Two years had elapsed when I met him again. I found him by hazard in the Ludgate Bar, which was then a great resort of the bigger men among the London journalists. As I entered he sat among a knot of his companions. Tom Hood was there as I remember, and Henry Sampson, founder of the Referee with Major Henty, the famous writer of books for boys, and poor brilliant young Evelyn Jerrold. Forbes greeted me boisterously, and, springing from his seat, clapped me upon the back. He took me to his friends and introduced me with words that put me to the blush. “Here,” said he, “is a man who writes English, and here is the only man who ever beat me on my own ground.” “No,” I answered, “it was my ground, Mr Forbes, and I should not have beaten you if you had spoken the language of the natives.” I never had a better or more generous friend than Forbes.
The World Journal, founded by Edmund Yates, was just then entering into its first dawn of success. Forbes had been asked to write a series of articles for it on a subject which, as he confessed, had no particular charm for him. He handed it over to me and that gave me my first chance in the higher journalism of London. But I am running far ahead now and there is much to tell before my narrative arrives legitimately at this point.
The Birmingham Morning News was a financial failure from the first, and towards the end of its second year its proprietors determined to reconstruct it. How or by whom they were advised I never knew, but a person who had no acquaintance either with finance or with journalism was entrusted with the command and Dawson threw up his post in dudgeon. I had fully intended to resign with him, but I had no time given me in which to do it, and in the space of a few weeks after the arrival of the newcomer, I was free to seek my fortune in London. By the good offices of the late Charles Williams, war correspondent on the staff of the Morning Advertiser, I was introduced to Colonel Richards, the editor of that journal, and did actually secure a berth as gallery reporter, but I was suddenly called back to the country by a grave domestic trouble, no less than the illness of my wife, which terminated fatally eight or nine weeks g 97 Recollections later. When I returned to London my place was filled and for a while the outlook was extremely desolate. My funds were very limited to begin with, and in spite of all the care I could exercise they dwindled at an appalling rate. I abode in a shabby little back bedroom in a lodging off the Gray's Inn Road and sat at my table wrapped in an ulster to prevent myself from freezing, whilst I wrote, and sent broadcast prose and verse, essays, short stories, journalistic trifles of every kind. All were ignored or returned.
Where the handsome offices of the Daily News now stand in Bouverie Street, there was at that time a doleful place of resort for life's failures. It was called the Sussex Hotel. The habitués of the place were for the most part broken journalists and barristers, some of whom were men of considerable native talent and attainment. They were mostly given to drink, but they contrived to maintain at least such an outward semblance of respectability as enabled them to loaf about the Fleet Street offices and bars without being actually the objects of derision. I do not suppose that there is anywhere at this time such a contingent to be found in London. I went to live amongst them for economy's sake. We each paid sixpence a night in advance for a bed, the linen of which had a look of having been washed in tobacco juice and dried up a chimney. When a guest had paid his money, he was supplied with a key and about an inch of thin candle, which was affixed by its own grease to a broken shard of pottery. I spent about six weeks there and during the latter part of the time at least, my one daily meal consisted of a hard-rinded roll and thick chocolate. My belongings had all dwindled away, and at last I found myself penniless and homeless in the midst of London.
It is not, when all is said and done, a very dreadful thing for a healthy man to be without food for a few days, nor is it such a hardship as the fastidious might fancy to snatch one's nightly rest on the benches of the Embankment. I passed four nights there, chivied with the rest of the abject crowd by the ubiquitous policeman with his eternal “Wake up, move on there!” and for four days I was entirely without food. I can quite honestly say that I cared very little for these things in themselves, but where the iron enters into a man's soul in such conditions is when he feels that his degradation is unmerited and knows that he has powers within him which, if he could find a vent for them, might lead him on to fame and fortune. The exasperating raging bitterness of this, the grudging envy with which he looks at those more fortunate than himself, whose intellectual equipment he despises, these are the things which sear the heart.
I had resolved—let come what might come—that I would never go home to confess myself a failure. The thing, of course, might have had a tragic ending; there have been thousands of tragic endings to such enterprises as that in which I was engaged, but in my case, fate ordered otherwise, I have told the tale elsewhere, but it will bear re-telling. I was drifting about Fleet Street, mournfully conscious of the extent to which my appearance had deteriorated, of the unblacked boots and the yellow linen, and the general air of being unkempt and unwashed, when I found myself standing in front of the window of a filter-maker's shop, close by old Temple Bar. In this window were displayed a number of glass domes, under each of which a little jet of water tossed about a cork ball. The ball would soar sometimes to the roof of the dome and would then topple over, sometimes to be caught midway upon the jet and sometimes to fall to the bottom, but always to be kept drenched and dancing in a melancholy futile way. I was comparing it with myself when a hand was clapped upon my shoulder and a jolly voice accosted me. The speaker was John Lovell, the president of the Press Association, which had its offices in Wine Office Court hard by. He could not have failed to be aware of my condition, but he gave no sign of having observed it and asked me if I could spare the time to earn a couple of guineas, by writing “a good, sea-salt, tarry British article about Christopher Columbus.” Time pressed, he told me, and he was too busy to undertake the article himself. If I would accompany him to the office, he would supply me with the necessary materials and would pay money down for the work. On to the office I went with him, with a sudden bright confidence that here at last the lane of ill-luck had found a turning. I was ushered into a little private room, and writing materials were set before me. In a couple of hours I sent in my copy, and there came back to me at once a pill-box, on the lid of which was inscribed in a very delicate handwriting, “The prescription to be taken immediately.” The box being opened was found to contain two sovereigns and two shillings, wrapped in cotton wool, and I went away to break a fast which was then entering on its fifth day. My next proceeding, after having somewhat refurbished myself, was to go back to the dingy old hole in Bouverie Street and to write an article on “Impecunious Life in London.”
During the brief run of the Illustrated Midlands News, to which I had been a frequent contributor of verse, the late Richard Gowing, then editor of the School Board Chronicle, had officiated as Mr Joseph Hatton's assistant editor. He had just acquired the copyright in the Gentleman's Magazine, and I bethought me that here lay my opportunity. I took the article to him, and after turning the manuscript pages swiftly over, he decided to accept it. It ran, I think, to two and thirty pages, and I received his cheque for ten shillings and sixpence a page.
Thus armed, I felt more than fit to face the world again, and it was whilst I was yet in this new flush of fortune that I walked into the Ludgate Bar as already recorded, and for the second time encountered Archibald Forbes.
And now began a period of halcyon weather. A kinder, more discerning and more helpful chief than Edmund Yates no aspiring young journalist ever had. He was as genial and as quick to recognise honest effort as Dawson himself, and he knew ten times better what he wanted, and a thousand times more about the taste and temper of the public.
He had conceived the idea of a series of articles on our civilisation, in which the writer should deal with the sores and oddities of it, and into this work I plunged with all the splendid vigour and avidity of youth, I chose the hangman as my first theme, because I happened to have had an acquaintance with a gentleman of that profession, and to have been engaged in some personal dealings with him. His name was James Smith, and he lived about midway between Rowley Regis and Dudley. I held that property in trust for my infant daughter, and the rents were collected for me weekly by a little lame clockmaker named Chesson. At one time my business often led me along that road, and I was familiar with the figure of a great, sprawling, muscular-looking, idle fellow, who, whenever I passed him, was leaning across the garden-gate in his shirt sleeves and smoking. He seemed to have no sort of employment, and, though I did not notice it at the time, it occurred to me afterwards, when I knew the truth about him, that I had never seen him exchange so much as a passing salutation with a single human creature. The rents came in regularly for some time, and then it was reported to me that my idle tenant had not paid. Time went on, and the idle tenant never paid. I determined to look into the thing myself, and I set out with the lame clockmaker to interview the man. He was sprawling over the gate as usual when we reached his cottage, and, to my surprise, the little lame man lagged some yards behind and refused to approach him. I explained my errand to the idle tenant, and he lugged out a handful of half-crowns.