Alias Simon Suggs: The Life and Times of Johnson Jones Hooper

III. “… good to be shifty in a new country …”

CHAPTER THREE " ... good to be shifty in a new country . .. " ON SATURDAY DECEMBER 17, 1842, two days after Hooper's marriage, John F. Gilbert & Son, enterprising job-printers of La Fayette, published what is believed to have been the first issue of Chambers County's first newspaper, the East Alabamian , a small weekly dedicated in principle to American 'Vhiggery and especially to Henry Clay.l Hooper, who had obviously never forgotten the smell of printer's ink of his father's Cape-Fear Recorder and who now more than ever needed to increase his income, was persuaded to accept the editorship of the new hebdomadal.2 Almost simultaneously, he withdrew from the law partnership with his brother (who soon formed another),3 and entered business alone, advertizing in his newspaper that he would ~'Practice law in the Courts of Chambers and the adjoining Counties" and that he could "be found at the office of the East-Alabamian, La Fayette, Alabama."4 Thus began his dual interest, like his father's before him, in law and journalism,5 professions between which he was to vacillate for more than a decade, pursuing first one and then the other and from time to time both at the same time. Hooper's choice of the Whig party evidently displeased his old and good friend Joseph A. Johnson, who at first subscribed for but then suddenly discontinued the East Alabamian. From 46 ALIAS SIMON SUGGS La Fayette Hooper wrote that cCI cannot tell you how much [cancelling the subscription] hurt my feelings, not on account of the money . . . but because it seems to indicate a decrease of kindly feeling and affection." He then recalled the "oldtime " they had had together, saying that he valued their friendship more than c'politics or any other damn stuff.~~ He concluded: c'Joe, if I have a feeling which is altogether free from any alloy of interest, it is my love for you, and it would gratify me beyond measure, that you should tell me that I am the same to you, that I have always been."6 Be that as it may, into the columns of the East Alabamian Hooper continued to pour his Whig-tinged editorials and, doubtless for CODlic relief, the fruits of his creative imagination . Soon he was known far and wide as an "accomplished" and crafty editor of "signal ability"" and a "facetious gentleman ," and his paper as ,chandsome.'" Mostly, however, he used scissors and paste, only occasionally printing original comments. News in the semi-wilderness of the old Southwest was not easy to come by and paying subscribers were few. For the owner the East Alabamian was an extremely doubtful venture, therefore. "I must have money, or I cannot get along with my paper,"" frankly announced Gilbert. "All who are in arrears for the Lord"s sake, come and pay up, for 1 want paper now-NOW-and cannot publish without it."7 In the summer of 1843, luost probably on August fifth or twenty-eighth, Hooper ran in the columns of the East Alabamian a little tongue-in-cheek yarn of his own making and based on his own experience, entitled cCTaking the Census in Alabama," and signed "By a Chicken Man of 1840."8 If it is possible to put a finger on the one effort of his life which proved to be an open sesame to fame and immortality in the realm of American humorous literature, this was it, undoubtedly . " ••• GOOD TO BE SHIFTY IN A NEW COUNTRY •••" 47 Up in New York, William T. Porter, genial and fun-loving editor of the Spirit of the Times, A Chronicle of the Turf, F'ield Sports, Literature and the Stage, and from 1843 until his death in 1858 Hooper's firm friend and Maecenas, picked up "Taking the Census" and reprinted it in his widely-circulated weekly on September 9, 1843. Thus, overnight, Hooper left the ranks of. the purely local "funny-men," of which there were hundreds, especially throughout the South and Southwest, to become a nationally-read humorist. For, once a story found its way into the Spirit, whose circulation even in this early day was more than 16,000 and soon was to be thrice that number, it was reprinted again and again in weeklies all over the country, large and small, frequently bringing a national reputation, not only to the author himself but also to his...