Part 2 (1/2)

CHAPTER II

PROBATION

Aspirations After a Journalistic Life--A Clerk's Stool in the WB Lead Office--Literary Ambitions--An Accepted Contribution--The _Northern Daily Express_ and its Editor--Founding a Literary Institute--Letters froley--Joseph Cowen and his Revolutionary Friends--Orsini--Thackeray's Lectures and dickens's Readings

One day, in the suh, looking onder and delight upon the beautiful panorae, and the gentle out to lory of theer than I was, and treated h on a brief holiday, and was staying at the house of one ofduly fulfilled his duty as showht to draw row up?” he asked My ansas instantaneous and assured ”Ihter, which surprised me even more than it did the passers-by ”A newspaper editor!” he cried, still convulsed by what appeared to me a most unseemly, if not offensive, merriment ”Good heavens! And what in the world has put such a thing as that into the child's head?” My wounded dignity came to my aid Was I not fourteen? and had I not already left school and begun to earn o,” I said in the accents of injured innocence ”When I a else” I had a sad tientlearded as the joke so keenly that whenever he met a friend he stopped him, and said, ”Let me introduce to you a live editor--that is to be some day” He enjoyed the situationas I was, I hadshould move me from my purpose Perhaps the printer's ink of the dear old co rooainst the usual te of his future path in life, is beset Or perhaps it was because printer's ink is in the blood of the family Whatever may have been the cause, journalis back across the years of heavy hich now separate h, I see no reason to repent my early choice or the loss of every other chance of success in life

Yet, at the outset, there were a hundred obstacles barring ed to pass I was already, as I have said, at work Knowing full well the narrowness of my father's means, I had cheerfully taken a situation as a clerk, and kindly Fortune had smiled upon me in the appoint school went, as it was phrased in those days, ”on the quay side” at Newcastle; that is to say, they entered the office of one of the great merchants by whose hands the prosperous trade of the Tyne was carried on

Here their lives were full froht with the business which in such a hive of industry see No doubt, a position in a shi+pping or colliery office at Newcastle in those days was one to which es were attached Not a few schoolfellows of es than I possessed, have becoe fortune, have acquired landed estates, have sat in Parliament, have founded county families But it was not towards these ends that ed me; and, happily forin the 'fifties, in the hu in co places of business on the quay side, where the race for wealth seehest to lowest

Through the influence of a friend, and chiefly in virtue of my father's name, I secured a place in as then known as the WB Lead Office

There was at that tiuished by these letters which carried off the palm in the lead markets of the world; indeed, its price was constantly froher than that of any other lead procurable This lead was obtained froreat enerations owned by the Beaumont family Mr Wentworth Blackett Beauer bustle, due to the keenness of business competition, in the quiet rooms of the WB Lead Office in Northumberland Street, when I entered it as a boy The whole of the produce of the reat London fire quantities that a score of transactions sufficed for a year's work How great those transactions were athered frole invoice in which the sole item stated represented a sum of 40,000

Very soon I found that my chief duty as junior clerk in this eminently sedate and respectable establishentleratitude His naill, and, like myself, he had little taste for mere business avocations He was a student, a lover of literature, a collector of books, and a writer of verse Fortunate was it for e in e when one is most susceptible to outside influences For five years we sat opposite to each other in the same quiet room, and never once did I hear fall froestion He suffered from serious weakness of the eyes, and it was for this reason that so much of my spare time (and it was nearly all spare ti aloud to hih in all conscience, but he never wanted ht when the first number of the _Saturday Review_, to which he had subscribed on its appearance, was placed in his hands

Fros of the leaders in the _Tis of the brilliant sarcasuished the new review that had entered the field of journalis its own so fearlessly against all coive norance of ood fortune ina companion like this--h s behind ethat a literary life was one reserved only for the few, and, like htly, or wantonly,”

he did not, as so ht have done, stamp ruthlessly upon my aspirations or subject the to the a This, it is true, was done by another person in the saentleether so obnoxious to me for many reasons that his special dislike of reeted my early appearances in print, did not affect ree

I could say much of those five years of my life spent in the WB Lead Office, but I must not weary my readers with that which would be at best a hus I took lessons at hoed, I had always a book or a pen in h one's aspirations soar in that season when everything seelory of Milton itself seemed hardly beyond attainment, and I nursed the illusion that within me lay the potentiality of a new Scott, or dickens, or Thackeray Happy, foolish drea which no man has ever been the worse! A hundred ti printed But the stories, the essays, and--save theunfinished, or, when finished, were so obviously bad, even to ment, that they were promptly destroyed When at last I did taste the fearful joys of a first appearance in print, it was on a very hu in Newcastle in 1857 over the appoint in the town; an appointment that was obnoxious not only because it was a clear case of pluralised to the then unpopular High Church party I read the articles in the papers, and the letters in which ave expression to their vieith keen interest, and at last I wascarefully composed a letter to the editor of the _Northern Daily Express_, which I signed ”A Bedesman,” I furtively dropped it into the letter-box at the newspaper office, and tre to wait The next , as I was on my way to the office, I chanced upon a contents bill of the _Express_, and there, with dazzled eyes, the testimony of which I could hardly believe, I read the announcement that the paper of the day contained a letter by ”A Bedes confession The price of the paper was a penny, and at that particular moment I discovered that I had not a penny in the world My weekly pocket-enerally went at one of the old bookstalls in the market before the as far advanced But I could not face the day beforeupon ht not have adopted the saht not be labouring under a fond delusion I turned and fled hoood time), and asked my mother to lend me the penny I needed In a broken whisper I confided to her the fact that I believed there was really a letter of otht--dearer than any other the world can show to the young literary aspirant--my first printed composition I had then just entered my fifteenth year

Not one writer in a thousand has stopped at a first book, and not one newspaper contributor in a million has stopped at a first letter to the editor Like much better people, I hadthe Genius of Shakespeare, the Art of Fiction, and the Character of Cromere not wanted by anybody, there were so up, as it were, at ive an opinion that so In short, I was enabled to see that though I could not fly, I erly I turned to profit the discovery I had thus ns were laid on one side I no longer dreamed of an Epic that should rival ”Paradise Lost” or a novel that ht outshi+ne ”Vanity Fair”; but I prepared to discuss the local questions of the hour, the site of a post office, the opening of a hospital, the grievance of some small public official, with the zest which I had only felt hitherto when dealing with the great literary and social probleence could contribute nothing of value What I wrote on such topics as those I have named I cannot pretend to remember; but there must have been some little promise in my contributions to the _Express_, for one ot home from work, my father told me that he had received a visit from Mr Marshall, the chief proprietor of that paper, and that this visit closely concerned e and occupation, and having suggested that ht not to be repressed, had offered to have ht shorthand by the reporter of the _Express_

Finally he had left with n, which he desired me to accept in payment of my various contributions to the paper So, whilst I was still aas yet entered onthe ular camp-followers of journalism

It was indeed a rapturous moment when I heard this news If I had been allowed, I would forthwith have thrown up my place at the WB Lead office and taken service--even the humblest--on the Press But on this point my father was firh there could be no harht fit me for journalism hereafter Not that he or my mother desired to see me become a journalist The Press--at all events in provincial towns--in those days was the reverse of respectable in the eyes of the world; and truly there was some reason for the low esteem in which it was held The ordinary reporter on a country paper was generally illiterate, was too often inteain didfor a life on the Press with the repetition of dis friends, who deplored the fact that her son should drea so secure and respectable a position as a clerkshi+p in the WB

Lead Office for the poor rewards and dubious respectability of a newspaper career

There was an old friend of my father's--Innes by name--who took it upon hi ht to illustrate the dangers of the course on which I was anxious to embark by a personal experience ”Thomas,” he said solemnly (and oh, how I hated to be called Thomas!), ”I knew a laddie called Forster His father was a most respectable, decent man, that kept a butcher's shop at the top o' the Side--a first-rate business; and this laddie--his naot just such notions into his head as ye have; he was always reading and writing, and nothing would suit hi to the shop And at last he went away to London, and his poor father died, and the business went all to pieces, and I've never heard tell of that laddie from the day he went to London until now He's died of starvation, most likely, by this time”

”Why, Mr Innes,” I cried, ”do you really mean to say that you have never heard of Mr Forster's books--his Life of Oliver Goldsreat writers now, and if I could only reach a position like his--” But this prospect was so dazzling that it fairly took hted to find that my old friend's ”awful example” should have been a man in whose footsteps I most ardently desired to tread

As I have n to becoht that I should say that if it had not been for the atmosphere in which I lived at hon would never have become possible Ours was a hoenerous sympathies We children learned from the example of our dear father and mother to look beyond ourselves and our own sht in the world at large If our table was of the plainest, there were always books and newspapers in the house, and they were not there for show My ment which, if not infallible, was at least sound Many a ti They were not, as a rule, hot from the Press; but why should they have been, in the case of a boy with all the literary treasures of the world still untasted? My father leaned, as was natural, to the more serious side of literature; but he had a keen interest in public affairs, and he brought to their study a sagacious and well-informed mind Whilst the spirit in which both he and my mother viewed life and the problems which it daily presented to them was that of a pure and lofty Puritanism, it was broadened and softened, entleness and liberality of their own characters So it was in an atht that I lived my life in those days both at home and at the WB Lead Office

The _Northern Daily Express_ was a penny newspaper which laid claim to be the first provincial daily published at that price The claim has, I believe, been disputed by Mr Justin McCarthy, who claims the honour for a Liverpool journal hich he was himself at one time connected

But whether first or second, it is certain that the _Express_ was very early in the field It had been started at Darlington in 1855 by a gentleman named Watson A year later it was transferred to Newcastle, and it was in the _Express_ office that I first became acquainted with actual newspaper work A very curious place was that office when I first knew it It consisted simply of two rooms and two cellars in a house in West Clayton Street One of the rooms was devoted to the compositors who set the little sheet; the other was by day the counting-house and the place where the papers were sold and advertiseht it became the editorial office--the editor, sub-editor, and reporters all working together here at the desks occupied by the clerks during the day I ought, perhaps, to explain that the staff was not quite so large as ht lead people to suppose The sub-editor, for instance, doubled his part and acted as reporter also

Still, it was a tight fit in that little roo to write so's paper In the cellars was the machine on which the _Express_ was printed, and the stock of paper

In one respect, the _Express_ was better equipped than is many a pretentious journal of to-day Its editor--Manson by name--was aarticles were certainly second to none in the newspaper press of his day This is a strong saying, but my reader will not think it unjustified when he hears that Manson's services had been eagerly sought for bythe _Tienius, but, unfortunately, not without the defects of his qualities Ineyes he was a marvel, and almost an idol To sit beside hied the thunderbolts which produced so great an effect upon the opinion of the toas to reat for words I would sit and watch the untiring handacross the slips of blue paper with a mind filled with the awe and reverence hich a pupil of Michael Angelo otof the ladder, and iven to the WB Lead Office; but seldo me, on one pretext or another, in the house in West Clayton Street

Indeed, I had now beconised member of the staff, and raphs, letters, and the inevitable verses appeared al to teach ress with Pitraphy; but now, thanks to the kindness of Mr Marshall, I secured the services of a first-rate teacher, and soon ress in that difficult art My teacher was Mr Lowes, an admirable shorthand writer, rote a systeraphy appeared to be the chief evil afflicting s divide the world! In raphers and stenographers, and never did the school their own shi+bboleths than did Lowes in asserting the superiority of his system to that of Mr Pitman--an opinion which I need scarcely say was not shared by the world

Loas a good fellow, and a uidance I soon acquired a certain amount of facility in ordinary press-work Contributions to _Chambers's Journal_, the _Leisure Hour_, and one or two avea wider audience than the readers of the _Express_, and though I had aswriters, I stuck steadily to thened my position in the world of journalism

There were other fields of activity, besides the press, that I assiduously cultivated For exae of seventeen I founded an institution in the west end of Newcastle, not far from my father's church I called it the ”West End Literary Institute,” and truly it was designed upon a edthe institute, and the uished authors for presentation copies of their books, in order to furnish the shelves of the library, I am driven to the painful conclusion that I must have been a terrible person in the days of ing for books as free gifts fro those whosley, and the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Longley