Mark Rutherfords Deliverance | Page 3

not expressly, the vast multitudes who hardly
ever see the hills or the ocean must be without a religion. The long
poems which turn altogether upon scenery, perhaps in foreign lands,
and the passionate devotion to it which they breathe, may perhaps do
good in keeping alive in the hearts of men a determination to preserve
air, earth, and water from pollution; but speaking from experience as a
Londoner, I can testify that they are most depressing, and I would
counsel everybody whose position is what mine was to avoid these
books and to associate with those which will help him in his own
circumstances.
Half of my occupation soon came to an end. One of my editors sent me
a petulant note telling me that all I wrote he could easily find out
himself, and that he required something more "graphic and personal." I
could do no better, or rather I ought to say, no worse than I had been
doing. These letters were a great trouble to me. I was always conscious
of writing so much of which I was not certain, and so much which was
indifferent to me. The unfairness of parties haunted me. But I continued
to write, because I saw no other way of getting a living, and surely it is
a baser dishonesty to depend upon the charity of friends because some
pleasant, clean, ideal employment has not presented itself, than to soil
one's hands with a little of the inevitable mud. I don't think I ever felt

anything more keenly than I did a sneer from an acquaintance of mine
who was in the habit of borrowing money from me. He was a painter,
whose pictures were never sold because he never worked hard enough
to know how to draw, and it came to my ears indirectly that he had said
that "he would rather live the life of a medieval ascetic than condescend
to the degradation of scribbling a dozen columns weekly of utter trash
on subjects with which he had no concern." At that very moment he
owed me five pounds. God knows that I admitted my dozen columns to
be utter trash, but it ought to have been forgiven by those who saw that
I was struggling to save myself from the streets and to keep a roof over
my head. Degraded, however, as I might be, I could not get down to the
"graphic and personal," for it meant nothing less than the absolutely
false. I therefore contrived to exist on the one letter, which, excepting
the mechanical labour of writing a second, took up as much of my time
as if I had to write two.
Never, but once or twice at the most, did my labours meet with the
slightest recognition beyond payment. Once I remember that I accused
a member of a discreditable manoeuvre to consume the time of the
House, and as he represented a borough in my district, he wrote to the
editor denying the charge. The editor without any inquiry--and I believe
I was mistaken--instantly congratulated me on having "scored." At
another time, when Parliament was not sitting, I ventured, by way of
filling up my allotted space, to say a word on behalf of a now utterly
forgotten novel. I had a letter from the authoress thanking me, but alas!
the illusion vanished. I was tempted by this one novel to look into
others which I found she had written, and I discovered that they were
altogether silly. The attraction of the one of which I thought so highly,
was due not to any real merit which it possessed, but to something I
had put into it. It was dead, but it had served as a wall to re-echo my
own voice. Excepting these two occasions, I don't think that one
solitary human being ever applauded or condemned one solitary word
of which I was the author. All my friends knew where my contributions
were to be found, but I never heard that they looked at them. They were
never worth reading, and yet such complete silence was rather lonely.
The tradesman who makes a good coat enjoys the satisfaction of having
fitted and pleased his customer, and a bricklayer, if he be diligent, is
rewarded by knowing that his master understands his value, but I never

knew what it was to receive a single response. I wrote for an
abstraction; and spoke to empty space. I cannot help claiming some
pity and even respect for the class to which I belonged. I have heard
them called all kinds of hard names, hacks, drudges, and something
even more contemptible, but the injustice done to them is monstrous.
Their wage is hardly earned; it is peculiarly precarious, depending
altogether upon their health, and no