James Ritchie - About London

The parliamentary reporters are now furnishing their quota; gentlemen who have been assisting at public-dinners come redolent of post-prandial eloquence, which has to be reduced to sense and grammar. It is now midnight, and yet we have to wait the arrival of the close of the parliamentary debate, on which the editor must write a leader before he leaves; and the theatrical critic’s verdict on the new play. In the meanwhile the foreman of the printers takes stock, being perfectly aware that he cannot perform the wonderful feat of making a pint bottle hold a quart. Woe is me! he has already half a dozen columns in excess. What is to be done? Well, the literature must stand over, that’s very clear, then those translations from the French will do to-morrow, and this report will also not hurt by delay – as to the rest, that must be cut down and still further condensed; but quickly, for time is passing, and we must be on the machine at three. Quickly fly the minutes – hotter becomes the gas-lit room – wearier the editorial staff. But the hours bring relief. The principal editor has done his leader and departed – the assistants have done the same – so have the reporters, only the sub-editor remains, and as daylight is glimmering in the east, and even fast London is asleep, he quietly lights a cigar, and likewise departs; the printers will follow as soon as the forms have gone down, and the movements below indicate that the machine, by the aid of steam, is printing.

We have thus seen most of the newspaper people off the premises. As we go out into the open air, we may yet find a few of them scorning an ignoble repose. For instance, there is a penny-a-liner – literally he is not a penny-a-liner, as he is generally paid three-farthings a line, and very good pay that is, as the same account, written on very thin paper, called flimsy, is left at all the newspaper-offices, which, if they all insert, they all pay for, and one short tale may put the penny-a-liner in funds for a week. The penny-a-liner has long been the butt of a heartless world. He ought to be a cynic, and I fear is but an indifferent Christian, and very so-so as head of a family. His appearance is somewhat against him, and his antecedents are eccentric; his face has a beery appearance; his clothes are worn in defiance of fashion; neither his hat nor his boots would be considered by a swell as the correct stilton; you would scarce take him as the representative of the potent fourth estate. Yet penny-a-liner’s rise; one of them is now the editor of a morning paper; another is the manager of a commercial establishment, with a salary of almost a thousand a year; but chiefly, I imagine, they are jolly good fellows going down the hill. Charles Lamb said he never greatly cared for the society of what are called good people. The penny-a-liners have a similar weakness; they are true Bohemians, and are prone to hear the chimes at midnight. Literally, they take no thought for to-morrow, and occasionally are put to hard shifts. Hence it is sub-editors have to be on their guard with their dealings with them. Their powers of imagination and description are great. They are prone to harrow up your souls with horrors that never existed; and as they are paid by the line, a harsh prosaic brevity is by no means their fault. Occasionally they take in the papers. Not long since a most extraordinary breach of promise case went the round of the evening papers, which was entirely a fiction of the penny-a-liners. Yet let us not think disparagingly of them – of a daily newspaper no small part is the result of their diligent research. And if they do occasionally indulge in fiction, their fictions are generally founded on fact. The reader, if he be a wise man, will smile and pass on – a dull dog will take the matter seriously and make an ass of himself. For instance, only this very year, there was a serious controversy about Disraeli’s literary piracies, as they were called in the Manchester Examiner . It appears a paragraph was inserted in an obscure London journal giving an account of an evening party at Mr. Gladstone’s, at which Mr. Disraeli had been present – an event just as probable as that the Bishop of Oxford would take tea at Mr. Spurgeon’s. Mr. Disraeli’s remarks were reported, and the paragraph – notwithstanding its glaring absurdity – was quoted in the Manchester Examiner . Some acute reader remembered to have read a similar conversation attributed to Coleridge, and immediately wrote to the Examiner to that effect. The letter was unhandsomely inserted with a bold heading, – several letters were inserted on the same subject, and hence, just because a poor penny-a-liner at his wits’ end doctored up a little par, and attributed a very old conversation to Mr. Disraeli, the latter is believed in Cottonopolis guilty of a piracy, Cottonopolis being all the more ready to believe this of Mr. Disraeli, as the latter gentleman is at the head of a party not supposed to be particularly attached to the doctrines of what are termed the Manchester School. Really editors and correspondents should be up to these little dodges, and not believe all they see in print.

I would also speak of another class of newspaper people – the newspaper boy, agile as a lamp-lighter, sharp in his glances as a cat. The newspaper boy is of all ages, from twelve to forty, but they are all alike, very disorderly, and very ardent politicians; and while they are waiting in the publishing-office for their papers they are prone to indulge in political gossip, after the manner of their betters at the west-end clubs. On the trial of Bernard, the excitement among the newspaper boys was very great. I heard some of them, on the last day of the trial, confess to having been too excited all that day to do anything; their admiration of the speech of Edwin James was intense. A small enthusiast near me said to another, “That ere James is the fellow to work ’em; didn’t he pitch hin to the hemperor?”

“Yes,” said a sadder and wiser boy; “yes, he’s all werry well, but he’d a spoke on t’other side just as well if he’d been paid.”

“No; would he?”

“Yes, to be sure.”

“Well, that’s wot I call swindling.”

“No, it ain’t. They does their best. Them as pays you, you works for.”

Whether the explanation was satisfactory I can’t say, as the small boy’s master’s name was called, and he vanished with “two quire” on his youthful head. But generally these small boys prefer wit to politics; they are much given to practical jokes at each other’s expense, and have no mercy for individual peculiarities. Theirs is a hard life, from five in the morning, when the daily papers commence publishing, to seven in the evening, when the second edition of the Sun with the Gazette appears. What becomes of them when they cease to be newspaper boys, must be left to conjecture. Surely such riotous youths can never become tradesmen in a small way, retailers of greens, itinerant dealers in coal. Do not offend these gentry if you are a newspaper proprietor. Their power for mischief is great. At the Illustrated News office I have seen a policeman required to reduce them to order.

Finally, of all newspaper people, high or low, let me ask the public to speak charitably. They are hard-worked, they are not over-paid, and some of them die prematurely old. Ten years of night-work in the office of a daily newspaper is enough to kill any man, even if he has the constitution of a horse; one can’t get on without them; and it is a sad day for his family when Paterfamilias misses his paper. Whigs, tories, prelates, princes, valiant warriors, and great lawyers, are not so essential to the daily weal of the public, as newspaper people. In other ways they are useful – the great British naturalist, Mr. Yarell, was a newspaper vendor.

Читать дальше