Walt Mason
Walt Mason (May 4, 1862 – June 22, 1939)[1] was a Canadian-born American journalist and writer, whose daily column was syndicated by George Matthew Adams in over 200 US and Canadian newspapers during the early part of the 20th Century.[2]
Walt Mason
June 22, 1939 (aged 77)
Journalist, Writer, Poet
1881-1939
Rippling Rhymes
Uncle Walt, Horse Sense, Terse Verse
2
He was called "the poet laureate of common sense",[3] and the "Homer of modern America",[1] but referred to himself as "the Fat One".[4] His columns were collected into eight books of "prose poems" between 1910 and 1919, for which admirers such as Theodore Dreiser, James Whitcomb Riley, William Dean Howells, Arthur Conan Doyle, George Ade, and Mary Roberts Rinehart wrote laudatory testimonials.[5]
Arrival in America[edit]
Mason moved to upstate New York about the time he turned 18 in 1880.[9] He worked on farms then drifted to the Midwest, landing in St. Louis, Missouri.[10] There he got a job running a printing press for a short-lived humor magazine called The St. Louis Hornet.[10] He also contributed writings to it, and became well known enough in the local area for an Illinois newspaper to quote him in 1881.[11] When the magazine folded Mason moved on to Frankfort, Kansas[fn 2] where he rode the range as a cowhand.[12]
Early journalism[edit]
A weekly paper began publishing original poems by Walt Mason during October 1884.[13] Mason wrote a series called "Poems in Paranthesis" during October and November 1884 for The Frankfort Bee, one appearing each week.[14][15] The editors indicated that besides writing poetry in his spare time, Mason was also a cartoonist.[16] These poems were in trochaic pentameter, with the ending of every other line rhyming;[17] Mason hadn't yet created the "prose poem" style for which he would later become famous.[8] Mason's remuneration from The Frankfort Bee, if any, isn't known. Through December 1884 Mason submitted both poems[fn 3] and prose pieces to The Frankfort Bee.[18] One of the latter, Riding a Texas Pony, was picked up and reprinted by other newspapers, including The Leavenworth Times.[19]
Later legend had it that Mason had submitted a poem to Col. Dan Anthony, editor of The Leavenworth Times, received $5 for it, and immediately went to work for the paper as a reporter at $8 a week.[8] During February 1885, the newspaper started running a serialized straight prose work by Mason called Rough Times, a humorous account of life in a boarding house.[20] The Frankfort Bee reported in February that Mason was on the staff of The Leavenworth Times,[21] and by early March was its telegraph editor.[22]
Film shorts[edit]
Mason wrote six prose poems during 1917 to serve as the storyline for one-reel film shorts.[59] The films were created by the Film-Craft Corporation of New York using Mason's poems as the basis for the scenario.[59] The first was The Dipper, which Mason showed to a select party at the Theater Royal in Emporia on January 25, 1917.[60] A few other films were scheduled to be released during August 1917.[59]
Later life[edit]
Mason retired from the Emporia Gazette in April 1920, moving his family from Kansas to La Jolla, California.[61] They lived for a short time in Escondido, California,[62] while a house was built for them in La Jolla. Their new home had a back office where Walt continued to type out his daily column. For exercise he would walk to a bookstore in La Jolla every morning.[62] His wife acted as a gatekeeper, shielding him from dubious callers hoping for a financial handout.[63] He was meticulous in writing his daily column up until January 1939, when at age 76 he was injured in a fall.[64]
From April 30, 1939, on he was bedridden with illness,[3] which by June 1, 1939, was publicly revealed as kidney disease.[65] He fell into a coma during late June, dying of uremic poisoning on June 22, 1939.[3]
Personal life[edit]
Walt Mason and K. Ella Foss were married February 15, 1893 at the home of her father Adam Foss in Wooster, Ohio.[66] Their Ohio marriage license, dated February 14, 1893, has him as Walter S. Mason, the only known reference to his middle name.[67]
Their only natural child, Adam Foss Mason, was born on February 18, 1894, in Beatrice, Nebraska.[68] He contracted diphtheria at age six, and died November 19, 1900.[69] Sometime around late 1912 or early 1913 the Masons adopted a six-year-old girl named Mary Ellen, who had been born in Minnesota.[70][71][1] She remained living with her new parents through Ella Mason's death in 1936,[62] and Walt Mason's death on June 22, 1939, in La Jolla, California.[8]
Aside from his daily newspaper columns, Mason is known to have written the following longer works:
Mason's prose poems for newspaper and magazines have been collected and published in the following volumes: