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 "Angélique," 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 à 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 journalism. I had been taken in, but I was glad to have been taken in.
At four o'clock he began frantically to dictate the weekly London Letter which he contributed to an Indian newspaper; the copy caught the Indian mail at six. And this too was what I called journalism. I felt myself to be in my element; I lived. At an hour which I forget we departed together to the printers, and finished off. It was late when the paper "went down." The next morning the lady-secretary handed to me the first rough folded "pull" of the issue, and I gazed at it as a mother might gaze at her firstborn.
"But is this all?" ran my thoughts. The fact was, I had expected some process of initiation. I had looked on "journalism" as a sort of temple of mysteries into which, duly impressed, I should be ceremoniously guided. I was called assistant-editor for the sake of grandiloquence, but of course I knew I was chiefly a mere sub-editor, and I had anticipated that the sub-editorial craft would be a complex technical business requiring long study and practice. On the contrary, there seemed to me to be almost nothing in its technique. The tricks of making-up, making-ready, measuring blocks, running-round, cutting, saving a line, and so on: my chief assumed in the main that I understood all these, and I certainly did grasp them instinctively; they appeared childishly simple. Years afterwards, a contributor confided to me that the editor had told her that he taught me nothing after the first day, and that I was a born journalist. I do not seriously think that I was a born journalist, and I mention this detail, not from any vain-glory over a trifle, but to show that the arcana of journalism partake of the nature of an imposture. The same may be said of all professional arcana, even those of politics or of the swell-mob.
In a word, I was a journalist—but I felt just the same as before.