A TALE OF FLEET STREET
No doubt there were greater things in Sir James Barrie's speech to the undergraduates at St. Andrews than the story of his conquest of Fleet Street; but for me, as for many others, there was nothing so interesting. It touched old chords of memory. There are many who have shared Sir James's youthful struggles without sharing his dazzling triumphs. My own thoughts went back more than forty years ago, about the time when Barrie came to London to try his luck in the enchanted street. I recalled two brothers—I knew them well—living in a country town, whose eyes were fixed on the starry realm of Fleet Street from afar. What a remote, impossible, golden world it seemed! Once they had known a fellow that had gone into it. He had been as one of themselves, familiar, companionable, ordinary; but one incredible day he had flown away to Fleet Street as naturally as a bird flies home to its nest, and they remained behind to imagine the sea of glory into which he had passed.
Then one day something happened. The younger of the two boys, Jonathan, noticed that the family copy of the Standard (that fine old paper that perished so lamentably of Tariff Reform) had been cut. An article, a column in length, had disappeared from the leader page. His curiosity was awakened. There was only one person in the household who was likely to have done this thing, and that was his brother, Geoffrey. But to ask Geoffrey about it was impossible. He was a reticent person, who did not throw his confidences about, least of all among younger brothers. But Jonathan knew that he had been writing in the privacy of his bedroom late at night, and suspected that something had come of it. So he went out and purchased another copy of the Standard, turned to the column that had been missing, and there saw an article:
ON A COUNTRY CORN EXCHANGE
From a Correspondent
Ah! so he had done it, thought Jonathan. He had got his foot in the famous street with the golden pavements. That night he observed Geoffrey with a new feeling of importance, and saw him retire early to his bedroom with the delightful sense of sharing his great secret without his knowledge.
After that he waited for the Standard, as eagerly as Geoffrey. He came to know the symptoms of an approaching event, and when he saw his brother cling to the Standard at breakfast and disappear with it into the garden, he knew that it was not the cricket news only—important as that was to both of them in those days—that made the paper so absorbing, and that when it fell to him there would be a gap in its contents. Then he noticed that other papers began to have occasional gaps, and life became a thrilling pursuit of Geoffrey's adventures in Fleet Street.
But the pursuit was not enough. It whetted his appetite for adventures of his own, and he too began to retire to his bedroom early and write long and late, until the door opened and a gentle voice would say, "Child, you ought to be in bed." I fancy it was poor stuff that Jonathan wrote, and Fleet Street showed a cold indifference to it. There was one article on A Harvest Home that grew worn and crumpled by many transits through the post. But the struggle was not in vain. One unforgettable day he opened an evening paper, and there—Lo! Behold! ... And next morning the postman brought a letter from the editor of the paper, stating—could he believe his eyes?—that he would be glad to receive further articles of the same character from his contributor. The sun shone with extraordinary splendour that day, and the birds sang more joyously than they had ever sung before. Jonathan walked on air—with the astonishing letter in his pocket—and he felt that Nature was rejoicing with him.
It is an old tale of far-off, forgotten things, called to mind by the recollections of Sir James Barrie. Perhaps it is worth telling, for the encouragement of other youths whose eager eyes are turned, wisely or unwisely, towards Fleet Street. I have lost sight of one of the brothers for many years; but he came to some prominence, edited a famous paper, and told me that when he went into the office he found, seated at a humble desk, the youth whose wonderful translation to Fleet Street had once filled him with envy and longing. The other brother still writes. I fancy I recognise his hand sometimes in articles that still have the note of that much-travelled manuscript of the Harvest Home.