Soon after the publication of Miss Burney’s novel, called “Cecilia,” a
young lady was found reading it. After the general topics of praise were
exhausted, she was asked whether she did not greatly admire the style?
Reviewing the incidents in her memory, she replied, “The style? the
style?--Oh! sir, I am not come to that yet!”
Vol. I.--3.
[Illustration: ~The Newsman.~]
“I, that do _bring_ the news.”
_Shakspeare._
Our calling, however the vulgar may deem,
Was of old, both on high and below, in esteem.
E’en the gods were to much curiosity given,
For Hermes was only the Newsman of heaven.
Hence with wings to his cap, and his staff, and his heels,
He depictured appears, which our myst’ry reveals,
That _news_ flies like wind, to raise sorrow or laughter,
While leaning on Time, _Truth_ comes heavily after.
_Newsmen’s Verses_, 1747.
The newsman is a “lone person.” His business, and he, are distinct from
all other occupations, and people.
All the year round, and every day in the year, the newsman must rise
soon after four o’clock, and be at the newspaper offices to procure a
few of the first morning papers allotted to him, at extra charges, for
particular orders, and despatch them by the “early coaches.” Afterwards,
he has to wait for his share of the “regular” publication of each paper,
and he allots these as well as he can among some of the most urgent of
his town orders. The _next_ publication at a later hour is devoted to
his remaining customers; and he sends off his boys with different
portions according to the supply he successively receives. Notices
frequently and necessarily printed in different papers, of the hour of
final publication the preceding day, guard the interests of the
newspaper proprietors from the sluggishness of the indolent, and quicken
the diligent newsman. Yet, however skilful his arrangements may be, they
are subject to unlooked for accidents. The late arrival of foreign
journals, a parliamentary debate unexpectedly protracted, or an article
of importance in one paper exclusively, retard the printing and defer
the newsman. His patience, well-worn before he gets his “_last_ papers,”
must be continued during the whole period he is occupied in delivering
them. The sheet is sometimes half snatched before he can draw it from
his wrapper; he is often chid for delay when he should have been praised
for speed; his excuse, “_All_ the papers were _late_ this morning,” is
better heard than admitted, for neither giver nor receiver has time to
parley; and before he gets home to dinner, he hears at one house that
“Master has waited for the paper these two hours;” at another, “Master’s
gone out, and says if you can’t bring the paper earlier, he won’t have
it all;” and some ill-conditioned “master,” perchance, leaves positive
orders, “Don’t take it in, but tell the man to bring the bill; and I’ll
pay it and have done with him.”
Besides buyers, every newsman has readers at so much each paper per
hour. One class stipulates for a journal always at breakfast; another,
that it is to be delivered exactly at such a time; a third, at any time,
so that it is left the full hour; and among all of these there are
malecontents, who permit nothing of “time or circumstance” to interfere
with their personal convenience. Though the newsman delivers, and allows
the use of his paper, and fetches it, for a stipend not half equal to
the lowest paid porter’s price for letter-carrying in London, yet he
finds some, with whom he covenanted, objecting, when it is called
for,--“I’ve not had my breakfast,”--“The paper did not come at the
proper time,”--“I’ve not had leisure to look at it yet,”--“It has not
been left an hour,”--or any other pretence equally futile or untrue,
which, were he to allow, would prevent him from serving his readers in
rotation, or at all. If he can get all his morning papers from these
customers by four o’clock, he is a happy man.
Soon after three in the afternoon, the newsman and some of his boys must
be at the offices of the evening papers; but before he can obtain his
requisite numbers, he must wait till the newsmen of the Royal Exchange
have received theirs, for the use of the merchants on ’Change. Some of
the first he gets are hurried off to coffee-house and tavern keepers.
When he has procured his full quantity, he supplies the remainder of his
town customers. These disposed of, then comes the hasty folding and
directing of his reserves for the country, and the forwarding of them to
the post-office in Lombard-street, or in parcels for the mails, and to
other coach-offices. The Gazette nights, every Tuesday and Friday, add
to his labours,--the publication of second and third editions of the
evening papers is a super-addition. On what he calls a “regular day,” he
is fortunate if he find himself settled within his own door by seven
o’clock, after fifteen hours of running to and fro. It is now only that
he can review the business of the day, enter his fresh orders, ascertain
how many of each paper he will require on the morrow, arrange his
accounts, provide for the money he may have occasion for, eat the only
quiet meal he could reckon upon since that of the evening before, and
“steal a few hours from the night” for needful rest, before he rises the
next morning to a day of the like incessant occupation: and thus from
Monday to Saturday he labours every day.
The newsman desires no work but his own to prove “Sunday no Sabbath;”
for on him and his brethren devolves the circulation of upwards of fifty
thousand Sunday papers in the course of the forenoon. His Sunday dinner
is the only meal he can ensure with his family, and the short remainder
of the day the only time he can enjoy in their society with certainty,
or extract something from, for more serious duties or social converse.
The newsman’s is an out-of-door business at all seasons, and his life is
measured out to unceasing toil. In all weathers, hail, rain, wind, and
snow, he is daily constrained to the way and the fare of a wayfaringman.
He walks, or rather runs, to distribute information concerning all sorts
of circumstances and persons, except his own. He is unable to allow
himself, or others, time for intimacy, and therefore, unless he had
formed friendships before he took to his servitude, he has not the
chance of cultivating them, save with persons of the same calling. He
may be said to have been divorced, and to live “separate and apart” from
society in general; for, though he mixes with every body, it is only for
a few hurried moments, and as strangers do in a crowd.
Cowper’s familiar description of a newspaper, with its multiform
intelligence, and the pleasure of reading it in the country, never
tires, and in this place is to the purpose.
This folio of four pages, happy work!
Which not ev’n critics criticise; that holds
Inquisitive Attention, while I read,
Fast bound in chains of silence, which the fair,
Though eloquent themselves, yet fear to break,
What is it, but a map of busy life,
Its fluctuations, and its vast concerns?
Houses in ashes, and the fall of stocks,
Births, deaths, and marriages---------------
------------------------The grand debate,
The popular harangue, the tart reply,
The logic, and the wisdom, and the wit,
And the loud laugh--------------------------
Cat’racts of declamation thunder here;
There forests of no meaning spread the page,
In which all comprehension wanders lost;
While fields of pleasantry amuse us there,
With merry descants on a nation’s woes.
The rest appears a wilderness of strange
But gay confusion; roses for the cheeks,
And lilies for the brows of faded age,
Teeth for the toothless, ringlets for the bald,
Heav’n, earth, and ocean, plunder’d of their sweets,
Nectareous essences, Olympian dews,
Sermons, and city feasts, and fav’rite airs,
Æthereal journies, submarine exploits,
And Katerfelto, with his hair an end
At his own wonders, wand’ring for his bread.
’Tis pleasant, through the loopholes of retreat,
To peep at such a world; to see the stir
Of the great Babel, and not feel the crowd;
To hear the roar she sends through all her gates,
At a safe distance, where the dying sound
Falls a soft murmur on th’ uninjured ear.
Thus sitting, and surveying thus, at ease,
The globe and its concerns, I seem advanced
To some secure and more than mortal height,
That lib’rates and exempts us from them all.
This is an agreeable and true picture, and, with like felicity, the poet
paints the bearer of the newspaper.
Hark! ’tis the twanging horn o’er yonder bridge,
That with its wearisome but needful length
Bestrides the wintry flood, in which the moon
Sees her unwrinkled face reflected bright;--
He comes, the herald of a noisy world,
With spatter’d boots, strapp’d waist, and frozen locks
News from all nations lumb’ring at his back.
True to his charge, the close pack’d load behind
Yet careless what he brings, his one concern
Is to conduct it to the destin’d inn;
And, having dropp’d th’ expected bag, pass on.
He whistles as he goes, light-hearted wretch,
Cold and yet cheerful: messenger of grief
Perhaps to thousands, and of joy to some;
To him indiff’rent whether grief or joy.
Methinks, as I have always thought, that Cowper here missed the
expression of a kind feeling, and rather tends to raise an ungenerous
sentiment towards this poor fellow. As the bearer of intelligence, of
which he is ignorant, why should it be
“To him indiff’rent whether grief or joy?”
If “cold, and yet cheerful,” he has attained to the “practical
philosophy” of bearing ills with patience. He is a frozen creature that
“whistles,” and therefore called “light-hearted wretch.” The poet
refrains to “look with a gentle eye upon this _wretch_,” but, having
obtained the newspaper, determines to enjoy himself, and cries
Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,
And, while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn
Throws up a steamy column, and the cups,
That cheer, but not inebriate, wait on each,
So let us welcome peaceful ev’ning in.
This done, and the bard surrounded with means of enjoyment, he directs
his sole attention to the newspaper, nor spares a thought in behalf of
the wayworn messenger, nor bids him “God speed!” on his further forlorn
journey through the wintry blast.
In London scarcely any one knows the newsman but a newsman. His
customers know him least of all. Some of them seem almost ignorant that
he has like “senses, affections, passions,” with themselves, or is
“subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and
cooled by the same winter and summer.” They are indifferent to him in
exact ratio to their attachment to what he “serves” them with. Their
regard is for the newspaper, and not the newsman. Should he succeed in
his occupation, they do not hear of it: if he fail, they do not care for
it. If he dies, the servant receives the paper from his successor, and
says, when she carries it up stairs, “If you please, the newsman’s
dead:” they scarcely ask where he lived, or his fall occasions a
pun--“We always said he _was_, and now we have proof that he _is_, the
_late_ newsman.” They are almost as unconcerned as if he had been the
postman.
Once a year, a printed “copy of verses” reminds every newspaper reader
that the hand that bore it is open to a small boon. “The Newsman’s
Address to his Customers, 1826,” deploringly adverts to the general
distress, patriotically predicts better times, and seasonably intimates,
that in the height of annual festivities he, too, has a heart capable of
joy.
------------------“although the muse complains
And sings of woes in melancholy strains,
Yet Hope, at last, strikes up her trembling wires,
And bids Despair forsake your glowing fires.
While, as in olden time, Heaven’s gifts you share,
And Englishmen enjoy their Christmas fare;
While at the social board friend joins with friend,
And smiles and jokes and salutations blend;
Your Newsman wishes to be social too,
And would enjoy the opening year with you:
Grant him your annual gift, he will not fail
To drink your health once more with Christmas ale:
Long may you live to share your Christmas cheer,
And he still wish you many a happy year!”
The losses and crosses to which newsmen are subject, and the minutiæ of
their laborious life, would form an instructive volume. As a class of
able men of business, their importance is established by excellent
regulations, adapted to their interests and well-being; and their
numerous society includes many individuals of high intelligence,
integrity, and opulence.
*
* * * * *
~The Drama.~