Journalism is, to my thinking, a delightful profession, full of interest, and promise of ever-extending usefulness. During the years in which I was a professional Journalist, when I had occasion to go into a Bank or a lawyer’s office, I always pitied the clerks for their dull, monotonous, ugly work, as compared with mine. If not carried on too long or continuously,—so that the brain begins to churn leaders sleeping or waking (a dreadful state of things into which we may fall),—it is pre-eminently healthy, being so full of variety and calling for so many different mental faculties one after another. Promptitude, clear and quick judgment as to what is, and is not, expedient and decorous to say; a ready memory well stored with illustrations and unworn quotations, a bright and strong style; and, if it can be attained, a playful (not saturnine) humour superadded,—all these qualities and attainments are called for in writing for a daily newspaper; and the practice of them cannot fail to sharpen their edge. To be in touch with the most striking events of the whole world, and enjoy the privilege of giving your opinion on them to 50,000 or 100,000 readers within a few hours, this struck me, when I first recognised that such was my business as a leader-writer, as something for which many prophets and preachers of old would have given a house full of silver and gold. And I was to be paid for accepting it! It is one thing to be a “Vox clamantis in Deserto,” and quite another to speak in Fleet Street, and, without lifting up one’s voice, to reach all at once, as many men as formed the population of ancient Athens, not to say that of Jerusalem! But I must not “magnify mine office” too fondly!

From the time of my second journey to Italy I obtained employment, as I have mentioned, as Correspondent to the Daily News, with whose Italian politics I was in sympathy. I also wrote all sorts of miscellaneous papers and descriptions for the Spectator, the Reader, the Inquirer, the Academy, and the Examiner. When in London I was engaged on the staff of the short-lived Day (1867); and much lamented its untimely eclipse, when my friend Mr. Haweis, unkindly “chaffed” me by mourning over it:—

I was paid, however, handsomely for all I had written for it, and a few months later I received an invitation from Mr. Arthur Arnold (since M.P. for Salford) to join his staff on the newly-founded Echo. It was a great experiment on the part of the proprietors, Messrs. Petter & Galpin, to start a half-penny paper. Such a thing did not then exist in England, and the ridicule it encountered, and boycotting from the news-agents who could not make enough profit on it to satisfy themselves, were very serious obstacles to success. Nevertheless Mr. Arnold’s great tact and ability cleared the way, and before many months our circulation, I believe, was very large indeed. My share in the undertaking was soon arranged after a few interviews and experiments. It was agreed that I should go on three mornings every week at ten o’clock, to the office in Catherine Street, Strand, and there in a private room for my own use only, write a leading article on some social subject after arranging with the editor what it should be. I am proud to say that for seven years from that time till I retired, I never once failed to keep my engagement. Of course I took a few weeks’ holiday every year; but Mr. Arnold never expected his contributor in vain. Sometimes it was hard work for me; I had a cold, or was otherwise ill, or the snow lay thick and cabs from South Kensington were not to be had. Nevertheless I made my way to my destination punctually; and, when there, I wrote my leader, and as many “Notes” as were allotted to me, and thus proved, I hope, once for all, that a woman may be relied on as a journalist no less than a man. I do not think indeed, that very many masculine journalists could make the same boast of regularity as I have done. My first article appeared in the third number of the Echo, December 10th, 1868, and the last on, or about, March, 1875. Of course at first I found it a little difficult to write exactly what, and how much was wanted, neither more nor less; but practice made this easier. I wrote, of course, on all manner of subjects, politics excepted; but chose in preference those which offered some ethical interest,—or (on the other hand) an opening for a little fun! The reader may see specimens of both, e.g., the papers on the great Divorce Case; Lent in Belgravia; and on Fat People; Sweeping under the Mats, &c., in Re-echoes, a little book compiled from a selection of my Echo articles which Tauchnitz reproduced in his library. A few incidents in my experience in Catherine Street recur to me, and may be worth recording.

Terrible stories of misery and death were continuously cropping up in the reports of Coroners’ Inquests, and I found that if I took these reports as they were published and wrote leading articles on them, we were almost sure next day to receive several letters begging the Editor to forward money (enclosed) to the surviving relations. It became a duty for me to satisfy myself of the veracity of these stories before setting them forth with claims for public sympathy; and in this way I came to see some of the sadder sides of poverty in London. There was one case I distinctly recall, of a poor lady, daughter of a country rector, who was found (after having been missed for several days, but not sought for) lying dead, scarcely clothed, on the bare floor of a room in a miserable lodging-house in Drury Lane. I went to the house and found it a filthy coffee-house, frequented by unwashed customers. The mistress, though likewise unwashed, was obviously what is termed “respectable.” She told me that her unhappy lodger was a woman of 40 or 50, perfectly sober and well conducted in every way. She had been a governess in very good families, but had remained unemployed till her clothes grew shabby. She walked all day long over London for many weeks, seeking any kind of work or means of support, and selling by degrees everything she possessed for food. At last she returned to her wretched room in that house into which it was a pain for any lady to enter,—and having begged a last cup of tea from her landlady, telling her she could not pay for it, she locked her door, and was heard of no more. Many days afterwards the busy landlady noticed that she had not seen her going in or out, and finding her door locked, called the police to open it. There was hardly an atom of flesh on the poor worn frame, scarcely clothes for decency, no food, no coals in the grate. “Death from Starvation” was the only possible verdict. When the case had been made public, relatives, obviously belonging to a very good class of society, came hastily and took away the corpse for burial in some family vault. The sight, the sounds, the fetid smells of that sordid lodging-house as endured by that lonely, dying, starving lady, will haunt me while I live.

Another incident (in January, 1869) had a happier conclusion. There was a case in the law Reports one day of a woman named Susannah Palmer, who was sent to Newgate for stabbing her husband. The story was a piteous one as I verified it. Her husband was a savage who had continually beaten her; had turned her out of the house at night; brought in a bad woman in her place; and then had deserted her for months, leaving her to support herself and their children. After a time he would suddenly return, take the money she had earned out of her pocket (as he had then a legal right to do), sell up any furniture she possessed; kick and beat her again; and then again desert her. One day she was cutting bread for the children when he struck her, and the knife in her hand cut him; whereupon he gave her in charge for “feloniously wounding”; and she was sent to jail. The Common Sergeant humanely observed as he passed sentence that “Newgate would be ten times better for her than the hell in which she was compelled to live.” It was the old epitaph exemplified:

Having obtained through John Locke (the well-known Member for Southwark, who had married my cousin) a special permit from the Lord Mayor, I saw the poor, pale creature in Newgate and heard her long tale of wrong and misery. The good Ordinary of the jail felt deeply with me for her; and when I had seen the people who employed her as charwoman (barbers and shoemakers in Cowcross Street) and received the best character of her, I felt justified in appealing, in the Echo, for help for her, and also in circulating a little pamphlet on her behalf. Eventually, when Mrs. Palmer left Newgate a few weeks later, it was to take possession, as caretaker for the chaplain, of nice, tidy rooms where she and her children could live in peace, and where her brutal husband could not follow her, since the place belonged legally to the chaplain.

When there was a dearth of interesting news on the mornings of my leader-writing, it was my custom to send for a certain newspaper, the organ of the extreme Ritualistic party, and out of this I seldom failed to extract Pabulum for a cheerful article! One day, just after the 29th of September, I found such a record of folly,—vestments, processions, thuribles, and what not, that I proceeded with glee to write a leader on Michaelmas Geese. Next day, to my intense amusement, there was a letter at the office addressed to the author of the article, in which one of the “Geese,” whom I had particularly attacked and who naturally supposed me to be a man, invited me to come and dine with him, and “talk of these matters over a good glass of sherry and a cigar!” The worldly wisdom which induced the excellent clergyman to try and thus “silence my guns” by inducing me to share his salt; and his idea of the irresistible attractions of sherry and cigars to a “poor devil” (as he obviously supposed) of a contributor to a half-penny paper, made a delightful joke. I had the greatest mind in the world to accept the invitation without betraying my sex till I should arrive at his door in the fullest of my feminine finery, and claim his dinner; but I was prudent, and he never knew who was the midge who had assailed him.

The incident reminds me of another journalistic experience not connected with the Echo, which throws some light on certain charges recently discussed about “commissions” given to newspaper writers who puff the goods of tradesmen under the guise of instructing the public in the latest fashions in dress, furniture and bric-à-brac. It was the only case in which any bribe of the kind ever came to my door. Some grandes dames anxious for the health of work-girls, had opened a millinery establishment in Clifford Street on purely philanthropic lines, and begged me to write an appeal in the Times for support for it. After visiting the beautiful, airy workrooms and dormitories, I did this with a clear conscience (of course gratuitously) to oblige my friends on the Committee. Next day a smart brougham drove to my door in Hereford Square, and an exquisitely dressed lady got out of it, and sent in her card, “Madame D——.” I was so grossly ignorant of fashionable millinery, that I did not know that my visitor was then at the very apex of that lofty commerce. She remonstrated on my injustice in praising the Clifford Street establishment, when her girls were exactly as well lodged and fed. “Would I not come and see for myself, and then write and say so equally publicly?” I agreed that this would be only fair, and fixed an hour for my inspection; on which she gracefully thanked me and departed, murmuring as she disappeared that she would be happy to present me with “Une jolie toilette!” Poor woman! She had come to the only gentlewoman perhaps in London to whom a “toilette” by Madame D—— offered no attractions at all, and to whom (even if I would have accepted one) it would have been useless, seeing that I never wore anything but the simply-made skirts and jackets of my maid’s manufacture. Of course I visited and justly praised her establishment, as I had promised; and I suppose she long expected me to come and claim her “jolie toilette!”

There was another story of which the memory is in my mind closely associated with a dear young friend,—Miss Letitia Probyn, who helped me ardently in my efforts, very shortly before her untimely death, while bathing, at Hendaye near Arcachon. The case of a woman named Isabel Grant moved us deeply. The poor creature, in a drunken struggle with her husband at supper, had cut him with the bread knife in such manner that he died next day. Her remorse was most genuine and extreme. She was sentenced to be hanged; and just at the same time an Irishman who had murdered his wife under circumstances of exceptional brutality and who had from first to last gloried in his crime, was set free after a week’s imprisonment! We got up a Memorial for Isabel Grant, Miss Probyn’s family interest enabling her to obtain many influential signatures; and we contrived that both the cases of exceptional severity to the repentant woman and that of lenity to the unrepentant man, should be set forth in juxtaposition in a score of newspapers. In the end Isabel Grant obtained a commutation of her sentence.

In 1875 the proprietors of the Echo sold the paper to Baron Grant; and Mr. Arnold and I at once resigned our positions as Editor and Contributor. He had created the paper,—I may say even more,—had created first-class, half-penny journalism altogether; and it was deeply regretted that his able and judicious guidance was lost to the Echo. After an interval, the paper was redeemed from the first purchaser’s hands by that generous gentleman, Mr. Passmore Edwards, than whom it could have no better Proprietor.

I wrote on the whole more than 1,000 leading articles, and a vast number of Notes, for the Echo during the seven years in which I worked upon its staff. The contributors who successively occupied the same columns of second leaders on my off-days were willing, (as I believe Mr. Arnold desired), to adopt on the whole the general line of sentiment and principle which my articles maintained; and thus I had the comfort of thinking that, as regarded social ethics, my work had given in some measure the tone to the paper. It was my pulpit, with permission to make in it (what other pulpits lack so sadly!) such jokes as pleased me; and to put forward on hundreds of matters my views of what was right and honourable. We did not profess to be “written by gentlemen for gentlemen.” The saturnine jests, the snarls and the pessimisms of the clubs were not in our way; and we did not affect to be blasés, or to think the whole world was going to the dogs. There were of course subjects on which a Liberal like Mr. Arnold and a Tory like myself differed widely; and then I left them untouched, for (I need scarcely say) I never wrote a line in that or any other paper not in fullest accordance with my own opinions and convictions, on any subject small or great. The work, I think, was at all events wholesome and harmless. I hope that it also did, now and then, a little good.

After the sudden and unexpected termination of my connection with the Echo I accepted gladly an engagement, not requiring personal attendance, on the staff of the Standard, and wrote two or three leaders a week for that newspaper, for a considerable time. At last the Vivisection controversy came in the way, when I resigned my post in consequence of the appearance of a pro-vivisecting paragraph. The editor assured me generally of his approval of my crusade, and I wrote a few articles more, but the engagement finally dropped. My time had indeed become too much absorbed by the other work to carry on regular Journalism with the needful vigour.

It may interest women who are entering the profession in which I found such pleasure and profit, to know that as regards “filthy lucre,” I found it more remunerative than writing for the best monthly or quarterly periodicals. I did both at the same period; often sitting down to spend some hours of the afternoon over a “Study of Eastern Religion” or some such subject, when I had gone to the Strand and written my leader and notes in the forenoon. Putting all together and the profits of my books, (which were small enough,) I made by my literary and journalistic work at one time a fair income. This golden epoch ended, however, when I threw myself into the Anti-vivisection movement, after which date I do not think I have ever earned more than £100 a year, and for the last 12 years not £20. I suppose in my whole life I have earned nearly £5,000, rather more than my whole patrimony. What my poor father would have felt had he known that his daughter eked out her subsistence by going down in all weathers to write articles for a half-penny newspaper in the Strand, I cannot guess. My brothers happily had no objection to my industry, and the eldest—who drew, as usual with elder sons in our class, more money every year from the family property than I received for life,—kindly paid off my charges on the estate and added £100 a year to the proceeds, so that I was thenceforth, for my moderate wants, fairly well off, especially since I had a friend who shared all expenses of housekeeping with me.

In reviewing my whole literary and journalistic life as I have done in these two chapters, I perceive that I have been from first to last an Essayist; almost pur et simple. I have done very little in any other way than to try to put forward—either at large in a book or in a magazine article, or, lastly, in a newspaper-leader—which was always a miniature essay,—an appeal for some object, an argument for some truth, a vindication of some principle, an exposure of what I conceived to be an absurdity, a wrong, a falsehood, or a cruelty. At first I had exaggerated hopes of success in these endeavours. Books had been a great deal to me in my own solitary life, and I far over-estimated their practical power. When editors and publishers readily accepted my articles and books, and reviewers praised them, I fancied, (though they never sold very freely,) that I was really given the great privilege of moving many hearts. But by degrees as years went on I felt the sorrowful limitation of literary influence. Sometimes I was wild with disappointment and indignation when critics lauded the “style” of my books while they never so much as noticed the purpose for sake of which I had laboured to make them good and strong literature.

For my own part I have shunned Review-writing; partly (as regarded newspaper criticism) for the rather sordid reason that it involves the double labour of reading and writing for the same pay per column, but generally, and in all cases, because I cannot say,—as dear Fanny Kemble used to remark in a sepulchral voice (quite falsely), “I am nothing if not critical.” On the contrary, I am several other things, and very little critical; and the pain and deadly injury I have seen inflicted by a severe review is a form of cruelty for which I have no predilection. It is necessary, no doubt, in the literary community that there should be warders and executioners at the public command to birch juvenile offenders, and flog garrotters, and hang anarchists; but I never felt any vocation for those disagreeable offices. The few reviews I have ever written have been properly Essays on given subjects, taking some book which I could honestly praise for a peg. As in the old Egyptian Book of the Dead the soul of the deceased protests, among his forty-two abjurations,—“I have not been the cause of others’ tears,”—so, I hope, I may say, I have given no brother or sister of the pen the wound (and often the ruinous loss) of a damaging critique of his or her books. If my writings have given pain to any persons, it can only have been to men whose dead consciences it would be an act of mercy to awaken, and towards whom I feel not the smallest compunction. Briefly I conclude in this book, (doubtless my last), a long and moderately successful literary life, with no serious regrets, but with much thankfulness and rejoicing for all the interest, the pleasure and the warm and precious friendships which the profession of letters has brought to me ever since I entered it,—just forty years ago,—when William Longman accepted my Intuitive Morals.