_A humble suggestion--The reviewer from Texas--His treatment of the
story of Joseph and his Brethren--A few flare-up headings--The
Swiss pastor--Some musical critics--“Il Don Giovanni”--A subtle
point--Newspaper suppers--Another suggestion--The bitter cry of the
journalist--The plurality of porridge--An object lesson superior to
grammatical rules--The bloater as a supper dish--Scarcely an unequivocal
success._
I HOPE I may not be going too far when I express the hope in this place
that any critic who finds out that some of my jottings are ancient will
do me the favour to state where the originals are to be found. I have
sufficient curiosity to wish to see how far the jottings deviate from
the originals.
In the preparation of stories for the Press it is, I feel more impressed
every day, absolutely necessary to bear in mind the authentic case of
the young sailor’s mother who abused him for telling her so palpably
impossible a yarn about his having seen fish rise from the water and fly
along like birds, but who was quite ready to accept his account of the
crimson expanse of the Red Sea. Some of the most interesting incidents
that have actually come under my notice could not possibly be published
if accuracy were strictly observed as to the details. They are “owre
true” to obtain credence..
In this category, however, I do not include the story about the
gentleman from Texas who, after trying various employments in Boston to
gain a dishonest livelihood, represented himself at a newspaper office
as a journalist, and only asked for a trial job. The editor, believing
he saw an excellent way of getting rid of a parcel of books that had
come for review, flung him the lot and told him to write three-quarters
of a column of flare-up head-lines, and a quarter of reviews, and maybe
some fool might be attracted to the book column. Now, at the top of the
batch there chanced to be the first instalment of a new Polyglot Bible,
after the plan so successfully adopted by Messrs. Bagster, about to
be issued in parts, and the reviewer failed to recognise the Book of
Genesis, which he accordingly read for fetching head-lines. The result
of his labours by some oversight appeared in the next issue of the
paper, and attracted a considerable amount of interest in religious
circles in Boston.
[Illustration: 0136]
The remaining quarter of a column was occupied by a circumstantial
and highly colloquial account of the incidents recorded in the Book of
Genesis, and it very plainly suggested that the work had been published
by Messrs. Hoskins as a satire upon the success of the Hebrew race in
the New England States. The reviewer even made an attempt to identify
Joseph with a prominent Republican politician, and Potiphar’s wife with
the Democratic party, who were alleged to be making overtures to the
same gentleman.
But I really did once meet with a sub-editor who had reviewed “The Swiss
Family Robinson” as a new work. He commenced by telling the readers
of the newspaper that the book was a wholesome story of a worthy Swiss
pastor, and so forth.
I also knew a musical critic who, on being entrusted with the duty of
writing a notice of _Il Don Giovanni_, as performed by the Carl Rosa
Company, began as follows: “Don Giovanni, the gentleman from whom the
opera takes its name, was a licentious Spanish nobleman of the past
century.” The notice gave some account of the _affaires_ of this
newly-discovered reprobate, glossing over the Zerlina business rather
more than Mozart thought necessary to do, but being very bitter against
Leporello, “his valet and confidant,” and finally expressing the opinion
somewhat dogmatically that “few of the public would be disposed to say
that the fate which overtook this callous scoundrel was not well earned
by his persistence in a course of unjustifiable vice. The music is
tuneful and was much encored.”
Upon the occasion of this particular representation I recollect that I
wrote, “An Italian version of a Spanish story, set to music by a German,
conducted by a Frenchman, and interpreted by a Belgian, a Swiss, an
Irishman and a Canadian--this is what is meant by English Opera.”
My notice gave great offence; but the other was considered excellent.
The moral tone that pervaded it was most praiseworthy, the people said.
And so it was.
I have got about five hundred musical jottings which, if provoked, I
may one day publish; but, meantime, I cannot refrain from giving one
illustration of the way in which musical notices were managed long ago.
Madame Adelina Patti had made her first (and farewell) appearance in the
town where I was located. I was engaged about two o’clock in the morning
putting what I considered to be the finishing touches to the column
which I had written about the diva’s concert, when the reporter of the
leading paper burst into the room in which I was writing. He was in
rather a dishevelled condition, and he approached me and whispered that
he wanted to ask me a question outside--there were others in the room. I
went through the door with him and inquired what I could do for him.
“I was marked for that blessed concert, and I went too, and now I’m
writing the notice,” said he. “But what I want to know is this--_Is
Patti a soprano or a contralto?_”
*****
I have just now discovered that it would be unwise for me to continue
very much farther these reminiscences of editors and sub-editors, the
fact being that I have some jottings about every one of the race whom
I have ever met, and when one gets into a desultory vein of anecdotage
like that in which I now find myself for the first time in my life,
one is liable to exhaust a reader’s forbearance before one’s legitimate
subject has become exhausted. I think it may be prudent to make a
diversion at this period from the sub-editors of the past to the suppers
of the newspaper office. Gastronomy as a science is not drawn out to its
finest point within these precincts. There is still something left to be
desired by such persons as are fastidious. I have for long thought that
it would be by no means extravagant to expect every newspaper office to
be supplied with a kitchen, properly furnished, and with the “good plain
cook,” who so constantly figures in the columns (advertising), at hand
to turn out the suppers for all departments engaged in the production of
the paper.
It is inconvenient for an editor to be compelled to cook his own supper
at his gas stove, while the flimsies of the speech upon which he is
writing are being laid on his desk by the sub-editor, and the foreman’s
messenger is asking for them almost before they have ceased to flutter
in the cooling draught created by opening the door. Equally inconvenient
is it for the sub-editor and the reporters to get something to prevent
them from succumbing to starvation. The compositors in some offices
have lately instituted a rule by which they “knock off” for supper at
half-past ten; but what sort of a meal do they get to sustain them until
four in the morning? I have no hesitation in pronouncing it to be almost
as indifferent as that upon which the editor is forced to subsist for,
perhaps, the same period. I have seen the compositors--some of them
earning £5 a week--crouching under their cases, munching hunches
(the onomatopæia is Homeric) of bread, while their cans of tea--that
abomination of cold tea warmed up--were stewing over their gas burners.
In the sub-editors’ room, and the reporters’ room, tea was also being
cooked, or bottles of stout drunk, the accompanying, comestibles being
bread or biscuits. After swallowing tea that has been stewing on its
leaves for half-an-hour, and eating a slab of office bread out of one
hand while the other holds the pen, the editor writes an article on
the grievances of shopmen who are only allowed an hour for dinner and
half-an-hour for tea; or, upon the slavery of a barmaid; or, perhaps,
composes a nice chatty half-column on the progress of dyspepsia and the
necessity for attending carefully to one’s diet.
Now, I affirm that no newspaper office should be without a kitchen. The
compositors should be given a chance of obtaining all the comforts of
home at a lesser cost than they could be provided at home; and later on
in the night the reporters, sub-editors, and editor should be able to
send up messages as to the hour they mean to take supper, and the dish
which they would like to have. Here is an opportunity for the Institute
of Journalists. Let them take sweet counsel together on the great
kitchen question, and pass a resolution “that in the opinion of the
Institute a kitchen in complete working order should form part of every
morning newspaper office; and that a cook, holding a certificate from
South Kensington, or, better still, Mrs. Marshall, should be regarded as
essential to the working staff as the editor.”
I do not say that a box of Partagas, or Carolinas, should be provided
by the management for every room occupied by the literary staff; though
undoubtedly a move in the right direction, yet I fear that public
feeling has not yet been sufficiently aroused by the bitter cry of the
journalist, to make the cigar-box and the club chair probable; but I do
say that since journalism has become a profession, those who practise it
should be treated as if they were as deserving of consideration as the
salesmen in drapers’ shops. Surely, as we have sent the bitter cry into
all the ends of the earth on behalf of others, we might be permitted the
luxury of a little bitter cry on our own account.
*****
This brings me down to the recollections I retain of the strange ideas
that some of the staff of journals with which I have been connected,
possessed as to the most appropriate menu for supper. One of these
gentlemen, for instance, was accustomed to make oatmeal porridge in a
saucepan for himself about two o’clock in the morning. When accused of
being a Scotchman, he indignantly denied that he was one. He admitted,
however, that he was an Ulsterman, and this was considered even worse
by his accusers. He invariably alluded to the porridge in the plural,
calling it “them.” I asked him one night why the thing was entitled to
a plural, and he said it was because no one but a blue-pencilled fool
would allude to it as otherwise. I had the curiosity to inquire farther
how much porridge was necessary to be in the saucepan before it became
entitled to a plural; if, for instance, there was only a spoonful,
surely it would be rather absurd to still speak of it as “them.” He
replied, after some thought, that though he had never considered the
matter in all its bearings, yet his impression was that even a spoonful
was entitled to a plural.
“Did you ever hear any one allude to brose as ‘it’?” he asked.
I admitted that I never had.
“Then if you call brose ‘them,’ why shouldn’t you call stirabout
‘them’?” he asked, triumphantly.
“I must confess that I never had the matter brought so forcibly before
me,” said I.
As he was going to “sup them,” as he termed the operation of ladling the
contents of the saucepan into his mouth, I hastily left the room. I have
eaten tiffin within easy reach of a dozen lepers on Robben Island in
Table Bay, I have taken a hearty supper in a tent through which a camel
every now and again thrust its nose, I have enjoyed a biltong sandwich
on the seat of an African bullock waggon with a Kaffir beside me, I have
even eaten a sausage snatched by the proprietor from the seething panful
in the window of a shop in the Euston Road--I did so to celebrate the
success of a play of mine at the Grand Theatre--but I could not remain
in the room while that literary gentleman partook of that simple supper
of his.
On my return when he had finished I never failed to allow in the most
cordial way the right of the preparation to a plural. It was to be
found in every part of the room; the table, the chairs, the floor, the
fireplace, the walls, the ceiling--all bore token to the fact that it
was not one but many.
In the hands of a true Ulsterman stirabout “are” a terrible weapon.
As a mural decorative medium “they” leave much to be desired.
*****
Only one man connected with the Press did
I ever know addicted to the bloater as a supper dish. The man came among
us like a shadow and disappeared as such, after a week of incompetence;
but he left a memory behind him that not all the perfumes of Arabia can
neutralise. It was about one o’clock in the morning--he had come on duty
that night--that there floated through the newspaper office a dense blue
smoke and a smell--such a smell! It was of about the same density as
an ironclad. One felt oneself struggling through it as though it were a
mass of chilled steel plates, backed with soft iron. On the upper floor
we were built in by it, so to speak. It arose on every side of us like
the wall of a prison, and we kept groping around it for a hole large
enough to allow of our crawling through. Two of us, after battering at
that smell for a quarter of an hour, at last discovered a narrow passage
in it made by a current of air from an open window, and having squeezed
ourselves through, we ran downstairs to the sub-editors’ room.
Through the crawling blue smoke we could just make out the figure of
a man standing in his shirt sleeves in front of the fire using a large
two-pronged iron fork as a toothpick. On a plate on the table lay the
dislocated backbone of a red herring (_harengus rufus_).
The man was perfectly self-possessed. We questioned him closely about
the origin of the smoke and the smell, and he replied that, without
going so far as to pronounce a dogmatic opinion on the subject, and
while he was quite ready to accept any reasonable suggestion on
the matter from either of us, he, for his part, would not be at all
surprised if it were found on investigation that both smoke and smell
were due to his having openly cooked a rather bloated specimen of the
Yarmouth bloater. He always had one for his supper, he said; critically,
when not too pungent--he disliked them too pungent--he considered that
a full-grown bloater, well preserved for its years and considering the
knocking about that it must have had, was fully equal to a beefsteak.
There was much more practical eating in it, he should say, speaking as
man to man. And it was so very simple--that was its great charm.
For himself, he never could bear made-up dishes; they were, he thought,
usually rich, and he had a poor-enough digestion, so that he could not
afford to trifle with it.
Just then the foreman loomed through the dense smoke, and, being
confronted with the hydra-headed smell, he boldly grappled with it, and
after a fierce contest, he succeeded in strangling one of the heads and
then set his foot on it. He hurriedly explained to the subeditor that
all the hands who had lifted the copy that had been sent out were
setting it up with bowls of water beside them to save themselves the
trouble of going to the water-tap for a drink.
The next day the clerks in the mercantile department were working with
bottles of carbolic under their noses, and every now and again a note
would be brought in from a subscriber ordering his paper to be stopped
until a new consignment of printers’ ink should arrive, in which the
chief ingredient was not so pungent.
At the end of a week the sub-editor was given a month’s salary and an
excellent testimonial, and was dismissed. The proprietor of the journal
had the sub-editors’ room freshly painted and papered, and made the
assistant-editor a present of two pounds to buy a new coat to replace
the one which, having hung in the room for an entire night, had to be
burnt, no cleaner being found who would accept the risk of purifying it.
The cleaners all said that they would not run the chance of having all
the contents of their vats left on their hands. They weren’t as a rule
squeamish in the matter of smells; they only drew the line at creosote,
and the coat was a long way on the other side.
Seven years have passed since that sub-editor partook of that simple
supper, and yet I hear that every night drag-hounds howl at the door of
the room, and strangers on entering sniff, saying,--
“Whew! there’s a barrel of red herrings somewhere about.”