“It amuses my friends very much,” said Mr. Peter Magnus when telling Mr. Pickwick that his initials were P.M., and that in notes to intimate friends he sometimes signed himself “Afternoon.” Mr. Pickwick was secretly “envious of the ease with which Mr. Magnus’s friends were amused,” and no doubt a professional merry-maker must have sighed over the inexpensive triumphs of Sir Frank Lockwood. But the thing did what it was intended to do, and on the strength of his caricatures and his jokes, far more than by any conspicuous ability, Lockwood climbed to a Recordership, a seat in Parliament, a good social position, and finally the Solicitor-Generalship.

His early death seemed the more pathetic because of his intense enjoyment of life and the unusual bounty with which Fate had so far treated one who was after all but a light-weight. He had always been a little nervous about his physical health and not a little anxious lest his professional standing should diminish. Thinking thus, he had his eye on the Bench. Lord Halsbury, whose professional sympathies were even stronger than his political prejudices, was favourable, and called on him during the last month of his life. But it was too plainly evident that Lockwood’s course was run, and the well-meaning visit could have no result. “He must have felt,” said Lockwood to Mr. Birrell a day or two later, glancing at his own wasted frame, “that I should make an excellent puisne judge.”

Lockwood’s personal opinion of litigation is perhaps worth quotation. “Never by any chance,” he wrote to a relative, “become involved in any difficulties which will bring you into a court of law of higher jurisdiction than a police court. An occasional drunk and disorderly will do you no harm and only cost you five shillings. Beyond a little indulgence of this kind—beware.”

CHAPTER XXVIII
OLD AND NEW JOURNALISTS

What we do, are, and suffer journalistically was determined for us in the Nineties. The decade was the meeting-ground of opposing forces, and the battle between them was largely fought to a decision before the end. In 1890 the old “solid” journalism—and it was very solid indeed—decidedly enjoyed pride of place; the newer journalism was not too firmly established; the newest journalism had conquered but an insignificant portion of the weekly Press, and had gained no daily representative.

Ten years later the whole scene was changed. The old journalism was manifestly stricken to death, though it took an unconscionable time to die. The newer journalism—its most typical representative was The Star—had advanced but slightly. The newest journalism—that of Alfred Harmsworth and his imitators—was in the heyday of youthful vigour, very much alive, and perpetually kicking. It is not easy to find a parallel to a change so swift, so silent, and so complete—a change, moreover, so powerful and various in its effect, for the newest journalism, with its loud and simple Imperialism, its indifference to party ties, its lack of interest in moral or religious questions, its intense concern in wealth and the manifestations of wealth, has contributed as much as anything to the digging of that great spiritual gulf which separates us from the Victorian time.

At the beginning of the Nineties the older newspaper Press seemed to enjoy all the prestige which had been its since Gladstone made a cheap Press possible. The “great dailies” were not largely circulated, as circulations now go; they were very cheaply conducted, by all modern standards of expenditure; they had few interests, apart from politics; they do not seem, to one who turns over the yellow files, conspicuously well written. But they commanded an almost idolatrous respect. The average of British mankind took his paper not much less seriously than his passbook, and rather more seriously than his Bible. The journalist himself might still, perhaps, be rather lightly regarded; there might be men still who, like George Warrington, blushed when they confessed to making an honest living out of pen and ink.

“I write,” said Warrington. “I don’t tell the world that I do so,” he added with a blush. “I do not choose that questions should be asked; or perhaps I am an ass, and don’t wish it to be said that George Warrington writes for bread.”