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wrongs—Exclusive rights—The “leaders” of a party—The fossil editor—The man and the dog and the boar—An unpublished history—The newspaper hoax—A premature obituary notice—The accommodating surgeon—A matter of business—The death of Mr.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.”
CHAPTER IV.—THE UNATTACHED EDITOR.
The “casual” word—The mighty hunter—The retort discourteous—How the editor’s chair was broken—An explanation on a clove—The master of a system—A hitch in the system—The two Alhambras—A parallel—The unattached parson—Another system—A father’s legacy—The sermon—The imagination and its claims—The evening service—Saying a few words—Antique carved oak—How the chaplain’s doubts were dispersed—A literary tinker—A tinker’s triumph—The two Joneses.
THE “scratch” editor also may now and again be found to possess some eccentricities. He is the man who is taken on a newspaper in an emergency to fill the place of an editor who may perhaps be suffering from a serious illness, or who may, in an unguarded moment, have died. There is a class of journalists with whom being out of employment amounts almost to a profession in itself. But the “unattached” editor is usually no more brilliant a man than the unattached gentleman “in holy orders”—the clergyman who appears suddenly at the vestry door carrying a black bag, and probably with his nose a little red (the result of a cold railway journey), and who introduces himself to the sexton as ready to do duty for the legitimate, but temporarily incapacitated, incumbent, whose telegram he had received only the previous day.
As the congregation are glad to get any one who can read the prayers with an air of authority in the absence of their pastor, so the proprietors of a newspaper are sometimes pleased to welcome the “scratch,” or casual, editor.
I have met with a few of the class, but never with one whose chronic unattached condition I could not easily account for, before we had been together long. Most of them hated journalism—-and everything else (with one important exception). All of them boasted of their feats as journalists. A fine crusted specimen was accustomed to declare nightly that he had once kept hunters; another that he had not always been connected with such a miserable rag as the journal on which he was temporarily employed.
“I’ve been on the best papers in the three kingdoms,” he shouted one night.
“That’s only another way of saying that you’ve been kicked off the most influential organs in the country,” remarked a bystander.
“If you don’t look out you’ll soon be kicked off another.”
No verbal retort is possible to such brutality of language. None was attempted.
When I was explaining, the next day, to the proprietor how the chair in the editor’s room came to be broken, and also how the silhouette of an octopus came to be executed so boldly in ink upon the wall of the same apartment, the “scratch” editor (his appellation had a double significance this day) entered suddenly. He said he had come to explain something.
Now when a literary gentleman appears with long strips of sticking plaster loosely adhering to one side of his face, as white caterpillars adhere to a garden wall, and when, moreover, the perfume that floats on the air at his approach is that of a peppermint lozenge that has been preserved from decay in alcohol, any explanation that he may offer in regard to a preceding occurrence is likely to be received with suspicion, if not with absolute distrust. In this case, however, no opportunity was given the man for justifying any claim that he might advance to be credited.
The proprietor assured him that he had already received an account of the deplorable occurrence of the night before, and that he hoped mutual apologies would be made in the course of the day, so that, in diplomatic language, the incident might be considered closed before night.
The “scratch” man breathed again—heavily, alcoholically, peppermintally. And before night I managed to sticking-plaster up a peace between the belligerents.
At the end of a month some busybody outside the paper had the bad taste to point out to the proprietor that one of the leading articles—the one contributed by the “scratch” man—in a recent issue of the paper, was to a word identical with one which had appeared a fortnight before in a Scotch paper of some importance. The “scratch” man explained—on alcohol and a clove—that the Scotch paper had copied his article. But the proprietor expressed his grave doubts on this point, his chief reason for adopting this course being that the Scotch paper with the article had appeared ten days previously. Then the “scratch” man said the matter was a singular, but by no means unprecedented, coincidence.
The proprietor opened the office door.
One of the most interesting of these “casuals” had been a clergyman (he said). I never was quite successful in finding out with what Church he had been connected, nor, although pressed for a reply, would he ever reveal to me how he came to find himself outside the pale of his Church—whatever it was. He had undoubtedly some of the mannerisms of a clergyman who is anxious that every one should know his profession, and he could certainly look out of the corners of his eyes with the best of them. Like the parson who is so very “low” that he steadily refuses to cross his t’s lest he should be accused of adopting Romish emblems, he declined to turn his head without moving his whole body.
He wore rusty cloth gloves.
He was also the most adroit thief whom I ever met; and I have lived among some adroit ones in my time.
I never read such brilliant articles as he wrote nightly—never, until I came upon the same articles in old files of the London newspapers, where they had originally appeared. The original articles from which his were copied verbatim were, I admit, quite as brilliant as his.
His modus operandi was simplicity itself. He kept in his desk a series of large books for newspaper cuttings, and these were packed with articles on all manner of subjects, clipped from the best newspapers. Every day he spent an hour making these extracts, by the aid of a pot of paste, and indexing them on the most perfect system of double entry that could be conceived.
At night I frequently came down to my office and found that he had written two columns of the most delightful essays. One might, perhaps, be on the subject of Moresco-Gothic Architecture and its influence on the genius of Velasquez, another on Battueshooting and the Acclimatisation of the Bird of Paradise in English coverts; but both were treated with equal grace. That such erudition and originality should be associated with cloth gloves astonished me. One day, however, the man wrote a column upon the decoration of one of the courts of the Alhambra, and a more picturesque article I never read—up to a certain point; and this point was reached when he commenced a new paragraph as follows:—
“Alas! that so lovely a piece of work should have fallen a prey to the devastating element that laid the whole structure in ruins, and eclipsed the gaiety, if not of nations, at any rate of the people of London, who were wont to resort nightly to this Thespian temple of Leicester Square, feeling certain that under the liberal management of its enterprising entrepreneur some brilliant stage spectacle would be brought before their eyes. Now, however, that the company for the restoration of the building has been successfully floated, we may hope for a revival of the ancient glories of the Alhambra.”
I inquired casually of the perpetrator of the article if he had ever heard of the Alhambra?
“Why, I wrote of it yesterday,” he said.
“I’ve been in it; it’s in Leicester Square.”
“Did you ever hear of another Alhambra?”
I asked blandly.
“Yes; there’s one in Glasgow.”
“Did you ever hear of one that wasn’t a music-hall?”
“Never. Maybe the temperance people give one of their new-fashioned coffee places the name to attract sinners on false pretences.”
“Did you ever hear of an Alhambra in Spain?”
“You don’t mean to say that they have music-halls in Spain? But why shouldn’t they? Spaniards are fond of dancing, I believe.”
“Why not indeed?” said I.
The next day he had an explanation to offer to the chief of the staff. In the evening he told me that he was going to leave the paper.
“How is that?” I inquired.
“I don’t like it,” he replied. “My ideas are cribbed, cabined, and confined here.”
“They are certainly cribbed,” said I. “Did you never hear of the Alhambra at Grenada?”
“Never; that’s what played the mischief with the article. You’ll see how the mistake arose. There was a capital article in the Telegraph about the Alhambra—I see now that it must have referred to the one in Spain—about four years ago; well, I cut it out and indexed it. A year ago, when the Alhambra in Leicester Square was about to re-open, there was an article in the Daily News. I found it in my index also, and incorporated the two articles in mine. How the mischief was I to know that one referred to Grenada and the other to London? These writer chaps should be more explicit. What do they get their salaries for, anyway?”
I have referred to a certain resemblance existing between the unattached parson and the unattached editor. This resemblance is the more impressed on me now that, after recalling a memory of an appropriator of another man’s literary work by the “casual” editor, I can recollect how I lived for some years next door to a “casual” parson, who had annexed a bagful of sermons left by his father, one of which he preached whenever he obtained an engagement. It was said that on receiving the usual telegram from a disabled rector on Saturday evening, he was accustomed to go to the sermon-sack, and, putting his hand down the mouth, take out a sermon with the same ease and confidence as are displayed by the professional rat-catcher in extracting from his bag one of its lively contents for the gratification of a terrier. It so happened, however, that upon a fine Sunday morning, he set out to do duty for a clergyman at a distance, having previously felt about the sermon-sack until he found a good fat roll of manuscript, which he stuffed into his pocket. He reached the church—in which, it should be mentioned, he had never before preached—and, bustling through the service with his accustomed celerity, ascended the pulpit and flattened out with a slap or two the sermon on the cushion in front of him. The sermon proved to be the valedictory one preached by his father in the church of which he had been rector for half a century. It was unquestionably a very fine effort, but it might seem to some people to lack local colour. Delivered in a church to which the preacher was a complete stranger, it had a certain amount of inappropriateness about it which might reasonably be expected to diminish from its effect.
“It is a solemn moment for us all, my dear, dear friends. It is a solemn moment for you, but ah! how much more solemn for me! Sunday after Sunday for the past fifty years I have stood in the pulpit where I stand to-day to preach the Gospel of Truth. I see before me now the well-known faces of my flock. Those who were young when I first came among you are now well stricken in years. Some whom I baptised as infants, have brought their infants to me to be baptised; these in turn have been spared to bring their infants to be admitted into the membership of the Church Militant. For fifty years have I not taken part in your joys and your sorrows, and now who shall say that the hour of parting should not be bitter? I see tears on the faces before me——”
And the funny part of the matter was that he did. No one present seemed to see anything inappropriate in the sermon; and at the pathetic references to the hour of parting, there was not a dry eye in the church—except the remarkably bright pair possessed by a female scoffer, who told the story to me. It was not to be expected that the clergyman would become aware of the mistake—if it was a mistake—that he had made: he had for years been a preaching machine, and had become as devoid of feeling as a barrel organ; but it seemed to me incredible that only one person in the church should discover the ludicrous aspect of the situation.
So I remarked to my informant, and she said that it was all the same a fact that the people were weeping copiously on all sides.
“I asked the doctor’s wife the next day what she thought of the sermon,” added my informant, “and she replied with a sigh that it was beautifully touching; and when I put it straight to her if she did not think it was queer for a clergyman who was a total stranger to us to say that he had occupied the pulpit for fifty years, she replied, ‘Ah, my dear, you’re too matter of fact: sermons should not be taken too literally. You should make allowance for the parsons imagination.’”
It is told of the same “casual” that an attempt was made to get the better of him by a parsimonious set of churchwardens upon the occasion of his being engaged to do duty for the regular parson of the parish. The contract made with the “casual” was to perform the service and preach the sermon in the morning for the sum of two guineas. He turned up in good time on the Sunday morning and performed his part of the contract in a business-like way. In the vestry, after he had preached the sermon, he was waited on by the senior churchwarden, who handed him his fee and expressed the great satisfaction felt by the churchwardens at the manner in which the work had been executed. He added that as the clergyman’s train would not leave the village until half-past eight at night, perhaps the reverend gentleman would not mind dining with him, the senior churchwarden, and performing a short evening service at six o’clock.
“That will suit me very well indeed,” said the reverend gentleman. “I thank you very much for your hospitable offer. I charge thirty shillings for an evening service with sermon.”
The hospitable churchwarden replied that he feared the resources of the church would not be equal to such a strain upon them. He thought that the clergyman might not object under the circumstances to give his services gratis.
“Do you dispose of your excellent cheeses gratis?” asked the clergyman courteously. The churchwarden was in the cheese business.
“Well, no, of course not,” laughed the churchwarden. “But still—well, suppose we say a guinea for the evening service?”
“That’s my charge for the service, leaving out the sermon,” said the clergyman.
He explained that it was the cheapest thing in the market at the time. It was done with only the smallest margin of profit. Allowing for the wear and tear, it left hardly anything for himself.
The churchwarden shook his head. He feared that they would not be able to trade on the terms, he said. Suddenly, however, he brightened up. Could the reverend gentleman not give them a good, sound, second quality sermon? he inquired. They did not expect an A-1, copper-fastened, platinum-tipped, bevelled-edged, full-calf sermon for the money; but hadn’t the reverend gentleman a sound, clump-soled, celluloid-faced, nickel-plated sermon—something evangelical that would do very well for one evening?
The clergyman replied that he had nothing of the sort in stock.
“Well, at any rate, you will say a few words to the congregation—not a sermon, you know—after the service, for the guinea?” suggested the churchwarden.
“Oh, yes, I’ll say a few words, if that’s all,” said the clergyman.
And he did.
When he had got to that grand old Amen which closes the Evening Service, he stood up and said,—
“Dear brethren, there will be no sermon preached here this evening.”
Having entered upon the perilous path that is strewn with stories of clergymen, I cannot leave it without recalling certain negotiations which a prelate once opened with me for the purchase of an article of furniture that remained at the palace when he was translated (with footnotes in the vernacular by local tradesmen) to a new episcopate. I have always had a weakness for collecting antique carved oak, and the prelate, being aware of this, called my attention to what he termed an “antique carved oak cabinet,” which occupied an alcove in the hall. He said he thought that I might be glad to have a chance of purchasing it, for he himself did not wish to be put to the trouble of conveying it to his new home—if a palace can be called a home. Now, there had been a three days’ auction at the palace where the antiquity remained, and, apparently, all the dealers had managed to resist the temptation that was offered them of acquiring a rare specimen of old oak; but, assuming that the dignitary had placed a high reserve price upon it from which he might now be disposed to abate, I replied that it would please me greatly to buy the cabinet if it was not too large. By appointment I accompanied a seemingly meek domestic chaplain to the dis-.mantled palace; and there, sure enough, in a dark alcove of the long and narrow hall—for the palace was not palatial—I saw (dimly) a huge thing like a wardrobe with pillars, or it might have been a loose box, or perhaps a bedstead gone wrong, or a dismantled hearse.
“That’s a dreadful thing,” I remarked to the meek chaplain.
“Dreadful, indeed,” he replied. “But it’s antique carved oak, so I suppose it’s a treasure.”
“Have you a match about you?” I asked, for the place was very dark.
The meek chaplain looked scandalised—it was light enough to allow of my seeing that—at the suggestion that he carried matches. He said he thought he knew where some might be had. He walked to the end of the passage, and I saw him take out a box of matches from a pocket. He came back, saying he recollected having seen the box on a ledge “down there.” I struck a match and held the light close to the fabric. I gave a portion of it a little scrape with my knife, and then tested the carving by the same implement.
“How did his lordship describe this?” I inquired.
“He said it was antique carved oak,” said the meek chaplain.
“Did you ever hear of Cuvier and the lobster?” I inquired further.
He said he never had.
“That being so, I may venture to say that his lordship’s description of this thing is an excellent one,” I remarked; “only that it is not antique, it is not carved, and it is not oak.”
“What do you mean?” asked the meek chaplain..
I struck another match, and showed him the white patch that I had scraped with my knife, and he admitted that old oak was not usually white beneath the surface. I showed him also where the carving had sprung up before the point of my knife, making plain the ‘fact that the carving had been glued to the fabric.
“His lordship got that made by a local carpenter twenty-five years ago,” said I; “and yet he tries to sell it to me for antique carved oak. It strikes me that in Wardour Street he would find a congenial episcopate.”
The meek chaplain stroked his chin reflectively; then, putting his umbrella under one arm, he joined the tips of his fingers, saying,—
“Whatever unworthy doubts I may once have entertained on the difficult subject of Apostolic succession are now, thank God, set at rest.”
“What do you mean?” I inquired.
“Is it possible,” he asked, “that you do not perceive how strong an argument this incident furnishes in favour of our Church’s claim to the Apostolic succession of her bishops?”
I shook my head.
“St. Peter was a Jew,” said the meek chaplain.
Another of the casual ward of editors who appears on the tablets of my memory was a gentleman who came from Wales—and a large number of other places. He had a rooted objection to write anything new; but he was the best literary tinker I ever met. In Spitzhagen’s story, “Sturmfluth,” there is a most amusing account of the sculptor who made the statues of distinguished Abstractions, which he had carved in his young days, do duty for memorial commissions of lately-departed heroes. A bust of Homer he had no difficulty in transforming into one of Germania weeping for her sons killed in the war, and so forth. The sculptor’s talent was the same as that of the editor. He had the draft of about fifty articles, and three obituary notices. These he managed to tinker up, chipping a bit off here and there, and giving prominence to other portions, until his purpose of the moment was served. I have seen him turn an article that purported to show the absurdity of free trade, into an attack upon the Irish policy of the Government; and in the twinkling of an eye upon another occasion he made one on the Panama swindle do duty for one on the compulsory rescue of Emin by Stanley. With only a change of a line or, two, the obituary notice of Gambetta was that which he had used for Garibaldi; and yet when the Emperor Frederick died, it was the same article that was furbished up for the occasion. Every local medical man who died was dealt with in the appreciative article which he had written some years before on the death of Sir William Gull; and the influence of the career of every just deceased local philanthropist was described in the words (slightly altered to suit topography) that had been written for the Earl of Shaftesbury.
It was really little short of marvellous how this system worked. It was a tinker’s triumph.
I must supplement my recollections of these worthies by a few lines regarding a man of the same type who, I believe, never put pen to paper without being guilty of some extraordinary error. A high compliment was paid to me, I felt, when I had assigned to me, as part of my duties, the reading of his proof sheets nightly. In everyone that I ever read I found some monstrous mistake; and as he was old enough to be my grandfather, and extremely sensitive besides, I was completely exhausted by my expenditure of tact in pointing out to him what I called his “little inaccuracies.” One night he laid his proof sheet before me, saying triumphantly, “You’ll not find any of the usual slips in that, I’m thinking. I’ve managed to write one leader correct at last.”
I read the thing he had written. It referred to a letter which Mr. Bence Jones had contributed to The Times on the subject of the Irish Land League Agitation. After commenting on this letter, he wound up by saying that Mr. Bence Jones had proved himself to be as practical an agriculturalist as he was an expert painter.
“Are you certain that Bence Jones is a painter?” I asked.
“As certain as I can be of anything,” was the reply. “I’ve seen his work referred to dozens of times. I believe there’s a picture of his in the Grosvenor Gallery this very year. I thought you knew all about contemporary art,” he added, with a sneer.
“Art is long,” said I, searching for a Grosvenor Gallery catalogue, which I knew I had thrown among my books. “Now, will you just turn up the picture you say you saw noticed, and I’ll admit that you know more than I do?”
I handed him the catalogue. He adjusted his spectacles, looked at the index, gave a triumphant “Ha! I have you now,” and forthwith turned up “The Golden Stair,” by E. Burne Jones.