RETURN TO JOURNALISM
Miss Spartali and I were married in the Spring of 1871, and in justice
to her I came to the hazardous decision to make my home in England,
and there to devote myself to general literature and correspondence
with America. As my financial condition at that moment, thanks to the
various contributions to it, was better than it had ever been before,
I had the courage needed to face the great change in my life. I
brought with me from Lowell a letter to Leslie Stephen, whose
friendship has ever since been one of the pleasantest things in my
English life. Mrs. Stephen, the elder daughter of Thackeray, was to us
an angel of goodness, and never since has the grateful recognition of
her loving hospitality in thought and deed diminished in my mind. Our
debt to her was a debt of the heart, and those are never paid. Her
sister, later Mrs. Ritchie, added much to the obligations of our early
life in London, and still remains our friend. Mr. Stephen gave me an
introduction to the "Pall Mall Gazette," then under the charge of
Greenwood, and I contributed in incidental ways to its columns; and
with contributions to "Scribner's" and other magazines it seemed that
we might forgather, and we decided to bring the children out.
An article on the Cretan insurrection, printed while I was still in
the island, had led the way to an acquaintance with Froude, in whose
magazine it appeared, and I had been put on the staff of the "Daily
News," which had printed a contribution on the Greek question as a
leading article; so that, on the whole, the venture did not seem
too rash for a man who never looked far ahead for good fortune. My
friendship with Froude lasted as long as he lived. He was a warm and
sincere friend, always ready with word or deed to help one who needed
it, and one of the men for whom I retain the warmest feeling of all I
knew at this epoch of my life. In New York I had made an arrangement
with Dr. Holland to hold the literary agency for "The Century" (then
"Scribner's") for England, and on returning to London we took a small
furnished house at Notting Hill Way, where our daughter Effie was
born. In the following spring we moved out to Clapham Common, to be
near the parents of my wife, and in the comparative quiet of that then
delightful neighborhood we gave our experiment full scope. The life as
a literary life was ideal, but as a practical thing it failed. Here
I had the pleasure of extending hospitality to Emerson on his way to
Egypt, and Lowell on the way to Madrid. To make the acquaintance of
Lowell we had Professor and Mrs. Max Müller to meet him at dinner, and
Tom Taylor was of the company, he living as a near neighbor.
But Russie's condition was a shadow over my life, growing deeper every
day. Though he had been discharged from Boston as incurable, we put
him under the care of one of the best of English surgeons, and one of
the kindest-hearted men I have ever known, the late Mr. John Marshall,
one of the warm and constant friends I had made through my relations
with Rossetti, of whom Marshall was a strong admirer. Though his
charges were modified to fit our estate, they aggregated, with all his
moderation, to a sum which I could ill support; but to save, or even
prolong Russie's life, I would have made any sacrifice. He was then
not far from nine, and, though crippled by his disease, with his once
beautiful face haggard with pain and no longer recognizable by those
who had known him in his infancy, he was to me still the same,--a dear
and loving child, the companion of my fortunes at their worst; and his
devotion to me was the chief thing of his life. I had carried him in
my arms at every change of vehicle in all the journeys from Athens
to Boston and from Boston to London again, and to him I was all the
world; to me he was like a nursling to its mother, the first thought
of every day, an ever-present care, and his long struggle with death
was an inseparable sadness in my existence. I remarked to Lowell one
day that I feared he would die, and Lowell replied, "I should be
afraid he would not die." The seeming cruelty of the expression struck
me like a sentence of death, and momentarily chilled my feeling
towards Lowell; but the incident made me understand some things in
life as I could not have otherwise understood them, enabling me to
take a larger view of our individual sorrows. There is no doubt that
to Russie's sufferings and death I owe a large part of my experience
of the spiritual life, and especially a comprehension of the secret of
the mother's heart, so rarely understood by one of the other sex.
But my unfailing facility for getting into hot water was not to find
an exception in London. As agent for "Scribner's" I had to secure
contributions from English authors, not so easy then as now. Amongst
other items I was instructed to secure a story from a certain author,
and I contracted with her for the proof sheets of her next novel,
about to be published in England in the--Magazine, the price to be
paid for the advance proofs being £500, if I remember rightly. There
was then no international copyright with America, but a courtesy right
between publishers, with a general understanding amongst the trade
that the works of an author once published by a house should be
considered as belonging by prescription to it. On the announcement by
"Scribner's" of the coming publication of this author's novel, the
firm who had published her prior works announced that they would not
respect the agreement with the author, but would pirate the story.
As the result of the quarrel, "Scribner's" resigned the story to its
rival on payment to the lady of the sum agreed on. But now appeared an
utterly unsuspected state of things: the--Magazine had already sold
the proof sheets of the story to a third American house, and an exposé
of the situation showed that English publishers had been in the
practice of selling the advance proofs of their most popular works of
fiction to the American houses, and recouping the half of the price
paid the authors.
On the heels of this discovery by the public, there happened one of
the periodical outbreaks of English journalism against the "American"
system of literary piracy, and simultaneously the visit of a committee
of the American publishers deputed by the government of the United
States to study out an arrangement for a treaty of international
copyright on the basis of equality of right and privileges in both
countries of the authors of both countries, but with no recognition
of publishers' rights or privileges. The English government, taking
advice from a committee of authors and publishers, in which the
interest of the publishers was dominant, declined the offer of the
American form of treaty, insisting on the protection of publishers'
rights, and the negotiations fell through, with great increase of the
outcry in the English press. Being in communication with Mr. William
H. Appleton, the head of the American committee, and in possession of
the facts of the case as regarded the courtesy right, I wrote to the
English papers, putting the American view of the matter, and the
facts, dwelling on the hitherto unknown point that the depredations on
the authors' interests were committed by the English publisher, who
sold to the American the wares the latter was accused of stealing,
whereas the fact was that he bought and paid equally for the right of
publication, while the English publisher continued to reprint American
books without the least regard for analogous transatlantic rights.
The consequences to me were variously disastrous. In the first place
I was deluged with applications from authors of still unestablished
transatlantic reputation to secure for them offers from "Scribner's"
for the advance sheets of their books. In the second I was treated to
a torrent of abuse as "the friend of piracy" ("Daily News" leading
article), and for some days not a single London paper would print a
word of reply or explanation from me. The "Echo" was the first to
do me the justice of printing a defense, and it was followed by the
"Times," which printed my letter and one from Mr. Appleton; but of the
authors who, having a transatlantic reputation, had profited by the
"courtesy right," only Mr. Trollope came forward to sustain me with
the statement that he had received more from the Harpers--his American
publishers--than from his English publishers. The author whose novel
had been the occasion of the original trouble, grateful for what I had
done in her case, declared that the English authors ought to make me a
testimonial (or perhaps it was a monument she suggested), but from no
other source did I receive a word of thanks. And the third consequence
was that the "Pall Mall Gazette" dropped me "like a hot potato." As
my monthly cheques had reached the sum of ten pounds, and were slowly
increasing, the inroad on my income arising from my crusade against
publishing abuses was a serious item in my outlook.
As misfortunes never come alone, this was followed by my supersession,
as literary agent of "Scribner's," by Mr. Gosse, who had been making a
visit to New York. It was in curious coincidence with these disasters
that I addressed (with a letter of introduction from Madame Bodichon,
who always was the kindest of friends to me) a distinguished lady
member of the staff of an evening paper, with a request to help me to
get work on it, and was told distinctly that she did not favor the
entry of foreigners on the staff, as English writers had too much
competition amongst themselves, and "the crumbs from the table" should
be reserved for them, so that while I had opened the door for English
writers in my native land, to the disadvantage of myself and my
compatriots, I was to be excluded from the English market as a
foreigner. My old friend the editor of the "Daily News," had, during
my absence in America, been appointed to the "Gazette," and the new
Pharaoh "knew not Joseph." And so we decided to throw up the sponge
and go back to America, though even there the new influx of English
competitors (for which I was in part responsible) had made our chance
less brilliant. My father-in-law offered us, if we withdrew from our
decision, to settle £400 a year on my wife. With this aid we felt
that we might carry through; and to her the change from English life,
surrounded by old friends and an artistic atmosphere, to the strange
and comparatively cruder surroundings of America, was to be avoided at
any possible price, and I had no right to hesitate.
The great Exhibition of Vienna, in 1873, found the New York "Tribune"
unprovided in time for its correspondence, and the European manager,
my friend G.W. Smalley, proposed to me to go out for the paper. There
were three months still to the opening, but the preparation of the
groundwork of a continuous correspondence, on an occasion to which the
American public attached much importance, was a matter of gravity, and
the time was not too long. The editor had neglected the matter,
owing to considerations which deluded him, and I was just in time to
forestall the worst effects of a scandal which made its noise in its
day. The chief commissioner, General Van Buren, had had associated
with him, through influences which need not be cited, several
under-commissioners who were Jews, formerly of Vienna, and of course
obnoxious to the society, official and polite, of the Austrian
capital, and who were exercising a most unfortunate influence on the
prospects of the American exhibitors. In addition to this, they had
entered into a system of trading in concessions for their personal
advantage, the competition being very keen, especially in the
department of American drinks, and their dealings with the competitors
had excited great indignation in certain quarters. One of the
disappointed applicants, whose concession had been unjustly annulled
in favor of a higher bidder, came to me for advice. I at once
instituted a rigorous though secret inquiry, and collected a body
of evidence of corrupt practices, which I laid before the American
minister, Mr. Jay, with a demand that it should be communicated to
the government. Mr. Jay at first declined to take cognizance of the
matter, and accused me of doing what I did with political partisan
bias, Van Buren being a prominent politician. I assured him that I did
not even know to which party Van Buren belonged; but, what probably
moved him more was my assurance that the affair was not going to be
whitewashed, that if it was not corrected quietly I was determined to
make a public exposure, and that whoever tried to whitewash it would
need a whitewashing himself, whereupon he decided to take, under oath,
the evidence I had laid before him and send it to Washington, which he
did.
The result was a cable dismissal of the entire commission and the
nomination in their places of several American gentlemen who had come
to Vienna to witness the opening of the Exhibition, amongst whom were
two of my warmest personal friends. They immediately offered me the
official position of secretary to the commission, which I declined.
Having enlisted on the "Tribune," and considering myself held "for the
war," I could not desert, though the inducement was very strong, for
I should not only have been better paid than by the "Tribune," but
should have been practically director of the Exhibition, so far as the
American department was concerned. The exposure of the old commission
which I sent the "Tribune" was printed reluctantly, for Van Buren was
a personal friend of the editor-in-chief; but as I had taken the
pains to make the substance of it common property so far as the other
correspondents were concerned, it could not be suppressed.
For the opening ceremony there was great rivalry amongst the leading
papers of New York, and the "Herald" made very expensive arrangements
to cable a full account; and, beside its European manager, John
Russell Young, and its telegraphic manager, Mr. Sauer, it had Edmund
Yates and a well-known European lady novelist to make up the report.
The "Tribune" sent to my assistance an old friend, Bayard Taylor,
and one of the staff from New York, E.V. Smalley. The "Herald" was
prepared for practically unlimited expenditure on the occasion; the
"Tribune" simply ordered me to telegraph 6000 words to Smalley at
London, leaving the question of cabling open. Young thought me a rival
to be held in poor account, and was careless. All the "Herald" staff
took their places in the Exhibition building for the ceremony of
opening by the Emperor, which was no doubt spectacular; but, as the
doors were to be closed until the ceremony was over, and the Emperor
rose to make the tour of the Exhibition, no one could get at the
telegraph till all was complete. I stayed outside and sacrificed the
spectacle. I had found who was to be the telegraph inspector for the
day, and I went to him with an offer to hire a wire for the day. This
was impossible, he said, as there was to be but one wire for all the
foreign press. I put my case to him as that of a beginner in the
service, to whom a success was of great importance for the future, and
asked to be allowed to declare 6000 words to follow continuously; but
this too, he said, was against the regulations. But I secured his
sympathy, and he finally promised me that if I got first on the wire,
and my message came without interruption, one section being laid
before the operator before the other was finished, they should go on
without interruption, as one message; but, if one minute lapsed and
another message came in the interval, I must take my turn with the
others.
As Taylor was an old hand, and wrote a most legible script, and style
_currente calamo_, I told him to write what he could as the ceremony
went on, and, the moment the doors were opened, to consign what he
had written to a messenger whom I had hired for the day,--an American
clerk of one of the exhibitors under some little obligation to me, a
sharp Yankee, for whose use I had hired a cab, with the fastest horse
I could find, to run back and forth between the Exhibition and the
telegraph. Taylor was then to finish his account of the opening
ceremonies and bring it or send it by the messenger to me at the
telegraph office, the messenger waiting or returning for the first
installment of Smalley's account of the imperial inspection, which
he was to follow closely. After this he was to continue to write the
incidents of the opening; and when the whole approximated to the 6000
words needed, he was to come himself to the telegraph. I, meanwhile,
went into the streets and devoted myself to picking up incidents of
the procession, the deportment of the population, and the weather; and
when I supposed that the opening of the doors was about to take place
I went to the telegraph office and deposited 1200 words. Long before
these could be sent, Taylor's first installment came, and then Taylor
himself with the second. Young, seeing my staff always present, and
thinking me asleep, took his time.
When Taylor's second part had been deposited and paid for, I saw
coming down the street in a furiously driven carriage Mr. Sauer, with
the first part of his message. I slipped out at a back door and was
not seen, and Sauer returned for the continuation of his telegram.
When Smalley's first dispatch had been put on, I saw Sauer coming
again with his second. Then I sat tight and saw that the message had
been written in columns of words on large paper, so that the counting
should be rapid. It made a huge packet, and he deposited it with
evident satisfaction and turned to go out, when he saw Archibald
Forbes, who was writing his telegram to the "Daily News" at the table
in the office, and turned to speak to him. When leaving him he caught
sight of me in the corner, and started as if he had been hit by a
bullet, then made as if he had not seen me and was going out, but
reconsidered and came to speak to me. "Well, what have you done?"
he said. I replied that I had put about 5000 words on, and was only
waiting for the odds and ends from Smalley. He flushed with surprise
and vexation, and began to curse the telegraph officials "who never
kept their engagements," and went off in a towering rage. My 6000
words went on before a single word of the message to the "Herald"
could go.
Mr. Young had ordered for that evening a magnificent dinner for his
staff, to which mine was invited to celebrate his unquestioned feat.
While waiting for the dinner to come on, he took me apart and asked
confidentially what we had really done. I told him, and he asked if we
cabled, to which I replied that as to that I knew nothing, that I had
wired G.W. Smalley in London, but what he had done I could not say.
"Well," said he, "if you have cabled you have beaten us, and if you
have not cabled you may have beaten us," and then he went on to say
that if I would drop the "Tribune" and come over to the "Herald" he
would give me a good post and good pay. "No," I replied, "I have taken
service with the 'Tribune' for the campaign, and I cannot desert
them." (My recompense was a curt dismissal from the "Tribune" as soon
as the urgent work of the reporting of the opening was done.) Mr.
Whitelaw Reid's nerve had failed him when it came to the question of
the expense of cabling, and the 6000 words had gone by steamer from
Queenstown. I had given the "Tribune" the best beat it had ever had
except the Sedan report, if the editor had had the courage to profit
by it. The "Herald" received 150 words of its report in time for the
press the next morning, and had to make up its page of dispatches
from matter sent by post in advance and by expansion of the 150 words
received. Edmund Yates, in his autobiography, tells a story of the
affair which is in every important detail untrue, and he probably knew
nothing of it except what Young had admitted, and that was certainly
very little, for Young was a very reticent man, and not likely to tell
his defeat even to his staff.
Bennett was too fickle and whimsical an employer to suit me, and I had
no disposition to expose myself to his whims. With Young I was always
on the best terms, and he was disposed to employ me when a momentary
service was required, but I had had one experience with his chief,
which was sufficient. He had offered me the London agency of the
"Herald" at a time when any constant occupation would have been
acceptable, and we had come to terms, when suddenly he was taken with
the notion that Edmund Yates, in addition to the service to the paper,
would be of use to him in social ways, and he dropped me and appointed
Yates, to drop him a little later, paying him a year's salary to break
the contract.
One bit of work I did for the "Herald" which I remember with much
pleasure. It was the reporting of Beaconsfield's Aylesbury speech, not
a stenographic report, for that they had from the English press, but a
letter on the occasion as a demonstration. I went to Aylesbury, and,
as Beaconsfield was to speak twice,--once at the farmers' ordinary and
then at the assembly rooms,--I dined at the ordinary; and as all the
places in the assembly rooms had been taken before the dinner was
over, I had to employ some assurance to hear the principal speech. As
soon as the company rose from the table, I pushed through to where
Beaconsfield was standing, and, presenting my card as correspondent of
the New York "Herald," asked him to be kind enough to put me in the
way of hearing him, explaining why I had lost my chance through
remaining to hear him at the dinner. He turned to one of the young men
who were with him, remarking that my card would take me anywhere, and
said, "See that Mr. Stillman has a place near me," and to me, "Keep
close to me," which I did, and took a seat on the edge of the
platform, at his feet; and I certainly never heard a more effective
speech. The lordly, triumphant manner with which he bantered Gladstone
for his dealings in the Straits of Malacca, the demonstrative
confidence with which he took victory for granted, and the magnetism
of his personal bearing, made an impression on me quite unique in my
experience of men. Gracious is the only word which I can apply to his
manner to those around him, and it had a fascination over them which
I could perfectly understand, and I could easily comprehend that
he should have a surrounding of devotees. The serene, absolute
self-confidence he evidently felt was of a nature to inspire a
corresponding confidence in his followers. It was an interesting
display of the power of a magnetic nature, and gave me a higher idea
of the man than all his writings had given or could give. For his
intellectual powers and their printed results I never had a high
opinion, but his was one of the most interesting and remarkable
personalities I ever encountered.
As Russie continued to hold his own against his terrible disease, Mr.
Marshall thought that the operation of resecting the leg at the hip
might save his life, and though such a maimed existence as his would
then be was but a doubtful boon, the boy eagerly caught at the chance
of life; and, to recruit strength for the operation, I decided to take
him, by Marshall's advice, to America, and give him a summer in the
woods, camping out. I took him to the Maine woods instead of my old
haunts of the Adirondacks, because the rail served to the verge of
the wilderness, and we had, on Moosehead Lake, the resource of a good
hotel to take refuge in if matters went ill. They did go ill, and I
found that life was too low in him to give the woodland air and the
influence of the pine-trees power to help him. Hope left me, and we
turned homeward again, sailing from Boston direct to London. It was
in late December, and we had a terrific voyage, and one of the
hairbreadth escapes of which I have had so many. In the height of the
gale Russie and I were standing in the companion-way, watching the
storm, for the boy loved the sea dearly and enjoyed the heaviest
weather, when the captain called to me to say that we were not
safe there and had better go below. Only a few minutes later an
exceptionally heavy sea broke over the deck, took five boats out
of the davits or crushed them, carried away in splinters the
companion-way in which we had been standing, and swept the decks, the
chief officer being saved only by being lashed to the railing of the
bridge, and the fall of the mass of water on the deck breaking several
of the deck beams. We had to lie to for the rest of the gale. We
landed at Gravesend just before Christmas, Russie being in much worse
condition than when we left England. Up to that time I had clung
to hope, for to lose the boy was like tearing my soul in two. Mr.
Marshall no longer held out a hope, but said if he had known the
strength of the boy's constitution he would have operated when he
first saw him, which was what Russie then begged for and had always
looked forward to. Through five years he had resisted the pain of that
most painful disease, hoping always, always reading, almost always
cheerful.
Our lease expiring, I decided to leave London, and Mr. Spartali
offered us a cottage on one of his estates in the Isle of Wight, where
the children, Russie especially, might have sweet English air. Marie
being engaged in finishing her pictures for the spring exhibition, I
went down alone with the children, stopping at an inn at Sandown till
the furniture was in the cottage. While so waiting Russie was taken
with the first convulsion peculiar to his malady, and then I realized
that Death had come, and, unwilling to face him in the semi-publicity
of an inn, I took the boy in my arms to the railway, and from the
station nearest to the cottage bore him thither.
I tried to prepare him for the impending death, by showing him that it
was the end of pain, but his horror of it was inextinguishable, and he
cried in agony, "Oh, no, no! Papa, I wish to live as long as you do;"
and, though his faculties were fortunately failing, he beckoned me to
lay my head by his on the pallet I had prepared for him on the floor,
and offered me a last feeble caress and showed his pleasure in having
me by him. He had loved me above all things on earth, even more than
his loving mother, and to be with me had always been his dearest
delight, and now we met Death alone, he and I, and I could only
remember David's cry, "Absalom, my son!" I watched the fading life,
the diminishing breath in the midnight silence of the solitary house,
and almost desired Death to hasten, for the final struggle had begun,
and the suspense was torture to me. And when the last long breath was
drawn, and the limp, deserted body was all that was left to me of my
thirteen years of passionate devotion, my pride and hope, and the
nursing care of so many years, I walked out into the midnight and left
my boy to Death. The long tension was over, and I could give way to
tears.
It was only a child's death, a common thing, almost as common as
family existence, but it gave a new color to my life, establishing
forever a sympathy with the common grief, and a community of sorrow
with all bereft fathers and mothers, in the premature dissipation of
the hopes of their future, and the lapse of a dear companionship into
the eternal void. This is the human brotherhood of sorrow, sacred,
ennobling, sanctifying where it abides, the deepest lesson of the
school of life. My feet have wandered far, and my thoughts still
further from the places and beliefs of my childhood; but whatever and
wherever I may be, this grief at times catches me and holds me in a
pause of dumb tears, and every similar bereavement I witness renews
the sympathetic grief. I have never been able to find a consolation
for that loss, for it carried with it the future and its best dreams.
When his mother died, I thought that any death were easier to bear
than the sudden and terrible tragedy of that; but in the devastated
youth and the lingering pain of Russie's leaving, I found that
"not all the preaching since Adam
Has made Death other than Death."
We buried him quietly in the churchyard at Arreton, the kind rector
not asking for a baptismal certificate, for he knew that I was not
a churchman, and Russie had never been baptized. In these things we
follow prejudices. Mine were Baptist; his mother was an advanced
Unitarian, and had been born in the Brook Farm community, of which her
father was a member, so that we had no sympathy with paedobaptism,
while the terrible effect of my own religious education forbade me to
encumber the boy's mind with religious dogmas, and from the beginning
I had forbidden any one in the house to teach him the name of God
until he was old enough to understand what "God" meant; but one day
during his illness I found him, when he should have been sleeping,
weeping bitterly, and to my inquiry as to the cause of his trouble,
he replied, "Do you think, Papa, that, if I went to sleep saying my
prayers, God would be satisfied if I finished them after I woke?" That
terrible hereditary conscience could not be laid, and perhaps the boy
was fortunate in his early death.