II

I wrote three small-type columns--three columns of leaded minion--about

that execution, describing everything I had seen with a studied

minuteness. Dawson was nervous about the whole affair, and, whilst the

copy was yet in the hands of the printer, asked two or three times what

had been done with the theme. He was kept at bay by the subeditor, who

scented a sensation, and was afraid that the editor-in-chief might cut

the copy to pieces. Dawson was purposely kept waiting for proofs so long

that at last he went home without seeing them; and he often spoke to me

afterwards of the rage and anguish he felt when he opened the paper at

his breakfast-table and found that great mass of space devoted to the

report of an execution. He began, so he told me, by reading the last

paragraph first; then he read the paragraph preceding it; and next,

beginning resolutely at the beginning, found himself compelled to read

the whole ghastly narrative clean through. The machine was at work

all day to supply the local demand for this particular horror, and Mr.

George Augustus Sala wrote specially to ask who was the author of the

narrative. I began to think my fortune made.

The journalist is like the doctor, his services are in requisition

mainly in times of trouble. The Black Country which lies north of

Birmingham is full of disaster, and the special correspondent has a big

field there. Quite early in my career I was sent out to Pelsall Hall,

near Walsall, where a mine had been flooded and two-and-thirty men were

known to be in the workings. I was born and bred in the mining district,

and was familiar with the heroism of the miners. They are not all

heroes, and even those who are are not always heroic. But use breeds a

curious indifference to danger.

I remember once paying a visit to the Tump Pit at or near Rowley Regis

at a time when the men were taking their midday meal. There was a sort

of Hall of Eblis there, a roof thirty feet high or thereabouts, and the

men sat in a darkness dimly revealed by the light of one or two

tallow candles. Down in the midst of them fell a portion of the rocky

roof--enough to have filled a wheelbarrow, and enough certainly to have

put out the vital spark of any man on whom it might have fallen. One

coal-grimed man, at whose feet the mass had fallen, looked up placidly

and said, 'That stuck up till it couldn't stick no longer;' and that

was all that was said about the matter. I suppose there was a tacit

recognition of the fact that the same thing might happen in any part of

the mine at any moment, and that it was useless to attempt to run

away from it. A passive scorn of danger is an essential element in the

miner's life, and when need arises he shows an active scorn of it which

is finer than anything I have ever seen in battle.

The Pelsall Hall Colliery disaster was the hinge on which the door of my

fate was hung. I wrote an unspeakably bad novel which had that disaster

for its central incident, and it was published from Saturday to Saturday

in the _Morning News_, to the great detriment of that journal; and so

long as the story ran, angry subscribers wrote to the editor to vilify

it and its author. There was some very good work in it none the less;

and an eminent critic told me that, though it was capital flesh and

blood, it had no bones. It resulted years afterwards in 'Joseph's Coat,'

which is, if I may say so, less inchoate and formless than its dead and

buried original.

But it was not that exasperating novel which made the Pelsall Hall

disaster memorable in my personal history. I made an acquaintance

there--an acquaintance curiously begun--which did much for me. I met

there the king of all special correspondents, and had an immediate

shindy with him. There was only one decent room to be found by way of

lodging in the village, and this was in the cottage of one Bailey, a

working engineer. Mr. Bailey, without his wife's knowledge, had let

that room to me for a week at a rent of one sovereign, and Mrs. Bailey,

without her husband's knowledge, had let the room at a similar rent

to the great Special. Box and Cox encountered, each determined on his

rights and each resolute to oust the other.

I was leaving the cottage at about seven in the morning, when I met

a man in a flannel shirt with no collar attached to it, a three days'

beard, a suit of homespun, and heavy ankle jack-boots much bemired with

the clay of the rain-sodden fields. He smoked a short clay pipe and

looked like anything but what he was--the comet of the newspaper

firmament.

'What are you doing here?' he asked--The manner was aggressive and

dictatorial, and I resented it.

'Is that your business?' I retorted.

'Who are you?' he asked. I told him that I was the representative of the

_Birmingham Morning News_, but questioned his right to the information.

'Look here, young man,' he said; 'there's only one spare room in that

cottage, and it belongs to me. I've rented it from the woman of the

house for a pound a week.'

'And I have rented it,' I answered, 'from the woman's husband for a

pound a week.'

'Well,' said the great man with much composure, 'if I find you there I

shall chuck you out of window.'

I told him that that was a game which two might play at; at which he

burst into a great laugh and clapped me on the shoulder. We agreed to

take bed and sofa on alternate nights, and there the matter ended; but

I found out my rival's name, and would have been willing, in the

enthusiasm of my hero-worship, to resign anything to him. Anything, that

is to say, but my own ambitions as a journalist and the interests of the

_Morning News_.

Here was a chance indeed. Here was a foeman worthy of any man's steel.

To beat Archibald Forbes would be, as it seemed then, to crown oneself

with everlasting glory, and I was not altogether without hope of

doing it. For one thing, I was native to the country-side. I spoke the

dialect, and that was a great matter. Forbes was incomprehensible to

half the men, and three-fourths of what they said was incomprehensible

to him. There was to be a descent and an attempt at rescue on the

midnight of the third day after the breaking in of the waters, and I had

secured permission to accompany the party.

I hired a horse at a livery-stable at Walsall, and had him kept in

readiness in the back yard of a beerhouse. My giant enemy, after

maintaining a strict watch on matters for eight-and-forty hours at a

stretch, had gone to bed at last, convinced that nothing could be done.

It was a dreadful night, and not an easy matter for one unaccustomed

to the place to find his way to the pit's mouth. The iron cages of fire

that burned there in the windy rain and the dark impeded rather than

helped the stranger on his way towards them. The feet of thousands of

people, who had visited the spot since the news of the accident was made

known, had worn away the last blade of grass from the slippery fields

and had left a very Slough of Despond behind them. I was down half a

dozen times, and when I reached the hovel where the rescue-party had

gathered I was as much like a mud statue as a man. Everything was in

readiness, and the descent was made at once.

We were under the command of Mr. Walter Ness, a valiant Scotchman, who

afterwards became the manager of her Majesty's mines in Warora, Central

India. Five or six of us huddled together on the 'skip,' the word was

given, and we shot down into the black shaft, which seemed in the light

of the lamps we carried as if its wet and shining walls of brick rushed

upwards whilst we kept stationary. In a while we stopped, with a black

pool of water three or four fathoms below us.

'This 'll be the place,' said one of the men, and tapped the wall with a

pick.

'Yes,' said Mr. Ness, 'that will be about the place; try it.'

The man lay down upon his stomach upon the floor of the skip and worked

away a single brick, which fell with a splash into the pool below. Then

out came another and another, until there was a hole there big enough

for a man to crawl through. We had struck upon an old disused airway

which led into the inner workings of the mine. One by one we snaked our

way from the skip into the hole; and, whatever the miners thought about

it, it was rather a scarey business for me. We all got over safely

enough and began a journey on all fours through mud and slush five or

six inches deep. Here and there the airway was lofty enough to allow us

to walk with bent heads and rounded shoulders. Sometimes it was so low

that we had to go snakewise. There was one place where the floor and

roof of the passage had sunk so that we actually had to dive for it.

This seemed a little comfortless at the time, but it saved our lives

afterwards. After a toilsome scramble we came upon the stables, and

found there the first dead body.

It was that of a lad named Edward Colman, who had met his death in a

curious and dreadful manner. He was sitting on a rocky bench, and at his

feet lay a rough hunch of bread and meat and a clasp-knife. He had heard

evidently the cry of alarm, had sprung to his feet, and had struck the

top of his head with fatal force against a projecting lance of rock

immediately above him. There had been a speedy end to his troubles, poor

fellow, and he sat there stiff and cold and pallid, staring before him

like a figure in an exhibition of waxworks.

The waters barred our further descent into the mine, but there was

a belief that by breaking through the earthy wall of the stable a

continuation of the old airway would be found. The experiment was tried

with an alarming result No sooner was the breach made than a slow stream

of choke-damp flowed into the chamber, and the lights began to go out

one by one. We scrambled back at once for our lives, and once past

the pool were safe; the water effectually blocked the passage of the

poisonous gas. I got but one whiff of it; but it gave me a painful

sensation at the bridge of the nose which lasted acutely for some days.

In all, our expedition had not lasted an hour; but it had proved to

demonstration the impossibility of saving a single life.

I was dressed and mounted in another quarter of an hour and scouring

hard through the dark and the rain in the direction of Birmingham. When

I arrived there the country edition of the _News_ was already on the

machine and the compositors were leaving work. Word was given at once,

however, the whole contingent detained, and I sat down to write an

account of the night's adventure--the printer's devil coming for the

copy sheet by sheet as it was written, and each folio being scissored

into half a dozen pieces so that as many men as possible might work on

it at once. I slept a few hours, and then rode back to Pelsall with a

copy of the paper in my pocket. Forbes packed up his belongings an hour

later and left the scene.

I had an idea that I had made an enemy, and that Forbes would never

forgive me for beating him. I did not know my man, however; for it was

he who took me by the hand in London a year afterwards and secured for

me the first regular engagements I ever held there. He introduced me to

Edmund Yates, who found me a place on the original staff of the _World_,

and to J. R. Robinson, manager of the _Daily News_, who gave me a seat

in the gallery of the House of Commons and a chance to show what I was

good for as a descriptive writer. Forbes did more than this; but the

matter I have in mind is private and confidential. I have no right to

speak of it here, except to say that it was an act of large-hearted

generosity performed in a fashion altogether characteristic of the man,

and that I shall never cease to be affectionately grateful for it.

There were two instances of escape at the Pelsall Hall disaster which

seem worth recording. Every mine has what is known as an 'upcast

shaft'--a perpendicular tunnel which runs side by side with the working

shaft, and is connected with it at the foot by an airway which serves to

ventilate the workings. When the first rush of water, breaking in from

some old deserted working, came tearing down, a man and a boy were

standing at the bottom of the downcast. They were carried on the crest

of the wave clean through the airway, borne some distance upwards in

the upcast, and were there floated on to the floor of a skip, where they

were found insensible, but living, some hours later. No other creature

was brought to bank alive.

One special correspondent turned up at Pelsall on a Sunday, just as

the pumping apparatus, which had broken down, was on the point of being

repaired, and when everybody concerned was working for the bare life. It

had not then been finally established that hope was over, and everybody

was inspired with an almost superhuman vigour. The correspondent, who

was a mighty person in his own esteem, sent his card to the manager, who

sent him back a sufficiently courteous message, saying how busy he was

and asking to be excused for an hour or two.

'Take back that card,' said the special (I was a witness of the scene),

'say that I represent' (he named one of the most influential of the

London dailies), 'and that I insist upon an interview.'

This time a sufficiently discourteous message came back; and the mighty

personage, after loafing about for an hour or two, retired and wrote

an article in which he described the people of the Black Country as

savages, and revived a foolish old libel or two which at one time had

currency concerning them. The old nonsense about the champagne was

there, for one thing. I know the Black Country miners pretty well--I

ought to do so, at least, for I was born in the thick of them and

watched their ways from childhood to manhood--and I never knew a working

miner who had so much as heard of champagne. Now and then a prosperous

'butty' (_Anglicè_, chartermaster) may have tried a bottle; but the

working collier's beverage is 'pit beer.' The popular recipe for this

drink is to 'chuck three grains of malt into the cut, and drink as much

as ye like of it.'

I remember the story of one wine party which met at the Scott's Arms at

Barr. I dare say Mr. Henry Irving knows the house, for he is President

of the Literary Society there. The tale was told me by the landlord.

Three chartermasters sat at a table in the bar, and old Pountney

overheard their whispered talk.

'Didst iver drink port, Jim?'

'No; what is it?'

'Why, port--port wine; it's a stuff as the gentlefolks is fond on.'

'I reckon it'll be main expensive, then.'

'Oh, we can stand it amongst the three on us. Got any port wine,

landlord?'

'Yes, some of the finest in the county.'

'What's it run to?'

'Seven-and-six a bottle.'

'They figured it out,' the landlord told me, 'with a bit of a stump of

an ode pencil on the top o' the table, and when they'd made up their

minds as siven and sixpence was half a crown apiece amongst the three on

'em they ordered a bottle. I sent my man down the cellar for it, and

I went out to look at my pigs. When I come back again there they was

sittin' wry-mouthed an' looking at one another, wi' some muddy-lookin'

stuff in the glasses afore 'em. “Gentlemen,” I says, “ye don't seem to

like your liquor.” “Like it!” says one on 'em; “if this is the stuff

the gentlefolks drinkin', the gentlefolks is welcome to it for we.” I

turns to my man, and “Bill,” says I, “where did ye get this bottle o'

port from?” “Why,” he says, “I got it from the fust bin on the left-hand

side.” “Why, you cussid ode idiot,” I says, “you've browt 'em mushroom

ketchup!”'