My left-hand neighbour was a poet, and he chimed in laconically, 'Five.'
In effect, it proved that there was not one of us who had not slept in that Hotel of the Beautiful Star which is always open to everybody. We had all been frequent guests there, and now we were all prosperous, and had found other and more comfortable lodgings. There is a gentler brotherhood to be found among men who have put up in that great caravanserai than can be looked for elsewhere. He jests at scars that never felt a wound, and a fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind.
There are many people still alive who remember the name of George Dawson. There used to be thousands who recognized it with veneration and affection. He was my first chief, editor of the Birmingham Morning News, and had been my idol for years. My red-letter nights were when he came over to my native town of West Bromwich to lecture for the Young Men's Christian Association there on Tennyson, 'Vanity Fair,' Oliver Goldsmith, and kindred themes.
Every Sunday night it was my habit to tramp with a friend of mine, dead long ago, into Birmingham to hear Dawson preach in the Church of the Saviour. The trains ran awkwardly for us, and many scores of times poor Ned and myself walked the five miles out and five miles home in rain and snow and summer weather to listen to the helpful and inspiriting words of the strongest and most helpful man I have ever known.
I am not sure at this time of day what I should think of George Dawson if he still survived; but nothing can now diminish the affection and reverence with which I bless his memory. I had been writing prose and verse for the local journals for a year or two. I was proud and pleased beyond expression to be allowed to write the political leaders for the Wednesday Advertiser. I got no pay, and I dare say the editor was as pleased to find an enthusiast who did his work for nothing as I was to be allowed to do it. In practical journalism I had had no experience whatever; but when Dawson was announced as the editor of the forthcoming Birmingham Morning News I wrote to him, asking to be allowed to join the staff. I had already secured a single meeting with him a year before, and he had spoken not unkindly of some juvenile verses which I had dared to submit to his judgment
He proved to be as well acquainted with practical journalism as myself, for in answer to my application he at once offered me the post of sub-editor. Dr. Langford, who held actual command, set his veto on this rather absurd appointment, and told me that if I wished to join the journalistic guild at all I must begin at the beginning. I asked what the beginning might be, and learned that the lowest grade in journalism in the provinces is filled by the police-court reporter. The salary offered was 25s. a week. The work began at eleven o'clock in the morning and finished at about eleven o'clock at night. I have known many sleepless nights since then; but the first entirely wakeful time I had passed between the sheets was spent in the mental discussion of that offer. There was weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth at home when I decided to accept it. The journal was very loosely conducted—a leader in the Birmingham Daily Post spoke of us once as the people across the street who were playing at journalism—and the junior reporter was permitted to write leaders, theatrical criticisms, and a series of articles on the works of Thomas Carlyle, then first appearing in popular form in a monthly issue.
I have always maintained, and must always continue to believe, that there is no school for a novelist which can equal that of journalism. In the police court, at inquests in the little upper rooms of tenth-rate public-houses, and in the hospitals which it was my business to visit nightly, I began to learn and understand the poor. I began on my own account to investigate their condition, and as a result of one or two articles about the Birmingham slums, was promoted at a bound from the post of police-court reporter to that of Special Correspondent. Six guineas a week, with a guinea a day for expenses, looked like an entry into Eldorado. There was a good deal of heartburning and jealousy amongst the members of the staff; but I dare say all that is forgotten long ago.
The first real chance I got was afforded me by the first election by ballot which took place in England. This was at Pontefract, where the Hon. Hugh Childers was elected in a contest against Lord Pollington. Some barrister-at-law had published a synopsis of the Ballot Act, which I bought for a shilling at New Street Station and studied all the way to Pontefract I sent off five columns of copy by rail in time to catch the morning issue of the paper, and received the first open sign of editorial favour on my return in the form of a cheque for ten pounds over and above my charges. The money was welcome enough; but that it should come from the hands of my hero and man of men, and should be accompanied by words of unqualified approval, was, I think, more inspiriting than anything could possibly be to me now. A very little while later Dawson came to me with a new commission.
'I hate this kind of business,' he said, 'but it has to be done, and we will do it once for all.'
There was an execution to take place at Worcester. One Edward Hughes, a plasterer, I think, had murdered his wife under circumstances of extraordinary provocation. The woman had left him once with a paramour, and when she was deserted he had taken her back again. She left him a second time and was again deserted, and again he condoned her offence. She left him a third time, and he went to look for her. She was living in clover, and she jeered when he begged her to return. It was set forth in evidence that he had told her that he would see her once more. He walked home—a distance of three or four miles—borrowed a razor, returned to the house in which the woman was living, asked for an interview outside in the darkness, and there almost severed her head from her body. He surrendered himself immediately to the police, was tried for his life, and sentenced to be hanged.