_Odd lots of journalism--Respectability and its relation to
journalism--The abuse of the journal--The laudation of the
journalist--Abuse the consequence of popularity--Popularity the
consequence of abuse--Drain-work and grey hairs--“Don’t neglect
your reading for the sake of reviewing”--Reading for pleasure or
to criticise--Literature--Deterioration--The Civil List Pension--In
exchange for a soul._
SOME years ago there was an auction of wine at a country-house in
Scotland, the late owner of which had taken pains to gain a reputation
for judgment in the matter of wine-selecting. He had all his life been
nearly as intemperate as a temperance orator in his denunciation of
whisky as a drink, hoping to inculcate a taste for vintage clarets upon
the Scots; but he that tells the tale--it is not a new one--says that
the man died without seriously jeopardizing the popularity of the
native manufacture. The wines that he had laid down brought good prices,
however; but, at the close of the sale, several odd lots were “put
up,” and all were bought by a local publican. A gentleman who had been
present called upon the publican a few days afterwards, and found
him engaged in mixing into one huge cask all the “lots” that he had
bought--Larose, Johannisberg, Château Coutet.
“Hallo,” said the visitor, “what’s this mixture going to be, Rabbie?”
“Weel, sir,” said the publican, looking with one eye into the cask and
mechanically giving the contents a stir with a bottle of Sauterne which
he had just uncorked--“Weel, sir, I think it should be port, but I’m no
sure.”
These odd lots of journalistic experiences and recollections may be
considered a book, “but I’m no sure.”
*****
After all, “a book’s a book although”--it’s written by a journalist.
Nearly every writer of books nowadays becomes a journalist when he has
written a sufficient number. He is usually encouraged in this direction
by his publishers.
“You’re a literary man, are you not?” a stranger said to a friend of
mine.
“On the contrary, I’m a journalist,” was the reply.
“Oh, I beg your pardon, I’m sure,” said the inquirer, detecting a
certain indignant note in the disclaimer. “I beg your pardon. What a
fool I was to ask you such a question!”
“I hope he wasn’t hurt,” he added in an anxious voice when we were
alone. “It was a foolish question; I might have known that he was a
journalist, _he looked so respectable_.”
We are all respectable nowadays. We belong to a recognised profession.
We may pronounce our opinions on all questions of art, taste, religion,
morals, and even finance, with some degree of diffidence: we are at
present merely practising our scales, so to speak, upon our various
“organs,” but there is every reason to believe that confidence will come
in due time. Are not our ranks being recruited from Oxford? Some years
ago men drifted into journalism; now it is looked on as a vocation.
Journalism is taken seriously. In a word, we are respectable. Have
we not been entertained by the Lord Mayor of London? Have we not
entertained Monsieur Emile Zola?
*****
People have ceased to abuse us as they once did with great freedom: they
merely abuse the journals which support us. This is a healthy sign; for
it may be taken for granted that people will invariably abuse the paper
for which they subscribe. They do not seem to feel that they get the
worth of their subscription unless they do so. It is the same principle
that causes people to sneer at a dinner at which they have been
entertained. If we are not permitted to abuse our host, whom may we
abuse? The one thing that a man abuses more than to-day’s paper is the
negligence of the boy who omits to deliver it some morning. Only in one
town where I lived did I find that a newspaper was popular. (It was
not the one for which I wrote.) The fathers and mothers taught their
children to pray, “God bless papa, mamma, and the editor of the
_Clackmannan Standard_.”
I met that editor some years afterwards. He celebrated a sort of
impromptu Comminution Service against the people amongst whom he
had lived. They had never paid for their subscriptions or their
advertisements, and they had thus lowered the _Standard_ of Clackmannan
and of the editor’s confidence in his fellow-men.
*****
The only newspaper that is in a hopeless condition is the one which is
neither blessed at all nor cursed at all. Such a newspaper appeals to no
section of the public. It has always seemed to me a matter of question
whether a man is better satisfied with a paper that reflects (so far
as it is possible for a paper to do so) his own views, or with one that
reflects the views that he most abhors. I am inclined to believe that
a man is in a better humour with those of his fellow-men whom he has
thoroughly abused, than with the one whom he greets every morning on the
top of his omnibus.
It is quite a simple matter to abuse a newspaper into popularity. One
of the Georges whose biographies have been so pleasantly and touchingly
written by Thackeray and Mr. Justin M’Carthy, conferred a lasting
popularity upon the man whom he told to get out of his way or he would
kick him out of it.
The moral of this is, that to be insulted by a monarch confers a greater
distinction upon a man living in Clapham or even Brixton than to be
treated courteously by a greengrocer.
*****
But though people continue to abuse the paper for which they subscribe,
and for which they are usually some year or two in arrears in the matter
of payment, still it appears to me that the public are slowly beginning
to comprehend that newspapers are written (mostly) by journalists.
Until recently there was, I think, a notion that journalists sat round
a bar-parlour telling stories and drinking whisky and water while the
newspapers were being produced. The fact is, that most of the surviving
anecdotes of the journalists of a past generation smell of the
bar-parlour. The practical jesters of the fifties and the punsters
of the roaring forties were tap-room journalists. They died hard.
The journalists of to-day do not even smile at those brilliant
sallies--bequeathed by a past generation--about wearing frock-coats and
evening dress, about writing notices of plays without stirring from the
taproom, about the mixing up of criticisms of books with police-court
reports. Such were the humours of journalism thirty or forty years ago.
We have formed different ideas as to the elements of humour in these
days. Whatever we may leave undone it is not our legitimate work.
*****
It was when journalism was in a state of transition that a youth,
waiting on a railway platform, was addressed by a stranger (one of those
men who endeavour to make religious zeal a cloak for impertinence)--“My
dear young friend, are you a Christian?”
“No,” said the youth, “I’m a reporter on the _Camberwell Chronicle_.”
On the other hand, it was a very modern journalist whose room was
invaded by a number of pretty little girls one day, just to keep him
company and chat with him for an hour or so, as it was the day his
paper--a weekly one--went to press. In order to get rid of them, he
presented each of them with a copy of a little book which he had just
published, writing on the flyleaf, “With the author’s compliments.” Just
as the girls were going away, one of them spied a neatly bound Oxford
Bible that was lying on the desk for editorial notice.
“I should so much like that,” she cried, pouncing upon it.
“Then you shall have it, my dear, if you clear off immediately,” said
the editor; and, turning up the flyleaf, he wrote hastily on it, “_With
the author’s compliments_.”
Yes, he was a modern journalist, and took a reasonable view of the
authoritative nature of his calling.
*****
Our position is, I affirm, becoming recognised by the world; but now and
again I am made to feel that such recognition does not invariably extend
to all the members of our profession. Some years ago I was getting my
hair cut in Regent Street, and, as usual, the practitioner remarked in a
friendly way that I was getting very grey.
“Yes,” I said, “I’ve been getting a grey hair or so for some time. I
don’t know how it is. I’m not much over thirty.” (I repeat that the
incident occurred some years ago.)
“No, sir, you’re not what might be called old,” said he indulgently.
“Maybe you’re doing some brain-work?” he suggested, after a pause.
“Brain-work?” said I. “Oh no! I work for a daily paper, and usually
write a column of leading articles every night. I produce a book a year,
and a play every now and again. But brain-work--oh no!”
“Oh, in that case, sir, it must be due to something else. Maybe you
drink a bit, sir.”
I did not buy the bottle which he offered me at four-and-nine. I left
the shop dissatisfied.
This is why I hesitate to affirm that modern journalism is wholly
understanded of the people.
But for that matter it is not wholly understanded of the people who
might be expected to know something about it. The proprietor of a
newspaper on which I worked some years ago made use of me one day to
translate a few lines of Greek which appeared on the back of an old
print in his possession. My powers amazed him. The lines were from an
obscure and little-known poem called the “Odyssey.”
“You must read a great deal, my boy,” said he.
I shook my head.
“The fact is,” said I, “I’ve lately had so much reviewing to do that I
haven’t been able to read a single book.”
“That’s too hard on you,” said he gravely. “Get some of the others of
the staff to help you. You mustn’t neglect your reading for the sake of
reviewing.”
I didn’t.
Upon another occasion the son of this gentleman left a message for
me that he had taken a three-volume novel, the name of which he had
forgotten, from a parcel of books that had arrived the previous day,
but that he would like a review of it to appear the next morning, as his
wife said it was a capital story.
He was quite annoyed when the review did not appear.
*****
But there are, I have reason to know, many people who have got no more
modern ideas respecting that branch of journalism known as reviewing.
“Are you reading that book for pleasure or to criticise it?” I was asked
not so long ago by a young woman who ought to have known better. “Oh, I
forgot,” she added, before I could think of anything sharp to say by way
of reply--“I forgot: if you meant to review it you wouldn’t read it.”
I thought of the sharp reply two days later.
So it is, I say, that some of the people who read what we write from
day to day, have still got only the vaguest notions of how our work is
turned out.
Long ago I used to wish that the reviewers would only read the books I
wrote before criticising them; but now my dearest wish is that they will
review them (favourably) without reading them.
*****
I heard some time ago of a Scot who, full of that brave sturdy spirit
of self-reliance which is the precious endowment of the race of North
Britons, came up to London to fight his way in the ranks of literature.
The grand inflexible independence of the man asserted itself with such
obstinacy that he was granted a Civil List Pension; and while in receipt
of this form of out-door relief for poets who cannot sell their poetry,
he began a series of attacks upon literature as a trade, and gave to the
world an autobiography in a sentence, by declaring that literature and
deterioration go hand in hand.
This was surely a very nasty thing for the sturdy Scotchman, who had
attained to the honourable independence of the national almshouse,
to say, just as people were beginning to look on literature as a
profession.
But then he sat down and forthwith reeled off a string of doggerel
verses, headed “The Dismal Throng.” In this fourth-form satirical
jingle he abused some of the ablest of modern literary men for taking a
pessimistic view of life. Now, who on earth can blame literary men for
feeling a trifle dismal if what the independent pensioner says is true,
and success in literature can only be obtained in exchange for a
soul? The man who takes the most pessimistic view of the profession of
literature should be the last to sneer at a literary man looking sadly
on life.