Gossiper Silenced

When the late plug-hatted, snow- whiskered Col. William D'Alton Mann published Town Topics 30, 40 years ago, he made a straightforward if unpleasant practice of "borrowing" large sums from individuals who did not want unkind things printed about themselves in the gossip sheet. Return of the money customarily was not made or expected, but the pompous colonel had a peculiar means of repayment at his command each Tuesday night when the magazine was being made up. On those nights he presided noisily over the editorial rooms, his lawyer at his elbow, reading and initialing proofs of every item which had been set in type for that issue. Now and then he would snort angrily at the "injustice" of some barbed paragraph, turn an infuriate glare upon his quaking underlings and announce that the story could not be true! For years the colonel had known the family under discussion and could believe no ill of them. Strike it out!

The late famed William Travers Jerome, crusading district attorney of Manhattan, tried his hardest to prove that the notorious colonel's faith in human nature was limited to his creditors; in short, that he was an extortionist. But victims of extortion are rarely willing to testify that they bought silence. For 55 years Town Topics thrived; and Col. Mann's estate, at his death twelve years ago, was valued at $500,000.

Since the days of Col. Mann, Town Topics has used different tactics--tactics also employed by Tatler & American Sketch, another "society" talebearer. The editors did not ask people for loans, but they did offer them stock in the magazines, allegedly punishing in print those who declined to buy. The Attorney General of New York investigated (TIME, Dec. 21). Last week Tatler, which had sold $250,000 worth of stock in the past five years, was enjoined by the New York County Supreme Court from selling any more. Town Topics did not even wait for such an injunction to be asked, but simply suspended publication. Its publishers admitted that publicity of the investigation forced them to close up shop. Tatler, despite the fact that it has never made money, announced that it would continue publication. But in his presumptuous "grading" of debutantes in the January issue it was observed that Editor John C. Schemm dealt only with grades "A," "B," "C" and a list headed "And Also." Gone were the dreadful "D" and "EZ" classifications which were alleged to include names of young ladies whose parents had chosen not to become Tatler stockholders.

Investigation of both magazines was set in motion by news stories in the New York Sun gathered by Reporter Edmund S. DeLong, contributing editor of the Princeton Alumni Weekly, and written by Mabel Greene. The Sun, however, made no "crusade" of the business, took no public credit for it.

If the plight of Town Topics is ignominious compared to its flamboyant rascality of three decades ago, so is Editor Augustus Ralph Keller colorless, small-scale compared to the vivid colonel. Editor Keller is already awaiting trial on a charge of criminal libel. Col. Mann had the temerity to sue the late Publisher Peter F. Collier and Editor Norman Hapgood of Collier's for libel. As a result of that fruitless sortie, the colonel was prosecuted on a charge of perjury for his barefaced denial that the "O. K., W. D. M." at the bottom of a document was his signature. Famed Lawyer Martin Wiley Littleton won an acquittal by rehearsing for a spellbound jury the story of the publisher's life, loud-pedaling the part about his brilliant Civil War record, notably his service with Custer at Gettysburg.

No widely famed character is Editor Keller. But few socialites of the gaslit era were unaware of Col. Mann, who regularly gorged himself on gargantuan meals at the Lotos Club or at Delmonico's, kept an expensive house on Riverside Drive and a summer home at Lake George, strutted about at opera and horse show, a conspicuous figure with his whiskers, flaming red tie, frock coat, plug hat, and heavy walking stick which could make a highly effective bludgeon.

The colonel would not have been proud could he have observed how ignominiously death came, at least temporarily, to his magazine last week. But he surely would have emitted his favorite snort of satisfaction to see researchers in the New York Public Library poring over his famed Fads & Fancies--an ultra-elaborate "Who's Who" of society for which the subjects listed paid staggering "subscriptions." Twice during his life Col. Mann offered the book to the Library; twice, to his indescribable indignation, it was refused.

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