THE DAY DAWNS
The emphatic declaration I made at the end of the last chapter seems to
demand an explanation forthwith, but the reader, if he has had patience
to follow me so far in my recital of these experiences, must wait for
the proper sequence of events. Being assured that I was absolutely free
from molestation by anybody on account of past debts, and in no danger
of any trouble so long as I did not obtain credit to the extent of £20
without disclosing the fact that I was an undischarged bankrupt, I went
on my way rejoicing. For whatever doubts I had about my future, of one
thing I was certain, and that was that I would never go into business
again as a tradesman, and as for getting credit for £20 I laughed at
the idea.
Perhaps I was too elated at the knowledge that I was free from the
hateful incubus which had robbed me of all joy in my life for so long,
but I think I had some excuse, and whether I had or not I allowed
myself to feel happy. Occasionally I felt depressed by the thought
of how near I was to forty years of age, how small were my chances
of starting my children in life, and how tired and worn out I was
feeling, but I was naturally elastic of temperament, and the rebound I
had lately felt was entirely beneficial to me. I worked at the bench
still, but with reluctance, because I had learned by bitter experience,
that work I never so hard, the reward was entirely incommensurate with
the outlay of energy. And so I took less and less interest in picture
framing, and got back again to my beloved books in greater measure than
ever.
Also I scribbled more and got several articles accepted at long
intervals, the remuneration for which, though pleasant to receive and
always coming in handy to meet some most pressing need, such as clothes
for the children, never raised in me any hopes of a permanent and
substantial addition to my income. For I still regarded, by some twist
of mind, the picture framing as my stand-by, although one article which
I could write in an evening or in the morning before going to work
would yield more when sold than I could earn in a week's overtime by
the really hard work of framing, to say nothing of the labour involved
in fetching the material and carrying home the finished product. Not
that I ever received any extravagant prices for my writing. With one
honourable exception, _Chambers's Journal_, all the organs I wrote for
seemed anxious to get what I wrote for the smallest possible sum, or
nothing if I could be made to forget that they had published my stuff.
To one journal with an august name and a large circulation, having
also an advertisement revenue of many thousands a year, I sent a story
of 5000 words. I received a most courteous letter in reply with a
statement that while they would much like to print the story, which was
an excellent one, they could only offer me ten shillings for it! I took
it, never mind why.
But taking things all round I was happier than I had been for many
a day. Having been set free from that awful burden of the shop, and
being finished for ever, (I hoped) with the whole body of County Court
officials, bum-bailiffs, etc., I experienced a restful peace to which
I had long been a stranger. I recovered much of my lost vigour, for
although the habit of work still clung to me and I did not waste a
minute if I could help it, I no longer dreaded a knock at the door,
no longer felt symptoms of heart failure at the sight of a postman
coming towards me. Now and then I thought of my fortieth birthday fast
approaching, believing as I did that a man of forty was too old to
strike out any new line, that if he had never done anything worth doing
he never would, and much more of the same tenor. But most happily,
however these pessimistic thoughts harassed me they did not affect
my conduct, not because I determined that they should not, or braced
myself in an heroic resolve to defy fate, age, or anything else that
should tend to hinder my advancement, but for the same reason that
I kept going so long in that hopeless shop, because the necessity
was laid upon me, as the nigger song says, to keep "a-pushin' an'
a-shovin'." Very disagreeable to other people in many cases this
persistence of a fellow for whom _they_ cannot see the slightest
necessity, but then, so much depends upon the point of view.
My only object in writing the penultimate sentence is to clear myself
of any suspicion of false hypocritical pretence. I have the greatest
horror and detestation of posing as one who, by sheer force of will and
decision of character, has conquered circumstances, lived instead of
died, and although wrecked apparently beyond salvage has reconstructed
something navigable and sailed away from a far more profitable voyage.
For I know that these things depend upon the quality of the fibre of
which a man is wrought and for which he can take no credit. It is
this which often keeps a man at work when, had he been living in more
prosperous conditions, he would have been in bed with grave doctors and
nurses around him, and hourly bulletins as to his temperature, etc.,
being issued. I remember during the first influenza epidemic the case
of a carter for one of the great carrying companies in London who,
it being a busy season, had been on duty twenty hours. He drove into
the yard in the small hours of the morning, dropped the reins on his
horse's back, but did not descend from his dickey. As he gave no reply
to repeated hailing by his mates below, one mounted to him and found
him stiff in death. It came out at the inquest that on leaving home
twenty hours before he had told his wife that he felt very bad, one
moment shivering and the next burning, and all his limbs one big ache,
but the fibre of the man insisted upon going on. Fear of losing his
job, of being short in his scanty week's earnings had spurred him, but
the frame gave out under the great strain put upon it by the spirit.
You may call it heroism if you will, but if it has any of that sublime
quality I am sure it is unconscious, innate, and not to be referred to
any conceived and determined desire to overcome obstacles apparently
insurmountable. Of course it is far more admirable, more worthy of
respect than is the conduct of the weakling who wilts under the first
blast of adversity, who must always be bolstered up and pushed along
the way that he ought to go, and never does anything for himself that
he can get others to do for him--a born loafer, in fact, for whom
there really is no room in a work-a-day world, but who, alas! thrives
bodily upon the labours of others, and is often treated with far more
consideration than those who are steadily labouring on.
It was about this time that I unconsciously dropped upon a new form of
activity entirely aloof from the tradesman line. I was a worker in a
humble little mission whereof none of the members earned more than £2 a
week, and some only half that sum. I had joined it in my desire to get
away from the cabals and jealousies of the ordinary church or chapel
where two-thirds of the good that might be done is wasted upon most
unchristian friction between members. I had got thoroughly disgusted
with them all as far as my experience had gone, and I felt that my only
hope of remaining associated with a body of Christians was to get as
low down as possible, where nobody could put on side or ape the patron.
Now it was our custom in our little hall during the winter months to
give, whenever we could raise sufficient funds, a free tea to the poor
neglected children of the neighbourhood, of whom there were a sad
number. It always meant a lot of work collecting the few shillings
necessary, but that work was never grudged by any of us, and we always
felt sufficiently rewarded at the sight of the poor kiddies stuffing
themselves. How cheaply we did it to be sure. Tea never cost us more
than one shilling a pound, condensed milk, threepence halfpenny a pound
tin; good cake, from the philanthropic firm of Peek Frean, we got
for fourpence, and sometimes threepence a pound; and other matters,
including margarine, on a like scale. Oh, it was a feast! and there
was always a hungry crowd of grown-ups outside at the close who were
grateful for the carefully saved fragments.
Well! it came to pass that at this particular time I speak of the
winter promised to be exceptionally severe, and we could not raise
funds for our free teas. So, in a moment of inspiration, I suggested
that if we could raise sufficient funds to have some lantern slides
made from pictures which I would get, and take the Peckham Public
Hall, I would give a lecture on the South Sea Whaling industry, of
which I had never forgotten a detail. All the brethren entered into the
proposal _con amore_, but I doubt if it would ever have matured but for
a recent convert, a young clerk in a big manufacturing house, who drew
out his savings and financed the affair.
That difficulty over, we went ahead full speed and pestered everybody
we knew to buy tickets, getting a guinea by the way from Sir John
Blundell Maple, who probably thought it was worth that to shelve
us when we applied to him for his patronage of the show. The great
night arrived, and we had secured a popular local preacher to take
the chair. His organist had promised to play an accompaniment for two
sacred songs which I was to sing, and best of all, four hundred tickets
were sold. Our popular preacher, however, very nearly ruined us, for,
after introducing me in a very graceful speech, he said to my shame
and indignation, "Will brother so-and-so lead us in prayer," naming a
long-winded old donkey who would ramble you on for an indefinite length
of time in a babblement that was anything but prayer, even if such a
prologue was at all indicated on such an occasion.
I verily believe that I lost a pint of sweat while that old idiot
maundered on. I felt in every nerve the impatience and disgust of the
mixed audience, and at last, in despair, I actually prayed myself that
the Lord would stop his wretched twaddle, for it was nothing else.
Apparently my prayer was answered, almost immediately, for he had a
violent paroxysm of coughing which enabled us to go ahead. Of course
I was not at all nervous, my long training in the open air prevented
that, and equally of course (I suppose) the strangeness of the subject
held the suburban folk enthralled. However that may have been, I know
that presently seeing my last slides appearing and fearing that I was
cutting the matter too short, I asked a friend of mine in front (in a
stage whisper) the time. "Ten o'clock, Tom," he promptly replied, in
a voice audible all over the hall. My, but there was nearly a panic.
Some wise person turned the lights up, and in about two minutes nearly
everybody had gone.
You see, divers of them came from far, and our Peckham communications
in those days were none of the best. A few faithful local ones
remained till the bitter end however, and my superintendent, who was a
chimney-sweep, said in broken accents from the platform, swabbing his
eyes meanwhile, "I never knoo we 'ad sich a bruvver!" And what more in
the way of commendation and honest praise could the heart of man desire
than that? Only this, that the net profits of the lecture, after all
expenses were paid, were £14 all but a shilling or two, a far greater
sum than we had ever had before to spend upon free teas for poor
children.
Then, at the instigation of a lantern fiend, I beg the dear chap's
pardon, a lantern enthusiast, who offered his services and his truly
exquisite set of slides free, I gave a series of four lectures on the
life of Christ in the little hall itself. A blind performer on the
organ flutina, who knew nearly all the classic hymns by heart, was
easily secured at the economical figure of half a crown per evening,
and I interspersed my remarks with all the old favourite hymns, that
now are indeed caviare to the general, sung solo. Such an entertainment
as I then gave, which of course would be impossible to me now, would,
I am sure, bring me in twenty guineas a night. For I could sing and I
could talk, the pictures and the music were alike excellent but--. The
total net produce was about fifteen shillings for four nights! There,
it's the first bit of brag I've given utterance to in the course of
these chapters, and this is its fitting anti-climax.
But if I did not receive much for my services as far as money went,
either for myself or the cause, I did gain invaluable experience in
addressing indoor audiences. I was already thoroughly at home with any
crowd in the open air, but I found that it was a totally different
matter to speak inside a building, even to the method of producing the
voice and sustaining it without obvious effect or real fatigue for a
couple of hours if need arose. And as I had previously discovered in
the open air that straining the voice ranting or raving was not only
indicative of insincerity but precluded intelligibility as well, so, in
a renewed and more definite sense, I found it here, and I am beyond
measure grateful for that experience. For I hate to hear a speaker, on
whatever subject, yell or shout at his audience as if he had a personal
quarrel with every one of them, just as much as I hate mannerisms of
any kind on the platform, regarding them all as a sort of showing off
that is only worthy of a pampered child.
The upshot of this practice at home, as I might say, was that I began
to get a local reputation as a lecturer, and any struggling church
or chapel in the neighbourhood trying to raise funds would give me a
cordial invitation to come and help them, providing my own lanternist,
etc., for the good of the cause; and for a time I went, unconscious
that I was by way of being a blackleg, but exceedingly conscious that
the _silver_ collections asked for on these occasions were mostly
copper with a goodly sprinkling of farthings. In my natural modesty
(the reader may laugh quietly at this but I can assure him that the
possession of this quality, so beautiful in women, is in excess
entirely detrimental to man, since the world takes us largely at our
own valuation), I felt that these meagre results were a sufficient
gauge of my popularity.
Still I did remember occasionally, to my comfort, a small experience I
had once, in Portland, Oregon. Three of us common sailors were invited
to a Methodist Episcopal Church to hear a lecture, by a phenomenal
preacher, entitled, "The Life, Death, and Resurrection of an Arab."
We were almost appalled by the magnificence of the place, which,
for luxury of appointment, could give points to any place of public
entertainment I have ever been in. Silk velvet lounges for pews,
upholstered like feather beds, soft Turkey carpets on the floor,
hammered brass enrichments to the carven woodwork--the place reeked of
wealth. At the close of the lecture the preacher went round with his
own top hat for the collection, in his humility not desiring any help
from the church officers. And the result in spot cash, as they would
say, was four dollars and ninety-two cents! of which our party might
have been credited with ten cents. A widow's mite indeed, for it was
all we had. Able seamen ashore in a foreign port, except on liberty
day, rarely have any money, and I am sure I don't know why we had
that solitary dime. But the lesson of the affair was that services,
however valuable in themselves, rendered gratis, or in the hope that
the audience will be generous, are usually taken by the recipients as
not worth recognising. The higher the price the performer can charge
and get, the more he or she is appreciated. It is a fact never to be
forgotten.
Thus it came about that I did not get puffed up by any roseate visions
of becoming a popular lecturer--how could I when I had seen an audience
of eight hundred yield fourteen shillings and elevenpence three
farthings? But I had a solid asset always in the glow of satisfaction
that I could address a big crowd and interest them, a pleasure which
was hardly clouded even for a moment by such remarks as I heard a
burly man make once in a chapel at Peckham where I was lecturing. In
a hoarse whisper he said to a neighbour, "What's this 'ere all about,
Guvnor?" "Whales," replied his interlocutor. "Ho, is it?" he growled.
"Well, s'rimps is more in my line or winkles. 'Ere, let me get aht!"
Almost imperceptibly I was dropping my picture framing connection. Much
as I had enjoyed the work, apart from the struggle to add to my income
by it, I had grown to hate it from its associations. That none of the
men who had trusted me with their goods had even so much as appeared
against me when I had figured as a bankrupt under examination only made
me feel grateful to them, it did not lessen my horrors of the means by
which I had been brought to the sad pass I had so lately emerged from.
And so as I did not pursue the business with any energy it gradually
fell away, and I was not in the least sorry, although I had not got to
the point yet of refusing any work that came in my way.
But I had grown quite unconsciously into the habit of writing, had
become used to seeing what I had written in print even to the point of
wondering not what the world would think of it, but what the editor
would think it worth while to pay me for it. Also I had grown to be
infected by the spirit of adventure, common to most literary men. By
which I mean that, unlike the tradesman, who, with a steady demand for
his goods, which people must have, fixes his profits with due regard to
the practice of his competitors, and does not dream of vicissitudes,
they must always reckon upon a change in the public taste or in the
idiosyncrasies of editors. It is a sportsmanlike feeling, and I must
say that it appealed to me very strongly as a pastime, but I always
regarded the cheques which I received as a gift from on high. When I
got an article or story accepted, I rejoiced and was exceedingly glad,
and then I endeavoured to forget all about it. Because I never knew
what I was going to get, nor when I was going to receive it. Therefore
when it came it was in the nature of a find. Needless to say, I always
wanted it very badly, and always wondered whatever I should have done
without it, but that I think only added to my joy.
Then came an opportunity which I thought but little of, at that time,
but have since seen the importance of. An article appeared in a
scientific journal of high standing upon a subject which I had made
peculiarly my own, and about which I had the most intimate personal
knowledge. A friend brought this article to my notice, and I, feeling
amazed at its assumptions, wrote to the editor about it. As a result
he requested me to write an article for him on the matter, and I did
so. Now, having regard to the standing of the journal in question,
and the fact that I had been invited to write, I broke my rule of
non-expectancy, and looked for a substantial reward. Alas for my
hopes. The article duly appeared--it was well over four thousand words,
and in three months I received for it thirty-seven and sixpence! I
regard that now as I regarded it then, an outrage. Yet I suppose that
is really how men of science are paid in this country.
I am happy to say that I have never written for a scientific journal
since, and I put that experience by the side of the other which I
mentioned before as being parallel cases and warnings. Why, many a
provincial newspaper struggling for a bare existence would have paid
a hack writer more. But few people outside the charmed circle know
how shamefully certain journals with an immense advertisement revenue
exploit the poor scribes who fill their columns of reading matter with
the fine fruit of brains and experience.
There is another curious little matter connected with this, which is
entirely germane, and I think it of considerable interest, which I
should like to mention as a particular instance. At one of our seaport
towns I met with a man in Government employ, whose pay was at the
rate of about £100 a year, but who possessed ability and mathematical
qualifications of a very high order. In the course of conversation with
him one day I learned that he had contributed over sixty articles,
in the space of two years, to at least a dozen different daily and
weekly journals. Some of these articles were 3000 words in length,
and none were under a thousand. Many of them had been printed in
prominent places, and were obviously considered by the editors as of
great importance, as indeed they were. When I had glanced through some
of them I said cheerfully, "I am very glad that you have been able to
add to your scanty income in this way; it should lead to something very
lucrative in time." "Oh," he replied, quite innocently, "I have never
received anything for them. I thought that they weren't worth paying
for."
I was astounded for a moment, and then asking him for a piece of paper,
I drafted him a form of account to send to each of those journals. He
did so, and in a week's time I was delighted to receive a grateful
letter from him saying that my little bit of advice had resulted in
his getting £60. He added that it would probably save the life of his
dear wife, who had been ordered away by the doctor, advice impossible
for him to follow before owing to lack of means. Well, heaven knows
the remuneration he received was little enough, but it was better
than nothing. What a condition of things when concerns yielding huge
fortunes to their owners will stoop so low as to allow poor men to give
them of their best, and never offer a halfpenny in return until dunned
for it, and then only on so niggardly a scale.
I cannot close this chapter without saying that this practice is by
no means universal, but it is decidedly general. I have myself been
begged by an editor, yes, literally begged, to write an article for
a pittance so small that I am ashamed to say I accepted it; and found
afterwards that the article in question had been sold to several other
journals for a big profit!