THE NEWSPAPER SYNDICATE "GREY BONNET"
For forty years Sweden had worked for the right which every man obtains
when he comes of age. Pamphlets had been written, newspapers founded,
stones thrown, suppers eaten and speeches made; meetings had been held,
petitions had been presented, the railways had been used, hands had
been pressed, volunteer regiments had been formed; and so, in the end,
with a great deal of noise, the desired object had been attained.
Enthusiasm was great and justifiable. The old birchwood tables at the
Opera Restaurant were transformed into political tribunes; the fumes of
the reform-punch attracted many a politician, who, later on, became a
great screamer; the smell of reform cigars excited many an ambitious
dream which was never realized; the old dust was washed off with reform
soap; it was generally believed that everything would be right now; and
after the tremendous uproar the country lay down and fell asleep,
confidently awaiting the brilliant results which were to be the outcome
of all this fuss.
It slept for a few years, and when it awoke it was faced by a reality
which suggested a miscalculation. There were murmurs here and there;
the statesmen who had recently been lauded to the skies were now
criticized. There were even, among the students, some who discovered
that the whole movement had originated in a country which stood in very
close relationship to the promoter of the Bill, and that the original
could be found in a well-known handbook. But enough of it!
Characteristic of these days was a certain embarrassment which soon
took the form of universal discontent or, as it was called, opposition.
But it was a new kind of opposition; it was not, as is generally the
case, directed against the Government, but against Parliament. It was a
Conservative opposition including Liberals as well as Conservatives,
young men as well as old; there was much misery in the country.
Now it happened that the newspaper syndicate _Grey Bonnet_, born and
grown up under Liberal auspices, fell asleep when it was called upon to
defend unpopular views--if one may speak of the views of a syndicate.
The directors proposed at the General Meeting that certain opinions
should be changed, as they had the effect of decreasing the number of
subscribers, necessary to the continuance of the enterprise. The
General Meeting agreed to the proposition, and the _Grey Bonnet_ became
a Conservative paper. But there was a _but_, although it must be
confessed that it did not greatly embarrass the syndicate; it was
necessary to have a new chief editor to save the syndicate from
ridicule; that no change need be made so far as the invisible editorial
staff was concerned, went without saying. The chief editor, a man of
honour, tendered his resignation. The editorial management, which had
long been abused on account of its red colour, accepted it with
pleasure, hoping thereby, without further trouble, to take rank as a
better class paper. There only remained the necessity of finding a new
chief editor. In accordance with the new programme of the syndicate, he
would have to possess the following qualifications: he must be known as
a perfectly trustworthy citizen; must belong to the official class;
must possess a title, usurped or won, which could be elaborated if
necessity arose. In addition to this he must be of good appearance, so
that one could show him off at festivals and on other public
occasions; he must be dependent; a little stupid, because true
stupidity always goes hand in hand with Conservative leanings; he must
be endowed with a certain amount of shrewdness, which would enable him
to know intuitively the wishes of his chiefs and never let him forget
that public and private welfare are, rightly understood, one and the
same thing. At the same time he must not be too young, because an older
man is more easily managed; and finally, he must be married, for the
syndicate, which consisted of business men, knew perfectly well that
married slaves are more amenable than unmarried ones.
The individual was discovered, and he was to a high degree endowed with
all the characteristics enumerated. He was a strikingly handsome man
with a fairly fine figure and a long, wavy beard, hiding all the weak
points of his face, which otherwise would have given him away. His
large, full, deceitful eyes caught the casual observer and inspired his
confidence, which was then unscrupulously abused. His somewhat veiled
voice, always speaking words of love, of peace, of honour and above all
of patriotism, beguiled many a misguided listener, and brought him to
the punch table where the excellent man spent his evenings, preaching
straightforwardness and love of the Mother Country.
The influence which this man of honour exerted on his evil environment
was marvellous; it could not be seen, but it could be heard. The whole
pack, which for years had been let loose on everything time-honoured
and venerable, which had not even let alone the higher things, was now
restrained and full of love--not only for its old friends--was now--and
not merely in its heart--moral and straightforward. They carried out in
every detail the programme drawn up by the new editor on his accession,
the cardinal points of which, expressed in a few words, were: to
persecute all good ideas if they were new, to fight for and uphold all
bad ones if they were old, to grovel before those in power, to extol
all those on whom fortune was smiling, to push down all those who
strove to rise, to adore success and abuse misfortune. Freely
translated the programme read: to acknowledge and cheer only the tested
and admittedly good, to work against the mania of innovation, and to
persecute severely, but justly, everybody who was trying to get on by
dishonest means, for honest work only should be crowned with success.
The secret of the last clause which the editorial staff had principally
at heart was not difficult to discover. The staff consisted entirely of
people whose hopes had been disappointed in one way or another; in most
cases by their own fault--through drinking and recklessness. Some of
them were "college geniuses," who in the past had enjoyed a great
reputation as singers, speakers, poets or wits, and had then justly--or
according to them unjustly--been forgotten. During a number of years it
had been their business to praise and promote, frequently against their
own inclination, everything that was new, all the enterprises started
by reformers; it was, therefore, not strange that now they seized the
opportunity to attack--under the most honourable pretexts--everything
new, good or bad.
The chief editor in particular was great in tracking humbug and
dishonesty. Whenever a delegate opposed a Bill which tended to injure
the interests of the country for the sake of the party, he was
immediately taken to task and called a humbug, trying to be original,
longing for a ministerial dress-coat; he did not say portfolio, for he
always thought of clothes first. Politics, however, was not his strong,
or rather his weak point, but literature. In days long past, on the
occasion of the Old Norse Festival at Upsala, he had proposed a toast
in verse on woman, and thereby furnished an important contribution to
the literature of the world; it was printed in as many provincial
papers as the author considered necessary for his immortality. This
had made him a poet, and when he had taken his degrees, he bought a
second-class ticket to Stockholm, in order to make his debut in the
world and receive his due. Unfortunately the Stockholmers do not read
provincial papers. The young man was unknown and his talent was not
appreciated. As he was a shrewd man--his small brain had never been
exuberantly imaginative--he concealed his wound and allowed it to
become the secret of his life.
The bitterness engendered by the fact that his honest work, as he
called it, remained unrewarded specially qualified him for the post of
a literary censor; but he did not write himself: his position did not
allow him to indulge in efforts of his own, and he preferred leaving it
to the reviewer who criticized everybody's work justly and with
inflexible severity. The reviewer had written poetry for the last
sixteen years under a pseudonym. Nobody had ever read his verses and
nobody had taken the trouble to discover the author's real name. But
every Christmas his verses were exhumed and praised in the _Grey
Bonnet_, by a third party, of course, who signed his article so that
the public should not suspect that the author had written it
himself--it was taken for granted that the author was known to the
public. In the seventeenth year, the author considered it advisable to
put his name to a new book--a new edition of an old one. As misfortune
would have it, the _Red Cap_, the whole staff of which was composed of
young people who had never heard the real name, treated the author as a
beginner, and expressed astonishment, not only that a young writer
should put his name to his first book, but also that a young man's book
could be so monotonous and old-fashioned. This was a hard blow; the old
"pseudonymus" fell ill with fever, but recovered after having been
brilliantly rehabilitated by the _Grey Bonnet_; the latter went for the
whole reading public in a lump, charging it with being immoral and
dishonest, unable to appreciate an honest, sound, and moral book which
could safely be put into the hands of a child. A comic paper made fun
of the last point, so that the "pseudonymus" had a relapse, and, on his
second recovery, vowed annihilation to all native literature which
might appear in future; it did, however, not apply to quite all native
literature, for a shrewd observer would have noticed that the _Grey
Bonnet_ frequently praised bad books; true, it was often done lamely
and in terms which could be read in two ways. The same shrewd observer
could have noticed that the miserable stuff in question was always
published by the same firm; but this did not necessarily imply that the
reviewer was influenced by extraneous circumstances, such as little
lunches, for instance; he and the whole editorial staff were upright
men who would surely not have dared to judge others with so much
severity if they themselves had not been men of irreproachable
character.
Another important member of the staff was the dramatic critic. He had
received his education and qualified at a recruiting bureau in
X-koeping; had fallen in love with a "star" who was only a "star" in
X-koeping. As he was not sufficiently enlightened to differentiate
between a private opinion and a universal verdict, it happened to him
when he was for the first time let loose in the columns of the _Grey
Bonnet_ that he slated the greatest actress in Sweden, and maintained
that she copied Miss----, whatever her name was. That it was done very
clumsily goes without saying, and also that it happened before the
_Grey Bonnet_ had veered round. All this made his name detested and
despised; but still, he had a name, and that compensated him for the
indignation he excited. One of his cardinal points, although not at
once appreciated, was his deafness. Several years went by before it was
discovered, and even then nobody could tell whether or no it had any
connexion with a certain encounter, caused by one of his notices, in
the foyer of the Opera House, one evening after the lights had been
turned down. After this encounter he tested the strength of his arm
only on quite young people; and anybody familiar with the
circumstances could tell by his critique when he had had an accident in
the wings, for the conceited provincial had read somewhere the
unreliable statement that Stockholm was another Paris, and had believed
it.
The art critic was an old academician who had never held a brush in his
hand, but was a member of the brilliant artists club "Minerva," a fact
which enabled him to describe works of art in the columns of his paper
before they were finished, thereby saving the reader the trouble of
forming an opinion of his own. He was invariably kind to his
acquaintances, and in criticizing an exhibition never forgot to mention
every single one of them. His practice, of many years' standing, of
saying something pretty about everybody--and how would he have dared to
do otherwise--made it child's play to him to mention twenty names in
half a column; in reading his reviews one could not help thinking of
the popular game "pictures and devices." But the young artists he
always conscientiously forgot, so that the public, which, for ten years
had heard none but the old names, began to despair of the future of
art. One exception, however, he had made, and made quite recently, in
an unpropitious hour; and in consequence of this exception there was
great excitement one morning in the editorial office of the _Grey
Bonnet_.
What had occurred was this: Sellen--the reader may remember this
insignificant name mentioned on a former, and not a particularly
important occasion--had arrived with his picture at the exhibition at
the very last moment. When it had been hung--in the worst possible
place--for the artist was neither a member of the Academy nor did he
possess the royal medal--the "professor of Charles IX" arrived; he had
been given this nickname because he never painted anything but scenes
from the life of Charles IX; the reason again for this was that a long
time ago he had bought at an auction a wine glass, a tablecloth, a
chair, and a parchment from the period of Charles IX; these objects he
had painted for twenty years, sometimes with, sometimes without, the
king. But he was a professor now and a knight of many orders, and so
there was no help for it. He was with the academician when his eye fell
on the silent man of the opposition and his picture.
"Here again, sir?" He put up his pince-nez. "And this, then, is the new
style! Hm! Let me tell you, sir! Believe the word of an old man: take
that picture away! Take it away! It makes me sick to look at it. You do
yourself the greatest service if you take it away. What do you say, old
fellow?"
The old fellow said that the exhibition of such a picture was an
impertinence, and that if the gentleman would take his kindly meant
advice, he would change his profession and become a sign-board painter.
Sellen replied mildly, but shrewdly, that there were so many able
people in that profession, that he had chosen an artistic career where
success could be obtained far more easily, as had been proved.
The professor was furious at this insolence; he turned his back on the
contrite Sellen with a threat which the academician translated into a
promise.
The enlightened Committee of Purchases had met--behind closed doors.
When the doors were opened again, six pictures had been bought for the
money subscribed by the public for the purpose of encouraging native
artists. The excerpt from the minutes which found its way into the
columns of the newspapers, was worded as follows:
"The Art Union yesterday bought the following pictures: (1) 'Water with
Oxen,' landscape by the wholesale merchant K. (2) 'Gustavus Adolphus at
the Fire of Magdeburg,' historical painting by the linen draper L. (3)
'A Child blowing its Nose,' genre-picture by lieutenant M. (4) 'S. S.
Bore in the Harbour,' marine picture by the shipbroker N. (5) 'Sylvan
Scene with Women,' landscape by the royal secretary O. (6) 'Chicken
with Mushrooms,' still-life by the actor P."
These works of art, which cost a thousand pounds each on an average,
were afterwards praised in the _Grey Bonnet_ in two three-quarter
columns at fifteen crowns each; that was nothing extraordinary, but the
critic, partly in order to fill up the space, and partly in order to
seize the right moment for suppressing a growing evil, attacked a bad
custom which was beginning to creep in. He referred to the fact that
young, unknown adventurers, who had run away from the academy without
study, were trying to pervert the sound judgment of the public by a
mere running after effect. And then Sellen was taken by the ears and
flogged, so that even his enemies found that his treatment was
unfair--and that means a great deal. Not only was he denied every trace
of talent and his art called humbug; even his private circumstances
were dragged before the public; the article hinted at cheap restaurants
where he was obliged to dine; at the shabby clothes he was forced to
wear; at his loose morals, his idleness; it concluded by prophesying in
the name of religion and morality that he would end his days in a
public institution unless he mended his ways while there was yet time.
It was a disgraceful act, committed in indifference and selfishness;
and it was little less than a miracle that a soul was not lost on the
night of the publication of that particular number of the _Grey
Bonnet_.
Twenty-four hours later the _Incorruptible_ appeared. It reflected on
the way in which public moneys were administered by a certain clique,
and mentioned the fact that at the last purchase of pictures, not a
single one had been bought which had been painted by an artist, but
that the perpetrators had been officials and tradesmen, impudent enough
to compete with the artists, although the latter had no other market;
it went on to say that these pirates lowered the standard and
demoralized the artists, whose sole endeavour would have to be to
paint as badly as they did if they did not want to starve. Then
Sellen's name was mentioned. His picture was the first soulfully
conceived work within the last ten years. For ten years art had been a
mere affair of colours and brushes; Sellen's picture was an honest
piece of work, full of inspiration and devotion, and entirely original;
a picture which could only have been produced by an artist who had met
the spirit of nature face to face. The critic enjoined the young artist
to fight against the ancients, whom he had already left a long way
behind, and exhorted him to have faith and hope, because he had a
mission to fulfil, etc.
The _Grey Bonnet_ foamed with rage.
"You'll see that that fellow will have success!" exclaimed the chief
editor. "Why the devil did we slate him quite so much! Supposing he
became a success now! We should cover ourselves with ridicule."
The academician vowed that he should not have any success, went home
with a troubled heart, referred to his books and wrote an essay in
which he proved that Sellen's art was humbug, and that the
_Incorruptible_ had been corrupted.
The _Grey Bonnet_ drew a breath of relief, but immediately afterwards
it received a fresh blow.
On the following day the morning papers announced the fact that his
Majesty had bought Sellen's "masterly landscape which, for days, had
drawn a large public to the Exhibition."
The _Grey Bonnet_ received the full fury of the gale; it was tossed
hither and thither, and fluttered like a rag on a pole. Should they
veer round or steer ahead? Both paper and critic were involved. The
chief editor decided, by order of the managing director, to sacrifice
the critic and save the paper. But how was it to be done? In their
extremity they remembered Struve. He was a man completely at home in
the maze of publicity. He was sent for. The situation was clear to him
in a moment, and he promised that in a very few days the barge should
be able to tack.
To understand Struve's scheme, it is necessary to know the most
important data of his biography. He was a "born student," driven to
journalism by sheer poverty. He started his career as editor of the
Socialist _People's Flag_. Next he belonged to the Conservative
_Peasants' Scourge_, but when the latter removed to the provinces with
inventory, printing plant and editor, the name was changed into
_Peasants' Friend_, and its politics changed accordingly. Struve was
sold to the _Red Cap_, where his knowledge of all the Conservative
tricks stood him in good stead; in the same way his greatest merit in
the eyes of the _Grey Bonnet_ was his knowledge of all the secrets of
their deadly foe, the _Red Cap_, and his readiness to abuse his
knowledge of them.
Struve began the work of whitewashing by starting a correspondence in
the _People's Flag_; a few lines of this, mentioning the rush of
visitors to the Exhibition, were reprinted in the _Grey Bonnet_. Next
there appeared in the _Grey Bonnet_ an attack on the academician; this
attack was followed by a few reassuring words signed "The Ed." which
read as follows: "Although we never shared the opinion of our art
critic with regard to Mr. Sellen's justly praised landscape, yet we
cannot altogether agree with the judgment of our respected
correspondent; but as, on principle, we open our columns to all
opinions, we unhesitatingly printed the above article."
The ice was broken. Struve, who had the reputation of having written on
every subject--except cufic coins--now wrote a brilliant critique of
Sellen's picture and signed it very characteristically Dixi. The _Grey
Bonnet_ was saved; and so, of course, was Sellen; but the latter was of
minor importance.