Faces and Places Part 4

Of the many letters that come to me with the a.s.surance that I have in my possession blank appointments on the editorial and reportorial staff of all contemporary journals paying good salaries, the saddest are those written by more than middle-aged men with families. Some have for years been earning a precarious living as reporters or sub-editors on obscure papers, and now find themselves adrift; others are men who, having vainly knocked at all other gates, are flushed by the happy thought that at least they can write acceptably for the newspapers; others, again, already engaged in daily work, are anxious to burn the midnight oil, and so add something to a scanty income. These last are chiefly clergymen and schoolmasters--educated men with a love of letters and the idea that, since it is easy and pleasant to read, it must be easy to write, and that in the immensity of newspapers and periodical literature there would be not only room, but eager welcome for them.

This cla.s.s of correspondents is curiously alike in one feature.

There is an almost sprightliness in their conviction that what they can write in these circ.u.mstances would exactly suit any paper, daily or weekly, morning or evening. All they have to do is to give up their odd savings of time to the work; all you--their hapless correspondent--have to do is to fill up one of those blank appointments with which your desk is clogged, and send it to them by first post.

There is no other profession in the world thus viewed by outsiders.

No one supposes he can make boots, cut clothes, or paint the outside of a house without having served some sort of apprenticeship, not to mention the possession of special apt.i.tude. Any one can, right off--, become a journalist. Such as these, and all those about to become journalists, I would advise to study a book published several years ago. It is the _Life of James MacDonell_, a name which, before this book was published, was an idle sound to the outer world, though to contemporary workers in the inner circle of the Press Macdonell was known as one of the ablest and most brilliant of modern journalists.

In these short and simple annals, the aspirant who imagines the successful journalist's life is all beer and skittles will discover what patient study, what self-denial, what strenuous effort, and, more essential than all, what rare natural gifts are needed to achieve the position into which Macdonell toiled.

It is this last consideration that makes me doubt whether there is any utility in offering practical hints "To Those about to become Journalists." If a boy or youth has in him the journalistic faculty, it will come out, whatever unpromising or adverse circ.u.mstances he may be born to. If he has it not, he had very much better take to joinering or carpentering, to clerking, or to the dispensation of goods over the retail counter. Journalism is an honourable and, for those specially adapted, a lucrative profession. But it is a poor business for the man who has mistaken his way into it. The very fact that it has such strong allurement for human nature makes harder the struggle for life with those engaged in its pursuit. I gather from facts brought under my personal notice that at the present time there are, proportionately with its numbers, more unemployed in the business of journalism than in any other, not exceeding that of the dockers. When a vacancy occurs on any staff, the rush to fill it is tremendous. Where no vacancy exists the knocking at the doors is incessant. All the gates are thronged with suitors, and the accommodation is exceedingly limited.

The first thing the youth who turns his face earnestly towards journalism should convince himself of is, that the sole guiding principle controlling admission to the Press or advance in its ranks is merit. This, as your communications, my dear young friends, have convinced me, is a statement in direct contravention of general belief. You are convinced that it is all done by patronage, and that if only some one in authority will interest himself in you, you straightway enter upon a glorious career. There is, however, no royal road to advancement on the Press. Proprietors and editors simply could not afford it. Living as newspapers do in the fierce light focussed from a million eyes, fighting daily with keen compet.i.tion, the instinct of self-preservation compels their directors to engage the highest talent where it is discoverable, and, failing that, the most sedulously nurtured skill. For this they will pay almost anything; and they ask nothing more, neither blood-relationship, social distinction, nor even academic training.

In journalism, more than in any other profession, not excepting the Bar, a man gets on by his own effort, and only by that. Of course, proprietors, and even editors, may, if the commercial prosperity of their journal permit the self-indulgence, find salaried situations for brothers, sons, or nephews or may oblige old friends in the same direction. Charles d.i.c.kens, as we have seen, made his father manager of the Parliamentary Corps of the _Daily News_. But that did not make him a journalist, nor did he, after his son's severance of his connection with the paper, long retain the post.

This line of reflection is, I am afraid, not encouraging to you, my dear young friends; but it leads up to one fact in which I trust you will be justified in finding ground for hope. Amongst the crowd struggling to obtain a footing within the pale of journalism, the reiterated rebuffs they meet with naturally lead to the conviction that it is a sort of close borough, those already in possession jealously resenting the efforts of outsiders to breach its sacred portals. Nothing could be further removed from the fact. A nugget of gold is not more pleasing to the sight of the anxious miner than is the discovery by the editor or manager of a newspaper of a new light in the world of journalism. This I put in the forefront of friendly words of advice to those about to enter journalism. Get rid of the fatal idea that some one will open the door for you and land you safely inside. You must force the door yourself with incessant knocking if need be, prepared for searching inquiry as to your right to enter, but certain of a hearty welcome and fraternal a.s.sistance when you have proved your right.

As an ounce of example is worth a ton of precept, I may perhaps mention that in a journalistic career now extending over just twenty-five years, I never but once received anything in the way of patronage, and that was extended at the very outset only after a severe test of the grounds upon which recommendation could be made.

My parents, in their wisdom, destined me for a commercial career.

If I had followed the bent given me when I left school, I should now have been a very indifferent clerk in the hide and valonia business. But like you, my dear young friends, I felt that my true vocation was journalism, and I determined to be a journalist.

I will tell you exactly how I did it. Like you, I meant to be an editor some day, but also, I trust, like you, I felt that it would be convenient, if not necessary to start by being a reporter. So I began to study shorthand, teaching myself by Pitman's system. When, after infinite pains, I had mastered this mystery, I began to look out for an opening on the Press. I had no friends in journalism, not the remotest acquaintance. I made the tour of the newspaper offices in the town where I lived, was more or less courteously received, and uniformly a.s.sured that there was no opening. One exception was made by a dear friend whose name is to-day known and honoured throughout Great Britain, who was then the young a.s.sistant-editor of a local daily paper. He gave me some trial work to do, and was so far satisfied that he promised me the first vacancy on the junior staff of reporters.

That was excellent, but I did not sit down waiting till fortune dropped the promised plum into my mouth. I got at all the newspapers within reach, searched for advertis.e.m.e.nts for reporters, answered them day after day, week after week, even month after month, without response. At last a cautious inquiry came. The reply was deemed satisfactory, and I got my chance.

This, dear young friends, is the short and simple annal of my start in journalism, and you will see that the pathway is equally open to you.

CHAPTER VII.

A CINQUE PORT.

Skulls piled roof high in the vault beneath the church tower supply the only show thing Hythe possesses. There is some doubt as to their precise nationality, but of their existence there can be none, as any visitor to the town may see for himself on payment of sixpence (parties of three or more eighteenpence). It is known how within a time to which memory distinctly goes the skulls were found down upon the beach, whole piles of them, thick as shingle on this coast. The explanation of their tenancy of British ground is popularly referred to the time, now nearly nine hundred years gone by, when Earl G.o.dwin, being exiled, made a raid on this conveniently accessible part of England, and after a hard fight captured all the vessels lying in the haven. Others find in the peculiar formation of the crania proof positive that the skulls originally came from Denmark.

But Saxon or Dane, or whatever they be, it is certain the skulls were picked up on the beach, and after an interval were, with some dim notion of decency, carried up to the church, where they lay neglected in a vault. The church also going to decay, the determination was taken to rebuild it, and being sorely pressed for funds a happy thought occurred to a practical vicar. He had the skulls piled up wall-like in an accessible chamber, caused the pa.s.sages to be swept and garnished, and then put on the impost mentioned above, the receipts helping to liquidate the debt on the building fund. Thus, by a strange irony of fate, after eight centuries, all that is left of these heathens brings in sixpences to build up a Christian church.

A good deal has happened in Hythe since the skulls first began to bleach on the inhospitable sh.o.r.e. When Earl G.o.dwin suddenly appeared with his helm hard up for Hythe, the little town on the hill faced one of the best havens on the coast. It was, as every one knows, one of the Cinque Ports, and at the time of the Conqueror undertook to furnish, as its quota of armament, five ships, one hundred and five men, and five boys. Even in the time of Elizabeth there was a fair harbour here. But long ago the sea changed all that. It occupied itself in its leisure moments by bringing up illimitable shingle, with which it filled up all water ways, and cut Hythe off from communication with the sea as completely as if it were Canterbury.

It is not without a feeling of humiliation that a burgess of the once proud port of Hythe can watch the process of the occasional importation of household coal. Where Earl G.o.dwin swooped down over twenty fathoms of water the little collier now painfully picks her way at high water. On sh.o.r.e stand the mariners of Hythe (in number four), manning the capstan. When the collier gets within a certain distance a hawser is thrown out, the capstan turns more or less merrily round, and the collier is beached, so that at low water she will stand high and dry.

Thus ignominiously is coal landed at one of the Cinque Ports.

Of course this change in the water approaches has altogether revolutionised the character of the place. Hythe is a port without imports or exports, a harbour in which nothing takes refuge but shingle. It has not even fishing boats, for lack of place to moor them in. It is on the greatest water highway of the world, and yet has no part in its traffic. Standing on the beach you may see day after day a never-ending fleet of ships sailing up or down as the wind blows east or west. But, like the Levite in the parable, they all pa.s.s by on the other side. Hythe has nothing to do but to stand on the beach with its hands in its pockets and lazily watch them.

Thus cut off from the world by sea, and by land leading nowhere in particular except to Romney Marshes, Hythe has preserved in an unusual degree the flavour of our earlier English world. There have indeed been times when endeavour was made to profit by this isolation. As one of the Cinque Ports Hythe has since Parliaments first sat had the privilege of returning representatives. In the time of James II. it seems to have occurred to the Mayor (an ancestor of one of the members for West Kent in a recent Parliament), that since a member had to be returned to Parliament much trouble would be saved, and no one in London would be any the wiser, if he quietly, in his capacity as returning officer, returned himself. But some envious Radical setting on the opposite benches, was too sharp for him, and we find the sequel of the story set forth in the Journals of the House of Commons under date 1685, where it is written--

"Information given that the Mayor of Hythe had returned himself: Resolved by the House of Commons that Mr. Julius Deedes, the Mayor, is not duly elected. New writ ordered in his stead."

Hythe is a little better known now, but not much. And yet for many reasons its acquaintance is worth forming. The town itself, lying snugly at the foot of the hill crowned by the old church, is full of those bits of colour and quaintnesses of wall and gable-end which good people cross the Channel to see. In the High-street there is a building the like of which probably does not anywhere exist. It is now a fish-shop, not too well stocked, where a few dried herrings hang on a string under ma.s.sive eaves that have seen the birth and death of centuries. From the centre of the roof there rises a sort of watch-tower, whence, before the houses on the more modern side of the street were built, when the sea swept over what is now meadow-land, keen eyes could scan the bay on the look out for inconvenient visitors connected with the coastguard. When the sea prevented Hythe honestly earning its living in deep-keeled boats, it perforce took to smuggling, a business in which this old watch-tower played a prominent part.

This is a special though neglected bit of house architecture in Hythe. But everywhere, save in the quarters by the railway station or the Parade, where new residences are beginning to spring up, the eye is charmed by old brown houses roofed with red tiles, often standing tree-shaded in a bountiful flower garden, and always preserving their own lines of frontage and their own angle of gable, with delightful indifference to the geometric scale of their neighbour.

The South-Eastern Railway Company have laid their iron hand on Hythe, and its old-world stillness is already on Bank Holidays and other bleak periods of the pa.s.sing year broken by the babble of the excursionist. In its characteristically quiet way Hythe has long been known as what is called a watering-place. When I first knew it, it had a Parade, on which were built eight or ten houses, whither in the season came quiet families, with children and nurses. For a few weeks they gave to the sea frontage quite a lively appearance, which the mariners (when they were not manning the capstan) contemplated with complacency, and said to each other that Hythe was "looking up." For the convenience of these visitors some enterprising person embarked on the purchase of three bathing machines, and there are traditions of times when these were all in use at the same hour--so great was the influx of visitors.

Also there is a "bathing establishment" built a long way after the model of the Pavilion at Brighton. The peculiarity of this bathing establishment is or was when I first knew the charming place that regularly at the end of September the pump gets out of order, and the new year is far advanced before the solitary plumber of the place gets it put right. He begins to walk dreamily round the place at Easter. At Whitsuntide he brings down an iron vessel containing unmelted solder, and early in July the pump is mended.

This mending of the pump is one of the epochs of Hythe, a sure harbinger of the approaching season. In July "The Families" begin to come down, and the same people come every year, for visitors to Hythe share in the privilege of the inhabitants, inasmuch as they never--or hardly ever--die. Of late years, since the indefatigable Town Clerk has succeeded in waking up the inhabitants to the possibilities of the great future that lies before their town, not only has a new system of drainage and water been introduced, but a register has been kept of the death-rate. From a return, published by the Medical Officer of Health, it appears that the death-rate of Hythe was 9.3 per 1000. Of sixty-three people who died in a year out of a population of some four thousand, twenty-three were upwards of sixty years of age, many of them over eighty. Perhaps the best proof of the healthfulness of Hythe is to be found in a stroll through the churchyard, whence it would appear that only very young children or very old people are carried up the hill.

The difficulty about Hythe up to recent times has been the comparative absence of accommodation for visitors. Its fame has been slowly growing as The Families have spread it within their own circles. But it was no use for strangers to go to Hythe, since they could not be taken in. This is slowly changing. Eligible building sites are offered, villas have been run up along the Sandgate Road, and an hotel has been built by the margin of the sea. When news reached the tower of the church that down on the beach there had risen a handsome hotel, fitted with all the luxuries of modern life, it is no wonder that the skulls turned on each other and--as Longfellow in the "Skeleton in Armour" puts it--

"Then from those cavernous eyes Pale flashes seem to rise, As when the northern skies Gleam In December."

This is surely the beginning of the end. Having been endowed with a railway which brings pa.s.sengers down from London in a little over two hours, Hythe is now dowered with an hotel in which they may dine and sleep. The existence of the hotel being necessarily admitted, prejudice must not prevent the further admission that it is exceedingly well done. Architecturally it is a curiosity, seeing that though it presents a stately and substantial front neither stone nor brick enters into its composition. It is made entirely of shingle mixed with mortar, the whole forming a concrete substance as durable as granite. The first pebble of the new hotel was laid quite a respectable number of years ago, the ceremony furnishing an almost dangerous flux of excitement to the mariners at the capstan. It has grown up slowly, as becomes an undertaking connected with Hythe. But it is finished now, handsome without, comfortable within, with views from the front stretching seawards from Dungeness to Folkestone, and at the back across green pastures, glimpses are caught through the trees of the red-tiled town.

Now that suitable accommodation is provided for stray visitors, Hythe, with its clean beach, its parade that will presently join hands with Sandgate, its excellent bathing, and its bracing air, may look to take high rank among watering places suburban to London. But there are greater charms even than these in the immediate neighbourhood. With some knowledge of English watering places, I solemnly declare that none is set in a country of such beauty as is spread behind Hythe. Unlike the neighbourhood of most watering places, the country immediately at the back of the town is hilly and well wooded. Long shady roads lead past blooming gardens or through rich farms, till they end in some sleepy village or hamlet, the world forgetting, by the world forgot. In late July the country is perfect in its loveliness. The fields and woods are not so flowery as in May, though by way of compensation the gardens are rich in roses. Still there are sufficient wild flowers to gladden the eye wherever it turns. From the hedgerows big white convolvulus stare with wonder-wide eyes, the honeysuckle is out, the wild geranium blooms in the long gra.s.s, the blackberry bushes are in full flower, and the poppies blaze forth in great cl.u.s.ters at every turn of the road. The corn is only just beginning to turn a faint yellow, but the haymakers are at work, and every breath of the joyous wind carries the sweet scent of hay.

CHAPTER VIII.

OYSTERS AND ARCACHON.

If the name had not been appropriated elsewhere, Arcachon might well be called the Salt Lake City. It lies on the south sh.o.r.e of a basin sixty-eight miles in circ.u.mference, into which, through a narrow opening, the Bay of Biscay rolls its illimitable waters.

Little more than thirty years ago the town was represented by half a dozen huts inhabited by fishermen. It was a terribly lonely place, with the smooth lake in front of it, the Atlantic thundering on the dunes beyond, and in the rear the melancholy desert of sand known as the Landes.

The Landes is peopled by a strange race, of whom the traveller speeding along the railway to-day may catch occasional glimpses.

Early in the century the department was literally a sandy plain, about as productive as Sahara, and in the summer time nearly as hot.

But folks must live, and they exist on the Landes, picking up a scanty living, and occasionally dying for lack of water. One initial difficulty in the way of getting along in the Landes is the sheer impossibility of walking. When the early settler left his hut to pay a morning call or walk about his daily duties, he sank ankle deep in sand.

But the human mind invariably rises superior to difficulties of this character.

What the "backstay" is to the inhabitant of the district around Lydd, the stilts are to the lonely dwellers in the Landes. The peasants of the department are not exactly born on stilts, but a child learns to walk on them about the age that his British brother is beginning to toddle on foot.

Stilts have the elementary recommendation of overcoming the difficulty of moving about in the Landes. In addition, they raise a man to a commanding alt.i.tude, and enable him to go about his daily business at a pace forbidden to ordinary pedestrians. The stilts are, in truth, a modern realisation of the gift of the seven-league boots. They are so much a part of the daily life of the people that, except when he stoops his head to enter his hut, the peasant of the Landes would as soon think of taking off his legs by way of resting himself as of removing his stilts. The shepherds, out all day tending their sheep, might, if they pleased, stretch themselves at full length on the grey sand, making a pillow of the low bushes. But they prefer to stand; and you may see them, reclining against a third pole stuck in the ground at the rear, contentedly knitting stockings, keeping the while one eye upon the flock of sheep anxiously nibbling at the meagre gra.s.s.

Next to the shepherds, the most remarkable live stock in the Landes are the sheep. Such a melancholy careworn flock! poor relations of the plump Southdown that grazes on fat Suss.e.x wolds. Long-legged, scraggy-necked, anxious-eyed, the sheep of the Landes bear eloquent testimony to the penury of the place and the difficulty of making both ends meet--which in their case implies the burrowing of the nose in tufts of sand-girt gra.s.s. To abide among such sheep through the long day should be enough to make any man melancholy. But the peasant of the Landes, who is used to his stilts, also grows accustomed to his sheep, and they all live together more or less happily ever afterwards.

The Landes is quite a prosperous province to-day compared with what it was in the time of Louis XVI. During the First Empire there was what we would call a Minister of Woods and Forests named Bremontier. He looked over the Landes and found it to be nothing more than a waste of shifting sand. Rescued from the sea by a mere freak of nature, it might, for all practical purposes, have been much more usefully employed if covered a few fathoms deep with salt water. To M. Bremontier came the happy idea of planting the waste land with fir trees. Nothing else would grow, the fir tree might. And it did. To-day the vast extent of the Landes is almost entirely covered with dark forests in perpetual verdure.

These have transformed the district, adding not only to the improvement of its sanitary condition, but creating a new source of wealth. Out of the boundless vistas of fir trees there ever flows a constant stream of resin, which brings in large revenues. Pa.s.sing through the forest by the railway line from La Mothe to Arcachon, one sees every tree marked with a deep cut. It looks as if the woodman had been about, picking out trees ready for the axe, and had come to the conclusion that they might be cut down _en bloc_. But these marks are indications of the process of milking the forests. It is a very simple affair, to which mankind contributes a mere trifle. In order to get at the resin a piece of bark is cut off from each tree. Out of the wound the resin flows, falling into a hole dug in the ground at the roots. When this is full it is emptied into cans and carried off to the big reservoir: when one wound in the tree is healed another is cut above it, and so the tree is finally drained.

Besides this revenue from resin immense sums are obtained from the sale of timber; and thus the Landes, which a hundred years ago seemed to be an inconvenient freak of nature afflicting complaining France, has been turned into a money-yielding department.

The firs which fringe the seacoast by the long strip of land that lies between the mouth of the Gironde and the town of Bayonne have much to do with the prosperity of Arcachon. The salt lake, with its little cl.u.s.ter of fishermen's cottages, lies within a couple of hours'

journey by rail from Bordeaux, a toiling, prosperous place, which, seated on the broad Garonne, longed for the sea. Some one discovered that there was excellent bathing at Arcachon, the bed of the salt lake sloping gently upwards in smooth and level sands. Then the doctors took note of the beneficial effects of the fir trees which environed the place. The aromatic scent they distilled was declared to be good for weak chests, and, almost by magic, Arcachon began to grow.

By swift degrees the little cl.u.s.ter of fishermen's cottages spread till it became a town--of one street truly, but the street is a mile and a half long, skirting the seash.o.r.e and backed by the fir forests. Bordeaux took Arcachon by storm. A railway was made, and all through the summer months the population poured into the long street, filling it beyond all moderate notions of capacity. The rush came so soon, and Arcachon was built in such a hurry, that the houses have a casual appearance, recalling the towns one comes upon in the Far West of America, which yesterday were villages, and to-day have a town-hall, a bank, many grog-shops, a church or two, and four or five daily newspapers.

A vast number of the dwellings are of the proportion of pill-boxes. Some are literally composed of two closets, one called a bedroom and the other a sitting-room; or, oftener still, both used as bedrooms. Others are built in terraces a storey high and a few feet wide, with the name of the proprietor painted over the liliputian trap-door that serves for entrance hall. The idea is that you live at ease and in comfort at Bordeaux, and just run down to Arcachon for a bath. There are no bathing machines or tents; but all along the sh.o.r.e, in supplement of the liliputian houses that serve a double debt to pay--being residences at night and bathing-machines by day,--stand rows of sentry-boxes, whence the bather emerges arrayed in more or less bewitching attire. The water is very shallow, and enterprising persons of either s.e.x spend hours of the summer day in paddling about in their bathing costumes.