THE CHAIRMAN WILL BE PLEASED TO SPILL SALT WITH YOU.THE CHAIRMAN WILL BE PLEASED TO SPILL SALT WITH YOU.From the "St. James's Budget."
In place of the old-fashioned formula, "The Chairman will be pleased to drink wine with the gentlemen on his right," and then on his left, the Toastmaster had to announce that the Chairman would be pleased to "spill salt" with those on his right, etc.; but force of habit was too strong, and "drink wine" came out, and although this was corrected, it was strange that in some cases the guests held up their glasses and did not spill salt. Of course, throwing salt over the shoulder was prohibited; that superstitious operation would have been sufficient to disqualify any member.
A KNIFE I WAS PRESENTED WITH.
Beside each member was placed a looking-glass, and in the course of the evening it went forth that "The Chairman will be pleased to shiver looking-glasses with the members," and smash! smash! went the mercury-coated glass all over the tables.
It then fell to me to present each of the thirteen chairmen with a pen-knife, refusing of course the customary coin in return. I was presented with a ferocious-looking knife, with a multiplicity of blades and other adjuncts, which I treasure as a memento of the dinner.
These are a few trifles I had to deal with in addition to the usual toasts, and I fervently trust it may never again be my lot to be called upon to take the chair at a "unique banquet" entailing such surprises and shocks and so many speeches:
I proposed the loyal toast as follows:—
TheQueenPrinceandPrincessofWalesandrestoftheRoyalFamily13
I had a point to make, but forgot it (oh, those squinting waiters!), showing that 1894 was a very unlucky year. However, any mathematician could prove that '94 = 9 + 4 = 13.Q.E.D.I might also have really utilised only thirteen words in giving the toast of the evening, as follows:
EnemiesofSuperstitionIgnoranceandHumbugdrinksuccesstoTheLondonThirteenClub-------13--------------
On my way to the Thirteen Club Dinner I met a well-knownPunchartist, also a keen man of the world. I invited him. He started with horror. "Not for worlds! Iamsuperstitious—never more so than at this moment. Why, do you know that this has been a most unlucky month with me? Everything has gone wrong, and I'll tell you why. The other night I woke up and went to my bedroom window to see what kind of a night it was—rash, stupid fool that I was! What do you think I saw?" "A burglar?" "Not a bit of it—I wouldn't have cared a pin for a brace of 'em. I saw the new moon through glass! That's why everything's gone wrong with me. What a fool I was!" "What a fool youare!" I ejaculated, as I jumped into a hansom for room 13, recalling to mind that my fellow-worker was not the only humorist who has been superstitious.
Albert Smith, the well-known author and entertainer, was very superstitious, and a curious incident has been related me by a friend who was present one night when Smith startled his friends by a most extraordinary instance of his fear of thesupernatural. It was in the smoking-room of the old Fielding Club, on New Year's Eve, 1854. The bells were just ringing in the New Year when Smith suddenly started up and cried, "We are thirteen! Ring, ring for a waiter, or some of us will die before the year is out!" Before the attendant arrived the fatal New Year came in, and Smith's cup of bitterness was full to overflowing. Out of curiosity my friend wrote the names of all those present in his pocket-book. Half of them were ordered to the Crimean War, and fought throughout the campaign. No doubt Smith eagerly scanned the lists of killed and wounded in the papers, for as the waiter did not arrive in time to break the unlucky number, one of them was sure to meet his death. However, all the officers returned safe and sound, and most of them are alive now. The first man to depart this life was Albert Smith himself, and this did not happen until six and a half years afterwards.
Correspondence from the superstitious and anti-superstitious poured in upon me. But I select a note received by the President some time before the dinner as the most interesting:
"Christiania, Norway."Sir,—I see you are going to have an anniversary dinner on the 13th of this month, and I take the liberty to send you the following:"In 1873, March 20th, I left Liverpool in the steamshipAtlantic, then bound for New York. On the 13th day, the 1st of April, we went on the rocks near Halifax, Nova Scotia. Out of nearly 1,000 human beings, 580 were frozen to death or drowned."The first day out from Liverpool some ladies at my table discovered that we were thirteen, and in their consternation requested their gentleman-companion to move to another table. Out of the entire thirteen, I was the only one that was saved. I was asked at the time if I did not believe in the unlucky number thirteen. I told them I did not. In this case the believers were all lost and the unbeliever saved."Out of the first-cabin passengers saved, I was one of the thirteen saved."At the North-Western Hotel, in Liverpool, there can be found thirteen names in the book of passengers that left in theAtlanticon the 20th of March, 1873, for New York; amongst them my own. Every one of those passengers except myself were lost."Now, if these memorandums about the number thirteen—by one that does not believe in it—is of any interest to you, it will please me very much."I am, yours very truly,"N. Brandt."9,Kongens Gade."
"Christiania, Norway.
"Sir,—I see you are going to have an anniversary dinner on the 13th of this month, and I take the liberty to send you the following:
"In 1873, March 20th, I left Liverpool in the steamshipAtlantic, then bound for New York. On the 13th day, the 1st of April, we went on the rocks near Halifax, Nova Scotia. Out of nearly 1,000 human beings, 580 were frozen to death or drowned.
"The first day out from Liverpool some ladies at my table discovered that we were thirteen, and in their consternation requested their gentleman-companion to move to another table. Out of the entire thirteen, I was the only one that was saved. I was asked at the time if I did not believe in the unlucky number thirteen. I told them I did not. In this case the believers were all lost and the unbeliever saved.
"Out of the first-cabin passengers saved, I was one of the thirteen saved.
"At the North-Western Hotel, in Liverpool, there can be found thirteen names in the book of passengers that left in theAtlanticon the 20th of March, 1873, for New York; amongst them my own. Every one of those passengers except myself were lost.
"Now, if these memorandums about the number thirteen—by one that does not believe in it—is of any interest to you, it will please me very much.
"I am, yours very truly,"N. Brandt."9,Kongens Gade."
It is absurd to say that I have been unlucky since presiding at that dinner. On the contrary, I have been most lucky—I have never presided at another!
Editors—Publishers—An Offer—Why I Refused it—ThePall Mall Budget—Lika Joko—TheNew Budget—The Truth about my Enterprises—Au Revoir!
Editors—Publishers—An Offer—Why I Refused it—ThePall Mall Budget—Lika Joko—TheNew Budget—The Truth about my Enterprises—Au Revoir!
Only the fortunate—or should we not rather say the unfortunate?—man who has made up his mind to produce a journal of his own can have the very faintest conception of the work and worry, the pains and penalties, the hopes and fears, the anxiety and exasperation, involved in the process. I have gone through it all, and perhaps something more than all by comparison with other people in the same peculiar predicament. For weeks before the promised periodical sees the light the unfortunate proprietor feels himself to be a very Atlas supporting Heaven knows how many cosmic schemes.
The first editor of my acquaintance was a little boy in knickerbockers, with a lavish profusion of auburn locks, an old-fashioned physiognomy, a wiry if diminutive frame, and a quick, nervous temperament, whose youthful eyes had beheld the suns of fourteen summers.
My last editor is one whose physique would be commonly qualified by the adjectivepodgy, of a full face, but with head somewhat depleted of its capillary adornments, for which deprivation it has to thank the snows of six-and-forty winters.
Our intimacy has been of long standing, for my first and last editor is one and the same being—the present writer.
From the day that I, as a little schoolboy, seated on the uncompromising school-form looked upon as a necessary adjunct to the inception of knowledge, produced in MS. and for private circulation only my first journalistic attempt, up to the present moment, I can confidently assert that during myvaried experience I never was brought into contact with a more interesting set of men than those I have seen stretched upon the editorial rack.
The primary requirements which tend to make up the composition of an editor are good health, an impenetrably thick skin, and the best of humour. Secondly, he must be able to command experience, a thirst for work, and the power of application; and, thirdly, he must possess tact and discretion. A universal and comprehensive knowledge of human nature must also be his, for not only has he to be capable of judging and humouring the overstrung men and women of talent with whom he deals—those fragile, sensitive flowers from whom he extracts the honey wherewith to gratify the palate of a journalistically epicurean public—but he must also have a thorough knowledge of that public to enable him to direct those who work for him, for they, shut up in their studies and studios, may not realise that the man at the look-out has to weather the storms of public opinion, of which they reck little if it be that what they work at may be to their own liking, albeit unpalatable to those whom they seek to feed.
Like poets, editors are born, not made. An editor may make a paper, but a paper never made an editor. But as to the commercial success or failure of a periodical, the editor is absolutely a nonentity. There are two sides to the production of a periodical: one is the business side, the other the editorial. The success or failure of a periodical depends almost entirely upon the business manager.
One of the youngest and most successful newspaper proprietors once called me a fool. I wrote and asked him why. We had an interview. He said frankly: "You are a fool, in my opinion, for producing too good an article for the money. The public does not appreciate good work, and you will never make a commercial success of your paper. Your staff is too good; your printing is too good; your paper is too good. I am a success because I know where to buy paper cheap and sell it for a profit. I have thirty publications, but their names, their contents, writing, or art I never think about, nor does the publiceither. We ink something on the paper, and sell it at so much a pound profit."
But I had nothing whatever to do with the commercial side of the arrangements connected with ventures associated with my name. Ah! how little the public know what goes on behind the scenes in the newspaper world! If you stop a publication with which your name is associated, everyone at once, very properly, dubs you a failure. As what? An editor, of course. That is the mistake, the injustice. How many periodicals have the most talked of publishers started and stopped? Scores of them. Yet are they therefore failures? No, no more than the manager of a theatre is who produces a piece which runs a night or two and comes off. He still has his theatre, and other plays. So is it in the publishing world.
It is the isolated editor, without the machinery of a big office, or the head of the man of commerce,—if he stops, from whatever cause, his one effort is the failure! The "successful publisher" stops a dozen new ventures in the same time, and he is still considered successful. A publisher is very much like a conjuror: he must start two or three tricks, so that if one is likely to go wrong he can draw the attention of the public off it by another, and the first is quickly dropped or reintroduced under another name. My one mistake in publishing was that having started a success,Lika Joko, I let it drop to take up another. But let my confessions on this subject be brief and in order.
Before I had any notion of leavingPunchI had conceived an idea for a monthly magazine to be calledLika Joko; Harry Furniss's Monthly, and had already had a number of drawings engraved, specimen copies printed, and had gone to great expense in the preliminary work. Of course, thePunchmen were to be the chief contributors, and Mr. E.J. Milliken was writing a great deal, and Mr. Bernard Partridge was illustrating for me. Shortly afterwards I retired from the staff ofPunch. I was then approached by the proprietors of an influential daily and weekly paper to edit a sixpenny high-class weekly, and they offered to put down £50,000 at once.This I would have willingly accepted, but it so happened that just at that time Mr. Astor reconstructed thePall Mall Budget, regardless of expense—an extravagance with which no other paper could compete. In these circumstances I declined the offer. I soon found many friends to support me if I would start a paper connected solely with my name, but wishing to have the largest risk myself I took the largest share (over £5,000 in cash), and allowed a few to join me. It was decided to drop the idea of a monthly and make it a humorous weekly.
That name was originated some years before by Mr. Burnand and myself jointly in a chaffing conversation. It was universally connected with me, but as it has been said that I had no right to use it, I here reproduce a document that settles any doubt on that point:
"This is to certify that Harry Furniss has the sole right to use the name of 'Lika Joko.' That he is at liberty to use it in any way he wishes, and no one else can adopt or utilise the name without his permission."(Signed)F.C. Burnand, Editor ofPunch."Philip Leslie Agnew,"For the Proprietors."
"This is to certify that Harry Furniss has the sole right to use the name of 'Lika Joko.' That he is at liberty to use it in any way he wishes, and no one else can adopt or utilise the name without his permission.
"(Signed)F.C. Burnand, Editor ofPunch."Philip Leslie Agnew,"For the Proprietors."
Wishing to be certain that the name "Lika Joko" was a wise one, I was advised to consult the leading editor of our largest publishing house. Strange to say, when I called he had on his wall rows of titles of publications under consideration. He looked at mine, and thought the matter over, then shook hands and told me there was a fortune in the title alone.
A few years afterwards I heard to my dismay that the same great man declared the title I had selected was a fatal mistake!
The first friend I consulted about capital suggested £20,000. He was very rich, but said that he would only put cash in equal to what I myself would. I put down £5,000, and he followed suit. I subsequently added more. The rest of the capital was found by various friends.
My friends subsequently said that as I supplied the editorialbrains I ought not to have supplied the largest share of the capital!
I was requested by my friends to introduce a business man, accustomed to publishing, and leave all business arrangements to him. My friends brought in two. Yet I am held responsible for the business arrangements made!
Few new periodicals have caused more interest. The scene at the railway stations and book-stalls was unparalleled. We could not print quick enough to supply the demand. 140,000 copies went off in a few days—which, for a threepenny humorous journal, is a record.
It is said I wrote the journal myself. I never wrote one line in it from the first number to the last. I had the best writers money could procure, and I venture to say it was the best-written paper of its class ever produced in England.
It is said I illustrated it all myself!
I had in thefirst numberalone George du Maurier, Bernard Partridge, Fred Barnard, A. C. Corbould, W. Ralston, J. F. Sullivan, G. Ashton, W. D. Almond, J. B. Yeats, and myself. Ten artists!—eight of whom have contributed toPunch. In subsequent numbers I added work by Sir Frank Lockwood, Arthur Hopkins, Gordon Browne, W. Maud, W. F. Thomas, C. Richardson, Louis Wain, G. Montbard, James Greig, "Rab," Max Cowper, J. H. Roberts, René Bull, S. Adamson, J. E. Donnison, W. H. Overend, Charles Burton Barber, A. T. Elwes, Hal Hurst, F. Miller, E. F. Skinner, George Morrow, J. Jellicoe, A. Greenbank, and others—in all nearly forty artists, and this in six months!
I have another inaccuracy to nail to the counter of Dame False Rumour's shop. That I stoppedLika Jokobecause it was a failure.
The facts about this incident are brief and instructive.
Mr. Astor stopped his artistic weekly, thePall Mall Budget, suddenly. It so happened it was printed in the same office asLika Joko. This very paper, which had prevented me accepting the editorship of the proposed new sixpenny weekly paper, and had driven me into publishing a threepennyweekly, was "put to bed" (to use a printer's phrase) week after week side by side with mine. I was sent for one Saturday morning. The expensive sixpenny child was to die that day. Could I not adopt it? There was a chance—splendid circulation, splendid returns for advertisements.
Why then does Mr. Astor discontinue it?
Because, I was told, Mrs. Astor had just died,—it was so dear to her that Mr. Astor felt he could not continue it, for purely sentimental reasons.
This was pathetically explained to me. It was so natural. Yet why should such a splendid paper cease when I had a large proprietor with capital waiting to start one? I was the man. So I was told, and so I believed, and so I proved to be. Not a moment was to be lost. I was with Sir George Lewis. Has Mr. Astor any objection? He thought certainly not.
I therefore engaged the same staff, the same printers, the same paper and machines were used. The paper, with the exception that the title was changed from thePall Mallto theNew Budget, came out in four days—the following Wednesday morning. Sir William Ingram was the first to purchase a copy. The whole edition was sold out before sunset. I have been assured that this was the smartest journalistic feat on record.
I then sought the people whom I had advised not to oppose this very paper, but they were on the Continent. I would bring it out and await their return. They did return. But it unfortunately happened that in the meantime they had speculated in one of those American imported "booms" of illustrated literature and lost!
Lika Jokocame out too, and I immediately met all the members of my company and placed both papers before them, myNew Budgetand our joint propertyLika Joko. The result was the following announcement in the next week's issue of the latter:
"Once upon a time there was a wealthy shipowner who possessed one of the best vessels on the seas. Her name was thePall Mall Budget. Week after week she left port, wellmanned, well rigged, laden with passengers, and made a prosperous voyage. No vessel in her own line was better built and appointed, and gradually she drew away those people who once had travelled by her rivals, and carried them herself.
"And then, one day, without assigning any reason, the shipowner forbade her ever again to leave port, and nothing could shake his resolve.
"Now, there was at this time also afloat a merry little passenger boat which made a weekly cruise in waters only occasionally entered by the larger vessel, and her name wasLika Joko. No sooner did the news of the great shipowner's decision reach the ears of the captain of theLika Jokothan he made all sail for port, drew up alongside of thePall Mall Budget, and boarded her.
"Then he asked her captain and crew, who were all regretful at the loss of their vessel, if they would put to sea again in a vessel built by himself, as like thePall Mall Budgetas might be, but, if anything, swifter, more trim, with later improvements to make the passage easier and more entertaining to all on board. And they agreed.
"Forthwith he set about giving his orders, and so heartily did everyone work that a week later, in fair weather, and to the surprise of all spectators, this vessel, which was christened theNew Budget, crossed the harbour bar and made one of the best passages on record, leaving the competing craft far behind, and carrying on board not only the old passengers of thePall Mall Budget, but those of theLika Jokoas well, and many new ones. 'Henceforth,' said the captain of theLika Joko, who had now become the captain of theNew Budget, 'we will set our sails every Thursday morning.'"
Little did I think the change was a fable. I had not long to wait to find I had been utterly deceived. According to Mr. Astor, his reason for his stopping his expensive paper was not as stated! As soon as I discovered this I called together my friends, and as they would have to supply a huge capital to carry on theBudget, and as I had been deceived, it wasarranged that they should retire with their unused capital, and I carried on theNew Budgetwith my own capital of £6,000. The paper cost me £100 a day—£700 each number. I had the best artists, the best writers, the best printers—the same as Mr. Astor—but here comes in my difficulty. As I had amalgamatedLika Jokowith theNew Budget, I was legally bound to the contract made with the advertising manager. That contract worked out in nearly every case at 40 per cent. commission for advertisement. That finished me. Was that editorial or business? I think the latter. Was I to blame? I think not.
As the American millionaire had discovered before me that it was impossible to give a shillingsworth for sixpence (although I ran it for a longer period than he did), I ceased its publication. Few papers, it has been said, were more admired than this artistic and refinedNew Budget, and I take this opportunity of denying that it was in any way a failure compared with papers in existence for years still losing money, and I am sincerely proud of my contribution to the publishing of periodicals. But had I not been deceived, and droppedLika Joko, that paper would now have been a splendid property.
I confess that the financial loss, severe to a professional man who has made it all by his own hand, was not what upset me. I am not a gambler—I never bet a shilling in my life—but I thought better of my fellow-men than they deserve. What did trouble me was that I never was given credit for my pluck. I was, and I am still, grossly misrepresented by a certain section of journalists. When thePall Mall Budgetwas discontinued, was it written down a failure? No, certainly not. A pathetic excuse was manufactured. That excuse was as clever as it was untrue, as I discovered to my cost.
I think the man who stepped in single-handed, saved thePall Mall Budgetas I did to the benefit of contributors, printers, and paper-makers, who then strangled his own child-paper and gave all the money at his disposal to keep theBudgetgoing, who was deserted by his Company in consequence—they taking with them their remaining capital—who fought on, and lost thousandsand thousands of pounds more of his own money, who worked night and day for months without any encouragement, any return, who discovered he had been deceived all round, and then, finding this, paid everyone every penny and said nothing, but turned round and went on with his own professional work, is surely a man at least to be respected; certainly not the man to be belittled, misrepresented, and maligned by brother workers.
I have other matters to confess regarding my experiences of publishing—but they will keep. I am anxious, however, that the facts recorded in this chapter should be known, as a warning to others who like myself, being a successful editor, imagine that editing can make a commercial success without a commercial pilot. I paid for my experience—I do not regret it.
FOOTNOTE[A]Soden's "Rap at the R.A."
[A]Soden's "Rap at the R.A."
[A]Soden's "Rap at the R.A."
BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO. LD., PRINTERS, LONDON AND TONBRIDGE.