Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (666 page)

“Look here, Messrs. So-and-so say that they have spent forty pounds a week with us for the last three months and that you never give their books any space at all. Couldn’t you see that they have a mention now and then?”

The literary editor, knowing perfectly well — or feeling sub-consciously that his position as editor or perhaps even the very existence of his literary supplement depends upon its power to attract advertisements, will almost certainly look out for something amongst the works published by Messrs. So-and-so, and will then praise this work to the extent of a column or so. He will not always do this out of fear. Sometimes it will be because he desires to help the poor devil of an advertisement canvasser, who has a wife and family. Sometimes he will do it to oblige the publisher, who may be the best of good fellows. But always the result will be the same. And, armed with this achievement, the advertising canvasser will go round to other publishers and assure them that, if they will spend money on advertisements in his paper, he will secure for them favourable notices upon the day when the advertisement appears. All this is very natural, a slow and imperceptibly spreading process of corruption. But it is bitterly bad for literature. Twenty-five years ago it would have been impossible, fifteen years ago it would have been impossible. Now, it
is.
There are exceptions, of course, but every day they grow fewer.

The fine old newspaper whose advertisement manager proposed that I should give him every Monday a six-inch double column and receive in exchange my favourable notice — this fine old newspaper had just a week before passed into “new hands.” And now-a-days alas! almost invariably new brooms sweep very dirty! Cataclysmic and extraordinary changes take place every day in the world of newspapers. In one week two years ago I received visits from just over forty beggars. Every one of these introduced himself to my favour with the words: “I am a journalist myself”! One of these poor men had a really tragic history. He bore a name of some respectability in the journalistic world. He had been a reporter upon a midland daily paper; he had become the editor of a southwest local journal. One day he was riding a bicycle outside his town when a motor-car approached him from behind, knocked him down, and, as he lay on the ground spread-eagled, it ran over both his legs and both his arms and broke them. The car went on without stopping, and this poor man lay for eighteen months in a hospital. When he came out he was penniless, and he found that the whole face of journalism had altered. The midland paper for which he had written had passed into the hands of Lord Dash, and the entire staff had changed; his south coast local paper had passed out of existence; so had the great London morning paper for which he had occasionally written. In another newspaper office with which he had been connected he found two editors, each properly engaged, quarrelling as to who should occupy the editorial chair, and neither one of these had been the editor of the paper when he had gone into the hospital. In the short space of eighteen months all the men he knew had lost their jobs and had disappeared from Fleet Street. That is why one will receive visits from forty beggars in one week, each of them introducing himself with the words: “I am a journalist myself.”

It is this terrible insecurity of tenure that has so brought low — that is so bringing low — the journalism of England. And it is not so much the fact that the majority of our journals are written by shop-boys for shop-girls — for, after all, why should shop-girls not have their organs? — or that they are directed by advertising managers for the benefit of shopkeepers. What is really terrible, is that the public is entirely indifferent to the fare that is put before it. It is as indifferent to the leading articles.

There is an old skit of Thackeray’s representing the astonishment of an Oriental Pasha at the ordered routine and the circumstances of an English middle class household. He sees the white breakfast-table laid, the shining coffee and cream jugs, the eggs and bacon bubbling in their silver dishes. The family come down and range themselves in their places around the table. The Pasha utters the appropriate ejaculations and comments at the strangeness of the scene. Last of all comes down the master of the house. He puts his napkin across his knees, is helped to eggs and bacon and then — comfortably opens his newspaper.

“Bismillah!” the Pasha ejaculates, “will he read through that immense sheet before he applies himself to the work of the day? By Allah! it is as large as the mainsail of His Highness’s yacht.”

Mr. Thomlinson of the ‘sixties and ‘seventies probably did not read through the whole of his paper. But he did read the leaders and the foreign correspondence, and then took himself off to business, his wife with her key basket attending him to the hall, where she cast a glance at the hat-rack to see that her husband’s hat was wel brushed and his umbrella properly folded. [These last words are not my own. They are suggested by the introductory direction to a lady of the house in the cookery book written by Mrs. Beeton — a work most excellent y shadowing that almost vanished thing, an English home.]

Mr. Thomlinson, if he did not ride down to his office in the City, drove there in his brougham. The remainder of his newspaper he reserved for a comfortable and half somnolent perusal after dinner, whilst Mrs. Thomlinson crocheted and the young ladies played “The Battle of Prague” upon the piano, or looked over the water-colour sketches that they had made at Ramsgate that summer. Then with his mind comfortably filled with the ideas of his favourite leader writers, Mr. Thomlinson would take his flat candlestick and go tranquilly to bed.

When I was a boy it used to be considered a reproach with which one could flatten out any “bourgeois” to say that his mind was regulated by the leader in the newspaper. And the minds of most of the middle class in that day were indeed so regulated. Nowadays it would be almost a testimonial to say of a middle class man that he read anything so solid and instructive as were the leaders of the ‘seventies and ‘eighties. That we do not read the leaders to-day is probably to our credit. A little time ago I was in the editorial room of one of our great organs. The editor was giving me his views upon something or other. A clerk came in with a note. The editor interrupted his flow of speech to say:

“Here, you! the German journalists’ deputation is coming to London to-morrow. Just write a leader about it. I am too busy. Be polite, but not too polite, you understand. If you have not time to write it get some one else to do it. Anybody will do. Tell them that — not to be too polite. Let them read the back files for what we have said already. I want the copy in half-an-hour.”

You will observe that it would be incorrect to say that this leader was going to be written by a shop-boy for shop-girls. It was going to be written by just any clerk, for nobody at all in England. Unfortunately, if nobody at all in England to-day reads leaders, this is not the ease in foreign countries. There was once a time when the
Standard
had an immense reputation abroad. Continental papers hung upon its lips and attached to its utterances on foreign politics an enormous and deserved importance. And some such importance is still attached on the Continent to the utterances of English newspapers, though the
Standard
itself no longer monopolizes attention. Thus the utterances of our “Gutter Press,” written by any clerk for nobody, and carefully observing the editor’s direction to be not too polite — these utterances find attached to them an all too great importance in the newspapers of the particular country which for the time being the proprietor of the newspaper has made up his mind to bait. In England they produce no impression at all, but abroad unfortunately they do a great deal of harm, because the foreigner can never really get it out of his head that a newspaper represents officially the views of the State. This same editor once gave one of his departmental sub-editors a fortnight’s holiday. In this fortnight he was to study the works of Flaubert and Maupassant — in order to acquire the quality that is called “snap.” This may appear impossible, yet it is perfectly true. But what would have happened in the days of Delane? One is a little tired of hearing of Delane, yet there is no doubt that Delane was one of the greatest editors of papers and one of the great forces of the day. He indeed earned for
The Times
the name of “The Thunderer.” And this he did by means of enormous industry and enormous rectitude. He paid unsleeping attention to the quality of the paper in all its departments. If the musical editor wrote too often or with too much enthusiasm of any given
prima donna
— or if he suspected that it was being done, he would himself take the opportunity of visiting the opera and forming an estimate. Or, if he suspected the art editor of too much partiality for a living painter, Delane would take a great deal of trouble to discover what was the general consensus of opinion of the art world concerning the claims of that painter. This, of course, was not an ideal method of directing criticism of art. Delane himself was not an authority on music, and the general consensus of opinion on any given painter will tell as a rule very hardly against originality or new genius. Nevertheless, it was a conscientious thing to do, and quite the most practical in a world where log-rolling is a dangerous factor.

And if there was only one Delane, there were in London of that day at least twenty editors of daily and weekly papers to whom Delane’s ideals were ideals too. An editor of that day regarded himself as discharging a very responsible and almost sacred duty. He discharged it autocratically, and his position was of the utmost security and tenure. He would have about him, too, a force of august anonymity, and to be in the same room with Delane was to feel oneself hushed, as if royalty had been about. Indeed, merely to take “copy” to
The Times
office was to feel oneself infinitely humble as regarded that newspaper, but nevertheless a functionary of importance in the rest of the world.

And, as with the editors, so with the leader writers.

These also were august and serious gentlemen. They appeared to be of the rank of editors of the great Quarterlies; or at least, they were contributors to these revered organs. They would debate the topics of the day with the editor-in-chief, and they would demand two days to reflect about and to write their article if it was one of any importance. In those days, in fact, no editor could call to him his clerk and say that he wanted a not too polite leader in half-an-hour.

I do not mean to say that the actual conditions of the English press up to the date of the Boer War were altogether ideal. But when a newspaper got its hand upon a writer of ability, of genius, or of rectitude, it knew what to do with him. It gave him plenty of space, it kept occasionally an eye upon him, and it left him very much alone. Thus there arose such really great journalistic critics as W. E. Henley, the late R. A. M. Stevenson, or G. W. Steevens, though Steevens lived into and died at the hands of the new journalism. And these men were really great in their own way. I do not mean to say that Henley was a great literary critic in the sense that Sainte Beuve was great, or that fifty Frenchmen are great. But he had at least some canons of art, and, right-headed, wrong-headed, or altogether beside the mark, he roared out gallantly enough the ideas which for the moment had possession of him. And I have always considered that the final proof that the Tory party is really the stupid party — the damning and final proof was that it never subsidized Henley and never provided him with an organ. Had Henley been a Liberal, he would have had half-a-dozen papers at his feet. The Tory party without a qualm let die alike the
National Observer
and the
New Review
as it would have let die fifty periodicals of as fine a genius had Henley had the strength or the money to start them. But Henley was a very great man, and the circle of writers with whom he surrounded himself was very valuable and very vital until the death of Henley, and the coming of that never to be sufficiently accursed war set as it were an iron door between the past and the present.

To Henley and his circle I will return; they took as it were the place of Pre-Raphaelism after Pre-Raphaelism had degenerated into a sort Æstheticism, and Æstheticism into a sort of mawkish flap-doodle. But the point was that the older journalism did afford place and space for such vigorous authentic and original writers. Its trouble was that unless an editor was very vigorous these strong critics, getting a too free hand, would go off into riots of a perfectly tremendous log-rolling.

Thus for instance one had the
Athenaeum,
under the editorship of Mr. Maccoll. Mr. Maccoll was one of the most charming and esoterically erudite of men, but his mind, I think, was entirely immersed in what is called Symbolic Logic. As to what Symbolic Logic was or may be I have not the faintest idea. One evening when I was walking home with Mr. Maccoll from Dr. Garnett’s at the British Museum, Mr. Maccoll with his gentle voice, large person, black kid gloves — I never in my life saw him without the black kid gloves either indoors or out — and abstract manner, kindly tried to explain to me what this science was. But all my mind retained was a vague idea that if you called a dog a tree and a tree R, and if you worked it out as an algebraic proposition, you would solve the riddle of the universe. At any rate he was a very gentle, kind and abstracted man, and it was a genuine pleasure to see him standing, tall, blond and bald in the middle of a drawing-room holding in his black kid gloves his cup of tea, and his eyes wandering always round and round the frieze just below the ceiling. And I have this much to say of gratitude to Mr. Maccoll, that although he entertained the deepest hostility to my father — a hostility which my father vigorously returned — of all the friends and enemies that my father and grandfather had between them, the editor of the
Athenæum
was the only one — if I except Dr. Garnett and Mr. Watts-Dunton — who ever tried to do me a good turn.