” And when he returned in the evening he was radiant with triumph. Every minute of available space had been sold, and he had been obliged to add a prologue to accommodate all the ads.
The “Princess of Pilliwink” had some modern interest when Perkins was through with it. It did not take up time with things no one cared a cent about. It went right to the spot.
There was a Winton Auto on the stage when the curtain rose, and from then until the happy couple boarded the Green Line Flyer in the last scene the interest was intense. There was a shipwreck, where all hands were saved by floating ashore on Ivory Soap, – it floats, – and you should have heard the applause when the hero laughed in the villain’s face and said, “Kill me, then. I have no fear. I am insured in the Prudential Insurance Company. It has the strength of Port Arthur.”
We substituted a groanograph – the kind that hears its master’s voice – for the hand-organ that was in the original play, and every speech and song brought to mind some article that was worthy of patronage.
