3. More About Papa

Nobody sang “Amen” but Mr. Strickland, who shouted it so loudly that many of the younger ones giggled and their fathers whipped out their handkerchiefs and blew their noses to hide a chuckle and a grin. You wouldn’t think that a grand old fellow like Mr. Strickland would get mad over the little joke he had played on himself; nor would he have taken it badly if something of the sort had happened at the Masonic Lodge or a meeting of the Grange. But sometimes the insulation on the nerves of elderly laymen in the Church is very thin, and almost any little rub will touch off a blaze. It is too bad.

I have known of cases where some man, who was henpecked at home, and afraid of his shadow downtown where he came, at full gallop, wagging his tail, when his employer called for him, gets to be the Big Shot in his church, the only place where anybody pays the slightest attention to him. Just for the salvation of his own soul, if not for the sake of the Church, he should be firmly taken in hand as soon as he begins to exhibit delusions of grandeur. It would be fun to see a little fellow of that sort start to throw his weight around in a Catholic Church… Boy, oh Boy!… Innumerable Protestant preachers would love to have a ringside seat to witness that spanking.

Practically everything I know about the church boss, which is plenty, has come to me by observation and pathetic letters from colleagues in the ministry, over a long period of years. In more than a few instances, the victims—especially the ones who had passed middle age—never quite regained their self-confidence and the joy they had found in their vocation. Only once, during my thirty years as a clergyman, was I unlucky enough to collide with a small but energetic group of laymen of the sort that my papa once described as “men who knew too much to follow but not quite enough to lead.” For the first time in my experience I learned how a minister feels in a position where he is antagonized by lay officials. While waiting to decide whether to fight or run, I sought distraction from my worries by attempting to write a novel.

I knew next to nothing about the composition of fiction. Certainly nobody on the faculty of my alma mater had ever offered any suggestions on that subject, though there may have been good reasons for that.

Perhaps I was only wasting my time, trying to write a novel. But, seeing I wasn’t sleeping very well, it seemed more sensible to be busy at something better in the night than staring at the ceiling. Gradually my story gathered momentum. My pile of typed manuscript grew, and as it grew my disappointment over what was happening to me at the church didn’t hurt much, any more.

When my opus was finished I named it Magnificent Obsession, and sent it to a publisher who had previously brought out a book of mine, a group of religious essays. My manuscript promptly bounced back. The publisher (a good friend of mine, by the way, both before and after he rejected my story) explained that his readers saw no future for it. He figured that it might sell a few hundred copies to my parishioners, but he would prefer not to list it.

I have never been able to brood very long or very painfully over a setback: I have my papa to thank for the ability to toss off disappointments. But I must admit that this rejection of the book on which I had spent so much of myself, and the firm opinion of my New York friend that it wasn’t worth publishing, was a severe blow; for my rating at the church was worsening by the hour. But perhaps this publisher could be mistaken. Sometimes experienced editors refused a book that turned out to be successful. It was told of the late Booth Tarkington that his The Gentleman from Indiana was refused twelve times before it found a publisher willing to gamble on it. Ben Hur made several excursions to the Wise Men of the East before it was accorded any hospitality. Yes; and a venerable publishing house, with whose Directors I have a first-name acquaintance, are still a bit embarrassed when anyone mentions David Harum, though no present member of the Board was responsible for its rejection.

So I sent my novel to another publisher and again it was returned. By this time I was beginning to wonder whether it could be true that the whole regiment was out of step but our Jim.

I tried a third time, and it stuck! Quite to everybody’s surprise, the book caught on!

Perhaps some old friend of mine will inquire, teasingly, “Why are you so steamed up about church bosses? If you hadn’t been bossed, maybe you wouldn’t have written any novels.”

To this question I can only reply that I was lucky. The old adage had proved true that “It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good.”

But my happy release from the captivity of the church boss does not make me indifferent to the plight of other men similarly trapped and with no means of escape.

(I have just now been visited by my long-time friend and colleague, Doctor Willsie Martin, of whom the world is not worthy… He said that never, in his long ministry, was he troubled with a church boss. “But,” he added, “I know of cases. A minister once said to me, when I was young, ‘Look out for the fellow who can’t get along in some other church, and comes to join yours.'”)

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