The Making of a Novelist | Page 3

had no experience
whatever; but when Dawson was announced as the editor of the

forthcoming Birmingham Morning News I wrote to him, asking to be
allowed to join the staff. I had already secured a single meeting with
him a year before, and he had spoken not unkindly of some juvenile
verses which I had dared to submit to his judgment
He proved to be as well acquainted with practical journalism as myself,
for in answer to my application he at once offered me the post of
sub-editor. Dr. Langford, who held actual command, set his veto on
this rather absurd appointment, and told me that if I wished to join the
journalistic guild at all I must begin at the beginning. I asked what the
beginning might be, and learned that the lowest grade in journalism in
the provinces is filled by the police-court reporter. The salary offered
was 25s. a week. The work began at eleven o'clock in the morning and
finished at about eleven o'clock at night. I have known many sleepless
nights since then; but the first entirely wakeful time I had passed
between the sheets was spent in the mental discussion of that offer.
There was weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth at home when I
decided to accept it. The journal was very loosely conducted--a leader
in the Birmingham Daily Post spoke of us once as the people across the
street who were playing at journalism--and the junior reporter was
permitted to write leaders, theatrical criticisms, and a series of articles
on the works of Thomas Carlyle, then first appearing in popular form in
a monthly issue.
I have always maintained, and must always continue to believe, that
there is no school for a novelist which can equal that of journalism. In
the police court, at inquests in the little upper rooms of tenth-rate
public-houses, and in the hospitals which it was my business to visit
nightly, I began to learn and understand the poor. I began on my own
account to investigate their condition, and as a result of one or two
articles about the Birmingham slums, was promoted at a bound from
the post of police-court reporter to that of Special Correspondent. Six
guineas a week, with a guinea a day for expenses, looked like an entry
into Eldorado. There was a good deal of heartburning and jealousy
amongst the members of the staff; but I dare say all that is forgotten
long ago.

The first real chance I got was afforded me by the first election by
ballot which took place in England. This was at Pontefract, where the
Hon. Hugh Childers was elected in a contest against Lord Pollington.
Some barrister-at-law had published a synopsis of the Ballot Act,
which I bought for a shilling at New Street Station and studied all the
way to Pontefract I sent off five columns of copy by rail in time to
catch the morning issue of the paper, and received the first open sign of
editorial favour on my return in the form of a cheque for ten pounds
over and above my charges. The money was welcome enough; but that
it should come from the hands of my hero and man of men, and should
be accompanied by words of unqualified approval, was, I think, more
inspiriting than anything could possibly be to me now. A very little
while later Dawson came to me with a new commission.
'I hate this kind of business,' he said, 'but it has to be done, and we will
do it once for all.'
There was an execution to take place at Worcester. One Edward
Hughes, a plasterer, I think, had murdered his wife under circumstances
of extraordinary provocation. The woman had left him once with a
paramour, and when she was deserted he had taken her back again. She
left him a second time and was again deserted, and again he condoned
her offence. She left him a third time, and he went to look for her. She
was living in clover, and she jeered when he begged her to return. It
was set forth in evidence that he had told her that he would see her once
more. He walked home--a distance of three or four miles--borrowed a
razor, returned to the house in which the woman was living, asked for
an interview outside in the darkness, and there almost severed her head
from her body. He surrendered himself immediately to the police, was
tried for his life, and sentenced to be hanged.
Rightly or wrongly, the man's story inspired me with a dreadful
sympathy. I cannot help thinking to this day that the tragedy of that
man's life went unappreciated, and that his long-suffering devotion and
the passion of jealousy which at length overcame