“Hullo, Hawke, what are you doing here?”
“I’m literary editor,” he said. “What are you?”
“That’s funny!” I replied. “I happen to be literary editor of this
paper!”
William Hill had appointed two literary editors, to be perfectly on
the safe side. He had also appointed two news editors. Whether the two
news editors settled the dispute by assassination, I do not know. Only
one functioned. But Hawke and I agreed to divide the job, which we did
in the friendliest way, Hawke controlling the reviews of books, and I
editing the special articles, stories, and other literary contents of
the paper.
It was started with a tremendous flourish of trumpets in the way of
advance publicity. On the first day of publication, London was startled
by the appearance of all the omnibus horses and cart horses caparisoned
in white sheets bearing the legend “Read _The Tribune_.” Unfortunately
it was a wet and stormy day, and before an hour or two had passed, the
white mantles were splashed with many gobs of mud, and waved wildly
as dirty rags above the backs of the unfortunate animals, or dangled
dejectedly about their legs. A night or two before publication, a grand
reception was given, regardless of expense, to an immense gathering of
political and literary personalities. The walls of _The Tribune_ office
were entirely covered with hothouse flowers, and baskets of orchids
hung from the ceilings. Wine flowed like water, and historical truth
compels me to confess that some members of the new staff were overcome
by enthusiasm for this rich baptism of the new paper. One young
gentleman, very tall and eloquent, fell as gracefully as a lily at the
feet of Augustine Birrell. Another, when the guests were gone, resented
some fancied impertinence from the commissionaire, and knocked him
through the telephone box. One of the office boys, unaccustomed to
champagne, collapsed in a state of coma and was put in the lift for
metal plates and carried aloft to the machine room. Long after all the
guests had gone, and Franklin Thomasson himself had returned home,
another gentleman in high authority on the organizing side was so
melted with the happy influences of the evening that his heart expanded
with human brotherly love for the night wanderers of London who had
been attracted by the lights and music in _The Tribune_ office, and
he invited them to carry off the baskets of orchids in the hall, as a
slight token of his affection and sympathy. Indeed, his generosity was
so unbounded that he made them a gift of the hall clock--a magnificent
timepiece with chimes like St. Paul’s Cathedral--and they were about
to depart with it, praising God for this benevolence, when Franklin
Thomasson, who had been summoned back by telephone, arrived on the
scene to save his property and restore discipline.
It was, of course, only a few Bohemian souls who were carried away by
the excitement of that baptismal night. Generally speaking, the staff
of _The Tribune_ was made up of men of high and serious character,
whose chief fault, indeed, was to err rather much on the side of
abstract idealism and the gravity of philosophical faith.
We produced a paper which was almost too good for a public educated in
the new journalism of the Harmsworth school, with its daily sensations,
its snippety articles, its “stunt” stories. We were long, and serious,
and “high-brow,” and--to tell the truth--dull. The public utterly
refused to buy _The Tribune_. Nothing that we could do would tempt
them to buy it. As literary editor of special articles and stories, I
bought some of the most brilliant work of the best writers in England.
I published one of Rudyard Kipling’s short stories--a gem--but it
did not increase the circulation of _The Tribune_ by a single copy.
I published five chapters of autobiography by Joseph Conrad--a
literary masterpiece--but it did not move the sales. I persuaded G. K.
Chesterton to contribute a regular article; I published the work of
many great novelists, and encouraged the talent of the younger school;
but entirely without success. It was desperately disappointing, and
I am convinced that the main cause of our failure was the surfeit of
reading matter we gave each day to a public which had no leisure for
such a mass of print, however good its quality. The appearance of the
paper, owing to the lack of advertisements, was heavy and dull, and
any bright and light little articles were overshadowed among the long,
bleak columns.
A new editor, belonging to the Harmsworth school, a charming little man
named S. G. Pryor, succeeded William Hill, but his attempts to convert
_The Tribune_ into a kind of _Daily Mail_ offended our small clientele
of serious readers, without attracting the great public.
After two years of disastrous failure, Franklin Thomasson, who by that
time had lost something like £300,000, decided to cut his losses, and
the news leaked out among his staff of over eight hundred men that
the ship was sinking. It was a real tragedy for those men who had
left good jobs to join _The Tribune_, and who saw themselves faced
with unemployment, and even ruin and starvation for their wives and
families. Some of us made desperate endeavors to postpone the sentence
of death by introducing new capital.
One of my colleagues journeyed to Dublin in the hope of persuading
Augustine Birrell to obtain government support for this Liberal organ.
He sent a somewhat startling telegram to Birrell at Dublin Castle.
“The lives of eight hundred men with their wives and children depend
on the interview which I beg you to grant me to-day.”
Birrell was surprised, and granted the interview.
“Mr. Birrell,” said my grave and melancholy friend, placing a hat of
high and noble architecture on the great man’s desk, “is _The Tribune_
going to die?”
“Sir,” said Mr. Birrell, twinkling through his eyeglasses, “may _The
Tribune_ die that death it so richly deserves.”
I succeeded in holding up the sentence of doom for another fortnight,
by the sportsmanship of a gallant old lady named the Countess of
Carlisle. We had been conducting a temperance crusade which had earned
her warm approval, and for the sake of that cause and her Liberal
idealism, she offered to guarantee the men’s wages until the paper
might be sold.
But it was never sold. The fatal night came when Franklin Thomasson,
white and distressed, but resolute, faced his staff with the dreadful
announcement that that was the last night. One man fainted. Several
wept. Outside the printers waited in the hope that at this twelfth hour
some stroke of luck would avert this great misfortune. To them it was a
question of bread and butter for wives and babes.
That luck stroke did not happen.
With several colleagues I waited, smoking and talking, after the
sentence had been pronounced. It seemed impossible to believe that _The
Tribune_ was dead. It was more than the death of an abstract thing,
more than the collapse of a business enterprise. Something of ourselves
had died with it, our hopes and endeavors, our work of brain and heart.
A newspaper is a living organism, threaded through with the nerves of
men and women, inspired by their spirit, animated by their ideals and
thought, the living vehicle of their own adventure of life. So _The
Tribune_ seemed to us then, in that last hour, when we looked back on
our labor and comradeship, our laughter, our good times together on
“the rag,” as we had called it.
Long after midnight I left the office for the last time, with
that friend of mine who had gone to Augustine Birrell, a tall,
melancholy-mannered, Georgian-looking man, whose tall hat was a noble
specimen of old-fashioned type.
The brilliant lights outside the office suddenly went out. It was like
the sinking of the ship. My friend said, “Dead! Dead!” and lifted his
hat as in the presence of death.