I don’t know why, but for many years there has been (and I am told there still is) a kind of silent conspiracy to keep out of Fleet Street as many aspirants to journalism as possible. They are discouraged by extravagant stories of the fierce competition that reigns there, by tragic yarns of men of great gifts who walk about The Street in rags. I myself was discouraged in this way and I found myself, on the verge of middle age, still hesitating in Manchester. It is true, I did not enter journalism until I was in my thirties, and I did not know the ropes. I did not know London either. Also, I was married and had children to educate and could not afford to take risks and make of life the grand adventure I have, in my heart, always known it to be.

So I hung on in Manchester, writing musical criticism for The Manchester Courier and contributing occasional articles and verses to The Academy, The Contemporary Review, The Cornhill, The English Review, The Musical Times, and many other magazines, and there is scarcely a London daily of repute for which at one time or another I did not write. But still I could find no opening in Fleet Street. The truth is, there is no regular means of finding openings in Fleet Street. If an editor is in want of a dramatic critic, a musical critic, a leader writer, or a descriptive reporter, he never advertises for one. He always knows someone who knows somebody else who is just the man for the job.

So one day I said to myself: “I will go to London at all 103costs. I will take a room in Bloomsbury and risk it.” By a happy accident I received, a few days later, a note from Rutland Boughton, the well-known composer, telling me that he was relinquishing his post as musical critic of The Daily Citizen, that ill-fated paper so courageously edited by Frank Dilnot. Boughton suggested I should apply for the vacancy. I did apply. I wrote to Dilnot and received no answer. I chafed a fortnight and then telegraphed, prepaying a reply. “No vacancy at present” was the message I received. So I took the next train to London and bearded Dilnot in his den. “Yes, I’ll take you,” he said, “if you’ll come for two pounds a week. But, if you’re the real stuff, you’ll receive much more.” As I knew that I was, indeed, the real stuff, “I’ll come,” said I. “When can I start?”

I went back to Manchester and saw W. A. Ackland, the managing editor of The Manchester Courier and the kindest of men, expecting to receive from him a cold douche. But no! To my amazement, he encouraged me most heartily, and kept me on his staff, bidding me write a weekly article for him from London. This I did till the outbreak of the war, writing a lot of material also for his London letter.

During my first year in London I made six hundred and forty pounds. And I spent it. I spent it in eager examination of, and participation in, the many activities that the life of a great metropolis affords. Very soon—within six months—I found myself in the happy position of being able to refuse work that was offered me, for I did not wish to work all my waking hours. I wanted to play. I did play. I made many friendships. I talked a great deal, played the piano two or three hours a day, caroused, ragged in Chelsea, and lived every hour of my life.

It may be thought that six hundred and forty pounds per annum is no great sum. Nor is it. But does a doctor, a barrister, a solicitor, or any other professional man earn so much, without capital or influence, during his first year 104in London? Or in his second? Or third? Money-making in Fleet Street up to about seven hundred and fifty pounds a year is the easiest thing in the world for a man who has any talent at all for writing, especially if that talent be combined with versatility. The journalist is rarely intellectual; as a rule, he is merely ready and glib. I am ready and glib myself.

So I am not among those who feel inclined to discourage him who hankers after Fleet Street. No matter if you live in the waste regions of Sutherland, if you have proved yourself by inducing a number of editors of repute to take your stuff, go in and win! Really, it is very easy.
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The men of Fleet Street are the best fellows in the world. Roughly, they may be divided into two classes: those who “go steady,” with their eye always on the main chance, with every faculty strained to enable them to “get on” in the world; and those happy-go-lucky people who make money easily and spend it recklessly, so excited by life that they cannot pause to contemplate life, so happy in their labour and in their play that they cannot conceive a day may come when work will be irksome and playing a half-forgotten dream. There are, of course, other divisions into which journalists may be separated. There is, for example, the devoted band of brilliant young men who work for Orage in The New Age—a paper that cannot, I am sure, pay high rates. (What those rates are I do not know, for I could never induce Orage to print a single thing I wrote for him.) Then there are the hangers-on of journalism: people who review books in the time spared from their labours as university professors, struggling barristers, parish priests and so on. Many of these people, led by vanity or some other concealed motive, offer to work without payment.

The men who “go steady” are the editors, the leader-writers, the news editors, the literary editors, etc. For 105the most part they are men who have to keep late hours and clear heads, for important news may reach the office at midnight and instant decisions regarding the policy that the paper has to assume in regard to that news have to be made. A great political speech may be made in Edinburgh; a startling murder trial may close in Liverpool; a famous man may die in Paris; a strike may break out in the Potteries: in short, anything may happen. What attitude is the paper going to take up? What precise shade of opinion is going to be expressed about that political speech? What is to be said about the degree of justice that the workers in the Potteries can claim for their action? These matters have to be decided instantly, for they have to be written about instantly, and perhaps you who read the leading article next morning rarely stop to consider the conditions—the incredibly difficult conditions—under which it has been written. For this kind of work real, genuine ability is required: a very wide and accurate knowledge of affairs, rapidity of thought, a fluent and eloquent pen and a mind so sensitive that it can, without effort, reflect to a nicety the precise policy of the paper upon whose work it is engaged.

There is a story, and I think the story is true, of a new and inexperienced reporter who was given a trial on the staff of a very famous “halfpenny” paper. He was not a success, for he bungled everything that was given him to do, and he had not an idea in his head concerning the invention and manufacture of stunts. So he was tried as a book-reviewer, and again failed miserably. They made a sub-editor of him, and once more he was slow and inaccurate. Said the news editor to the editor-in-chief: “I’m afraid I shall have to get rid of Jones; he’s tried almost everything and failed.” “Oh! has he?” returned the editor-in-chief. “Well, put him on to writing leaders.”

But even the halfpenny Press has, in recent years, come to regard its leader columns as one of the most important 106parts of its papers. Of this kind of work I have had little experience. A position as writer of “leaderettes” was offered me on The Globe, but I was not a success, for I was at the same time writing a great deal of stuff for The Daily Citizen, and, as both papers were equally violent in antagonistic political and social fields, I soon found myself writing solidly and regularly against my own convictions. It is true that a journalist, like a barrister, is generally but a hireling paid to express certain views, but there are few men so intellectually backboneless and ethically flabby that they can, day after day, say both yes and no to the various problems that face them.
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I suppose there are few professions in which one learns more about the seamy side of human nature than one does in journalism. The one appalling vice of eminent men is vanity. Musicians, actors, authors, politicians—even judges and preachers—appear to be so constituted that they cannot live and be happy without publicity. From what source, do you think, originate those chatty little paragraphs concerning famous men and women that you find in every evening newspaper and in many weeklies? They originate from the fountain-head. If the novelist does not himself send the paragraph to the paper, his publisher does; if the actor has not written that “snappy” par., he has given his manager the material for it. At one time I wrote a weekly column of theatrical gossip for a well-known daily, and I can, without exaggeration, say that most of our famous actors and actresses did my work for me. I used scissors and paste, corrected their grammatical errors (and mistakes in spelling!), coloured the whole with my personality—and there the column was ready for the printer! Sometimes I would receive letters from notorious mimes expostulating with me because I had not mentioned their names for a month or two. Others wrote and thanked me for praising them. One 107lady whom I have never seen, either on the stage or off, sent me a silver pencil-case, with a letter containing the material for a very personal sketch. I put the pencil in my pocket and the sketch in the newspaper. Quite recently I was shown an article signed by a famous lady, containing a bogus account of how she had received a strange proposal of marriage. The article had been invented and written by an acquaintance of mine, but the signature was the lady’s.

But more egregious than the vanity of actors is the vanity of fashionable preachers. To them notoriety is the very breath of their nostrils. They have no “agents,” so they are compelled to advertise themselves without camouflage. And they do it shamelessly. I will not mention names, but at least half the fashionable preachers in London, no matter what their denomination, are guilty of constant and most resourceful self-advertisement. A little, a very little, jesuitical reasoning is sufficient to satisfy their consciences that this is done, not out of vanity, but from a desire to bring a still larger congregation to the fount of wisdom itself.... They are the fount of wisdom.

On only two occasions have I approached an author with a request for an interview and been refused. But I have taken care never to approach such men as Thomas Hardy, John Galsworthy and a few others who regard their profession with too much respect to lend themselves to a practice which, at its best, is undignified, and which, at its worst, is a method of mean self-glorification.
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Of “ghosting” I have done a little and seen much. I know well a very prosperous musical composer of talent who has paid me to write many articles that he has signed with his own name. You call me an accomplice? But then it was nothing to me what he did with my articles when I had written them. Believe me, the practice is 108very common. The man who signs the articles furnishes the ideas: the ghost merely expresses them.

The same musical composer was commissioned a few years ago to write an orchestral work for an important musical festival. We will call him Birket. Either Birket was too busy to write the work or he felt he had not the ability to do it; whatever the reason, he went to a friend of mine—a man of far superior gifts to his more famous colleague—and offered him a certain sum to do the work for him. My friend—Foster will do for his name—consented, and the work was duly performed at the festival, conducted by Birket, and I attended in my capacity as musical critic.

How eminent men who are not writers do itch to see themselves in print! It is not enough that their speeches are reported, their paintings and musical compositions criticised, their sentences recorded by every daily newspaper, their acting, singing and what not lauded to the skies: they must themselves write: or, if they cannot write, it must appear to the public that they have written. Why? Just vanity. That word “vanity” will explain nine-tenths of the seemingly inexplicable things in the conduct of most of our public men. A man accepts a knighthood because, as a rule, he is vain; he refuses it for the same reason; he advertises that he has refused it because he is vain; and, because he is vain, he refuses to advertise that he has refused it.
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A great deal has been written about the romance of Fleet Street. But romance is in a man’s mind and heart, and it is true that many romantically minded men go to Fleet Street. Fleet Street gives us a sense of importance, a sense of too much importance. We like to feel that we are powerful, but only a mere handful of men in The Street have power that is worth while. What we of the rank and file write is soon forgotten, for newspaper readers are, for 109the most part, people who devour print greedily, neither masticating nor assimilating the things they devour. Newspapers confuse the mind and bring it to a state of drugged apathy. Did you ever meet a really voracious reader of newspapers who possessed the gift of sifting and weighing evidence, or one who had an accurate memory, or one who could think clearly and logically, or one who was not bewildered and befogged by mere words?

But even if we men in Fleet Street have no real power, we have what is much the same thing: we have the illusion of power. We come into close............