CHAPTER III.—THE EDITOR OF THE PAST.

Proprietary rights—Proprietary wrongs—Exclusive rights—The “leaders” of a party—The fossil editor—The man and the dog and the boar—An unpublished history—The newspaper hoax—A premature obituary notice—The accommodating surgeon—A matter of business—The death of Mr. Robinson—The quid pro quo’.

IT is only within the past few years that the Editor has obtained public recognition as a personality; previously his personality was merged in the proprietor, and when his efforts were successful in keeping a Corporation from making fools of themselves—this is assuming an extreme case of success—or in exposing some attempted fraud that would have ruined thousands of people, he was compelled to accept his reward through the person of the proprietor. The proprietor was made a J.P., and sometimes even became Mayor or Chairman of the Board of Guardians, when the editor succeeded in making the paper a power in the county. Latterly, however, the editors of some provincial journals have been obtaining recognition.

They have been granted the dubious honour of knighthood; and the public have discovered that the brains which have dictated a policy that has influenced the destinies of a Ministry, may be entrusted with the consideration of sewage and main drainage questions on a Town Council, or with the question of the relative degrees of culpability of a man who jumps upon his wife’s face and is fined ten shillings, and the boy who steals a raw turnip and is sent to a reformatory for five years—a period quite insufficient for the adequate digestion of that comestible, which it would appear boys are ready to sacrifice years of their liberty to obtain.

I must say that, with one exception, the proprietors whom I have met were highly competent business men—men whose judgment and public spirit were deserving of that wide recognition which they nearly always obtained from their fellow-citizens. One, and one only, was not precisely of this type. He used to write with a blue pencil across an article some very funny comments.

I have before me at this moment a letter in which he asked me to abbreviate something; and he gave me an example of how to do it by cutting out a letter of the word—he spelt it abrievate.

He had a perfect passion for what he called “exclusives.” The most trivial incident—the overturning of a costermonger’s barrow, and the number of the contents sustaining fatal injuries; the blowing off of a clergyman’s hat in the street, with a professional opinion as to the damage done; the breaking of a window in a private house—he regarded as good foundation for an “exclusive”; and indeed it must be said that the information given to the public by the organ of which he was proprietor was rarely ever to be found in a rival paper. At the same time, upon no occasion of his obtaining a really important piece of news did he succeed in keeping it from the others. This annoyed him extremely He was in great demand as chairman of amateur reciting classes—a distinction that was certainly dearly purchased. I never knew of one of these reciting entertainments being refused a full report in his newspaper upon any occasion when he presided. He also aspired to the chairmanship of small political meetings, and once when he found himself in such a position, he said he would sing the audience a song, and he carried out his threat. His song was probably more convincing than his speech would have been. He had a famous story for platform use. It concerned a donkey that he knew when they were both young.

He said it made people laugh, and it surely did. At a public dinner he formulated the plausible theory that to be a good player of golf was to be a gentleman. He was a poor golfer himself.

Now, regarding London editors I have not much to say. I am not personally acquainted with any one of them. But for twelve years I read every political article that appeared in each of the six principal London daily papers; I also read a report of every speech made in the House of Commons, and of every speech made by a statesman of Cabinet rank outside Parliament; and I am prepared to say that the great majority of these speeches bore the most unmistakable evidence of being—well, not exactly inspired by, but certainly influenced by some leading article. In one word, my experience is that what the newspapers say in the morning the statesmen say in the evening.

Of course Mr. Gladstone must not be included in the statesmen to whom I refer. His inspiration comes from another direction. That is how he succeeds in startling so many people.

The majority of provincial editors include, I have good reason to know, some of the best men in the profession. Only here and there does one meet with a fossil of journalism who is content to write a column of platitudes over a churchwarden pipe and then to go home to sleep.

With only one such did I come in contact recently. He was connected with a newspaper which should have had unbounded influence in its district, but which had absolutely none. The “editor” was accustomed to enter his room about noon, and he left it between seven and eight in the evening, having turned out a column of matter of which he was an earnest reader the next morning. And yet this same newspaper received during the night sometimes twelve columns of telegraphic news and verbatim reports of the chief speeches in Parliament.

The poor old gentleman had never been in London, and never could see why I should be so constantly going to that city. He was under the impression that George Eliot was a man, and he one day asked me what the Royal Academy was. Having learned that it was a place where pictures that richly deserved exposure were hung, he shortly afterwards assumed that the French Academy was a gallery in which naughty French pictures—he assumed that everything French was naughty—were exhibited. He occasionally referred to the Temps phonetically, and up to the day of his death he never knew why I laughed when I first heard his pronunciation of the name of that organ.

The one dread of his life was that I might some time inadvertently suggest that I was the editor of the paper. As if any sane human being would have such an aspiration! His opportunity came at last. A cabinet photograph of a man and a dog arrived at the office one day addressed to the editor. He hastened to the proprietor and “proved” that the photograph represented me and my dog, and that it had been addressed “to the editor.” The proprietor was not clever enough to perceive that the features of the portrait in no way resembled those with which I am obliged to put up, and so I ran a chance of being branded as a pretender.

Fortunately, however, the fascinating little daughter of the proprietary household contrived to see the photograph, and on being questioned as to its likeness to a member of the staff, declared that there was no one half so goodlooking connected with the paper. On being assured that the original had already been identified, she expressed her willingness to stake five pounds upon her opinion; and the injured editor accepted her offer.

Now, all this time I had never been applied to by the disputants, though I might have been expected to know something of the matter,—people generally remember a visit to their photographer or their stockbroker,—but just as the young lady was about to appeal to me as an unprejudiced arbiter on the question at issue, the manager of the advertisement department sent to inquire if any one on the editorial staff had come upon a photograph of a man and a collie. An advertisement for a lost collie had, he said, been appearing in the paper, and a postcard had just been received from the owner stating that he had forwarded a photograph of the animal, in order that, should any one bring a collie to the office and claim the reward, the advertising department would be in a position to see that the animal was the right one.

The young lady got her five pounds, and, having a considerable interest in the stocking of a farm, purchased with it an active young boar which, in an impulse of flattery, she named after me, and which, so far as I have been able to gather, is doing very well, and has already seen his children’s children.

When I asked the young lady why she had called the animal after me, she said it was because he was a bore. She had a graceful wit.

In a weak moment this editor confided to me that he was engaged in writing a book—“A History of the Orange” was to be the title, he told me; and he added that I could have no idea of the trouble it was causing him; but there he was wrong. After this he was in the habit of writing a note to me about once a week, asking me if I would oblige him by doing his work for him, as all his time was engrossed by his “History.” It appears to me rather melancholy that the lack of enterprise among publishers is so great that this work has not yet been given a chance of appearing. I looked forward to it to clear up many doubtful points of great interest. Up to the present, for instance, no intelligent effort has been made to determine if it was the introduction of the orange into Great Britain that brought about the Sunday-school treat, or if the orange was imported in order to meet the legitimate requirements of this entertainment.

Human nature—-and there is a good deal of it in a large manufacturing centre—could not be restrained in the neighbourhood of such a relic of a past generation, and, consequently, that form of pleasantry known as the hoax was constantly attempted upon him. One morning the correspondence columns, which he was supposed to edit with scrupulous care, appeared headed with an account of the discovery of some ancient pottery bearing a Latin inscription—the most venerable and certainly the most transparent of newspaper hoaxes.

It need scarcely be said that there was an extraordinary demand for copies of the issue of that day; but luckily the thing was discovered in time to disappoint a large number of those persons who came to the office to mock at the simplicity of the good old soul, who fancied he had found a congenial topic when he received the letter headed with an appeal to archæologists.

Is there a more contemptible creature in the world than the newspaper hoaxer? The wretch who can see fun in obtaining the publication of some filthy phrase in a newspaper that is certain to be read by numbers of women, should, in my mind, be treated as the flinger of a dynamite bomb among a crowd of innocent people. The sender of a false notice of a marriage, a birth, or a death, is usually difficult to bring to justice, but when found, he—or she—should be treated as a social leper. The pain caused by such heartless hoaxes is incalculable.

Sometimes a careless reporter, or foreman printer, is unwittingly the means of causing much annoyance, and even consternation, by allowing an obituary notice to appear prematurely. On every well-managed paper there is a set of pigeon-holed obituaries of eminent persons, local as well as national. When it is almost certain that one of them is at the point of death, the sketch is written up to the latest date, and frequently put in type, to be ready in case the news of the death should arrive when the paper is going to press. Now, I have known of several cases in which the “set-up” obituary notice contrived to appear before the person to whom it referred had breathed his last. This is undoubtedly a very painful occurrence, and in some cases it may actually precipitate the incident which it purports to record. Personally, I should not consider myself called on to die because a newspaper happened to publish an account of my death; but I know of at least one case in which a man actually succumbed out of compliment to a newspaper that had accidentally recorded his death.

That person was not made of the same fibre as a certain eminent surgeon with whom I was well acquainted. He was thoughtful enough to send for a reporter on one Monday evening, and said that as he did not wish the pangs of death to be increased by the reflection that a ridiculous sketch of his career would be published in the newspapers, he thought he would just dictate three-quarters of a column of such a character as would allow of his dying without anything on his mind. Of course the reporter was delighted, and commenced as usual:—

“It is with the deepest regret that we have to announce this morning the decease of one of our most eminent physicians, and best-known citizens. Dr. Theobald Smith, M.Sc., F.R.C.S.E., passed peacefully away at o’clock {last night/this morning} at his residence, Pharmakon House, surrounded by the members of the family to whom he was so deeply attached, and to whom, though a father, he was still a friend.”

“Now, sir,” said the reporter, “I’ve left a space for the hour, and I can strike out either ‘last night,’ or ‘this morning,’ when I hear of your death.”

“That’s right,” said the doctor. “Now, I’ll give you some particulars of my life.”

“Thanks,” said the reporter. “You will not exceed three-quarters of a column, for we’re greatly crushed for space just now. If you could put it off till Sunday, I could give you a column with leads, as Parliament doesn’t sit on Saturday.”

It seemed a tempting offer; but the doctor, after pondering for a few moments, as if trying to recollect his engagements, shook his head, and said he would be glad to oblige, but the matter had really passed beyond his control.

“But there’ll surely be time for you to see a proof?” cried the reporter, with some degree of anxiety in his voice.

“I’ll take good care of that,” said the doctor. “You can send it to me in the morning. I think I’ll die between eleven and twelve at night.”

“That would suit us exactly,” said the reporter genially. “We could then send the obituary away in the first page at one o’clock. The foreman grumbles if he has to put obituaries on page 5, which goes down to the machine at half-past three.”

The doctor said that of course business was business, and he should do his best to accommodate the foreman.

He died that night at twenty minutes past eleven.

I have suggested the possibility of the record of a death in a public print having a disastrous effect upon a sick man, and the certainty of its causing pain to his relatives. This view was not taken by the eccentric proprietor to whom I have already alluded. Upon one occasion he heard casually that a man named Robinson had just died. He hastened to his office, found a reporter, and told him to write a paragraph regretting the death of Mr. Richard Robinson. He assumed that it was Richard Robinson who was dead, but it so happened that it was Mr. Thomas Robinson, although Mr. Richard Robinson had been in feeble health for some time. Now, when the son of the living Mr. Robinson called upon the proprietor the next day to state that his father had read the paragraph recording his death, and that the shock had completely prostrated him, the proprietor turned round upon him, and said that Mr. Robinson and his family should rather feel extremely grateful for the appearance of a paragraph of so complimentary a character. Young Mr. Robinson, fearing that the next move on the part of the proprietor would be to demand payment for the paragraph at scale rates, begged that his intrusion might be pardoned; and hurried away congratulating himself at having escaped very easily.

Editors are always supposed to know nearly everything, and they nearly always do. In this respect they differ materially from the representatives of other professions. If you were to ask the average clergyman—if there is such a thing as an average clergyman—what he thought of the dramatic construction of a French vaudeville, he would probably feel hurt; but if an editor failed to give an intelligent opinion on this subject, as well as upon the tendencies to Socinianism displayed in the sermon of an eminent Churchman, he would be regarded as unfit for his business. You can get an intelligent opinion from an editor on almost any subject; but you are lucky if you can get an intelligent opinion on any one subject from the average professional man—a lawyer, of course, excepted.

But undoubtedly curious specimens of editors might occasionally have been found in the smaller newspaper offices in the provinces long ago. More than twenty years have passed since the sub-editor of a rather important paper in a town in the Midlands interviewed, on a matter of professional etiquette, the editor—he was an Irishman—of a struggling organ in the same town.

It appeared that the chief reporter of the sub-editor’s paper had given some paragraph of news to a brother on the second paper, and yet when the latter was respectfully asked for an equivalent, he refused it; hence the need for diplomatic representations.

“I say that our reporters must have a quid pro quo in every case where they have given a par. to yours,” said the sub-editor, who was entrusted with the negotiations.

“Must have a what?” asked the Irish editor. “A quid pro quo,” said the sub-editor. “Now I’ve come here for the quid and I don’t mean to go until I get it.”

The editor looked at him, then felt for something in his waistcoat pocket. Producing a piece of that sort of tobacco known as Limerick twist, he bit it in two, and offered one portion to the sub-editor, saying, “There’s your quid for you; but, so help me Gad, I’ve only got what you see in my mouth to last me till morning.”