During the summer the children made friends with a certain Mr. Zur, an original character and owner of the Menemsha store. The old man liked children and whenever they came to his shop to buy candy, salted nuts or a bag of popcorn, they always used to stay there for a while and discuss the weather, politics and all sorts of events with him. Mr. Zur used to talk to children as though they were grownups, and this contributed a lot to his popularity. When they arrived at the summer resort, the first thing the children did was to run to their old friend’s shop and there, as they were eating fresh cracking popcorn, they told him the staggering news—they had published a magazine.
“A magazine? And how much costs one copy of your magazine, gentlemen?” inquired Mr. Zur in a businesslike manner.
The children exchanged quick glances. Somehow they had not arrived at the thought that their magazine could be sold.
“It costs nothing, sir,” David started saying.
“No, no, it costs one dollar,” the quick-witted Mikey interrupted his brother as this new aspect of their hobby began to dawn upon him. “One dollar.”
“It’s rather expensive, gentlemen. However, I enjoy reading, and so I will buy one copy,” replied the old shopkeeper and handed over a dirty green bill to the journalists. They were left quite speechless by this development.
The business was continued. Realizing that there 79 were quite a few funny people among the dwellers in that summer resort and wishing to please his little friends, old Zur took over the newsstand sale of their publication on a commission basis. He even displayed the magazine in his shop window. To his astonishment, the whole of the first issue was sold out. Four more followed. By the end of the summer, the boys’ income, after deduction of expenses and commissions, amounted to roughly $50. The children gave this money—not without some regret, to be truthful—to the local fishermen whose boats had been shattered against the rocks of the coast by a passing hurricane.
Inspired by the unexpected success of their first year’s operations, the editorial staff resumed publication in the following summer at that same resort. It proved even more interesting. It contained interviews with fishermen and lobstermen and a story told by an old captain of a fishing schooner, who was spending his declining years in a dilapidated shack by the seashore. That huge, hoarse, bearded giant was always drunk. But in his rare moments of sobriety he was kind, used to give candy to the children and nobody could tell fascinating sea adventure stories better than he did. Mikey managed to catch him in such a mood and the magazine was adorned, as a result, with a powerful story by the old captain about a hurricane that threw ships around like bits of paper and about the rescue of a beautiful lady passenger who had been thrown into the ocean by the roaring gale, by the captain himself, who saved her out of the waves at the risk of his own life.
The children’s hobby, which so clearly demonstrated their propensity toward journalism, greatly interested us. During our visits with various American families our attention had been drawn more than once to this good trait—if indeed it is not a tradition—which makes the children familiarize themselves with the profession of their father, or their grandfather, or some close relative. In the apartment of an auto-mechanic we saw a small lathe and a block on which a little fellow was filing something. In the family of a musician, little girls played on the violin. The little son of a well-known Hollywood scenario-creator told us excitedly how he and his little brothers and sisters were making a film. A child’s game gradually develops into an absorbing interest, and maybe in these games which are treated seriously, not only by the children but as a rule by the adults too, the seed of his future profession is planted in the child’s brain.
I expressed the wish to become a subscriber to the Green Spring-Menemsha Gazette for a full year and took out a $5 bill. The editor and the publisher exchanged glances. They obviously wished to get a foreign subscriber. But what if this should create trouble of some kind? Were they entitled to mail their magazine abroad, and moreover, to a country like the USSR? What would their father and mother say? And how would Mr. John Foster Dulles react?
David carefully pushed the bill away, back to my end of the table. I, of course, felt offended. Could it be that I had no right to subscribe to an American magazine? Why such discrimination? The editor whispered something to the publisher who ran out of the room and came back dragging Michael senior in once more. The father laughed. He apparently had no objection to the mailing abroad of the magazine which was being published under his sponsorship. All the periodical publications of good standing always have foreign subscribers. However, Michael senior had objections against any monetary transaction with countries abroad. It was agreed that the subscription would be handled on a clearing basis: the Green Spring-Menemsha Gazette would be mailed to the USSR in exchange for our children’s magazine The Pioneer. We shook hands on this transaction, concluded to the mutual satisfaction of the “high contracting parties.”
When we returned to the living room, the debate about the freedom of the press was still continuing. But the two sides had exchanged places. Gribatchov was the one who led the attack now; the idea of exchanging articles with The New Republic had gradually excited him. Publisher Harrison, on the contrary, was taking a defensive stand: he was already foreseeing numerous difficulties obstructing the materialization of his project. The unionist leader was sitting on the sofa next to them. He was a tall man with a pale face with an ironical expression, and he was gently mocking the discomfited publisher. “Really, why shouldn’t there be an exchange of articles with a Russian paper?”
So finally they came to no conclusion at all.
We were taking our seats in the car when David manfully shook hands with me and suddenly asked: “Maybe you will write from Moscow a contribution for publication in The Green Spring-Menemsha Gazette? Our magazine will gladly publish it, I can promise you.”
My negotiations with the editors of the Gazette appeared to be more fruitful than the ones Gribatchov had had with The New Republic.
JULY 16, 1956
Editors’ Note:
There are, of course, some errors in Mr. Polevoy’s story. Many are due, as he notes, to the fact that parts of the conversation were conducted through dramatic gesticulations and incoherent sounds. Bill Seward, the youthful proprietor of Menemsha’s post office and store, for example, may not recognize himself as the ancient Mr. Zur, and the author of Cassandra Bobble, a fictional caricature of society columnists, will be surprised to see her creation re-emerge in Russian as Xandra Babel the neighbor’s girl reporter. More substantial, in the editor’s opinion, is his view that it was Mr. Gribatchov and not Mr. Harrison who doubted the practicality of an exchange of articles. And yet as many errors of detail and interpretation would no doubt be found were we to describe an evening spent in Mr. Polevoy’s villa outside Moscow. As far as the general tone of Mr. Polevoy’s account is concerned we cannot complain.
Mr. Polevoy, after all, is describing an evening in the home of an opponent of the political administration in power. Soviet readers learn that it is a comfortable place, lived in by a family substantially free from fear. The author refers in a mocking way to the shadow of John Foster Dulles and mentions the reluctance of the boys to take his $5 (the reason, lost in translation, was that they would not be publishing their paper in 1956). But just as Mr. Polevoy seems about to conclude with a political moral, he demolishes this traditional ending in favor of the truth. For the discussion which Mr. Polevoy describes ended with a whispered aside which the host found startling. “We will put you on the subscriber’s list to The Pioneer!” Mr. Polevoy had roared to the boys; then he drew their father aside: “That is, if it will not hurt you,” he whispered. The host laughed and explained that he and his sons were free citizens, able to read whatever they pleased and happy to receive literature from other lands. It seems gratifying to us that this small but memorable incident has found its way into the Soviet press.
Michael Straight
BOOKS
Clarke, E.; Potts, J. M.; and Payton, J. S., eds. The Journal and Letters of Francis Asbury. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1958.
Davis, R. B. Intellectual Life in Jefferson’s Virginia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1964.
Gutheim, Frederick. The Potomac. New York: Rinehart, 1949.
Harrison, Fairfax. Landmarks of Old Prince William. Berryville, Va.: Chesapeake Book Co., 1964.
Herndon, M. Tobacco in Colonial Virginia. Williamsburg: Virginia 350th Anniversary Celebration Corporation, 1957.
Hulbert, A. Paths of Inland Commerce. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1921.
Johnston, Frederick. Memorials of Old Virginia Clerks. Lynchburg: Bell Co., 1888.
Jones, Virgil C. Ranger Mosby. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1944.
Moger, A. W. The Rebuilding of the Old Dominion (PhD thesis). New York: Columbia University, 1940.
Mosby, J. S. Mosby’s War Memoirs and Stuart’s Cavalry Campaigns. New York: Pageant Book Company, 1958.
Porter. A. O. Country Government in Virginia. New York: Columbia University Press, 1947.
Russell, C. W., ed. The Memoirs of Colonel John S. Mosby. Boston: Little Brown, 1917.
Virginia Good Roads Convention. Programme. Richmond: Stone Printing Co., October 18, 1894.
Who’s Who in America. 1966-1967. Volume XXXIV. Chicago: A. N. Marquis Company.
Williamson, James. Mosby’s Rangers. New York: Sturgis & Walton, 1909.
ARTICLES
Abbott, R. H. “Yankee Farmers in Northern Virginia: 1840-1860.” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, v. 76, No. 1 (January 1968), pp. 56-66.
Funk, W. C. “An Economic History of Small Farms near Washington, D.C.” U.S. Department of Agriculture Bulletin 848. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1920.
“A New House with Young Ideas.” House and Garden. December 1958.
Straight, Michael. “A Visit from Mr. Polevoy.” The New Republic, v. 135, No. 3 (July 16, 1956), pp. 12-15.
Willis, K. M. “Old Fairfax Homes Give Up a Secret.” The American Motorist Magazine, v. 7, No. 2 (May 1932), p. 16.
OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT RECORDS AND REPORTS
Annual Report of the President and Directors of the Board of Public Works to the General Assembly of Virginia. 1818, 1819, 1820.
Fairfax County, Virginia. Deedbooks.
______. Minute Books.
______. Order Books.
______. Will Books.
Hening, William W., ed. Statutes at Large, 1823. Reprint ed., Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1969.
National Archives, Military Records Division, Washington, D.C. Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers who Served in Organizations from Virginia. Microcopy 324, Roll 207, “Hounshell’s Bat. Cav. Partisan Rangers, M-Z and Mosby’s Bat. Cav. Partisian Rangers A-D.”
Official Records of the War of the Rebellion. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1888.
Official Registers of Officers and Employees of the Civil, Military and Naval Service of the United States. (Issued Biennially.) Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.
Shepherd. Statutes.
“Status of Virginia Agriculture in 1870” in Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture. 1870. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1871, p. 267-291.
U.S. Treasury Department. Service Record (Form 426), “Beattie, Fountain.” (File in custody of Federal Records Center (GSA), St. Louis, Mo.)
NEWSPAPER
The Alexandria Gazette
MANUSCRIPTS
The Journal of John Littlejohn, MS. Methodist Churches, Louisville, Kentucky, April 29, 1778. (Copy courtesy of Reverend Melvin Steadman.)
Truro Parish Vestry Book, 1732-1803, MS. Library of Congress.
MISCELLANEOUS
Fullerton, W. Address to Piedmont Agricultural Society, October 1876.
Macomber, Walter; Schlebecker, John; and Straight, Michael and Belinda. Tape-recorded interviews.
Transcriber’s Notes
Original, sometimes very archaic spellings retained.
Photographs still under copyright on pages 32, 42, 44, and 56 (Figures 9, 11-13, and 16-18) excluded.