THE COLUMN
_(James Orlebar Cloyster’s narrative continued)_
After the first week “On Your Way,” on the _Orb_, offered hardly any
difficulty. The source of material was the morning papers, which were
placed in a pile on our table at nine o’clock. The halfpenny papers
were our principal support. Gresham and I each took one, and picked it
clean. We attended first to the Subject of the Day. This was generally
good for two or three paragraphs of verbal fooling. There was a sort of
tradition that the first half-dozen paragraphs should be topical. The
rest might be topical or not, as occasion served.
The column usually opened with a one-line pun—Gresham’s invention.
Gresham was a man of unparalleled energy and ingenuity. He had created
several of the typical characters who appeared from time to time in “On
Your Way,” as, for instance, Mrs. Jenkinson, our Mrs. Malaprop, and
Jones junior, our “howler” manufacturing schoolboy. He was also a stout
apostle of a mode of expression which he called “funny language.” Thus,
instead of writing boldly: “There is a rumour that——,” I was taught to
say, “It has got about that——.” This sounds funnier in print, so
Gresham said. I could never see it myself.
Gresham had a way of seizing on any bizarre incident reported in the
morning papers, enfolding it in “funny language,” adding a pun, and
thus making it his own. He had a cunning mastery of periphrasis, and a
telling command of adverbs.
Here is an illustration. An account was given one morning by the
Central news of the breaking into of a house at Johnsonville (Mich.) by
a negro, who had stolen a quantity of greenbacks. The thief, escaping
across some fields, was attacked by a cow, which, after severely
injuring the negro, ate the greenbacks.
Gresham’s unacknowledged version of the episode ran as follows:
“The sleepy god had got the stranglehold on John Denville when Caesar
Bones, a coloured gentleman, entered John’s house at Johnsonville
(Mich.) about midnight. Did the nocturnal caller disturb his slumbering
host? No. Caesar Bones has the finer feelings. But as he was
noiselessly retiring, what did he see? Why, a pile of greenbacks which
John had thoughtlessly put away in a fire-proof safe.”
To prevent the story being cut out by the editor, who revised all the
proofs of the column, with the words “too long” scribbled against it,
Gresham continued his tale in another paragraph.
“‘Dis am berry insecure,’ murmured the visitor to himself,
transplanting the notes in a neighbourly way into his pocket. Mark the
sequel. The noble Caesar met, on his homeward path, an irritable
cudster. The encounter was brief. Caesar went weak in the second round,
and took the count in the third. Elated by her triumph, and hungry from
her exertions, the horned quadruped nosed the wad of paper money and
daringly devoured it. Caesar has told the court that if he is convicted
of felony, he will arraign the owner of the ostrich-like bovine on a
charge of receiving stolen goods. The owner merely ejaculates ‘Black
male!’”
On his day Gresham could write the column and have a hundred lines over
by ten o’clock. I, too, found plenty of copy as a rule, though I
continued my practice of doing a few paragraphs overnight. But every
now and then fearful days would come, when the papers were empty of
material for our purposes, and when two out of every half-dozen
paragraphs which we did succeed in hammering out were returned deleted
on the editor’s proof.
The tension at these times used to be acute. The head printer would
send up a relay of small and grubby boys to remind us that “On Your
Way” was fifty lines short. At ten o’clock he would come in person, and
be plaintive.
Gresham, the old hand, applied to such occasions desperate remedies. He
would manufacture out of even the most pointless item of news two
paragraphs by adding to his first the words, “This reminds us of Mr.
Punch’s famous story.” He would then go through the bound volumes of
_Punch_—we had about a dozen in the room—with lightning speed until he
chanced upon a more or less appropriate tag.
Those were mornings when verses would be padded out from three stanzas
to five, Gresham turning them out under fifteen minutes. He had a
wonderful facility for verse.
As a last expedient one fell back upon a standing column, a moth-eaten
collection of alleged jests which had been set up years ago to meet the
worst emergencies. It was, however, considered a confession of weakness
and a degradation to use this column.
We had also in our drawer a book of American witticisms, published in
New York. To cut one out, preface it with “A good American story comes
to hand,” and pin it on a slip was a pleasing variation of the usual
mode of constructing a paragraph. Gresham and I each had our favourite
method. Personally, I had always a partiality for dealing with
“buffers.” “The brakes refused to act, and the train struck the buffers
at the end of the platform” invariably suggested that if elderly
gentlemen would abstain from loitering on railway platforms, they would
not get hurt in this way.
Gresham had a similar liking for “turns.” “The performance at the
Frivoli Music Hall was in full swing when the scenery was noticed to be
on fire. The audience got a turn. An extra turn.”
Julian Eversleigh, to whom I told my experiences on the _Orb_, said he
admired the spirit with which I entered into my duties. He said,
moreover, that I had a future before me, not only as a journalist, but
as a writer.
Nor, indeed, could I help seeing for myself that I was getting on. I
was making a fair income now, and had every prospect of making a much
better one. My market was not restricted. Verses, articles, and fiction
from my pen were being accepted with moderate regularity by many of the
minor periodicals. My scope was growing distinctly wider. I found, too,
that my work seemed to meet with a good deal more success when I sent
it in from the _Orb_, with a letter to the editor on _Orb_ notepaper.
Altogether, my five weeks on the _Orb_ were invaluable to me. I ought
to have paid rather than have taken payment for working on the column.
By the time Fermin came back from Scotland to turn me out, I was a
professional. I had learned the art of writing against time. I had
learned to ignore noise, which, for a writer in London, is the most
valuable quality of all. Every day at the _Orb_ I had had to turn out
my stuff with the hum of the Strand traffic in my ears, varied by an
occasional barrel-organ, the whistling of popular songs by the
printers, whose window faced ours, and the clatter of a typewriter in
the next room. Often I had to turn out a paragraph or a verse while
listening and making appropriate replies to some other member of the
staff, who had wandered into our room to pass the time of day or read
out a bit of his own stuff which had happened to please him
particularly. All this gave me a power of concentration, without which
writing is difficult in this city of noises.
The friendship I formed with Gresham too, besides being pleasant, was
of infinite service to me. He knew all about the game. I followed his
advice, and prospered. His encouragement was as valuable as his advice.
He was my pilot, and saw me, at great trouble to himself, through the
dangerous waters.
I foresaw that the future held out positive hope that my marriage with
Margaret would become possible. And yet——
Pausing in the midst of my castle-building, I suffered a sense of
revulsion. I had been brought up to believe that the only adjective
that could be coupled with the noun “journalism” was “precarious.” Was
I not, as Gresham would have said, solving an addition sum in infantile
poultry before their mother, the feathered denizen of the farmyard, had
lured them from their shell? Was I not mistaking a flash in the pan for
a genuine success?
These thoughts numbed my fingers in the act of writing to Margaret.
Instead, therefore, of the jubilant letter I had intended to send her,
I wrote one of quite a different tone. I mentioned the arduous nature
of my work. I referred to the struggle in which I was engaged. I
indicated cleverly that I was a man of extraordinary courage battling
with fate. I implied that I made just enough to live on.
It would have been cruel to arouse expectations which might never be
fulfilled. In this letter, accordingly, and in subsequent letters, I
rather went to the opposite extreme. Out of pure regard for Margaret, I
painted my case unnecessarily black. Considerations of a similar nature
prompted me to keep on my lodging in Walpole Street. I had two rooms
instead of one, but they were furnished severely and with nothing but
the barest necessaries.
I told myself through it all that I loved Margaret as dearly as ever.
Yet there were moments, and they seemed to come more frequently as the
days went on, when I found myself wondering. Did I really want to give
up all this? The untidiness, the scratch meals, the nights with Julian?
And, when I was honest, I answered, No.
Somehow Margaret seemed out of place in this new world of mine.