There is one story of Forbes’s personal vicissitudes in the Commune, which must stand on the summit of all the hairbreadth dangers of a correspondent. On a morning when the Versaillais troops were fighting their way into Paris and breaking down the barricades of the Communards, Forbes, who was safely behind the line of the civilized combatants in one street, happening to cross along a side street into a parallel main boulevard, found himself to his dismay behind one of the untaken barricades. The rush of the assailants was about to take place. The Communard officer saw Forbes, seized him before he could retreat and ordered him into the firing line. In vain Forbes protested his nationality. At that time and place they were of no moment and as he refused to use the chassepot, which was put into his hand, he was put up against the wall to be shot. At that instant the regular troops carried the barricade, seized the much bewildered Forbes with the weapon in his hands and put him again in his old place to be shot as a combatant. Forbes’s protests were very nearly set aside but it occurred to the officer in charge to ask to see his hands, because the chassepot always threw back a spit of black powder on the hand from the breech for every shot that was fired. Forbes’s hands were clean, so he was free; but, if he had fired one shot to save his life on the first occasion, he would have lost it on the second.

To conclude this halting review of groups of journalists, we must not omit to mention the occasional writer who may have fleeting and simultaneous fidelities to many journals. Of this type, not to mention living names, Andrew Lang was the best known British representative, a cultivated gentleman with a touch of the academician and of the spiritualist in his composition. But the type does not flourish in England, where personal and continued attachment to an organ is a rest for the wits and a prophylactic against bailiffs. On the Continent also it is almost never a permanent career. The successful journalist passes on to the drama, or to politics, or to finance. In America the best opportunity is offered for his talents through the medium of the syndicated press. Immense sums are paid to ready pens, who have the knack of appealing to a wide range of tastes, such as no single journal can offer, however rich it may be. These popular heroes are of all kinds; some, men of genius. I may mention Mr. Dunne, the well-known writer of the Dooley articles, publicist and wit, equally at home with English life, politics and manners as with the failures of his own government and the successes of his own politicians. He has a colleague on his peculiar platform of general satirist, less well-known but not less witty; if not so genial, yet more trenchant. Mr. George Ade has limited the circle of the appreciators of his brilliancy by writing in what is perpetually a new language, American slang. Those, who can leap over the bars of an unapproachable faculty of fin de siècle language laden with some bitterness and inveterate criticism, will recognize in him the keenest intellect, that has been engaged in journalism since Swift. He deals with things familiar in his own country and sometimes met in ours; the blue-stocking, who had an intellect, which made a noise like a dynamo; the negro head-waiter with a corporation and a dress-suit, that fit him too soon; the father of a family, trying to raise three children with one hand and a mortgage with the other; or the young commercial gentleman, who in his own line of conversation was as neat and easy-running as a red buggy, but when any one talked about Chopin and Beethoven would sit back so quiet, that often he got numb below the hips. It is a pity that the barrier of language shuts him off from most of us.

On the other hand there are some things of the same intention, that we do not miss much. Probably about the largest circle of readers in the world, some 10,000,000 a day, is reached at this moment by a journalist familiarly known in the Middle West as “Uncle Walt,” whose speciality is “lineless rhymes,” of which the following is a specimen: “Charles the First, with stately walk, made the journey to the block. As he paced the street along, silence fell upon the throng; from that throng there burst a sigh, for a king was come to die! Charles upon the scaffold stood, in his veins no craven blood; calm, serene, he viewed the crowd, while the headsman said, aloud: ‘Cheer up, Charlie! Smile and sing! Death’s a most delightful thing! I will cure your hacking cough, when I chop your headpiece off! Headache, toothache—they’re a bore! You will never have them more! Cheer up, Charlie, dance and yell! Here’s the axe, and all is well! I, though but a humble dub, represent the Sunshine Club, and our motto is worth while: “Do not worry—Sing and Smile!” Therefore let us both be gay, as we do our stunt to-day; I to swing the shining axe, you to take a few swift whacks. Lumpty-doodle, lumpty-ding, do not worry, smile and sing!’”

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Strictly speaking there can be no bibliography of such a subject as “newspapers.” There have been occasional works on journalism, but after a few years they become out of date and useless. For the history of newspapers in general, with a slight sketch of the foreign press the article in the Encyclopædia Britannica on “Newspapers,” gives the facts admirably in small compass. The same may be said of an article on “Advertising” in Chambers’ Encyclopædia. On the press for pressmen I only know of one good book, Mr. Given’s, The Making of a Newspaper. On English journalism and the gossip of the calling a very full book is Mr. T. H. S. Escott’s Masters of Journalism, but it is not guiltless of inaccuracies. The best supply of valuable material on this subject is undoubtedly contained in various biographies, such as those of Defoe, Swift, etc., and in modern times the Life of Delane, by Sir George Dasent; the Life of Sir W. H. Russell by Mr. J. B. Atkins, very good with often a better glimpse of Delane than in the official life; the Life of E. Godkin by Mr. R. Ogden. Memoirs are useful but not so reliable; such as the Memoirs of Horace Greeley, of De Blowitz, and the highly-coloured Memoirs of Henri Rochefort. The published works of Russell, Archibald Forbes and G. W. Steevens have very considerable value in this connection. I may conclude with one or two recent novels on journalistic life, which throw a good deal of side light on the subject; A Hind let Loose by C. E. Montague; the Street of Adventure by Philip Gibbs; Mightier than the Sword by Alphonse Courlander; The Way of the World by Mr. D. C. Murray; and When a Man’s Young by Mr. J. M. Barrie. Mr. Rudyard Kipling and Sir Conan Doyle have written some good journalistic stories, chiefly about war correspondence. An excellent history of printing appeared in the Times Supplement of Sept. 10, 1912.

In this connection I must render a special tribute to the merits of the technical organ of the English press, the Newspaper Owner, which furnishes a vast amount of special information, for those who know how to use it. It is owned and edited by Mr. Charles Baker, and for much of the information on current topics, which has appeared in these former pages, I am indebted to his columns.

INDEX