to quieten them, I promised to try to write a short story. Without too much difficulty I concocted one concerning an artist’s model, and sent it to a weekly which gives a guinea each week for a prize story. My tale won the guinea.
“There! We told you so!” was the chorus. And I stood convicted of underestimating my own powers; fault rare enough in my career!
However, I insisted that the story was despicably bad, a commercial product, and the reply was that I ought next to write one for art’s sake. Instead, I wrote one for morality’s sake. It was a story with a lofty purpose, dealing with the tragedy of a courtesan’s life. (No, I had not then read Splendeurs et Mis/res des Courtisanes.) A prominent philanthropist with a tendency to faddism, who for morality’s sake was running a monthly magazine, was much impressed by my tale, and after some trouble —the contributors were supposed to contribute con amore—I got another guinea. This story only pleased me for a few weeks; its crudity was too glaring. But I continued to write short stories, and several of them appeared in halfpenny evening papers. Gaining in skill, I aimed political skits in narrative form at the more exclusive, the consciously superior, penny evening papers, and one or two of these hit the mark. I admired the stuff greatly. Lo, I had risen from a concocter of “bits” articles to be the scorpion-sting of cabinet ministers! My self-confidence began to return.
Then, one day, one beneficent and adorable day, my brain was visited by a Plot. I had a prevision that I was about to write a truly excellent short story. I took incredible pains to be realistic, stylistic, and all the other istics, and the result amazed me. I knew that at last I had accomplished a good thing—I knew by the glow within me, the emotional fatigue, the vista of sweet labour behind me. What moved me to dispatch this jewel, this bit of caviare-to-the-general, to the editor of a popular weekly with a circulation of a quarter of a million, I cannot explain. But so I did. The editor returned it with a note to say that he liked the plot, but the style was below his standard. I laughed, and, more happily inspired, sent it to the Yellow Book, where it duly appeared. The Yellow Book was then in apogee. Several fiercely literary papers singled out my beautiful story for especial praise.
“By Heaven!” I said, “I will write a novel.” It was a tremendous resolution.
I saw that I could write.
VI
But before continuing the narration of my adventures in fiction, I must proceed a little further in the dusty tracks of journalism. When I had laboured sordidly and for the most part ineffectively as a free-lance for two or three years, I became, with surprising suddenness, the assistant-editor of a ladies’ paper. The cause of this splendid metamorphosis was sadly unromantic. I had not bombarded the paper, from the shelter of a pseudonym, with articles of unexampled brilliance. The editor had not invited his mysterious and talented contributor into the editorial sanctum, and there informed him that his exclusive services, at a generous salary, were deemed absolutely essential to the future welfare of the organ which he had hitherto assisted only on occasion. I had never written a line for the paper, nor for any ladies’ paper. I obtained the situation by “influence,” and that of the grossest kind. All that I personally did was to furnish a list of the newspapers and periodicals to which I had contributed, and some specimens of my printed work. These specimens proved rather more than satisfactory. The editor adored smartness; smartness was the “note” of his paper; and he discovered several varieties of smartness in my productions. At our first interview, and always afterwards, his attitude towards me was full of appreciation and kindness. The post was a good one, a hundred and fifty a year for one whole day and four half-days a week. Yet I was afraid to take it. I was afraid to exchange two hundred a year for a hundred and fifty and half my time, I who ardently wished to be a journalist and to have leisure for the imitation of our lady George Sand I In the end I was hustled into the situation. My cowardice was shameful; but in recording it I am not unconscious of the fact that truth makes for piquancy.
“I am sorry to say that I shall have to leave you at Christmas, sir.”
“Indeed I” exclaimed the lawyer who admired Browning. “How is that?”
“I am going on to the staff of a paper.”
Perhaps I have never felt prouder than when I uttered those words. My pride must have been disgusting. This was the last time I ever said “sir” to any man under the rank of a knight. The defection of a reliable clerk who combined cunning in the preparation of costs with a hundred and thirty words a minute at shorthand was decidedly a blow to my excellent employer; good costs clerks are rarer than true poets; but he suffered it with impassive stoicism; I liked him for that.
On a New Year’s Day I strolled along Piccadilly to the first day’s work on my paper. “My paper”—oh, the joyful sound I But the boats were burnt up; their ashes were even cool; and my mind, in the midst of all this bliss, was vexed by grave apprehensions. Suppose the paper to expire, as papers often did! I knew that the existence of this particular paper was precarious; its foundations were not fixed in the dark backward and abysm of time—it was two years old. Nevertheless, and indisputably and solely, I was at last a journalist, and entitled so to describe myself in parish registers, county court summonses, jury papers, and income-tax returns. In six months I might be a tramp sleeping in Trafalgar Square, but on that gorgeous day I was a journalist; nay, I was second in command over a cohort of women whose cleverness, I trusted, would be surpassed only by their charm.
The office was in the West End—index of smartness; one arrived at ten thirty or so, and ascended to the suite in a lift. One smoked cigars and cigarettes incessantly. There was no discipline, and no need of discipline, since the indoor staff consisted only of the editor, myself, and the editor’s lady-secretary. The contrast between this and the exact ritual of a solicitor’s office was marked and delightful. In an adjoining suite on the same floor an eminent actress resided, and an eminent actor strolled in to us, grandiosely, during the morning, accepted a cigar and offered a cigarette (according to his frugal custom), chatted grandiosely, and grandiosely departed. Parcels were constantly arriving — books, proofs, process-blocks, samples of soap and of corsets: this continuous procession of parcels impressed me as much as anything. From time to time well-dressed and alert women called, to correct proofs, to submit drawings, or to scatter excuses. This was “Evadne,” who wrote about the toilet; that was “Angelique,” who did the cookery; the other was “Enid,” the well-known fashion artist. In each case I was of course introduced as the new assistant-editor; they were adorable, without exception. At one o’clock, having apparently done little but talk and smoke, we went out, the editor and I, to lunch at the Cri.
“This,” I said to myself quite privately, “this may be a novel by Balzac, but it is not my notion of journalism.”
The doings of the afternoon, however, bore a closer resemblance to my notion of journalism. That day happened to be Press-day, and I perceived that we gradually became very busy. Messenger-boys waited while I wrote paragraphs to accompany portraits, or while I regularized the syntax of a recipe for sole a la Normande, or while I ornamented two naked lines from the Morning Post with four lines of embroidery. The editor was enchanted with my social paragraphs; he said I was born to it, and perhaps I was. I innocently asked in what part of the paper they were to shine.
“Gwendolen’s column,” he replied.
“Who is Gwendolen?” I demanded. Weeks before, I had admired Gwendolen’s breadth of view and worldly grasp of things, qualities rare in a woman.
“You are,” he said, “and I am. It’s only an office signature.”
Now, that was what I called
