In effect, it proved that there was not one of us who had not slept in
that Hotel of the Beautiful Star which is always open to everybody. We
had all been frequent guests there, and now we were all prosperous,
and had found other and more comfortable lodgings. There is a gentler
brotherhood to be found among men who have put up in that great
caravanserai than can be looked for elsewhere. He jests at scars that
never felt a wound, and a fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind.
There are many people still alive who remember the name of George
Dawson. There used to be thousands who recognized it with veneration
and affection. He was my first chief, editor of the _Birmingham Morning
News_, and had been my idol for years. My red-letter nights were when
he came over to my native town of West Bromwich to lecture for the Young
Men's Christian Association there on Tennyson, 'Vanity Fair,' Oliver
Goldsmith, and kindred themes.
Every Sunday night it was my habit to tramp with a friend of mine, dead
long ago, into Birmingham to hear Dawson preach in the Church of the
Saviour. The trains ran awkwardly for us, and many scores of times poor
Ned and myself walked the five miles out and five miles home in rain and
snow and summer weather to listen to the helpful and inspiriting words
of the strongest and most helpful man I have ever known.
I am not sure at this time of day what I should think of George Dawson
if he still survived; but nothing can now diminish the affection and
reverence with which I bless his memory. I had been writing prose and
verse for the local journals for a year or two. I was proud and pleased
beyond expression to be allowed to write the political leaders for the
_Wednesday Advertiser_. I got no pay, and I dare say the editor was as
pleased to find an enthusiast who did his work for nothing as I was to
be allowed to do it. In practical journalism I had had no experience
whatever; but when Dawson was announced as the editor of the forthcoming
_Birmingham Morning News_ I wrote to him, asking to be allowed to
join the staff. I had already secured a single meeting with him a year
before, and he had spoken not unkindly of some juvenile verses which I
had dared to submit to his judgment
He proved to be as well acquainted with practical journalism as myself,
for in answer to my application he at once offered me the post of
sub-editor. Dr. Langford, who held actual command, set his veto on this
rather absurd appointment, and told me that if I wished to join the
journalistic guild at all I must begin at the beginning. I asked what
the beginning might be, and learned that the lowest grade in journalism
in the provinces is filled by the police-court reporter. The salary
offered was 25s. a week. The work began at eleven o'clock in the
morning and finished at about eleven o'clock at night. I have known many
sleepless nights since then; but the first entirely wakeful time I had
passed between the sheets was spent in the mental discussion of that
offer. There was weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth at home when
I decided to accept it. The journal was very loosely conducted--a leader
in the Birmingham Daily Post spoke of us once as the people across
the street who were playing at journalism--and the junior reporter
was permitted to write leaders, theatrical criticisms, and a series of
articles on the works of Thomas Carlyle, then first appearing in popular
form in a monthly issue.
I have always maintained, and must always continue to believe, that
there is no school for a novelist which can equal that of journalism.
In the police court, at inquests in the little upper rooms of tenth-rate
public-houses, and in the hospitals which it was my business to visit
nightly, I began to learn and understand the poor. I began on my own
account to investigate their condition, and as a result of one or two
articles about the Birmingham slums, was promoted at a bound from the
post of police-court reporter to that of Special Correspondent. Six
guineas a week, with a guinea a day for expenses, looked like an entry
into Eldorado. There was a good deal of heartburning and jealousy
amongst the members of the staff; but I dare say all that is forgotten
long ago.
The first real chance I got was afforded me by the first election by
ballot which took place in England. This was at Pontefract, where the
Hon. Hugh Childers was elected in a contest against Lord Pollington.
Some barrister-at-law had published a synopsis of the Ballot Act, which
I bought for a shilling at New Street Station and studied all the way to
Pontefract I sent off five columns of copy by rail in time to catch
the morning issue of the paper, and received the first open sign of
editorial favour on my return in the form of a cheque for ten pounds
over and above my charges. The money was welcome enough; but that it
should come from the hands of my hero and man of men, and should
be accompanied by words of unqualified approval, was, I think, more
inspiriting than anything could possibly be to me now. A very little
while later Dawson came to me with a new commission.
'I hate this kind of business,' he said, 'but it has to be done, and we
will do it once for all.'
There was an execution to take place at Worcester. One Edward Hughes,
a plasterer, I think, had murdered his wife under circumstances of
extraordinary provocation. The woman had left him once with a paramour,
and when she was deserted he had taken her back again. She left him a
second time and was again deserted, and again he condoned her offence.
She left him a third time, and he went to look for her. She was living
in clover, and she jeered when he begged her to return. It was set forth
in evidence that he had told her that he would see her once more.
He walked home--a distance of three or four miles--borrowed a razor,
returned to the house in which the woman was living, asked for an
interview outside in the darkness, and there almost severed her head
from her body. He surrendered himself immediately to the police, was
tried for his life, and sentenced to be hanged.
Rightly or wrongly, the man's story inspired me with a dreadful
sympathy. I cannot help thinking to this day that the tragedy of that
man's life went unappreciated, and that his long-suffering devotion
and the passion of jealousy which at length overcame him might have
furnished Shakspeare himself with a theme as terrible as he found in
'Othello.' Anyway, the man was to be hanged and I was deputed to attend
the execution.
At that time I had never been a witness at a death scene. I have seen
thousands hurried out of life since then; and though even now I should
find an execution ugly and repellant, I recall with some astonishment
the agony of horror which this commission cost me. I had an introduction
to the sub-sheriff and another to the governor of the gaol; and I
presented these at the gaol itself on a night of rainy misery which was
in complete accord with my own feelings. I went hoping with all my heart
that the permission to attend the awful ceremony of the next morning
would be refused. It was accorded, and I left the gaol in a sick whirl
of pity and horror.
I shall remember whilst I remember anything my last look at the gloomy
building from the fields which lie between it and the town. The flying
afterguard of the late storm was hurrying across the sky, the fields
were sodden, and rainpools lay here and there reflecting the dull steely
hue of the heavens. A single light burned red and baleful in one window,
and right over the black bulk of the gaol one star beamed. It seemed to
me like a promise of mercy beyond, and I went back to my hotel filled
with thoughts which will hardly bear translation.
Next day I had a first lesson in one or two things. I saw death for the
first time; for the first time in my life I saw a human creature in the
extremity of fear, and I had my first lesson in human stupidity. I have
told the story of this execution in another place and have no mind
to repeat it here. But I shall never forget the spidery black-painted
galleries and staircases and the whitewashed walls of the corridor.
I shall never forget the living man who stood trembling and almost
unconscious in the very gulf of cowardice and horror. I shall never
forget the face of the wretched young chaplain who, like myself, found
himself face to face with his first encounter with sudden death, and
who, poor soul, had over-primed himself with stimulant. I shall never
forget, either, that ghoul of a Calcraft, with his disreputable grey
hair, his disreputable undertaker's suit of black, and a million dirty
pin-pricks which marked every pore of the skin of his face. Calcraft
took the business business-like, and pinioned his man in the cell
(with a terror-stricken half-dozen of us looking on) as calmly to all
appearance as if he had been a tailor fitting on a coat.
The chaplain read the Burial Service, or such portion of it as is
reserved for these occasions, in a thick and indistinct voice. A bell
clanged every half-minute or thereabouts, and it seemed to me as if
it had always been ringing and would always ring. I have the dimmest
notion--indeed, to speak the truth, I have no idea at all--as to how the
procession formed and how we found ourselves at the foot of the gallows.
The doomed man gabbled a prayer under his breath at galloping speed, the
words tumbling one over the other. 'Lord Jesus have mercy upon me and
receive my spirit.' The hapless chaplain read the service. Calcraft
bustled ahead. The bell boomed. Hughes came to the foot of the gallows,
and I counted mechanically nineteen black steps, fresh-tarred and
sticky. 'I can't get up,' said the murderer. A genial warder clapped him
on the shoulder, for all the world as if there had been no mischief in
the business. Judging by look and accent, the one man might have invited
the other to mount the stairs of a restaurant. 'You'll get up right
enough,' said the warder. He got up, and they hanged him.
Where everything was strange and dreamlike, the oddest thing of all
was to see Calcraft take the pinioned fin-like hand of the prisoner and
shake it when he had drawn the white cap over the face and arranged
the rope. He came creaking in new boots down the sticky steps of the
gallows, pulled a rope to free a support which ran on a single wheel in
an iron groove, and the man was dead in a second. The white cap fitted
close to his face, and the thin white linen took a momentary stain of
purple, as if a bag of blackberries had been bruised and had suddenly
exuded the juice of the fruit. It sagged away a moment later and assumed
its natural hue.
I learned from the evening paper and from the journals of next morning
that the prisoner met his fate with equanimity. I think that in that
report I bottomed the depths of human stupidity, if such a thing is
possible. I had never seen a man afraid before; and, when I found time
to think about it, I prayed that I might never see that shameful and
awful sight again.