When the National Sporting Club was yet unthought of, and when the premises they occupy was still Evans’s Hotel, there was a tobacconist’s shop next door, and behind the shop there was an American bowling-alley. This was Kilpack’s. It was an old-fashioned shop, and the customers sat on tobacco-barrels beside the counter. The bowling-alley was not much frequented when I knew it; but earlier in the nineteenth century it had a vogue, I understand. It was a capital alley, and I have enjoyed many a game there with citizens of the United States, who did not, I am bound to confess, take much stock in the pastime. Behind the counter of the cigar-shop was a middle-aged man, very genial and reminiscent. The customers always called him “Kilpack,” and he always “answered” to that name; but the original Kilpacks had disappeared long before, and thisamiable person—probably a Smith or a Jones—thought it a safe policy to carry on the old traditions under the old name. Kilpack’s was
“A link within the days to bindThe generations each to each.”
“A link within the days to bindThe generations each to each.”
As I see these old landmarks disappear one by one from the face of the Metropolitan area, I experience a pang of bereavement as at the death of an old friend. The site upon which the demolished Kilpack’s once stood is now occupied by the premises of a draper.
I never had much to do with the money-lending fraternity. I tried on one occasion to borrow fifty of Sam Lewis. I may mention at once that I did not succeed. But my visit on the occasion to 17, Cork Street established a friendship between Sam and myself which continued until his death. I have heard a good many stories about the rapacity of Sam in his professional capacity. His critics forget to estimate the risks which he continually took, and when one remembers the sort of men his principal “clients” were, and the eventual destination of the millions which the worthy Sam accumulated, it must be admitted that the public has benefited by the transactions. Had the vast sums of interest which Sam Lewis hauled in from clients like Ailesbury percolated through other channels, Society would not have been a halfpenny the better. As it was, the Lewis millions went in the end to benefit hospitals and other great public charities. Sam left a lot to be disposed of in this way, leaving the bulk of his little savings to his wife. That lady did not survive her husband by many years, and her will added enormously to the benefactions devised by her husband. In the testamentary acts of both husband and wife the Christian charities were as liberally treated as were those distinctively Jewish.
Lewis was a dapper, well-dressed little man, with a bald head and a smile of winning quality; indeed, all Sam’s qualities were winning qualities. His offices were on the first-floor of the house next door to the Blue Posts in Cork Street, and impecuniousflâneursemerging from the Burlington Arcade were often blessed by a sight of the back ofSam’s head as he leaned against the window talking to some “forlorn and shipwrecked brother” intent on discovering the wherewithal on which to “take heart again.”
Lewis began life as a traveller in real and sham jewellery, to which he added, as time went on, some little adventures on his own account in the tally-man arena of British enterprise. The most melancholy young man I ever saw was his clerk—one Gilbey by name. Whether this young man’s melancholy was constitutional or was caused by his acquaintance with the seamy side of Society, or by the monotonous filling up of bills for Sam’s clients to sign, I never could make out. Sam’s chief jackal was one Alfred Snelling, whose office was in a little house looking down Savile Row.
Not often have the betting ring and the tipsters and “the boys” generally come across so soft a thing as they found in Ernest Benzon, whose meteoric course lasted just two years. It must be confessed that this extraordinary young man contrived to fill the public eye during that period to the exclusion of more useful subjects, and it cost him just a quarter of a million of money to achieve that splendid notoriety. The fortune to which Benzon—known during his brief career on the turf as “the Jubilee Juggins”—succeeded was made by his father, a Birmingham man. The trade by which it was accumulated was that of constructing umbrella-frames. That a fortune thus made should have been inherited by one who was utterly oblivious to the necessity of laying by something for a rainy day strikes a reflective person as being at once strange and sad. Benzon did not acquire the sobriquet “Juggins” for nothing. He was the last man in the world to whom the control of a fortune should have been committed.
Benzon was absolutely vain, frivolous, and assertive. He fancied himself no end at things for which he had no very great aptitude. As an instance of this, I remember quite well how he challenged John Roberts at pyramids for a sovereign a ball. Of course, Roberts “took him on,” with what result can be imagined. He had that sort of sickly sentimentality which may be encountered in the sixpenny gallery of the homes of melodrama—a sentimentality whichcan exist in natures incapable of any quite genuine emotion. Benzon squandered money, and doubtless was robbed of money; but I have never heard a case in which he spent money on a generous impulse or with the intention of doing an act of solid benefit to an individual or to the human race. Yet I accompanied him on one occasion to the Adelphi Theatre. A melodrama of the ordinary Adelphi sort was being played, and Benzon became so extremely touched by the sufferings of the heroine that he began blubbering like a child. Nor can it be said that the exhibition was explicable on the ground that the “Juggins” was “crying drunk.”
When Benzon had melted his patrimony of a quarter of a million, he thought to maintain his notoriety by telling the world how he had managed to do it. To this motive may be attributed the appearance of a book attributed to him, and entitled, “How I Lost £250,000 in Two Years.” His friends now considered that a new and reputable career was opened up to him; for the work was extremely well written, and the “Jubilee Juggins” accepted with never-failing geniality the congratulations which were showered upon him. But even here Benzon was fated to be a disappointment to his friends. Some months after the book appeared an action was brought against the publisher by Vero Shaw. From the evidence given during the hearing it transpired that, save for the two words “Ernest Benzon” which appeared under his likeness opposite the title-page, not a scrap of the work had been done by the “Juggins” himself. It was all the work of Vero Shaw, constructed out of such flimsy materials as could be gathered from the vapid conversation of the devoted plunger and the diary of the latter’s tutor.
The last time I saw Benzon he was somewhat less of the butterfly than in the days of his vanity. He was living on an inalienable income paid weekly. His salient qualities were selfishness and silliness. He was what “bookies” used to call “a fly-flat,” and, I may add, more flat than fly.
Saturday-to-Mondaying became recognized as having a place among British sports and pastimes some time at the close of the seventies, I think. It was started, like so manyother delightful innovations, by Bohemians. Having once “caught on,” it was adopted by Society, and in quite recent years became recognized under the name which it originally and naturally bore. But though Society has sanctioned—or shall I say sanctified?—the term, the first public allusion to the beneficent custom was on the stage of the music-hall, and was made by Miss Marie Lloyd or another. The stimulating refrain ran: “Oh, will you be my Saturday-to-Monday?”
Charles Wyndham was one of the first of the theatrical profession to recognize in the Thames Valley a peaceful resort in which, after the Saturday performance, to rest and study and contrive. It was at a very critical period in the history of the Criterion, and the ambitious manager—surely the finest of English comedians—was suffering all the horrors of insomnia. Affairs were balanced on the edge of a knife, as it were, at the theatre, and it was doubtful whether the courageous young manager could hold on or not. His objective in those days was the Swan, at Thames Ditton, and here for the greater part of Sunday he would shut himself up in a private room studying manuscript plays, French and English of their kind. All who knew him then rejoiced when a brilliant success at last followed his judgment in selection, and the anxiety and the insomnia simultaneously disappeared. Those who have only known him in later years as the rich and popular Sir Charles Wyndham will learn that his success—like all solid and lasting successes—was strenuously won.
But it was not until a later period that the general weekend migration of Bohemia to the Thames set in with yearly increasing severity. And those who followed Wyndham to the river of pleasure did not, you may be quite sure, follow his example in the matter of arduous study. A good deal of “shop” was talked, no doubt, at the merry forgatherings of actors in flannels and actresses in white frocks—actors will pass their time in heaven talking “shop”—but serious consideration of the business of the theatre was as a rule taboo. The spirit of the little assemblages of friends all along the Valley was frankly a holiday spirit; the dominantnote of the Bohemian parties was gaiety. The Saturday-to-Monday establishments spread themselves from Twickenham—then below locks—to Datchet. Nowadays the profession may be found encamped higher up the stream. But there were no motors in the dark days of which I am writing, and players whose engagements were in or near the Strand were limited to the river resorts served by the South-Western Railway Company. Whatever disadvantages may have been incident on this limitation, it had the advantage of placing the week-enders from the theatres within visiting distance of each other.
D’Oyly Carte hired a big house at Hampton, close to Tagg’s Island, where he entertained largely on Sundays. It had a lawn running down to the river—a lawn on which I have met some very pleasant people, but none as pleasant and unassuming as Carte himself, or more hospitable and gracious than his talented wife. Carte evidently regarded the Thames as an ideal stream by which to live, for he afterwards bought an eyot higher upstream, and built a house on it.
Higher up the stream, at Sunbury, there was a cheery Bohemian colony where the fun never flagged. “Cis” Chappel’s cottage by the river was one of the centres of the settlement. Among his visitors—also of the colony—were Captain Fred Russell, whose quaint humour and whose fame as a raconteur were enhanced by a slight stammer, which, instead of marring, heightened his effects. Alfred Benjamin, of bulldog fame, was free of this circle, in virtue of having “married on to the stage,” so to speak, Mrs. Benjamin having been one of the vestals who had kept burning HoIIingshead’s “sacred lamp of burlesque” at the Gaiety. Other bright and beautiful women were among Chappel’s visitors, chief among these being Miss Nellie Farren, who had a residence not far off, and whose presence and fine flow of animal spirits prevented the possibility of any dull moments. The Magpie Hotel, with a landing-stage to the river, was a famous gathering place for the members of the theatrical profession, more especially on Sunday afternoons. Old Freeman, the landlord, has long since abandoned Clarke’s ferry for thatof Charon. He had the general appearance of a stage-butler—artificial smirk and all—and he made a nice fortune by catering for the gay and irresponsible youth who frequented his establishment.
Still farther upstream was Shepperton. Here of a morning the handsome Harry B. Conway might be seen leaving his cottage, preceded by the two noisiest collies ever littered. Conway, surely the best-looking Romeo who ever played the part, was a connection of the Byron family, and possessed all the good looks of his famous relative. It is to be feared that he inherited also some of the other idiosyncrasies of the author of “Don Juan.” Henry Pottinger Stephens had for some time a house farther inland from the river. He had hired the place furnished. The grounds were surrounded by a high wall, the visitor at the gate being scanned through a grille before admission. The retreat was as private as a nunnery. Once inside, “Pot’s” visitor would be struck by the excessive number of copies of the Holy Scriptures which were to be found in the rooms. It used to amuse “Pot” to stimulate the curiosity of his guests on this point, and then to explain the mystery by observing that he had hired the house of Mr. Bagster, the Bible publisher of Paternoster Row.
Above the lock, and on the Chertsey side of the river, Sir Charles Dilke had built himself the most retired little bungalow on all the river. Neither from the stream nor from the shore approaches was the house visible. It seemed to be sunk in osier-beds and embowered in willows. Theodore Hook I think it was who described the advantage of having a riverside cottage as consisting in the fact that “in the summer you had the river at the bottom of your garden, and that in the winter you had the garden at the bottom of your river.” I should imagine that in the winter, not only the garden, but the house itself, must sometimes have been at the bottom of the river in the case of Sir Charles Dilke’s Chertsey home.
At Staines “Tommy” Brett, a member of the Bar, conspicuous for his negligence in the matter of dress, had his week-end quarters. He practised on the Chancery side, and was half mad on the subject of horse-racing. To hear andsee Tommy describe a close finish was one of the funniest entertainments possible. In his excitement, the little man would get down to his work, his wrists and elbows playing, his knees pressed in, his neck craned forward, and his hat pressed to the very back of his head. Brett was in deadly earnest all the time, while to his audience the performance appealed as a piece of the most extraordinary burlesque. Fortunately, Tommy’s knowledge of law was much more sound than his knowledge of horse-racing. On the other side of the river to Staines is Egham Hythe, and here Vero Shaw had a pleasant establishment known as Wapshot Farm. The author of “The Book of the Dog” was here experimenting in pigeon-breeding, and at Wapshot Farm there was always a warm welcome to friends on the part of the most cheery of hosts and the most hospitable of hostesses. Mrs. Shaw was noted on the Staines reach, and on reaches above and below it, for her success as a Thames angler.
With the advent of the house-boat an era of greater luxuriousness was inaugurated. At first the house-boat was a floating structure of small proportions and humble pretensions—the home of some artist or some devoted lover of the Thames who had become tired of camping out. But the possibilities of the thing were soon gauged by those to whom money was not very much of an object. The first of the house-boats on a really large and luxurious scale was built for Mr. O’Hagan of Hampton by Tom Tagg. Once the game was started, it went on merrily, and continueth even unto this day, although the motor has diverted many of the wealthy from a pastime which, from one point of view at least, must be regarded as “slow.” Colonel North, the Nitrate King, as they called him in the City, set up a house-boat on a grand scale. He called herThe Golden Butterfly, and on board this gorgeous floating pleasure-house he gave princely entertainments to the ornaments of the stage and his City friends. John L. Shine, the actor, had gained the good graces of the egregious Nitrate King—who, while recklessly hospitable, was hopelessly vulgar—and he did a lot of the inviting for the florid and red-whiskered magnate. Where City men of the “Woolpack” type, ladies of the theatre, unlimited champagne,and a host free of any bigoted regard for theconvenances, are the chief elements of a gathering, the fun should have been fast and furious—as, indeed, it sometimes was.
William Hudson, the wine-merchant, had a house-boat right away from the more crowded reaches of the Thames. She lay off the Mapledurham meadows, belonging to the Blount family. Hudson’s boat was calledThe Little Billee, and he kept moored near by an excellent steam-launch, theMartlet, and a whole flotilla of skiffs, punts, and canoes for the use of his visitors. In the internal fittings of theLittle BilleeHudson went in not so much for airy grace as for solid comfort. And no man on all the Thames gave better weekend dinners. He liked to have around him guests who could talk, and who could talk well. All sorts and conditions of people met at his board, but one never met there a man who was not interesting. Travellers, authors, journalists, merchants, Conservative Members of Parliament, and Irish Nationalist Members of the same august assembly, I have met at Hudson’s week-end parties on theLittle Billee. And if the after-dinner talk was always kept up to the right conversational pitch, much of the credit was due to the keenness and tact of a host who delighted in the conversational “give and take” of clever men.
On the upper and on the lower reaches of the Thames the upper and the lower reaches of literature—if I may so describe them—were represented. Thus, at Kelmscott, by Lechlade, Rossetti and Morris were producing enduring work; while down at Isleworth Mr. Le Queux was reporting at County Courts and Boards of Guardians for theMiddlesex Chronicle, innocent as yet of the many sensational crimes which, in six-shilling volumes, he has since committed; and at Richmond Mr. Bloundelle Burton was daily treading on historic ground without so much as contemplating the historic novel. At Teddington, Blackmore, having abandoned Devonshire and the novel of the West, was devoting himself to the pleasurable and profitable pursuit of market gardening. All sorts and conditions of the cultivators of literature sought the banks of the Thames; and if Edmund Yates, oftheWorld, had a delightful place at Goring, Purkiss, of thePolice Gazelle, had a still more luxurious home at Shepperton.
In the eighties, too, the river began to have a literature of its own. Of these,Lock to Locklingers on to this day. TheThameswas a more serious and a more pretentious paper. It was under the editorship of one of the Mackays—William, I think—and to its powerful and continuous advocacy the public are indebted for the lock below Richmond, an improvement which can only be appreciated by those who can remember the exposed bed of the river between Isleworth and Teddington at the height of a hot summer. During one such year it was possible to walk across that part of the river which was supposed to run between Twickenham foreshore and Eel Pie Island.
To one who comes early under the subtle influence of the Thames there is no other water which shall ever possess the same attraction. One falls in love with it, and thereafter can see only its perfections. No stream has been so celebrated in verse. From Spenser and Drayton to Cowley and Pope, from Cowley and Pope to Matthew Arnold and Theo Marzials, there stretches a long list of illustrious versifiers who found inspiration in the Thames. And if Pope might so exaggerate the objects of his poetic vision as to behold “. . . the Muses sport on Cooper’s Hill,” the more modern bard, Mr. Theo Marzials, may be forgiven for metamorphosing the Twickenham ferryman. The song presents that waterman as a dashing young Lothario. The unhappy fact is that, at the time when Marzials wrote the once popular song, the ferryman was a fat, oleaginous old man named Cooper, with no sentiment of any kind about him save a sentimental feeling for beer.
Through all my memories of the journalistic life the Thames sings softly. When I look back, a thousand delightful recollections of its bosom and its banks inevitably obtrude, even while I try to concentrate on the busy haunts of men. “Sweete Temmes!”
“Old familiar declining and falling off.”—Silas Wegg.
“Old familiar declining and falling off.”—Silas Wegg.
“Allthings earthly,” said the wit, “have an end—except Upper Wimpole Street.” And the end of the Press has been cheerfully foretold by the Jeremiahs of Fleet Street. So obvious, I have been recently informed, have become the symptoms of disintegration and decay in the institution known under the style and title of “The Daily Press” that the publicist who would call attention to the fact must be prepared to hold himself rather cheap.
Now, it is almost a truism to say that there is in the older members of any profession an intuition which compels them to regard their own early days in a calling as indicating the high-water mark of that vocation, whatever it may have been. The reason for this curious attitude of the human mind is not very far to seek. To parody Lytton, “the youthful and the beautiful are one.” And a profession regarded by one who is young, ardent, impressionable, and credulous, will not appear the same thing to him when he views it, in its new developments, with old eyes and in a spirit of detachment. That which differs in the new constitution from the conditions of the old he will regard as bad or puerile or reactionary. The old things he sees through a golden haze; the new he regards with the rheumy eyes of the valetudinarian.
In the old newspaper man this instinct to depreciate the present I have found very strong. His pose is invariably that of thelaudator temporis acti. In all its departments and through all its methods he observes what Wegg calls “the Decline-and-Fall-Off” of the daily paper. Old actors are very much like old pressmen in this respect. Theirearly days were always “the palmy days.” And as there have always been living old actors to impress this fact on the minds of successive generations, it is obvious that all time, past and present, was and is that blessed period known as “the palmy days.”
But while I do not note in the newspaper Press, as it exists to-day, those signs of disintegration and wasting—that “old familiar declining and falling off”—which have been diagnosed by aged professors, I do observe the passing of certain stages of the evolution of the newspaper; and I can even read in those indications the foretaste of a time when the newspaper, as we know it now, will have ceased altogether to exist.
I will endeavour to explain.
It is not alleged by our Jeremiah that the newspapers have “declined and fallen off” in circulation. I write without statistics and making a mere intelligent guess when I estimate that there are at least four times as many copies of newspapers sold in a day in London now as were sold in 1870. Here, at least, there is no indication of decline; and if there be anything at all in the law of supply and demand, we are bound to infer that the proprietors of newspapers must be supplying that which the public demands. Public taste is not created or directed by newspapers. The clever editor is he who shrewdly anticipates the direction of the public taste, and caters for it. It is aflairwhich the editor may possess in common with the theatrical manager and therestaurateur. He exercises it in exactly the same way as George Edwardes exercises it or as “Jo” Lyons exercises it. “Find out what the fool of a public wants, and give it to ’em!” was the advice given me once by the managing director of a syndicate of newspapers of the North of England. And it was sound advice.
If this view of the whole duty of the modern editor be correct, it involves the admission that the newspaper of to-day has abandoned its ancient traditions, just as it has thrown aside the worn-out clichés. Half the disgust of the journalistic Jeremiah with the new order is caused, I believe, by the abandonment of those time-honoured clichés. He endures a pang of regret and resentment when, in readingthe account of a fire, he finds no allusion to “the devouring element.” He is incapable of understanding that the public does not care any more for “the devouring element,” and that the penny-a-liner has been superseded by the crime investigator and other weird officials called into existence by the new reader of newspapers.
When our poor old Jeremiah was young, the newspaper was, primarily, the organ of a party—sometimes its official organ, but always, whether officially or unofficially, representing one of the great political parties. Nominally, indeed, it is so still. But there is no underlying enthusiasm, nor is there any continuity of conviction. Many of our “esteemed contemporaries” are, ostentatiously, rail-sitters. But the Press has ceased to have any influence with Cabinets, nor are editors any longer consulted by Cabinet Ministers. No editor will ever again hold the position with regard to Ministers held by Dr. Giffard of theMorning Herald, or John Delane of theTimes. By the way, the Conservative party owed a great deal more than they were ever willing to acknowledge to the said Dr. Giffard. I suppose that they considered that they had wiped out the debt when they made his son Lord Chancellor and an Earl! One of these days we shall find politics left out of our papers save at election times, when the space will be hired by persons wishing to advertise their political convictions.
The new conditions under which the newspaper exists, and the new methods introduced by its conductors, were foreordained, though not foreseen, when Mr. Forster’s Education Bill became law, and the School Board education was offered to the youth of merry England. Paterfamilias bought his newspaper in the dark ages before Forster. The generations that developed under Forster’s Act demanded newspapers of their own, but they were not prepared to pay a penny for them. And, lo! the halfpenny Press arose at his bidding—the bidding of the Board School boy and the bicycle boy—and remaineth with us even unto this day.
Clearly, the halfpenny paper could only afford half the space to what is known as “original matter” that was accorded by its penny rival. Parliamentary and lawreports were made taboo. The “snippet” habit was inoculated on to the vile body of the daily Press from virus obtained from the “Bits” papers. And so eager was the bicycle boy to swallow his tabloided doses of news that he never discovered the inroads gradually made by the advertiser on the spaces originally devoted to reading matter. Nay, so contented was he with the latest method of presenting the news of the day, that he did not even mind when further encroachments were made on his news columns, and a daily portion of the broadsheet was filched for the presentation of a solid chunk of fifth-rate fiction. In his present temper the bicycle boy appears ready to stand almostanything!
Meanwhile, and in face of this determined and successful competition on the part of the halfpenny papers, what has been the policy of the penny news-sheets? They have gone on enlarging their borders, increasing their bulk, and adding to their weight—adding to their weight, I mean, in the literal, and not in the figurative, acceptation of that phrase. The Parliamentary and law reports are more formidable in their length and particularity than ever. Book-reviewing is carried on to an extent hitherto only demanded in a literary weekly; essays on engineering, gardening, motoring, fishing, have regular days devoted to them. The advertisers are no longer satisfied with a modicum of space. The mural poster has been transferred to the pages of the penny morning paper. Oxbridge’s full pages have become an expected item in the day’s entertainment, and Coco’s illustrations of his physical perfections have become an integral feature of our daily portion. The result is that the penny paper has grown to an unwieldy bulk, awkward to handle, impossible to turn over in a train or in the open, and containing, in proportion to the small ha’pennyworth of what one does want, an intolerable deal of what one does not, and is never likely to, want.
The general conclusion to be deduced from these necessarily undemonstrable statements is that the fate of any given newspaper is in the hands of the advertisers. Editors choose to address themselves exclusively to their readers, and maintain a splendid official ignorance of the advertiser.This is the onlyposepossible to the well-regulated editor. Did he for a moment admit, even to himself, that his professional emoluments were derived from Oxbridge and the British and foreign tradesman generally, he would no longer be able to take the Press quite so seriously as he does; indeed, he would scarcely be able any longer to take himself quite seriously, and that would surely be a great pity.
Suppose for a moment that some other channel were discovered—we live in an age of surprising discoveries—which the advertisers regarded as more suited to their requirements than the present system. What happens? The small advertiser, whose three-and-sixpences form the real backbone of every newspaper enterprise, follows the big one. The papers shrivel up in dimensions, and down comes the price, or, in the alternative, up go the shutters. I am glad to reflect that the owners of newspapers have made such fortunes out of their enterprise that they can calmly face the future.
I have shown how the pressure of advertisers has affected the penny papers. It has induced them to increase their space and the quantity of their “reading matter.” On the chief of the halfpenny morning papers the pressure has had an entirely different effect. The astute proprietor has met increased pressure by an increased tariff. The advertiser’s scale on the principal halfpenny paper is, I believe, higher than that of theTimes. Even at this prohibitive rate the public presses on with a demand for publicity for its wants. This impinging on the domain of the mere reader is skilfully masked. Always the advertiser is asking for, and obtaining, more space. The tabloids of news are more scientifically compressed. Unconsidered trifles are snipped off the stodgy chunks of negligible fiction; for the newspaperfeuilletonis but a sickly growth in Fleet Street soil. The leading article is squeezed into a paragraph to admit the prospectus of a pill. Yet the paper is made to look the same as usual. There is never anythingdécolletéabout its appearance, no matter how much it may have been stripped. But here also there is an appointed limit beyond which it will be impossible to step without incurring the suspicionand arousing the resentment of the long-suffering reader. That limit, I apprehend, may at any time be touched.
At present the newspaper habit appears to be strong, inherent, and hereditary, in the British people. But is the habit really as deep as it is widespread? With men of the world the habit does not even now persist. The man of the world seldomreadsa newspaper. He will take a copy up, and give a glance at stocks or at starting prices. In the smoking-room of his club he will use the daily broadsheet as a screen what time he is sleeping the sleep of the just-tired. Society will, however, always want to know what is “going on,” and the end of the transition period of journalism upon which we have entered will be heralded by the introduction of a contrivance, original, scientific, and up-to-date, whereby the latest intelligence shall be distributed with increased certainty and celerity, and at a moderate cost.
The new contrivance, we may cheerfully assume, will make no use whatever of paper or printer’s ink. Science will have exposed the insanitary effects of a continuous matutinal contact with these obsoletemedia, and the common-sense of the community will at last have discovered their curious inadaptability. The newspaper microbe will become as familiar a topic with the public as the lobster. Medical Officers of Health will “come down on” insanitary journals, even as in our own time they “come down on” defective drains. When the transition period shall have come to an end, and when the newspaper, as we know it, shall have come to an end, too, the disseminator of news will, it may reasonably be anticipated, appeal directly to the ear, and not to the eye, of the public. Nay, seeing that to science nothing is impossible, may we not be enabled to absorb our news without fatiguing either ear or eye? We may be taught to “take it in through the pores,” like Joey Ladle.
The eventual solution of the difficulty will, doubtless, come to us from the element responsible for most of our modern miracles. An adaptation of wireless methods with the telephone seems to be indicated. The newspaper office of the future will be a vast exchange, an enormous central depot,from which the news of the day will be transmitted to scattered subscribers. At these central establishments the news of the world will continually pour in. Skilled hands—the old sub-editorial hands—will winnow it, prune it, classify it, and, generally speaking, make it ready for the million receivers of the subscribers. Happily, the new order will involve little or no abrogation of the functions of the journalist. The editor, of course, is doomed, for the public will pay for news, and not for notions. But even under the journalistic order as we know it the power of the editor has become more and more circumscribed. He has been going for a long time; soon he will have gone. But the position of the staff should be enhanced. The journalist, who must reappear under some other title, will be brought more under the personal control of the subscriber. Errors in collection or transmission will, as in other departments, be traced to their source. The members of a staff will no longer find shelter behind the impenetrable anonymity of an editor. They will have less kudos, but they will have better pay. They will have become the servants of a sound commercial undertaking, and they will have ceased to talk of themselves as “the Fourth Estate of the Realm.”
The processes of evolution are very gradual, and go unrecorded. How long will this one take? A century? Half a century? Shall we tie ourselves to a date, and fix upon the year 1960 as the time of the great consummation?
Let us imagine the passage of the intervening years, and seek out Jones in the suburbs, the suburbs in 1960 meaning an area of twenty-five miles from the City. Jones descends with all his accustomed pomposity to the wife and olive-branches assembled in the breakfast-room. He acknowledges the salutes of the family with that semiregal affability which is one of his most engaging characteristics. He looks through the window, and notes with satisfaction that his aeroplane is moored to the aero-railings—shall I say? Then he seats himself at the breakfast-table, and places the “receiver and communicator” in position at his side, or, rather, at the side of his plate. This insignificant implement is of silver or of gold or ofinferior metal, according to the means or tastes of the subscriber. It is the “last word”—as far, at least, as 1960 has gone. It sucks in from the ambient air the news sent circulating from the central depot, and by a most ingenious contrivance it will record only such news as is demanded of it. This selection is regulated by a curious arrangement of “stops.” There is the “City” stop, the “Parliamentary” stop, the “Courts” stop, the “Racing” stop. Jones, you may depend, turns the “City” tap on before any other. In answer to his inquiry as to the prices of certain stocks, he obtains an immediate answer. He next inquires as to the result of last night’s debate in the House of Commons. He does not seek after sporting intelligence at the breakfast-table—bad example to the boys, he considers it. Thus the news is gently murmured to Jones as he eats his ham and eggs; for, in spite of the advance of science, the middle-class breakfast-table of 1960 is the middle-class breakfast-table of the early Victorian era. Jones digests his mental pabulum as he masticates his food.
Jones rises from his place, hastens out to his aeroplane, and is soon purring along to Tom Tiddler’s Ground. Being a considerate paterfamilias, he leaves the “receiver” at home for the use of the family. His unselfishness in this respect may be discounted by a consideration of the fact that he has another “receiver” at his office in the City. The family gathers in turn round the little implement—scarcely bigger than a Jew’s-harp it is—and apply to the vibrating atmosphere, now charged with intelligence hot from a thousand sources, for items suited to the domestic hearth. The boys have, I will suppose, had a first “cut in,” clamorous about starting prices or cricket. But the interests of the ladies are more various and more widespread. They would know, for instance, who is married and who dead? What is going on at the theatres, and what at the Court? How is Society conducting itself? There is no scandal about Queen Elizabeth, one may piously hope? How shapes the gossip of the day, and is there an announcement of any Great Pink Sales?
In ten minutes they have learned all that the heart ofwoman can desire to know, and they have satisfied their legitimate thirst for knowledge without having had to prosecute a weary search through the unwieldy pages of a bulky newspaper. I can imagine the fond mother of 1960 fetching a sigh as she recalls the sad, bad system which was in vogue in the days of her innocent childhood. She shudders at the memory of the blurred, insanitary broadsheets of an earlier time.
And the cost? . . . I do not suppose that it will exceed the amount of the subscription at present paid for the daily delivery of a penny paper. It would probably “pan out” at something less. The cost of a penny paper totals up to something like five-and-twenty shillings a year. For an annual subscription of a guinea the little implement will probably be placed at the disposal of its customers by the great central exchange. . . . So mote it be!
Aaronson, Jo,251
“Actea: the Nymph of the Shore,”23
Adam Architecture,158
Adelphi Theatre,93,124,218,247,284
Advertisements,296
Ailesbury, Marquis,250,283
Ainsworth, Thomas,35,47
—, William Harrison,33
“Aladdin” (burlesque),230
Albery, James,154,216
Albion Tavern,28,29,245
Alhambra, The,232–238
Alias (costumier),220
Alison, William,81,200
All the Year Round,206,248
Ally Sloper,247
Amberley, Viscount,175
“Ambidextrous Man,” Reade’s articles inDaily Telegraph,281
American Civil War, Sala’s lectures,55
Ames, Hugo,203
—, Captain “Ossy,”203
Amusements, Sunday:seeSunday
Anderson, Andy,268
—, David,18
—, Tom,282
Anderton’s Hotel,181
Angle, Jack,282
Anglo-Saxon,The,203
Ansdell, James,181
“Ape” (cartoonist),70,166,250
Aquarium, The,149
Archer, Fred,267
—, William,93,203
Ardilaun, Lord,176
Arditi,249
Arnold, Sir Edwin,54
—, Matthew,54,291
Artists and the Press,15
Arundel Club,58
“As in a Looking-Glass,”97
Ascot,260
Athenæum,35,90,280
Austin, Alfred,182
Avenue Theatre,90