The Sun and the Moon: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York by Goodman Matthew

Author:Goodman, Matthew [Goodman, Matthew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0465019005
Amazon: B005B1JMHU
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2010-05-17T06:00:00+00:00

readers, who considered it well worth a penny to find out what Bennett would say that morning. Once he tried his hand at satire, producing an item he called “A Better Story—Most Wonderful and Astounding Discoveries by Herschell the Grandson, LL.D., F.R.S., R.F.L., P.Q.R., &c. &c.

&c.” Like the Transcript’ s earlier account by “Captain Tarbox,” this item purported to bring news of additional discoveries from the observatory at the Cape of Good Hope. The first of the sightings was “the Editor of the New York Sun, seated on a three legged stool, with a great sledge hammer in his hand, forging ‘truths,’ in the same manner that Jove forged thun-derbolts.” Bennett’s touch was not as light as Asa Greene’s; he was much better at direct attack, as with the item in which he railed against the newspaper he called “the impudent Sun—the unprincipled Sun—the mer-cenary Sun—the low bred Sun—the Sun that hoaxes the public—that tells untruths for money—that cheats the whole city and country.”

“Why still persist in cheating the public?” he asked in another item.

“How many prints and pamphlets have they yet unsold?”

Bennett knew Richard Adams Locke to be an honorable man, and in emphasizing the profits the Sun had reaped from the moon series he seems to have been trying to prick Locke’s conscience, like a constable badger-ing a wavering conspirator into a confession. James Gordon Bennett had made his name from insult, but he was equally adept at the calculated flat-tery that, by the 1830s, was already becoming known as the “soft soap.”

Mr. Locke has exhibited great ingenuity in the general keeping of the account. He wrote it, as we learn, to amuse a vacant hour, and out of the vigor and fulness of a vivid imagination. He has certainly exhibited talent of a very remarkable kind. Knowing as we do the amiableness of Mr. Locke’s character, we do not charge him with the intention to deceive the public. He had no money making motive in the affair. It was as far as he is concerned, a mere jeu d’esprit, but the motives of the Sun editors are far different.

By the “Sun editors” Bennett was referring not to Locke but to Benjamin Day and, most likely, Day’s brother-in-law Moses Yale Beach, a paper mill owner brought on to help manage the Sun’ s financial affairs: men, Bennett believed, who cared little for truth and much for money.

There was no harm in publishing Locke’s jeu d’esprit and enjoying for a day or two the folly of those who believed it. “But now,” he thundered,

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“The Astronomical Hoax Explained”

“when that paper in order to get money out of a credulous public, seriously persists in averting its truth, it becomes highly improper, wicked, and in fact a species of impudent swindling.”

“Mr. Locke himself,” Bennett assured his readers, “would never sanction such a course.”

For his part, Mr. Locke was saying little. In those turbulent early September days, he was navigating a treacherous passage between truth and duty.

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