She and I Volume II Part 21

I was nerved to action at once.

Before the day on which I received the welcome intelligence was one hour older, I had sat me down and penned a hurried sheet of ecstatic rapture to my darling--the first number of our delightful little serial which was going to be regularly issued every fortnight until further notice in time for posting on mail days! I only just managed to catch the European packet, so I could not write a very long letter on this occasion--as I had also to answer the vicar's and Miss Pimpernell's communications; but I said quite enough, I think, to let my darling know, that, although she had not been able to hear from me directly before, she had never been out of my thoughts.

You may be sure, too, that I did not forget to send a short note to Mrs Clyde, thanking her for her kindness to us both. Indeed, I _was_ grateful to her; for serious consideration of my past conduct had led me to think that she might have only judged wisely in her opinion as to what was the best course to adopt for her daughter's future happiness.

Now, she had amply atoned for her former harshness, as I esteemed it, by her permission for our correspondence; and, notwithstanding that she never responded to my note, I regarded her thenceforth in the light of a friend.

On reading over the vicar's letter after getting this happy business concluded, I saw--what had escaped my notice at first--that he had not been content with merely exerting his influence with Mrs Clyde for my benefit. His good offices had gone much further. He had again spoken for me to his patron, the bishop--who, you may recollect, was the means of my getting that appointment to the Obstructor General's department; and my old friend wrote that they had great hopes of being able to procure me a nice little secretarys.h.i.+p under Government, which would probably bring me in enough income to marry upon.--Only think!

What do you say to that, eh?

It was true, though; or the vicar would never have expressed himself so confidently.

He added, that it was best for me to remain where I was in the meanwhile, persevering in my resolution of living a steady life, and that all might turn out well for me. He said, that my interests should not be neglected in my absence; and, that there would be no use of my returning until I got something certain.

His words, and this amicable settlement of matters between my darling and myself, awoke a new life in me. I did not despair any longer. I felt that G.o.d had at last heard not only my prayers, but also those of her, who, I knew, was praying for me at home; and that, if He had not appeared to grant my former pet.i.tions, the answer to them had been withheld for the all-wise purpose of making me look to Him more earnestly than I might have done, if prosperity had rewarded my first effort! Before, I had trusted entirely to myself, never thinking of appealing to His aid.

Now, I a.s.sure you, I could have struggled on to the death--even had Fortune still gone against me even in America; but, the fickle G.o.ddess alike altered her expression _there_, as circ.u.mstances improved for me _here_, so that, I was not called upon to exercise any further endurance in adversity.

My temporal troubles ended as my more serious difficulties disappeared-- all being in due accordance with the old adage which tells us that "it never rains but it pours."

One morning, soon after hearing from England, as I was conning over the advertis.e.m.e.nt columns of the _New York Herald_, I chanced on a notice which immediately caught my eye. An "editor" was wanted, without delay, at the office of one of the other leading-journals of the city, where applications were requested from all desirous of taking the "situation vacant." Who could this have reference to, but me?

I thought so, at all events, and "exploited" the supposition.

I did not allow the gra.s.s to grow under my feet, I can a.s.sure you.

I hurried off instanter to the address mentioned; and, although newspaper men of the New World, unlike ours, are uncommonly early birds, getting up matutinally betimes so as to catch the typical worm--in which respect they resemble the entire business population of Transatlantica-- I found, on my arrival, that I was the first candidate who had appeared on the scene.

It was a good omen, for your "live Yankee" likes "smartness;"

consequently, I was sanguine of success.

You may, peradventure, be "surprised to hear" of my thinking myself fit for such a post, having had such a slight acquaintance with literature at home?

That did not dissuade me, however, in the least.

I have so great a confidence in myself, that I would really take the command of the Channel fleet to-morrow if it were offered to me--as Earl Russell proposed to do, when he was simple "Lord John;" and, as a civilian First Lord of the Admirality has since done, although he possessed so little nautical knowledge that he might not have been able to tell you the difference between a cathead and a capstan bar, or, how to distinguish a "dinghy" from the "second cutter." I suppose he thought, like Mr Toots, that, "it didn't matter!"

Conceit, you say?

Not at all.--Only self-reliance, one of the most available qualities for getting on in the world; for, if a man does not believe in himself, how on earth can he expect other people to believe in him?

"Guess" I posed you there!--to use one of my patent Americanisms.

Besides, an American "editor," if you please, is of a very different stamp to an English one. The "learned lexicographer"--and pedantic old bore, by the way--Doctor Johnson, defined the individual in question to be "one who prepares or revises any literary work for publication;" and, we generally a.s.sociate the name with the supreme head of a journalistic staff--he who is addressed indignantly as "sir" by those weak-minded persons who write letters to newspapers, and who signs himself familiarly "Ed." But, at the other side of the Atlantic, the term bears a much wider application, extending to all "connected with the press"-- from the "head cook and bottle-washer," down, nearly, to that bottle imp, the printer's "devil."

Political writers; correspondents, "special" and "local;" reviewers; reporters; stenographers, or "gallery" men; dramatic and musical critics; "paragraphists"--the new name for fire and murder manifolders, and other "flimsy" compilers; and, penny-a-liners:--each and all, are, severally and collectively, "editors," beneath the star-spangled banner of equality and freedom.

Hence, there was not so much effrontery after all in my applying for the position, eh?

The proprietor of the paper whom I now canva.s.sed did not think so, at least; and _he_ was the party chiefly concerned in the affair besides myself; so, I should like to know what _you've_ got to do with it?

He was a "Down-easter," a cla.s.s of American I had already learnt specially to dislike--the ideal and real, "Yankee" of the States; but, he spoke to the point, as most of them do, without any waste of words or travelling round the subject--more than can be said for some "Britishers" I know!

He was leaning over the counter of the advertis.e.m.e.nt office as I entered, settling some calculation of greenbacks with the cas.h.i.+er, and "guessed," ere I had opened my mouth to explain my presence, that I had come about that "vacancy up-stairs."

"Been in the newspapering line before?" was his next interrogatory--a very pertinent one; for, Transatlantic journalists, as a rule, manage to try every trade and calling previously to sinking down to "literature"-- similarly to some of those bookseller's "hacks" over here who mortgage themselves to flash publishers when all other means of livelihood have failed them.

When I answered "Yes" to this question, he did not wait to hear anything further.

"Go up-stairs and try your hand," said he--"we'll soon see what you'll amount to, I reckon. We don't want any references here. We take a man as we find him. Guess I'll give you twenty-five dollars a week, anyhow, for one week sartain; and then, if we suit each other, we can raise the pile bimeby. Say, are you on?"

I "guessed" I _was_ "on;" and, went up-stairs to the paste-and-scissors purlieus with much gusto.

It was a very good commencement for me--I who had nothing to bless myself with before, for, the salary would pay my board and lodging twice over. It was a beginning, at any rate; and, as we subsequently did "suit each other," my down-east friend behaved very fairly, keeping to his promise of "raising my pile"--a synonym for increasing the weekly sum of "greenbacks" he allowed me for my labours. I had never any reason to repent the bargain--nor did I.

The work I had to do was by no means arduous, although, in many respects, of a novel character. From the fact that my residence in America had not been yet sufficiently extended to enable me to master the ins and outs of Transatlantic politics, the leading articles--or "editorials" as they are there styled--which I had to write were but few in number, and entirely referring to social subjects of local interest; notwithstanding that I was occasionally allowed to enlighten the Manhattan mind in the matter of European affairs. If my special "editor's" duties were thus light, I made up, however, for their deficiency, by enlarging upon the skeleton telegrams that came every night across the ocean--"expanding news," so to speak--and by also writing, on the arrival of every steamer, while seated in the back parlour of the journal's office in New York, the most graphic special correspondent's letters from Paris and London!

With regard to the telegrams. Half a dozen words only might come over the cable, to say, for instance, that the late Emperor Napoleon, who was the then supposed arbiter of the Old World, had nominated Count somebody or General that to a fresh portfolio; or that, the "scion of the house of Hapsburgh" was suffering from tooth-ache; or that, John Bright was going to Dublin to lecture "on Irish affairs."

My duties were such, that, when these telegrams appeared, in all the glories of print, the next morning, they had grown in such a miraculous way, that they took up half a yard of room, instead of but a few lines of type. Had you read them, you would have found their contents thoroughly explanatory, entering into the most minute details--as to how Napoleon's change of ministers would affect "the situation;" how poor Francis Joseph's attack of caries might, could and would raise again the ghost of "the Eastern question;" how the advent of the great Radical leader in Ireland would be the signal for a general Fenian uprising-- and, so on.

I _only_ mention these cases in point, to describe the way in which I clothed my skeletons with solid substrata of flesh and blood. The public, you see, had only so much the more information for their money-- which was, probably, just as reliable as if it had been really "wired"

under the Atlantic! n.o.body was the wiser; n.o.body, the sufferer by the deception; so, what was "the odds" so long as they were correspondingly "happy"--in their ignorance?

My correspondent's letters were much more mendacious compositions.

I am quite ashamed to tell you what long columns of flagrant description I was in the habit of reeling off--touching certain races in the Bois de Boulogne, soirees at the Tuileries, and working-men's "demonstrations"

in Hyde Park--of which I was only an imaginative spectator!

I used to rake up all my old reminiscences of the boulevards and cafes and prados, giving details concerning the "pet.i.t-creves" and "cocottes,"

the "flaneurs" and "grandes dames" of the once "gay" capital--gay no longer; and, interspersing them with veracious reports respecting the latest hidden thoughts of "Badinguet," and vivid descriptions of the respective toilets of the Empress Eugenie, Baroness de B---, Madame la Comtesse C---, la belle Marquise d'E---, and all the other fas.h.i.+onable letters of the alphabet--chronicling the very latest achievements in "Robes en train" and "Costumes a ravir" of the great artist Worth. Even the men folk of America--"shoddy" of course--dote on those accounts of European toilets, which we never see given in any of our papers, excepting where the appearance of the Queen's Drawing-Room may be pa.s.singly noted; or, when the _Morning Post_ exhausts itself over a "marriage in high life."

When my spurious intelligence was dated from London, I had to draw on a fertile memory for popular rumours concerning revolutionary doctrine, and express a conviction that things were not going very well with John Bull, politically or socially, hinting, also, at the prospect of an early Irish rebellion--and, generally, manufacture similar "news" of a kind that is peculiarly grateful to the jaundiced palates of our English-hating, jealousy-mad cousins over the way.

When Min came to know of this practice of mine, she did not like it.

She wrote to me to say that it was acting untruthfully to pretend to correspond from a place when I was not actually there.

The habit was certainly reprehensible, I admit, as I admitted to her; but, then, what can a writer do if blessed with a vivid imagination?

Besides, I had a precedent in Goldsmith's _Citizen of the World_, you know; and, as Byron says--

"--After all, what is a lie? 'Tis but The truth in masquerade; and I defy Historians, heroes, lawyers, priests, to put A fact without some leaven of a lie.

The very shadow of true truth would shut Up annals, revelations, poesy, And prophecy--except it should be dated Some years before the incidents related."

Even on this side of the water, too, authors have frequently to use their pens as if they did not chance to possess a conscience--one of the worst possessions for any aspirant in the journalistic profession to be enc.u.mbered with, I may remark by the way!

You seem to be astonished at my observation? I will explain what I mean more lucidly.