And now journalism in turn began and that seriously.
I found a list of editors and papers, scanned it carefully, and to the most likely addressed manuscripts. On every possible and impossible subject—very often the latter, be it known—I scribbled. Often the manuscripts were returned, but equally often they were accepted, and gradually this came to mean regular engagement. Thus, for years, I turned out four, five, and six articles every week, many of them signed. The front page of the Pall Mall Gazette and the front page of the Queen were a constant source of employment, to say nothing of other work on nearly every important paper at some time or the other. I have written serious stuff for the magazines, topical stuff for the dailies, and rubbish for the frivolous papers.
I never had an introduction in my life and have rarely been inside a newspaper office. My work was done from my own writing-table and entirely by correspondence; for, in my belief, if the material is worth taking it will find its own market, and no amount of pushing or introductions will be of the slightest avail.
Penmanship means hard brain-fagging work with little gain in proportion. A well-known writer once told me one of his big important books brought him exactly thirteen pounds.
I still remember with what joy I read a leader in the Daily Telegraph on a magazine article of mine. It then seemed so great and wonderful to be mentioned in a leader; next to which recollection comes my pride on seeing book reviews with my own name above them in the literary page of that literary paper, the Daily Chronicle. These little vanities were the recompense for the dreary hours of work, when one’s head ached and one’s eyes felt hot and swollen and one’s brain seemed on fire or asleep.
What years of anxiety some of those were, when the house would not let and the bills would come in! Tenant succeeded tenant, and between whiles I wandered.
Later, when I returned to the old home, I took a boarder. In polite society people talk of “paying guests.” I prefer the true term—“lodger.” She was an old lady with a title, nearly blind, and had her maid. They were with me for two years. I used to work all day, and read aloud, trim her caps, or chat to her in the evening. She very rarely had a meal outside the house, so there was a good deal to arrange for her in my otherwise busy life.
My old lady came into an unexpected fortune and left.
Little boys home from school had to be fed at meals, amused between tea and dinner during that precious “children’s hour,” and I often left my bed in the morning, to begin another strenuous day, more tired than I had entered it the previous night.
But mediocrity and determination succeeded where genius and inspiration might have failed.