“Here lies the wife of Matthew Ford,
Whose soul we hope is with the Lord;
But if for Hell she’s changed this life
‘’Tis better than being Mat. Ford’s wife!’”
Having obtained through John Locke (the well-known Member for Southwark, who had married my cousin) a special permit from the Lord Mayor, I saw the poor, pale creature in Newgate and heard her long tale of wrong and misery. The good Ordinary of the jail felt deeply with me for her; and when I had seen the people who employed her as charwoman (barbers and shoemakers in Cowcross Street) and received the best character of her, I felt justified in appealing, in the Echo, for help for her, and also in circulating a little pamphlet on her behalf. Eventually, when Mrs. Palmer left Newgate a few weeks later, it was to take possession, as caretaker for the chaplain, of nice, tidy rooms where she and her children could live in peace, and where her brutal husband could not follow her, since the place belonged legally to the chaplain.
When there was a dearth of interesting news on the mornings of my leader-writing, it was my custom to send for a certain newspaper, the organ of the extreme Ritualistic party, and out of this I seldom failed to extract Pabulum for a cheerful article! One day, just after the 29th of September, I found such a record of folly,—vestments, processions, thuribles, and what not, that I proceeded with glee to write a leader on Michaelmas Geese. Next day, to my intense amusement, there was a letter at the office addressed to the author of the article, in which one of the “Geese,” whom I had particularly attacked and who naturally supposed me to be a man, invited me to come and dine with him, and “talk of these matters over a good glass of sherry and a cigar!” The worldly wisdom which induced the excellent clergyman to try and thus “silence my guns” by inducing me to share his salt; and his idea of the irresistible attractions of sherry and cigars to a “poor devil” (as he obviously supposed) of a contributor to a half-penny paper, made a delightful joke. I had the greatest mind in the world to accept the invitation without betraying my sex till I should arrive at his door in the fullest of my feminine finery, and claim his dinner; but I was prudent, and he never knew who was the midge who had assailed him.
The incident reminds me of another journalistic experience not connected with the Echo, which throws some light on certain charges recently discussed about “commissions” given to newspaper writers who puff the goods of tradesmen under the guise of instructing the public in the latest fashions in dress, furniture and bric-à-brac. It was the only case in which any bribe of the kind ever came to my door. Some grandes dames anxious for the health of work-girls, had opened a millinery establishment in Clifford Street on purely philanthropic lines, and begged me to write an appeal in the Times for support for it. After visiting the beautiful, airy workrooms and dormitories, I did this with a clear conscience (of course gratuitously) to oblige my friends on the Committee. Next day a smart brougham drove to my door in Hereford Square, and an exquisitely dressed lady got out of it, and sent in her card, “Madame D——.” I was so grossly ignorant of fashionable millinery, that I did not know that my visitor was then at the very apex of that lofty commerce. She remonstrated on my injustice in praising the Clifford Street establishment, when her girls were exactly as well lodged and fed. “Would I not come and see for myself, and then write and say so equally publicly?” I agreed that this would be only fair, and fixed an hour for my inspection; on which she gracefully thanked me and departed, murmuring as she disappeared that she would be happy to present me with “Une jolie toilette!” Poor woman! She had come to the only gentlewoman perhaps in London to whom a “toilette” by Madame D—— offered no attractions at all, and to whom (even if I would have accepted one) it would have been useless, seeing that I never wore anything but the simply-made skirts and jackets of my maid’s manufacture. Of course I visited and justly praised her establishment, as I had promised; and I suppose she long expected me to come and claim her “jolie toilette!”
There was another story of which the memory is in my mind closely associated with a dear young friend,—Miss Letitia Probyn, who helped me ardently in my efforts, very shortly before her untimely death, while bathing, at Hendaye near Arcachon. The case of a woman named Isabel Grant moved us deeply. The poor creature, in a drunken struggle with her husband at supper, had cut him with the bread knife in such manner that he died next day. Her remorse was most genuine and extreme. She was sentenced to be hanged; and just at the same time an Irishman who had murdered his wife under circumstances of exceptional brutality and who had from first to last gloried in his crime, was set free after a week’s imprisonment! We got up a Memorial for Isabel Grant, Miss Probyn’s family interest enabling her to obtain many influential signatures; and we contrived that both the cases of exceptional severity to the repentant woman and that of lenity to the unrepentant man, should be set forth in juxtaposition in a score of newspapers. In the end Isabel Grant obtained a commutation of her sentence.
In 1875 the proprietors of the Echo sold the paper to Baron Grant; and Mr. Arnold and I at once resigned our positions as Editor and Contributor. He had created the paper,—I may say even more,—had created first-class, half-penny journalism altogether; and it was deeply regretted that his able and judicious guidance was lost to the Echo. After an interval, the paper was redeemed from the first purchaser’s hands by that generous gentleman, Mr. Passmore Edwards, than whom it could have no better Proprietor.
I wrote on the whole more than 1,000 leading articles, and a vast number of Notes, for the Echo during the seven years in which I worked upon its staff. The contributors who successively occupied the same columns of second leaders on my off-days were willing, (as I believe Mr. Arnold desired), to adopt on the whole the general line of sentiment and principle which my articles maintained; and thus I had the comfort of thinking that, as regarded social ethics, my work had given in some measure the tone to the paper. It was my pulpit, with permission to make in it (what other pulpits lack so sadly!) such jokes as pleased me; and to put forward on hundreds of matters my views of what was right and honourable. We did not profess to be “written by gentlemen for gentlemen.” The saturnine jests, the snarls and the pessimisms of the clubs were not in our way; and we did not affect to be blasés, or to think the whole world was going to the dogs. There were of course subjects on which a Liberal like Mr. Arnold and a Tory like myself differed widely; and then I left them untouched, for (I need scarcely say) I never wrote a line in that or any other paper not in fullest accordance with my own opinions and convictions, on any subject small or great. The work, I think, was at all events wholesome and harmless. I hope that it also did, now and then, a little good.