CHAPTER VII.—SOME EXTINCT TYPES.
A perturbed spirit—The loss of a fortune—A broken bank—A study in bimetallism—Auri sacra fames—A rough diamond—A friend of the peerage—And of Dublin stout—His weaknesses—The Quarterly Review—The dilemma—An amateur hospital nurse—A terrible night—Benvenuto Cellini—A subtle jest—The disappearance of the jester—An appropriated leaderette—An appropriated anecdote—An appropriated quatrain.
ONCE I saw a sub-editor actually within easy reach of suicide. It was not the duplicating of a five-column speech in flimsy, nor was it that the foreman printer had broken his heart. It was that he had been the victim of a heartless theft. His savings of years had been carried off in the course of a single night. So he explained to me with “tears in his eyes, distraction in’s aspect,” when I came down to the office one evening. He was walking up and down his room, with three hours’ arrears of unopened telegrams on his desk and a p.p.c. note from the foreman beneath a leaden “rule,” used as a paper weight; for the foreman, being, as usual, a conscientious man, invariably promised to hand in his notice at sundown if kept waiting for copy.
“What on earth is the matter?” I inquired.
“Is it neuralgia or——”
“It’s worse—worse!” he moaned. “I’ve lost all my money—all—all! there’s the tin I kept it in—see for yourself if there’s a penny left in it.” He threw himself into his chair and bowed down his head upon his hands.
Far off a solitary (speaking) trumpet blew.
“If the hands are to go home you’ve only got to say so and I release them,” was the message that was delivered into my ear when I went to the end of the tube communicating with the foreman.
“Three columns will be out inside half an hour,” I replied. Then I turned to the sobbing sub-editor. “Come,” said I, “bear it like a man. It’s a terrible thing, of course, but still it must be faced. Tell me how many pounds you’ve lost, and I’ll put the matter into the hands of the police.”
He looked up with a vacant white face.
“How many—there were a hundred and forty pence in the tin when I went home last night. See if there’s a penny left.”
A cursory glance at the chocolate tin that lay on the table was quite sufficient to convince me that it was empty.
“Cheer up,” I said. “A hundred and forty pence. It sounds large in pence, to be sure, but when you think of it from the standard of the silver currency it doesn’t seem so formidable. Eleven and eightpence. Of course it’s a shocking thing. Was it all in pence?”
“All—all—every penny of it.”
“Keep up your heart. We may be able to trace the money. I suppose you are prepared to identify the coins?”
He ran his fingers through his hair, and I could see that he was striving manfully to collect his thoughts.
“Identify? I could swear to them if I saw them in the lump—one hundred and forty—one—hundred—and—forty—pence! Yes, I’ll swear that I could swear to them in the lump. But singly—oh, I’ll never see them again!”
“Tell me how it came about that you had so much money in this room,” said I, beginning to open the telegrams. “Man, did you not think of the terrible temptation that you were placing in the way of the less opulent members of the staff? Eleven and eight in a disused chocolate tin! It’s a temptation like this that turns honest men into thieves.”
Then it was that he informed me on the point upon which I confess I was curious—namely, how he came to have this fortune in copper.
His wife, he said, was in the habit of giving him a penny every rainy night, this being his tramcar fare from his house to his office. But—he emphasised this detail—she was usually weak enough not to watch to see whether he got into the tramcar or not, and the consequence was that, unless the night was very wet indeed, he was accustomed to walk the whole way and thus save the penny, which he nightly deposited in the chocolate tin: he could not carry it home with him, he said, for his wife would be certain to find it when she searched his waistcoat pockets before he arose in the morning.
“For a hundred and forty times you persevered in this course of duplicity for the sake of the temporary gain!” said I. “It is this craving to become quickly rich that is the curse of the nineteenth century. I thought that journalists were free from it; I find that they are as bad as Stock Exchange gamblers or magazine proprietors. Oh, gold! gold! Go on with your work or there’ll be a blue-pencilled row to-morrow. Don’t fancy you’ll obtain the sympathy of any human being in your well-earned misfortune. You don’t deserve to have so good a wife. A penny every rainy night—a penny! Oh, I lose all patience when I think of your complaining. Go on with your work.”
He went on with his work.
Some months after this incident he thought it necessary to tell me that he was a Scotchman.
It was not necessary; but I asked him if his wife was one too.
“Not exactly,” said he argumentatively. “But she’s a native of Scotland—I’ll say that much for her.”
I afterwards heard that he had become the proprietor of that very journal upon which he had been sub-editor.
I was not surprised.
My memories of the sub-editor’s room include a three months’ experience of a remarkable man. He imposed upon me for nearly a week, telling me anecdotes of the distinguished persons whom he had met in the course of his career. It seemed to me—for a week—that he was the darling of the most exclusive society in Europe. He talked about noble lords by their Christian names, and of noble ladies with equal breezy freedom. Many of his anecdotes necessitated a verbatim report of the replies made by marquises and countesses to his playful sallies; and I noticed that, so far as his recollection served him, they had always addressed him as George; sometimes—but only in the case of over-familiar daughters of peers—Georgie. I felt—for a week—that journalism had made a sensible advance socially when such things were possible. Perhaps, I thought, some day the daughter of a peer may distort my name, so that I may not die undistinguished.
I have seen a good many padded peeresses and dowdy duchesses since those days, and my ambition has somehow drifted into other channels; but while the man talked of his intimacies with peers, and his friendship—he assured me on his sacred word of honour (whatever that meant) that it was perfectly Platonic—with peeresses.
I was carried away—for a week.
He was an undersized man, with a rooted prejudice against soap and the comb. He spoke like a common man, and wore clothes that were clearly second-hand. He posed as the rough diamond, the untamed literary lion, the genius who refuses to be trammelled by the usages—most of them purely artificial—of society, and on whom society consequently dotes.
What he doted on was Dublin stout. If he had acquired during his intercourse with the aristocracy their effete taste in the way of drinking, he certainly managed to chasten it. He drank six bottles of stout in the course of a single night, and regretted that there was not a seventh handy.
For a month he did his work moderately well, but at the end of that time he began to put it upon other people. He made excuse after excuse to shirk his legitimate duties. One night he came down with a swollen face. He was suffering inexpressible agony from toothache, he said, and if he were to sit down to his desk he really would not guarantee that some shocking mistake would not occur. He would, he declared, be serving the best interests of the paper if he were to go home to his bed. He only waited to drink a bottle of stout before going.
A few days after his return to work he entered the office enveloped in an odoriferous muffler, and speaking hoarsely. He had, he said, caught so severe a cold that the doctor was not going to allow him to leave his house; but so soon as he got his back turned, he had run down to tell us that it was impossible for him to do anything for a night or two. He wanted to bind us down in the most solemn way not to let the doctor know that he came out, and we promised to let no one know except the manager. This assurance somehow did not seem to satisfy him. But he drank a bottle of porter and went away.
The very next week he came to me in confidence, telling me that he had just received the proofs of his usual political article in the Quarterly, and that the editor had taken the trouble to telegraph to him to return the proofs for press without fail the next day. Now, the only question with him was, should he chuck up the Quarterly, for which he had written for many years, or the humble daily paper in the office of which he was standing.
I did not venture to suggest a solution of the problem.
He did.
“Maybe you wouldn’t mind taking a squint”—his phraseology was that of the rough genius—“through the telegrams for to-night,” said he. “I don’t like to impose on a good-natured sonny like you, but you see how I’m situated. Confound that Quarterly!”
“Do you do the political article for the Quarterly?” I asked.
“Man, I’ve done it for the past eleven years,” said he. “I thought every one knew that. It’s editor of the Quarterly that I should be to-day if William Smith hadn’t cut me out of the job. But I bear him no malice—bless your soul, not I. You’ll go over the flimsies?”
I said I would, and he wiped a bath sponge of porter-froth off his beard in order to thank me.
I knew that he was telling me a lie about the Quarterly, but I did his work.
Less than a week after, he entered my room to express the hope that I would be able to make arrangements to have his work done for him once again, the fact being that he had just received a message from Mrs. Thompson—the wife of young Thompson, the manager for Messrs. Gibson, the shippers—to ask him for heaven’s sake to help her to look after her husband that night. Young Thompson had been behaving rather wildly of late, it appeared, and was suffering from an attack of that form of heredity known as delirium tremens. He had been held down in the bed by three men and Mrs. Thompson the previous night, my informant said, and added that he himself would probably be one of a fresh batch on whom a similar duty would devolve inside an hour or so.
He had scarcely left the office—after refreshing himself by the artificial aid of Guinness—before a knock came to my door, and the next moment Mr. Thompson himself quietly entered. I saw that the poker was within easy reach, and then asked him how he was.
“I’m all right,” he replied. “I merely dropped in to borrow the Glasgow Herald for a few minutes. I heard to-day that a ship of ours was reported as spoken, but I can’t find it in any paper that has come to us.”
“You can have the Herald with pleasure,” said I. “You didn’t go to the concert last night?”
“No,” said he. “You see it was the night of our choir practice, and I had to attend it to keep the others up to their work.”
The next night I asked the sub-editor how his friend Mr. Thompson was, and if he had experienced much difficulty in keeping him from making an onslaught upon the snakes.
He shook his head solemnly, as if his experiences of the previous night were too terrible to be expressed in ordinary colloquialisms.
“Sonny,” said he, “pray that you may never see all that I saw last night.”
“Or all that Thompson saw,” said I. “Was he very bad?”
“As bad as they make them,” he replied. “I sat on his head for hours at a stretch.”
“When he was off his head you were on it?”
“Ay; but every now and again he would, by an almost superhuman effort, toss me half way up to the ceiling. Man, it was an awful night! It’s heartless of me not being with the poor woman now; but I said I’d do a couple of hours’ work before going.”
“All right,” said I. “Maybe Thompson will call here and you can walk up with him.”
“Thompson call? What the blue pencil do you mean?”
“Just what I say. If you had waited for five minutes last night you might have had his company up to that pleasant little séance in which you turned his head into a chair. He called to see the Glasgow Herald before you could have reached the end of the street.”
He gave a little gasp.
“I didn’t say Thompson, did I?” he asked, after a pause.
“You certainly did,” said I.
“I’ll be forgetting my own name next,” said he. “The man’s name is Johnston—he lives in the corner house of the row I lodge in.”
“Anyhow, you’ll not see him to-night,” said I.
The fellow failed to exasperate me even then. But he succeeded early the next month. He came to me one night with a magazine in his hand.
“I wonder if the boss”—I think I mentioned that he was a rough diamond—“would mind my inserting a column or so of extracts from this paper of mine in the Drawing Room on Benvenuto Cellini?” He pronounced the name “Selliny.”
“On whom is the paper?” I inquired.
“Selliny—Benvenuto Selliny. I’ve made Selliny my own—no man living can touch me there. I knocked off the thing in a hurry, but it reads very well, though I say it who shouldn’t.”
“Why shouldn’t you say it?” I inquired.
“Well when you’ve written as much as me,”—he was a rough diamond—“maybe you’ll be as modest,” he cried, gaily. “When you can knock off a paper——”
“There’s one paper that you’ll not knock off, but that you’ll be pretty soon knocked off,” said I; “and that paper is the one that you are connected with just now. If lies were landed property you’d be one of the largest holders of real estate in the world. I never met such a liar as you are. You never wrote that article on Benvenuto Cellini—you don’t even know how to pronounce the man’s name.”
“The boy’s mad—mad!” he cried, with a laugh that was not a laugh. “Mr. Barton,”—the managing editor had entered the room,—“this fair-haired young gentleman is a bit off his head, I’m thinking.”
“I’m not off my head in the least,” said I. “Do you mean to say, in the presence of Mr. Barton, that you wrote that paper in the Drawing Room on Benvenuto Cellini?”
“Do you want me to take my oath that I wrote it?” said he. “What makes you think that I didn’t write it?”
“Nothing beyond the fact that I wrote it myself, and that this slip of paper which I hold in my hand is the cheque that was sent to me in payment for it, and that this other slip is the usual form of acknowledgment—you see the title of the article on the side—which I have to post to-morrow.”
There was a silence in the room. The managing editor had seated himself in my chair and was scribbling something at the desk.
“My fair-haired friend,” said the sub-editor, “I thought that you would have seen from the first the joke I was playing on you. Why, man, the instant I read the paper I knew it was by you. Don’t you fancy that I know your fluent style by this time?”
“I fancy that there’s no greater liar on earth than yourself,” said I.
“Look here,” he cried, assuming a menacing attitude. “I can stand a lot, but——”
“And so can I,” said the managing editor, “but at last the breaking strain is reached. That paper will allow of your drawing a month’s salary to-morrow,”—he handed him the paper which he had scribbled,—“and I think that as this office has done without you for eleven nights during the past month, it will do without you for the twelfth. Don’t let me find you below when I am going away.”
He didn’t.
I cannot say that I ever met another man connected with a newspaper quite so unscrupulous as the man with whom I have just dealt. I can certainly safely say that I never again knew of a journalist laying claim to the authorship of anything that I wrote, either in a daily paper, where everything is anonymous, or in a magazine, where I employed a pseudonym. No one thought it worth his while doing so. A man who was not a journalist, however, took to himself the honour and glory associated with the writing of a leaderette of mine on the excellent management of a local library. The man who was idiot enough to do so was a theological student in the Presbyterian interest. He began to frequent the library without previously having paid his fare, and on being remonstrated with mildly by the young librarian, said that surely it was not a great concession on the part of the committee to allow him the run of the building after the article he had written in the leading newspaper on the manner in which the institution was conducted. It so happened, however, that the librarian had, at my request, furnished me with the statistics that formed the basis of the leaderette, and he had no hesitation in saying of the divinity student at his leisure what David said of all men in his haste. But after being thrust out of the library and called an impostor, the divinity student went home and wrote a letter signed “Theologia,” in which he made a furious onslaught upon the management of the library, and had the effrontery to demand its insertion in the newspaper the next day.
He is now a popular and deservedly respected clergyman, and I hear that his sermon on Acts v., 1-11 is about to be issued in pamphlet form.
Curiously enough quite recently a man in whose chambers I was breakfasting, pointed out to me what he called a good story that had appeared in a paper on the previous evening.
The paragraph in which it was included was as follows:—
“A rather amusing story is told by the Avilion Gazettes Special Commissioner in his latest article on ‘Ireland as it is and as it would be.’ It is to the effect that some of the Irish members recently wished to cross the Channel for half-a-crown each, and to that end called on a boat agent, a Tory, who knew them, when the following conversation took place:—
“‘Can we go across for half-a-crown each?’
“‘No, ye can’t, thin.’
“‘An’ why not?’
“‘Because’tis a cattle boat.’
“‘Nevermind that, sure we’re not particular.’
“‘No, but the cattle are.’”
That was the entire paragraph..
“It’s a bit rough on your compatriots,” said my host. “You look as if you feel it.”
“I do,” said I; “I feel it to be rather sad that a story that a fellow takes the trouble to invent and to print in a pamphlet, should be picked up by an English correspondent in Dublin, printed in one of his letters from Ireland, and afterwards published in a London evening paper without any acknowledgment being made of the source whence it was derived.”
And that is my opinion still. The story was a pure invention of my own, and it was printed in an anonymous skit, only without the brogue. It was left for the English Special Commissioner to make a feature of the brogue, of which, of course, he had become a master, having been close upon two days in Dublin.
But the most amusing thing to me was to find that the sub-editor of the newspaper with which I was connected had actually cut the paragraph out of the London paper and inserted it in our columns. He pointed it out to me on my return, and asked me if I didn’t think it a good story.
I said it was first rate, and inquired if he had ever heard the story before. He replied that he never had.
That was, I repeat, the point of the whole incident which amused me most; for I had made the sub-editor a present of the original pamphlet, and he said he had enjoyed it immensely.
He also hopes to be one day an ordained clergyman.
When in Ireland during the General Election of 1892, I got a telegram one night informing me that Mr. Justin M’Carthy had been defeated in Derry that day by Mr. Ross, Q.C.
It occurred to me that if a quatrain could be made upon the incident it might be read the next day. The following was the result of the great mental effort necessary to bring to bear upon the task:—
“That the Unionists Derry can win
Is a matter to-day beyond doubt;
For Ross the Q.C. is just in,
And the one that’s Justin is just out.”
I put my initials to this masterpiece, and I need scarcely say that I was dizzy with pride when it appeared at the head of a column the next morning. Now, that thing kept staring me in the face out of every newspaper, English as well as Irish, that I picked up during the next fortnight, only it appeared without my initials, but in compensation bore as preface, lest the reader might be amazed at coming too suddenly upon such subtle humour, these words:—
“The following epigram by a Dublin wit is being widely circulated in the Irish metropolis.” Some months afterwards, when I chanced to pay a visit to Dublin, the author of the epigram was pointed out to me.
“So it was he who wrote that thing about just in and just out?” I remarked.
“It was,” said my friend. “I’d introduce you to him only, between ourselves, though a nice enough fellow before he wrote that, he hasn’t been very approachable since.”
I felt extremely obliged to the gentleman. I thought of Mary Barton, the heroic lady represented by Miss Bateman long ago, who had accused herself of the crime committed by another.
CHAPTER VIII.—MEN, MENUS, AND MANNERS.
A humble suggestion—The reviewer from Texas—His treatment of the story of Joseph and his Brethren—A few flare-up headings—The Swiss pastor—Some musical critics—“Il Don Giovanni”—A subtle point—Newspaper suppers—Another suggestion—The bitter cry of the journalist—The plurality of porridge—An object lesson superior to grammatical rules—The bloater as a supper dish—Scarcely an unequivocal success.
I HOPE I may not be going too far when I express the hope in this place that any critic who finds out that some of my jottings are ancient will do me the favour to state where the originals are to be found. I have sufficient curiosity to wish to see how far the jottings deviate from the originals.
In the preparation of stories for the Press it is, I feel more impressed every day, absolutely necessary to bear in mind the authentic case of the young sailor’s mother who abused him for telling her so palpably impossible a yarn about his having seen fish rise from the water and fly along like birds, but who was quite ready to accept his account of the crimson expanse of the Red Sea. Some of the most interesting incidents that have actually come under my notice could not possibly be published if accuracy were strictly observed as to the details. They are “owre true” to obtain credence..
In this category, however, I do not include the story about the gentleman from Texas who, after trying various employments in Boston to gain a dishonest livelihood, represented himself at a newspaper office as a journalist, and only asked for a trial job. The editor, believing he saw an excellent way of getting rid of a parcel of books that had come for review, flung him the lot and told him to write three-quarters of a column of flare-up head-lines, and a quarter of reviews, and maybe some fool might be attracted to the book column. Now, at the top of the batch there chanced to be the first instalment of a new Polyglot Bible, after the plan so successfully adopted by Messrs. Bagster, about to be issued in parts, and the reviewer failed to recognise the Book of Genesis, which he accordingly read for fetching head-lines. The result of his labours by some oversight appeared in the next issue of the paper, and attracted a considerable amount of interest in religious circles in Boston.
The remaining quarter of a column was occupied by a circumstantial and highly colloquial account of the incidents recorded in the Book of Genesis, and it very plainly suggested that the work had been published by Messrs. Hoskins as a satire upon the success of the Hebrew race in the New England States. The reviewer even made an attempt to identify Joseph with a prominent Republican politician, and Potiphar’s wife with the Democratic party, who were alleged to be making overtures to the same gentleman.
But I really did once meet with a sub-editor who had reviewed “The Swiss Family Robinson” as a new work. He commenced by telling the readers of the newspaper that the book was a wholesome story of a worthy Swiss pastor, and so forth.
I also knew a musical critic who, on being entrusted with the duty of writing a notice of Il Don Giovanni, as performed by the Carl Rosa Company, began as follows: “Don Giovanni, the gentleman from whom the opera takes its name, was a licentious Spanish nobleman of the past century.” The notice gave some account of the affaires of this newly-discovered reprobate, glossing over the Zerlina business rather more than Mozart thought necessary to do, but being very bitter against Leporello, “his valet and confidant,” and finally expressing the opinion somewhat dogmatically that “few of the public would be disposed to say that the fate which overtook this callous scoundrel was not well earned by his persistence in a course of unjustifiable vice. The music is tuneful and was much encored.”
Upon the occasion of this particular representation I recollect that I wrote, “An Italian version of a Spanish story, set to music by a German, conducted by a Frenchman, and interpreted by a Belgian, a Swiss, an Irishman and a Canadian—this is what is meant by English Opera.”
My notice gave great offence; but the other was considered excellent.
The moral tone that pervaded it was most praiseworthy, the people said.
And so it was.
I have got about five hundred musical jottings which, if provoked, I may one day publish; but, meantime, I cannot refrain from giving one illustration of the way in which musical notices were managed long ago.
Madame Adelina Patti had made her first (and farewell) appearance in the town where I was located. I was engaged about two o’clock in the morning putting what I considered to be the finishing touches to the column which I had written about the diva’s concert, when the reporter of the leading paper burst into the room in which I was writing. He was in rather a dishevelled condition, and he approached me and whispered that he wanted to ask me a question outside—there were others in the room. I went through the door with him and inquired what I could do for him.
“I was marked for that blessed concert, and I went too, and now I’m writing the notice,” said he. “But what I want to know is this—Is Patti a soprano or a contralto?”
I have just now discovered that it would be unwise for me to continue very much farther these reminiscences of editors and sub-editors, the fact being that I have some jottings about every one of the race whom I have ever met, and when one gets into a desultory vein of anecdotage like that in which I now find myself for the first time in my life, one is liable to exhaust a reader’s forbearance before one’s legitimate subject has become exhausted. I think it may be prudent to make a diversion at this period from the sub-editors of the past to the suppers of the newspaper office. Gastronomy as a science is not drawn out to its finest point within these precincts. There is still something left to be desired by such persons as are fastidious. I have for long thought that it would be by no means extravagant to expect every newspaper office to be supplied with a kitchen, properly furnished, and with the “good plain cook,” who so constantly figures in the columns (advertising), at hand to turn out the suppers for all departments engaged in the production of the paper.
It is inconvenient for an editor to be compelled to cook his own supper at his gas stove, while the flimsies of the speech upon which he is writing are being laid on his desk by the sub-editor, and the foreman’s messenger is asking for them almost before they have ceased to flutter in the cooling draught created by opening the door. Equally inconvenient is it for the sub-editor and the reporters to get something to prevent them from succumbing to starvation. The compositors in some offices have lately instituted a rule by which they “knock off” for supper at half-past ten; but what sort of a meal do they get to sustain them until four in the morning? I have no hesitation in pronouncing it to be almost as indifferent as that upon which the editor is forced to subsist for, perhaps, the same period. I have seen the compositors—some of them earning £5 a week—crouching under their cases, munching hunches (the onomatopæia is Homeric) of bread, while their cans of tea—that abomination of cold tea warmed up—were stewing over their gas burners.
In the sub-editors’ room, and the reporters’ room, tea was also being cooked, or bottles of stout drunk, the accompanying, comestibles being bread or biscuits. After swallowing tea that has been stewing on its leaves for half-an-hour, and eating a slab of office bread out of one hand while the other holds the pen, the editor writes an article on the grievances of shopmen who are only allowed an hour for dinner and half-an-hour for tea; or, upon the slavery of a barmaid; or, perhaps, composes a nice chatty half-column on the progress of dyspepsia and the necessity for attending carefully to one’s diet.
Now, I affirm that no newspaper office should be without a kitchen. The compositors should be given a chance of obtaining all the comforts of home at a lesser cost than they could be provided at home; and later on in the night the reporters, sub-editors, and editor should be able to send up messages as to the hour they mean to take supper, and the dish which they would like to have. Here is an opportunity for the Institute of Journalists. Let them take sweet counsel together on the great kitchen question, and pass a resolution “that in the opinion of the Institute a kitchen in complete working order should form part of every morning newspaper office; and that a cook, holding a certificate from South Kensington, or, better still, Mrs. Marshall, should be regarded as essential to the working staff as the editor.”
I do not say that a box of Partagas, or Carolinas, should be provided by the management for every room occupied by the literary staff; though undoubtedly a move in the right direction, yet I fear that public feeling has not yet been sufficiently aroused by the bitter cry of the journalist, to make the cigar-box and the club chair probable; but I do say that since journalism has become a profession, those who practise it should be treated as if they were as deserving of consideration as the salesmen in drapers’ shops. Surely, as we have sent the bitter cry into all the ends of the earth on behalf of others, we might be permitted the luxury of a little bitter cry on our own account.
This brings me down to the recollections I retain of the strange ideas that some of the staff of journals with which I have been connected, possessed as to the most appropriate menu for supper. One of these gentlemen, for instance, was accustomed to make oatmeal porridge in a saucepan for himself about two o’clock in the morning. When accused of being a Scotchman, he indignantly denied that he was one. He admitted, however, that he was an Ulsterman, and this was considered even worse by his accusers. He invariably alluded to the porridge in the plural, calling it “them.” I asked him one night why the thing was entitled to a plural, and he said it was because no one but a blue-pencilled fool would allude to it as otherwise. I had the curiosity to inquire farther how much porridge was necessary to be in the saucepan before it became entitled to a plural; if, for instance, there was only a spoonful, surely it would be rather absurd to still speak of it as “them.” He replied, after some thought, that though he had never considered the matter in all its bearings, yet his impression was that even a spoonful was entitled to a plural.
“Did you ever hear any one allude to brose as ‘it’?” he asked.
I admitted that I never had.
“Then if you call brose ‘them,’ why shouldn’t you call stirabout ‘them’?” he asked, triumphantly.
“I must confess that I never had the matter brought so forcibly before me,” said I.
As he was going to “sup them,” as he termed the operation of ladling the contents of the saucepan into his mouth, I hastily left the room. I have eaten tiffin within easy reach of a dozen lepers on Robben Island in Table Bay, I have taken a hearty supper in a tent through which a camel every now and again thrust its nose, I have enjoyed a biltong sandwich on the seat of an African bullock waggon with a Kaffir beside me, I have even eaten a sausage snatched by the proprietor from the seething panful in the window of a shop in the Euston Road—I did so to celebrate the success of a play of mine at the Grand Theatre—but I could not remain in the room while that literary gentleman partook of that simple supper of his.
On my return when he had finished I never failed to allow in the most cordial way the right of the preparation to a plural. It was to be found in every part of the room; the table, the chairs, the floor, the fireplace, the walls, the ceiling—all bore token to the fact that it was not one but many.
In the hands of a true Ulsterman stirabout “are” a terrible weapon.
As a mural decorative medium “they” leave much to be desired.
Only one man connected with the Press did
I ever know addicted to the bloater as a supper dish. The man came among us like a shadow and disappeared as such, after a week of incompetence; but he left a memory behind him that not all the perfumes of Arabia can neutralise. It was about one o’clock in the morning—he had come on duty that night—that there floated through the newspaper office a dense blue smoke and a smell—such a smell! It was of about the same density as an ironclad. One felt oneself struggling through it as though it were a mass of chilled steel plates, backed with soft iron. On the upper floor we were built in by it, so to speak. It arose on every side of us like the wall of a prison, and we kept groping around it for a hole large enough to allow of our crawling through. Two of us, after battering at that smell for a quarter of an hour, at last discovered a narrow passage in it made by a current of air from an open window, and having squeezed ourselves through, we ran downstairs to the sub-editors’ room.
Through the crawling blue smoke we could just make out the figure of a man standing in his shirt sleeves in front of the fire using a large two-pronged iron fork as a toothpick. On a plate on the table lay the dislocated backbone of a red herring (harengus rufus).
The man was perfectly self-possessed. We questioned him closely about the origin of the smoke and the smell, and he replied that, without going so far as to pronounce a dogmatic opinion on the subject, and while he was quite ready to accept any reasonable suggestion on the matter from either of us, he, for his part, would not be at all surprised if it were found on investigation that both smoke and smell were due to his having openly cooked a rather bloated specimen of the Yarmouth bloater. He always had one for his supper, he said; critically, when not too pungent—he disliked them too pungent—he considered that a full-grown bloater, well preserved for its years and considering the knocking about that it must have had, was fully equal to a beefsteak. There was much more practical eating in it, he should say, speaking as man to man. And it was so very simple—that was its great charm.
For himself, he never could bear made-up dishes; they were, he thought, usually rich, and he had a poor-enough digestion, so that he could not afford to trifle with it.
Just then the foreman loomed through the dense smoke, and, being confronted with the hydra-headed smell, he boldly grappled with it, and after a fierce contest, he succeeded in strangling one of the heads and then set his foot on it. He hurriedly explained to the subeditor that all the hands who had lifted the copy that had been sent out were setting it up with bowls of water beside them to save themselves the trouble of going to the water-tap for a drink.
The next day the clerks in the mercantile department were working with bottles of carbolic under their noses, and every now and again a note would be brought in from a subscriber ordering his paper to be stopped until a new consignment of printers’ ink should arrive, in which the chief ingredient was not so pungent.
At the end of a week the sub-editor was given a month’s salary and an excellent testimonial, and was dismissed. The proprietor of the journal had the sub-editors’ room freshly painted and papered, and made the assistant-editor a present of two pounds to buy a new coat to replace the one which, having hung in the room for an entire night, had to be burnt, no cleaner being found who would accept the risk of purifying it. The cleaners all said that they would not run the chance of having all the contents of their vats left on their hands. They weren’t as a rule squeamish in the matter of smells; they only drew the line at creosote, and the coat was a long way on the other side.
Seven years have passed since that sub-editor partook of that simple supper, and yet I hear that every night drag-hounds howl at the door of the room, and strangers on entering sniff, saying,—
“Whew! there’s a barrel of red herrings somewhere about.”