Father Payne was a very irregular reader of the newspaper; he was not
greedy of news, and he was incurious about events, while he disliked the
way in which they were professionally dished up for human consumption. At
times, however, he would pore long and earnestly over a daily paper with
knitted brows and sighs. "You seem to be suffering a good deal over your
paper to-day, Father!" said Barthrop once, regarding him with amusement.
Father Payne lifted up his head, and then broke into a smile. "It's all
right, my boy!" he said. "I don't despair of the world itself, but I feel
that if the average newspaper represents the mind of the average man, the
human race is very feeble--not worth saving! This sort of
thing"--indicating the paper with a wave of his hand--"makes me realise how
many things there are that don't interest me--and I can't get at them
either through the medium of these writers' minds. They don't seem to want
simply to describe the facts, but to manipulate them; they try to make you
uncomfortable about the future, and contented with the past. It ought to be
just the other way! And then I ask myself, 'Ought I, as a normal human
being, to be as one-sided, as submissive, as trivial, as sentimental as
this?' These vast summaries of public opinion, do they represent anyone's
opinion at all, or are they simply the sort of thing you talk about in a
railway-carriage with a man you don't know? Does anyone's mind really dwell
on such things and ponder them? The newspapers do not really know what is
happening--everything takes them by surprise. The ordinary person is
interested in his work, his amusements, the people he lives with--in real
things. There seems to be nothing real here; it is all shadowy, I want to
get at men's minds, not at what journalists think is in men's minds. The
human being in the newspapers seems to me an utterly unreal person,
picturesque, theatrical, fatuous, slobbering, absurd. Does not the
newspaper-convention misrepresent us as much as the book-convention
misrepresents us? We straggle irregularly along, we are capable of
entertaining at the same moment two wholly contrary opinions, we do what we
don't intend to do, we don't carry out our hopes or our purposes. The man
in the papers is agitated, excited, wild, inquisitive--the ordinary person
is calm, indifferent, and on the whole fairly happy, unless some one
frightens him. I can't make it out, because it isn't a conspiracy to
deceive, and yet it does deceive; and what is more, most people don't even
seem to know that they are being misrepresented. It all seems to me to
differ as much from real life as the Morning Service read in church differs
from the thoughts of the congregation!"
"How would you mend it?" said Barthrop. "It seems to me it must represent
_something_."
"Something!" said Father Payne. "I don't know! I don't believe we are so
stupid and so ignoble! As to mending it, that's another question. Writing
is such a curious thing--it seems to represent anything in the world except
the current of a man's thoughts. Reverie--has anyone ever tried to
represent that? I have been out for a walk sometimes, and reflected when I
came in that if what has passed through my mind were all printed in full in
a book, it would make a large octavo volume--and precious stuff, too! Yet
the few thoughts which do stand out when it is all over, the few bright
flashes, they are things which can hardly be written down--at least they
never are written down."
"But what would you do?" I said--"with the newspapers, I mean."
"Well," said Father Payne, "a great deal of the news most worth telling can
be told best in pictures. I believe very much in illustrated papers. They
really do help the imagination. That's the worst of words--a dozen
scratches on a bit of paper do more to make one realise a scene than
columns of description. I would do a lot with pictures, and a bit of print
below to tell people what to notice. Then we must have a number of bare
facts and notices--weather, business, trade, law--the sort of thing that
people concerned must read. But I would make a clean sweep of fashion, and
all sensational intelligence--murders, accidents, sudden deaths. I would
have much more biography of living people as well as dead, and a few of the
big speeches. Then I would have really good articles with pictures about
foreign countries--we ought to know what the world looks like, and how the
other people live. And then I would have one or two really fine little
essays every day by the very best people I could get, amusing, serious,
beautiful articles about nature and art and books and ideas and
qualities--some real, good, plain, wise, fine, simple thinking. You want to
get people in touch with the best minds!"
"And how many people would read such a paper?" I said.
"Oh, I don't know, I'm sure," said Father Payne with a groan. "I would for
one! I want to have the feeling of being in touch day by day with the
clever, interesting, lively, active-minded people, as if I had been
listening to good talk. Isn't that possible? Instead of which I sit here,
day after day, overflowing with my own ridiculous thoughts--and the world
discharging all its staleness and stupidity like a sewer in these horrible
documents. Take it away from me, someone! I'm fascinated by the disgusting
smell of it!" I withdrew the paper from under his hands. "Thank you," said
Father Payne feebly. "That's the horror of it--that the world isn't a dull
place or a sensational place or a nasty place--and those papers make me
feel it is all three!"
"I'm sorry you are so low about it," said Barthrop.
"Yes, because journalism ought to be the finest thing in the world," said
Father Payne. "Just imagine! The power of talking, without any of the
inconveniences of personality, to half-a-million people."
"But why doesn't it improve?" said Barthrop. "You always say that the
public finds out what it wants, and will have it."
"In books, yes!" said Father Payne; "but in daily life we are all so
damnably afraid of the truth--that's what is the matter with us, and it is
that which journalism caters for. Suppress the truth, pepper it up, flavour
it, make it appetising--try to persuade people that the world is
romantic--that's the aim of the journalist. He flies from the truth, he
makes a foolish tale out of it, he makes people despise the real interests
of life, he makes us all want to escape from life into something that never
has been and never will be. I loathe romance with all my heart. The way of
escape is within, and not without."
"You had better go for a walk," said Barthrop soothingly.
"I must," said Father Payne. "I'm drunk and drugged with unreality. I will
go and have a look round the farm--no, I won't have any company, thank you.
I shall only go on fuming and stewing, if I have sympathetic listeners. You
are too amiable, you fellows. You encourage me to talk, when you ought to
stop your ears and run from me." And Father Payne swung out of the room.