Where's Eliza? Who was the man in the iron mask? Who was Junius? Whose
were the bones discovered last year in a carpet-bag under
Waterloo-bridge? You cannot tell. Neither can I tell you who is our
London Correspondent. Yet he exists. I find traces of him in the most
Boeotian districts of England.
"Caledonia, stern and wild,
Fit nurse for a poetic child,"
knows him. In "Tara's halls" he has superseded the harp, and is a
presence and a power. Before newspapers were, when Addison was writing
the "Spectator," and Dick Steele "Tatlers" innumerable, and De Foe his
Review and all sorts of romances, in Grub-street there was an immense
deal of activity in the way of letter writing. Country gentlemen wanted
news, and were willing to pay for it. When there was a frost or when it
was wet, when the nights were long or amusements few, when the squire was
laid up with the gout or when my lady had the vapours, it was pleasant to
read who ate cheesecakes and syllabubs at Spring Gardens, who drank
coffee at Button's or chocolate at the Cocoa Tree, what was the gossip of
the October or Kit Kat clubs, what had become of Mrs. Bracegirdle, and
how Mrs. Oldfield triumphed on the stage. Nor did the letter-writer stop
here. In those days courtiers had two faces. There was one King _de
facto_, and another _de jure divino_. There was a Court at St. Germains
as well as at St. James's. There were Jacobites as well as Hanoverians.
There were plots and intrigues--Popish and Protestant--and in the dark
days before Christmas, in old country houses, letters full of all the
rumours thus created were welcomed. But the age made progress.
Newspapers were established in all the leading towns of the country, and
the need of the letter-writer vanished, but only for a while. In his
desire to cater for the public, and to outbid his competitors, the
country newspaper revived the London correspondent, but on an extended
scale. Now scarce a country newspaper exists that does not avail itself
of his services.
But from the general let me descend to the particular. I take up the
"Little Pedlington Gazette," and I find our London Correspondent dates
from --- Club, St. James's-square. Of course, in a free country, a man
may date his letters where he likes; but I'll be bound to say the letter
is written in a cheap coffee-house in Chancery-lane, and all its contents
are culled from that day's papers. From the letter, however, I am led to
suppose that the writer is a member of the House of Commons--that he has
the run of the clubs--that royal personages are not unfamiliar with
him--and that his intimacy with Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli is only
equalled by his friendship with Palmerston and Russell. Our London
Correspondent has very wonderful eyes, and I am sure his ears must be
longer than those of any other animal extant. I have tried the
Strangers' Gallery in the House of Commons, and the Speaker's, and the
Reporters', and in all I have the utmost difficulty in distinguishing
emotions which an animated debate must excite in the disputants. The
Parliamentary fashion is for a minister, when attacked, to sit with his
hat so pulled down over his eyes that you can scarce see a feature. Lord
John always sits in this way, so does Lord Palmerston. Our London
Correspondent can see what no one else can, and there is not a wince of
the galled jade but what is visible to his eyes. He sees Palmerston
winking to Sir George Grey, and hears what Cornewall Lewis whispers to
Lowe. Lord John does not chuckle quietly to himself, nor Disraeli
whisper a sarcasm, nor Walpole meditate a joke, but he hears it. He
possesses a rare and blessed gift of ubiquity. At the very time that he
is watching these exalted personages in the House, he is chatting
confidentially with Hayter in the lobby, or looking in at the Opera, or
gossiping behind the scenes with Wright and Paul Bedford, or having a
chop at the Garrick with Thackeray, or shining at Lady Plantagenet's
soiree "as a bright particular star." I wonder the dear creature's head
is not quite turned with the attentions he receives from the nobility,
with whom he is as intimate as I with Smiths and Browns. Occasionally I
meet with a few London Correspondents imbibing together their frugal
half-and-half. It does me good to hear them. It reminds me of Elia's
Captain Jackson's bacchanalian orgies, where "wine we had none, nor,
except on very rare occasions, spirits; but the sensation of wine was
there." Says one to another, "Oh, how did you get on last night?"
"Pretty well," is the reply, "considering there were none but lords
there." Walking in a low neighbourhood, I meet one. I ask after his
health. "Devilish seedy," says he; "up too late last night at Lady ---,"
naming one of the proudest members of the proudest aristocracies in the
world. Yet are they too uncultivated, and hairy, and _outre_, to pass
with credit in Belgravia. Their literary efforts are not remarkable for
polish. They affect a graphic style, and are not sparing in the use of
slang. They eschew the classics, and evince but a very superficial
knowledge of literature, save that of the current year. They are chiefly
strong in politics, and for the actors on that stage have that contempt
which familiarity is said to breed, but which, as in the present case,
sometimes flourishes without it. They view the busy scene as the gods of
Epicurus the follies of mankind. This man is a fool--that a tool. As a
rule, officials are run down, and some illustrious-obscure--perhaps the
borough representative, if he is on good terms with the paper--is
suspiciously and inordinately puffed up. I often wish our London
Correspondent would address the House. What a figure he would make on
some matter of business, the details of which it is impossible to make
interesting! The chances are that he is a Scotchman or an Irishman; that
his impudence is merely confined to paper; that he does not shine either
at the Temple Forum or Codgers' Hall. There would be a burst of laughter
when he rose. They ought to be more genial critics. I was once in the
lobby when our London Correspondent of a paper published in a large
manufacturing town came up to me. I had not seen him for some years.
After the usual inquiries, said he, "What a capital cutting that was in
the --- of your book!" "You are mistaken," said I; "the book was by so
and so." Our friend, very crest-fallen, immediately rushed off without
bidding us goodbye. Once upon a time one of them produced a great
sensation. Our readers will remember, when Lord John Russell dismissed
Lord Palmerston, what a cry was raised about German influences by a
certain morning print which seems to exist merely for the sake of
disgusting intelligent people with a righteous cause. A German paper was
referred to. Well, the gentleman to whom I have alluded was the
correspondent of that paper, and one day, in the absence of anything of
importance, he had manufactured the article very innocently out of the
extraordinary paragraphs in which the morning print aforesaid rejoices,
little dreaming, that in Parliament and out his letter would be quoted as
evidence of a deeply-laid conspiracy to weaken the power of Lord
Palmerston and undermine European liberty.
But I have not yet said who our London Correspondent is. The better
class of them I think are Parliamentary reporters. There was a paper
published in London kept alive merely by its Paris Correspondent. No
other paper had such a correspondent, or abounded in such extraordinary
tales and scandal. Yet the correspondent's plan was very simple. Every
new tale and drama which came out in Paris was worked up and sent to
London as a reality, that was all. In a less degree our London
Correspondent does the same, and in quiet country towns there is great
wonder and lifting up of hands, especially if, as was once the case, the
wrong letter is sent, and the Tory paper abounds with sneers at Lord
Derby and the squirearchy, a _contretemps_ which is avoided if the plan
of one London Correspondent be adopted, who supplies thirteen different
papers with the same letter at five shillings each--a plan, however, not
sanctioned by respectable papers, who pay a good price and get often a
good article, and for whose letters, if a little too highly coloured and
seasoned, the public taste is more to blame than the newspaper
proprietor, or his painstaking London Correspondent. I believe _the_ Mr.
Russell, of the _Times_, was the London Correspondent of one of the Irish
papers, and such papers as the _Liverpool Albion_, _Cambridge
Independent_, and a few others I could name, evidently have for London
Correspondents literary men of superior position and respectability.