_Proprietary rights--Proprietary wrongs--Exclusive rights--The
“leaders” of a party--The fossil editor--The man and the dog and the
boar--An unpublished history--The newspaper hoax--A premature obituary
notice--The accommodating surgeon--A matter of business--The death of
Mr. Robinson--The quid pro quo_’.
IT is only within the past few years that the Editor has obtained
public recognition as a personality; previously his personality was
merged in the proprietor, and when his efforts were successful in
keeping a Corporation from making fools of themselves--this is assuming
an extreme case of success--or in exposing some attempted fraud that
would have ruined thousands of people, he was compelled to accept his
reward through the person of the proprietor. The proprietor was made
a J.P., and sometimes even became Mayor or Chairman of the Board of
Guardians, when the editor succeeded in making the paper a power in the
county. Latterly, however, the editors of some provincial journals have
been obtaining recognition.
They have been granted the dubious honour of knighthood; and the public
have discovered that the brains which have dictated a policy that
has influenced the destinies of a Ministry, may be entrusted with the
consideration of sewage and main drainage questions on a Town Council,
or with the question of the relative degrees of culpability of a man who
jumps upon his wife’s face and is fined ten shillings, and the boy
who steals a raw turnip and is sent to a reformatory for five years--a
period quite insufficient for the adequate digestion of that comestible,
which it would appear boys are ready to sacrifice years of their liberty
to obtain.
I must say that, with one exception, the proprietors whom I have met
were highly competent business men--men whose judgment and public
spirit were deserving of that wide recognition which they nearly
always obtained from their fellow-citizens. One, and one only, was not
precisely of this type. He used to write with a blue pencil across an
article some very funny comments.
I have before me at this moment a letter in which he asked me to
abbreviate something; and he gave me an example of how to do it by
cutting out a letter of the word--he spelt it _abrievate_.
He had a perfect passion for what he called “exclusives.” The most
trivial incident--the overturning of a costermonger’s barrow, and the
number of the contents sustaining fatal injuries; the blowing off of
a clergyman’s hat in the street, with a professional opinion as to the
damage done; the breaking of a window in a private house--he regarded as
good foundation for an “exclusive”; and indeed it must be said that the
information given to the public by the organ of which he was proprietor
was rarely ever to be found in a rival paper. At the same time, upon
no occasion of his obtaining a really important piece of news did he
succeed in keeping it from the others. This annoyed him extremely He was
in great demand as chairman of amateur reciting classes--a distinction
that was certainly dearly purchased. I never knew of one of these
reciting entertainments being refused a full report in his newspaper
upon any occasion when he presided. He also aspired to the chairmanship
of small political meetings, and once when he found himself in such a
position, he said he would sing the audience a song, and he carried out
his threat. His song was probably more convincing than his speech would
have been. He had a famous story for platform use. It concerned a donkey
that he knew when they were both young.
He said it made people laugh, and it surely did. At a public dinner he
formulated the plausible theory that to be a good player of golf was to
be a gentleman. He was a poor golfer himself.
*****
Now, regarding London editors I have not much to say. I am not
personally acquainted with any one of them. But for twelve years I
read every political article that appeared in each of the six principal
London daily papers; I also read a report of every speech made in the
House of Commons, and of every speech made by a statesman of Cabinet
rank outside Parliament; and I am prepared to say that the great
majority of these speeches bore the most unmistakable evidence of
being--well, not exactly inspired by, but certainly influenced by some
leading article. In one word, my experience is that what the newspapers
say in the morning the statesmen say in the evening.
Of course Mr. Gladstone must not be included in the statesmen to whom
I refer. His inspiration comes from another direction. That is how he
succeeds in startling so many people.
The majority of provincial editors include, I have good reason to know,
some of the best men in the profession. Only here and there does one
meet with a fossil of journalism who is content to write a column of
platitudes over a churchwarden pipe and then to go home to sleep.
With only one such did I come in contact recently. He was connected with
a newspaper which should have had unbounded influence in its district,
but which had absolutely none. The “editor” was accustomed to enter his
room about noon, and he left it between seven and eight in the evening,
having turned out a column of matter of which he was an earnest reader
the next morning. And yet this same newspaper received during the night
sometimes twelve columns of telegraphic news and verbatim reports of the
chief speeches in Parliament.
The poor old gentleman had never been in London, and never could see
why I should be so constantly going to that city. He was under the
impression that George Eliot was a man, and he one day asked me what
the Royal Academy was. Having learned that it was a place where pictures
that richly deserved exposure were hung, he shortly afterwards
assumed that the French Academy was a gallery in which naughty French
pictures--he assumed that everything French was naughty--were exhibited.
He occasionally referred to the _Temps_ phonetically, and up to the
day of his death he never knew why I laughed when I first heard his
pronunciation of the name of that organ.
The one dread of his life was that I might some time inadvertently
suggest that I was the editor of the paper. As if any sane human being
would have such an aspiration! His opportunity came at last. A cabinet
photograph of a man and a dog arrived at the office one day addressed
to the editor. He hastened to the proprietor and “proved” that the
photograph represented me and my dog, and that it had been addressed “to
the editor.” The proprietor was not clever enough to perceive that
the features of the portrait in no way resembled those with which I
am obliged to put up, and so I ran a chance of being branded as a
pretender.
Fortunately, however, the fascinating little daughter of the proprietary
household contrived to see the photograph, and on being questioned as
to its likeness to a member of the staff, declared that there was no one
half so goodlooking connected with the paper. On being assured that the
original had already been identified, she expressed her willingness to
stake five pounds upon her opinion; and the injured editor accepted her
offer.
Now, all this time I had never been applied to by the disputants, though
I might have been expected to know something of the matter,--people
generally remember a visit to their photographer or their
stockbroker,--but just as the young lady was about to appeal to me as
an unprejudiced arbiter on the question at issue, the manager of the
advertisement department sent to inquire if any one on the editorial
staff had come upon a photograph of a man and a collie. An advertisement
for a lost collie had, he said, been appearing in the paper, and a
postcard had just been received from the owner stating that he had
forwarded a photograph of the animal, in order that, should any one
bring a collie to the office and claim the reward, the advertising
department would be in a position to see that the animal was the right
one.
The young lady got her five pounds, and, having a considerable interest
in the stocking of a farm, purchased with it an active young boar which,
in an impulse of flattery, she named after me, and which, so far as I
have been able to gather, is doing very well, and has already seen his
children’s children.
When I asked the young lady why she had called the animal after me, she
said it was because he was a bore. She had a graceful wit.
In a weak moment this editor confided to me that he was engaged in
writing a book--“A History of the Orange” was to be the title, he told
me; and he added that I could have no idea of the trouble it was causing
him; but there he was wrong. After this he was in the habit of writing
a note to me about once a week, asking me if I would oblige him by doing
his work for him, as all his time was engrossed by his “History.”
It appears to me rather melancholy that the lack of enterprise among
publishers is so great that this work has not yet been given a chance
of appearing. I looked forward to it to clear up many doubtful points of
great interest. Up to the present, for instance, no intelligent effort
has been made to determine if it was the introduction of the orange
into Great Britain that brought about the Sunday-school treat, or if the
orange was imported in order to meet the legitimate requirements of this
entertainment.
*****
Human nature---and there is a good deal of it in a large manufacturing
centre--could not be restrained in the neighbourhood of such a relic of
a past generation, and, consequently, that form of pleasantry known
as the hoax was constantly attempted upon him. One morning the
correspondence columns, which he was supposed to edit with scrupulous
care, appeared headed with an account of the discovery of some ancient
pottery bearing a Latin inscription--the most venerable and certainly
the most transparent of newspaper hoaxes.
It need scarcely be said that there was an extraordinary demand for
copies of the issue of that day; but luckily the thing was discovered
in time to disappoint a large number of those persons who came to the
office to mock at the simplicity of the good old soul, who fancied he
had found a congenial topic when he received the letter headed with an
appeal to archæologists.
Is there a more contemptible creature in the world than the newspaper
hoaxer? The wretch who can see fun in obtaining the publication of some
filthy phrase in a newspaper that is certain to be read by numbers of
women, should, in my mind, be treated as the flinger of a dynamite bomb
among a crowd of innocent people. The sender of a false notice of a
marriage, a birth, or a death, is usually difficult to bring to justice,
but when found, he--or she--should be treated as a social leper. The
pain caused by such heartless hoaxes is incalculable.
*****
Sometimes a careless reporter, or foreman printer, is unwittingly the
means of causing much annoyance, and even consternation, by allowing an
obituary notice to appear prematurely. On every well-managed paper there
is a set of pigeon-holed obituaries of eminent persons, local as well as
national. When it is almost certain that one of them is at the point of
death, the sketch is written up to the latest date, and frequently put
in type, to be ready in case the news of the death should arrive when
the paper is going to press. Now, I have known of several cases in which
the “set-up” obituary notice contrived to appear before the person
to whom it referred had breathed his last. This is undoubtedly a very
painful occurrence, and in some cases it may actually precipitate the
incident which it purports to record. Personally, I should not consider
myself called on to die because a newspaper happened to publish an
account of my death; but I know of at least one case in which a
man actually succumbed out of compliment to a newspaper that had
accidentally recorded his death.
That person was not made of the same fibre as a certain eminent surgeon
with whom I was well acquainted. He was thoughtful enough to send for
a reporter on one Monday evening, and said that as he did not wish
the pangs of death to be increased by the reflection that a ridiculous
sketch of his career would be published in the newspapers, he thought
he would just dictate three-quarters of a column of such a character
as would allow of his dying without anything on his mind. Of course the
reporter was delighted, and commenced as usual:--
“It is with the deepest regret that we have to announce this morning the
decease of one of our most eminent physicians, and best-known citizens.
Dr. Theobald Smith, M.Sc., F.R.C.S.E., passed peacefully away at o’clock
{last night/this morning} at his residence, Pharmakon House, surrounded
by the members of the family to whom he was so deeply attached, and to
whom, though a father, he was still a friend.”
“Now, sir,” said the reporter, “I’ve left a space for the hour, and I
can strike out either ‘last night,’ or ‘this morning,’ when I hear of
your death.”
“That’s right,” said the doctor. “Now, I’ll give you some particulars of
my life.”
“Thanks,” said the reporter. “You will not exceed three-quarters of a
column, for we’re greatly crushed for space just now. If you could put
it off till Sunday, I could give you a column with leads, as Parliament
doesn’t sit on Saturday.”
It seemed a tempting offer; but the doctor, after pondering for a few
moments, as if trying to recollect his engagements, shook his head, and
said he would be glad to oblige, but the matter had really passed beyond
his control.
“But there’ll surely be time for you to see a proof?” cried the
reporter, with some degree of anxiety in his voice.
“I’ll take good care of that,” said the doctor. “You can send it to me
in the morning. I think I’ll die between eleven and twelve at night.”
“That would suit us exactly,” said the reporter genially. “We could then
send the obituary away in the first page at one o’clock. The foreman
grumbles if he has to put obituaries on page 5, which goes down to the
machine at half-past three.”
The doctor said that of course business was business, and he should do
his best to accommodate the foreman.
He died that night at twenty minutes past eleven.
*****
I have suggested the possibility of the record of a death in a public
print having a disastrous effect upon a sick man, and the certainty
of its causing pain to his relatives. This view was not taken by the
eccentric proprietor to whom I have already alluded. Upon one occasion
he heard casually that a man named Robinson had just died. He hastened
to his office, found a reporter, and told him to write a paragraph
regretting the death of Mr. Richard Robinson. He assumed that it was
Richard Robinson who was dead, but it so happened that it was Mr. Thomas
Robinson, although Mr. Richard Robinson had been in feeble health for
some time. Now, when the son of the living Mr. Robinson called upon the
proprietor the next day to state that his father had read the paragraph
recording his death, and that the shock had completely prostrated him,
the proprietor turned round upon him, and said that Mr. Robinson and
his family should rather feel extremely grateful for the appearance of
a paragraph of so complimentary a character. Young Mr. Robinson, fearing
that the next move on the part of the proprietor would be to demand
payment for the paragraph at scale rates, begged that his intrusion
might be pardoned; and hurried away congratulating himself at having
escaped very easily.
*****
Editors are always supposed to know nearly everything, and they
nearly always do. In this respect they differ materially from the
representatives of other professions. If you were to ask the average
clergyman--if there is such a thing as an average clergyman--what he
thought of the dramatic construction of a French vaudeville, he would
probably feel hurt; but if an editor failed to give an intelligent
opinion on this subject, as well as upon the tendencies to Socinianism
displayed in the sermon of an eminent Churchman, he would be regarded
as unfit for his business. You can get an intelligent opinion from
an editor on almost any subject; but you are lucky if you can get an
intelligent opinion on any one subject from the average professional
man--a lawyer, of course, excepted.
But undoubtedly curious specimens of editors might occasionally have
been found in the smaller newspaper offices in the provinces long ago.
More than twenty years have passed since the sub-editor of a rather
important paper in a town in the Midlands interviewed, on a matter of
professional etiquette, the editor--he was an Irishman--of a struggling
organ in the same town.
It appeared that the chief reporter of the sub-editor’s paper had given
some paragraph of news to a brother on the second paper, and yet when
the latter was respectfully asked for an equivalent, he refused it;
hence the need for diplomatic representations.
“I say that our reporters must have a _quid pro quo_ in every case where
they have given a par. to yours,” said the sub-editor, who was entrusted
with the negotiations.
“Must have a what?” asked the Irish editor. “A _quid pro quo_,” said the
sub-editor. “Now I’ve come here for the _quid_ and I don’t mean to go
until I get it.”
The editor looked at him, then felt for something in his waistcoat
pocket. Producing a piece of that sort of tobacco known as Limerick
twist, he bit it in two, and offered one portion to the sub-editor,
saying, “There’s your quid for you; but, so help me Gad, I’ve only got
what you see in my mouth to last me till morning.”