Success Story

When an interviewer asked Publisher Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis what piece of music he would like to listen to on his deathbed, he promptly replied: "Hymn to the Night."--the hymn written by Organist Hermann Kotzschmar, his father's friend in Portland, Me. On his deathbed at '"Lyndon," his estate near Philadelphia, last week old Mr. Curtis, who would have been 83 on June 18, heard no music. Comatose, in the last grip of a heart ailment from which he had long suffered, he did not even see at his bedside his only daughter, Mrs. Mary Louise Curtis Bok; his stepdaughter. Mrs. John Charles Martin and her husband, his newspaper-publishing partner. Two days later the great pipe organ downstairs on which Mr. Curtis liked to improvise for a few minutes before breakfast (sitting on a special stool because he was short), breathed the strains of "Hymn to the Night" while the Men's Singing Club of Portland sang the words: ''Softly now the light of day fades upon my sight away. . . ." Large among the floral pieces which banked the music room was one in the shape of a harp, on which roses marked the notes of the first bars of the hymn. In several cities seven other pipe organs, gifts of Mr. Curtis, whispered the same peaceful melody that afternoon as his body was borne to its grave in West Laurel Hill Cemetery. Cyrus Curtis' death was a sequel, rather than an end, to a conventional U. S. success story of monumental proportions. About ten years ago he gave authority over his rich magazines. Saturday Evening Post, Ladies' Home Journal, Country Gentleman, to able Editor George Horace Lorimer. His newspapers, the Philadelphia Public Ledgers, Inquirer and New York Evening Post are run by Stepson-in-Law Martin. Publisher Curtis contented himself in recent years largely with sailing up & down the Atlantic Coast on his steam yacht Lyndonia, summering at his beloved Camden, Me., eating simple fare like baked beans and fish cakes. Once in a great while he would wander into the office of New York Evening Post, invariably stopping at the cigar stand in the lobby to buy a copy of his paper for 3-c-. As diffidently as an old man who wanted to ask the editor to print a letter about the flower beds in Central Park, he would venture through the editorial offices, exchanging nods with reporters whose names he did not know, looking grateful for their recognition. Hardly ever did he go up to his penthouse on the roof of the Post building in which a French chef prepared luncheon every day in case Publisher Curtis should want it. Since the death of his second wife, Mrs. Kate Stanwood Pillsbury Curtis, in Philadelphia a year ago, while he was gravely ill in the hospital with her, Publisher Curtis had rarely ventured away from home. Most U. S. schoolboys can recite the newsboy-to-tycoon story of Cyrus H. K. Curtis, as told by his son-in-law the late Edward William Bok,* but it is doubtful if he is a hero to many of those boys. Not that he was unworthy. On the contrary, every turn of his career provides a text for a sermon on honesty, thrift, diligence, perseverance, kindliness, charity. But-- and it may well be the fault of his biographers--Cyrus Curtis has never been brought as vividly to life as one might expect of a man whose properties were capitalized at $40,000,000, did better than $100,000,000 business in 1930, and who in 1925, when income taxes were made public, had an income of some $5,000,000--as big as Rockefeller's, Ford's, MelIon's. If he had human frailties or a sense of humor, the public did not know about them. If he had genius in addition to his Horatio Alger traits, there was only the circumstantial evidence of his colossal success in dollars. From the time he began his first important publishing venture, The Tribune & Farmer, in Philadelphia in 1879 (this followed a series of smaller-scale efforts, jobs as advertising solicitor, circulation hustler, etc. etc.) to the day when he could address an audience of 8,000,000, Publisher Curtis never swum: a crusader's sword. Like himself his publications were simple, eminently respectable, ultra conservative, 100% American. It was Publisher Curtis' idea that the Satevepost, which he bought in 1897 for $1,000 when it had a circulation of 2,000, should preach the romance of honest toil. /-Ladies' Home Journal, as nearly everyone knows, was originated and long edited by the publisher's first wife, Louisa Knapp Curtis. She had scoffed at the poor quality of the women's column in Tribune & Farmer, offered to write a better one herself. Her column grew to a supplement, then to a whole magazine. Many are the stories documenting Publisher Curtis' belief in advertising. Before the Satevepost earned a penny he had poured $1,000,000 into it, largely in advertising and promotion. Once he bought a full page in the New York Sun to catch the eye of a big potential advertiser in Manhattan who had refused to listen to Curtis advertising salesmen. Of patent medicine advertising, Publisher Curtis would have none, and once in the old days, when there was no money to meet the month's payrolls, he is said to have returned a check for $18,000 to a would-be advertiser of medicines. Cigaret advertising also was taboo (Mr. Curtis smoked cigars) until 1930 when hard times had squeezed the fat old Post from its 272-page high, to below 100 pages.

Mr. Curtis' gifts to hospitals, music institutions, schools and charities were incalculably large. To a friend who was discussing his philanthropies with him not long ago Publisher Curtis remarked cryp- tically: "When I die my friends will be surprised at the size of my fortune." That surprise remained unsprung last week when the Curtis will was filed. His personal estate and his income from his pub- lications he left to his daughter, Mrs. Bok. His stock in the publishing companies (presumed to be controlling interest) he left in care of seven trustees including Mrs. Bok, her sons Gary & Curtis. John C. Martin, Editor Lorimer, and two officers of his companies. The trustees were enjoined not to sell Mr. Curtis' common stock in Curtis Publishing Co. except in "some extraordinary contingency." No such injunction affected his stock in Curtis-Martin newspapers. Unaccountably last week Curtis Publishing Co. common stock spurted up 5 1/2 points, the preferred stock 6.

* A Man From Maine -- Scribner.

/-On the cover of last week's Satevepost, for the first time appeared the portrait of a contributor, Mrs. Helen Wills Moody.

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