Children of the Dead End: The Autobiography of an Irish Navvy

by Patrick MacGill

"Do you really think that men are acting in a straightforward manner by writing unfair and untruthful articles for the public?" I asked.

"The public is a crowd of asses and you must interest it. You are paid to interest it with plausible lies or unsavoury truths. An unsavoury truth is always palatable to those whom it does not harm. Our readers gloat over scandal, revel in scandal, and pay us for writing it. Learn what the public requires and give it that. Think one thing in the morning and another at night; preach what is suitable to the mob and study the principle of the paper for which you write. That's how you have to do it, Flynn. A paper's principle is a very subtle thing, and it must be studied. Every measure passed in Parliament affects it, it oscillates to the breezes of public opinion and it is very intangible. The principle of a daily paper is elusive, old man, damned elusive. Come in and have a whisky and soda."

"Not elusive but changeable, I suppose," I said, alluding to his penultimate remark as we stood at the bar of the wine shop. "The principles of the Dawn are rather consistent, are they not?"

"The principles oscillate, old man. Your health, and may you live until newspapers are trustworthy! Consistent, eh? Some day you'll learn of the inconsistencies of Fleet Street, Flynn. Here the Jew is an advocate of Christianity, the American of Protection, the poet a compiler of statistics, the penny-a-liner a defender of the idle rich, and the reporter with anarchistic ideas a defender of social law and order. Here charlatans, false as they are clever, play games in which the pawns are religion and atheism, and make, as suits their purpose, material advantages of the former or a religion of the latter. Fleet Street is the home of chicanery, of fraud, of versatile vices and unnumbered sins. It is an outcome of the civilisation which it rules, a framer of the laws which it afterwards destroys or protects at caprice; without conscience or soul it dominates the world. Only in its falseness is it consistent. Truth is further removed from its jostling rookeries than the first painted savage who stoned the wild boar in the sterile wastes of Ludgate Circus."

Barwell's gestures were as astonishing as his eloquence. One hand clutched the lapel of his coat; in the other he held the glass of liquor which he shook violently when reaching the zenith of his harangue. The whisky splashed and sparkled and kept spurting over the rim of the glass until most of the contents were emptied on the floor. He hardly drank a quarter of the liquor. We went out, and once in the street he continued his vehement utterances.

"Take the Dawn for example," he said. "The editor is a Frenchman, the leader-writer a German, the American special correspondent an Irishman who came to England on a cattle boat and who has never ventured on the sea since. The Dawn advocates Tariff Reform, and most of the reporters are socialists. The leader-writer points out the danger of a German menace daily. What influences one of the Kaiser's subjects to sit down and, for the special benefit of the British nation, write a thrilling warning against the German menace? Salary or conscience, eh? The Dawn knows the opinions of Germany before Germany has formed an opinion, and gives particulars of the grave situation in the Far East before the chimerical situation has evolved from its embryological stages. Consistent, my dear fellow? It is only consistent in its inconsistencies. The reviewers seldom read the books which they review in its pages, and the quack suffers from the ills which through its columns he professes to cure. The bald man who sells a wonderful hair restorer, the cripple who can help the lame, and the anæmic pill-maker who professes ability to cure any disease, all advertise in the Dawn. A newspaper is as untruthful as an epitaph, Flynn."

"If you dislike the work so much why do you remain on the staff?" I asked.

"I do not dislike it. Being by nature a literary Philistine and vagabond journalist, I love the work. Anyhow, there is nothing else which I can do. If I happened to be placed on a square acre of earth fresh from the hands of the Creator, and given a spade and shovel to work with, what use could I make of those tools of labour? I could not earn my living with a spade and shovel. It was for the like of us that London and journalism were created."

For a while I was very much out of my place at my quarters in Bloomsbury, for it was in that locality that I obtained rooms along with Barwell. Everything in the place was a fresh experience to me; at the dinner-table I did not know the names of the dishes. The table napkins were problems which were new to me, and the frilled and collared maid-servant was a phenomena, disconcerting and unavoidable.

I who had cooked my own chops for the best part of seven years, I who had dined in moleskin and rags for such a long while, felt the handicap of dining inside four walls, hemmed with restraint, and almost choked with the horrible starched abomination which decency decreed that I should wear around my neck. It was very wearisome. Barwell was utterly careless and outraged custom with impunity, but I, who feared to do the wrong thing, always remained on the tenter-hooks of suspense. Barwell knew what should be done and seldom did it, while I, who was only learning the very rudimentary affectations of civilised society, took care to follow out the most stringent commands of etiquette whenever I became aware of those commands.