The Autobiography
of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After
to the american woman i owe much,
but to two women i owe more,
MY MOTHER
and
MY WIFE.
and to them i dedicate this account of the boy
to whom one gavebirth and brought to manhood
and the other blessed with all a
home and family may mean.
This book was to have been written in 1914, when I foresaw some leisureto write it, for I then intended to retire from active editorship. Butthe war came, an entirely new set of duties commanded, and the projectwas laid aside.
Its title and the form, however, were then chosen. By the form I referparticularly to the use of the third person. I had always felt the mosteffective method of writing an autobiography, for the sake of a betterperspective, was mentally to separate the writer from his subject bythis device.
Moreover, this method came to me very naturally in dealing with theEdward Bok, editor and publicist, whom I have tried to describe in thisbook, because, in many respects, he has had and has been a personalityapart from my private self. I have again and again found myself watchingwith intense amusement and interest the Edward Bok of this book at work.I have, in turn, applauded him and criticised him, as I do in this book.Not that I ever considered myself bigger or broader than this EdwardBok: simply that he was different. His tastes, his outlook, his mannerof looking at things were totally at variance with my own. In fact, mychief difficulty during Edward Bok's directorship of The Ladies' HomeJournal was to abstain from breaking through the editor and revealing myreal self. Several times I did so, and each time I saw how different wasthe effect from that when the editorial Edward Bok had been allowedsway. Little by little I learned to subordinate myself and to let himhave full rein.
But no relief of my life was so great to me personally as his decisionto retire from his editorship. My family and friends were surprised andamused by my intense and obvious relief when he did so. Only to thoseclosest to me could I explain the reason for the sense of absolutefreedom and gratitude that I felt.
Since that time my feelings have been an interesting study to myself.There are no longer two personalities. The Edward Bok of whom I havewritten has passed out of my being as completely as if he had never beenthere, save for the records and files on my library shelves. It is easy,therefore, for me to write of him as a personality apart: in fact, Icould not depict him from any other point of view. To write of him inthe first person, as if he were myself, is impossible, for he is not.
The title suggests my principal reason for writing the book. Every lifehas some interest and significance; mine, perhaps, a special one. Herewas a little Dutch boy unceremoniously set down in America unable tomake himself understood or even to know what persons were saying; hiseducation was extremely limited, practically negligible; and yet, bysome curious decree of fate, he was destined to write, for a period ofyears, to the largest body of readers ever addressed by an Americaneditor—the circulation of the magazine he edited running into figurespreviously unheard of in periodical literature. He made no pretense tostyle or even to composition: his grammar was faulty, as it was naturalit should be, in a language not his own. His roots never went deep, forthe intellectual soil had not been favorable to their growth;—yet, itmust be confessed, he achieved.
But how all this came about, how such a boy, with every disadvantage toovercome, was able, apparently, to