One more point. A second assertion is continually being heard concerning editors. It is said that they do not read contributions offered to them. When editors publicly advertise that they do not invite contributions, or that they will not return contributions, it is reasonable to suppose that they do not read them. Well, you have heard my first experience with a publisher. Hear next an experience with editors. It is, first, to the fact that contributions are read by editors that I owe my introduction to James Rice and my subsequent collaboration with him. It was, next, to an unsolicited contribution that I owed a connection of many years with a certain monthly magazine. It was, lastly, through an unsolicited contribution that I became and continued for some time a writer of leading articles for a great London daily. Therefore, when I hear that editors will not read contributions, I ask if things have changed in twenty years—and why?
I sent a paper, then, unasked, and without introduction, to the editor of Once a Week. The editor read it, accepted it, and sent it to the press. Immediately afterwards he left the journal because it was sold to Rice, then a young man, not long from Cambridge, and just called to the Bar. He became editor as well as proprietor. The former editor forgot to tell his successor anything about my article. Rice, finding it in type, and not knowing who had written it, inserted it shortly after he took over the journal, so that the first notice that I received that the paper was accepted was when I saw it in the magazine, bristling with printer's errors. Of course I wrote indignantly to the editor. I received a courteous reply begging me to call. I did so, and the matter was explained. Then for a year or two I continued to send things to Once a Week. But the paper was anything but prosperous. Indeed, I believe there was never any time during its existence of twenty years when it could be called prosperous. After three years of gallant struggle, Rice concluded to give it up. He sold the paper. He would never confess how much he lost over it; but the ambition to become proprietor and editor of a popular weekly existed no longer in his bosom, and he was wont to grow thoughtful in after years when this episode was recalled to his memory. During this period, however, I saw a great deal of the management, and was admitted behind the scenes, and saw several remarkable and interesting people. For instance, there was a certain literary hack, a pure and simple hack, who was engaged at a salary to furnish so many columns a week to order. He was clever, something of a scholar, something of a poet, and could write a very readable paper on almost any subject. In fact, he was not in the least proud, and would undertake anything that was proposed. It was not his duty to suggest, nor did he show the least interest in his work, nor had he the least desire to advance himself. In most cases, I believe, he simply 'conveyed' the matter; and if the thing was found out, he would be the first to deplore that he had 'forgotten the quotes.' He was a thirsty soul; he had no enthusiasm except for drink; he lived, in fact, only for drink; in order to get more money for drink he lived in one squalid room, and went in rags. One day he dismissed himself after an incident over which we may drop a veil. Some time after it was reported that he was attempting the stage as a pantomime super. But fate fell upon him; he became ill; he was carried to a hospital; and pneumonia opened for him the gates of the other world. He was made for better things.
Again, it was in the editor's small back room that I made the acquaintance of a young lady named Julia, whose biography I afterwards related. She was a bookbinder's accountant all the day, and in the evening she was a figurante at one of the theatres. I think she was not a very pretty girl, but she had good eyes—of the soft, sad kind, which seem to belong to those destined to die young; and in the evening, when she was dressed, she looked very well indeed, and was placed in the front.
To the editor's office came in multitudes seedy and poverty-stricken literary men; there were not, twenty-four years ago, so many literary women as at present, but there were many more seedy literary men, because in those days the great doors of journalism were neither so wide nor so wide open as they are now. Every one, I remember, wanted to write a series of articles. Each in turn proposed a series as if it was a new and striking idea. A certain airy, rollicking, red-nosed person, who had once walked the hospitals, proposed, I remember, to 'catch science on the Wing—on the Wing, sir'—in a series of articles; a heavy, conscientious person, also red-nosed, proposed, in a series of articles, to set the world right in Economics; an irresponsible, fluttering, elderly gentleman, with a white waistcoat and a red nose, thought that a series of articles on—say the Vestries of our Native Land, would prove enormously popular; if not the Vestries, then the Question of Education, or of Emigration, or—or—something else. The main point with all was not the subject, but the series. As it happened, nobody ever was allowed to contribute a series at all. Then there were the people who sent up articles, and especially the poor ladies who were on the point of starving. Would the editor only—only take their article? Heavens! what has become of all these ladies? It was twenty-four years ago; these particular ladies must have perished long since; but there are more—and more—and more—still starving, as every editor knows full well.
Sometimes, sitting in that sanctum, I looked through their MSS. for them. Sometimes the writers called in person, and the editor had to see them, and if they were women, they went away crying, though he was always as kind as possible. Poor things! Yet what could one do? Their stuff was too—too terrible.
Another word as to the contributions. In most cases a glance at the first page was sufficient. The MS. was self-condemned. 'Oh!' says the contributor; 'if the editor would only tell me what is wrong, I would alter it.' Dear contributor, no editor has time for teaching. You must send him the paper complete, finished, and ready for press; else it either goes back or lies on the shelf. When Rice handed over the paper to his successor, there were piles of MSS. lying on all the shelves. Where are those MSS. now? To be sure, I do not believe there was one among them all worth having.