Supernumeraries of the Press.

New Zealand Illustrated Magazine, Volume 1, Issue 10, 1 July 1900, Page 64

Supernumeraries of the Press.

By One op Them

f^T flashed upon my mind one day n that after all we were only pennym a -liners — whom we had always

supposed to be a foreign species of mankind of tbo very lowest type, a sort of scribbling Bushman. Our chosen name for ourselves is " Journalists," but though our " stuff " (a flattering office phrase) is only now and then paid for by the yard, I fear we are little better than a colonial Grub Street. We are nearly all retired geniuses with extinct missions. I might say all, and so avoid comparisons. There is evidently not a large demand for colonial geniuses with missions. When in our youth we laid plans for taking the world by storm, our friends looked on and marvelled. We wrote epics, dramas, philosophic novels and social treatises, improved versions of Shakespeare, Browning and Tennyson. At that stage most of us had dedicated ourselves to the Muse of Poetry. We sent our creations over the seas and they always came faithfully home again. We continued heroic and secreted piles of MSS. The newspapers gave us support and inward comfort by publishing from time to time accounts of great authors whose works had been rejected by publishers. As publishers had rejected our works, it followed that we were great authors. But at middle age one becomes tired of blushing unseen and being a gem in unfathomed caves, besides it does not pay. Our adoring relatives were the first to perceive this fact, and to point it out to us with comments. At present we have given up working for Art and are writing for bread and butter. As we had begun at the end of Literature, we are now likely to end at the beginning. ■ Some of us find our life tragic, and some of us find it

humorous — it amounts to much the same thing. We write articles of all kinds to order of the public taste, leaders, leaderettes, topics of the day, the facetious notes column, sketches, correspondence, country gossip and reports on such special subjects as chess or tennis tournaments ; our highest artistic level is generally the Christmas story. Sometimes we get an article into an English magazine, and never recover from the shock. This happens, on a rough average, two or three times during the life of a Maoriland supernumerary. The first occasion has been known to be fatal. Bewildered at never seeing the body of MSS. again, but only its glorified form in the pages of "The Atlantic," or " The Gentleman's," or " The Cornhill," the author has been known to go on sending feebler and feebler copies of himself to the magnificent donor of three guineas a column until he finally died (in a literary sense) of sheer exhaustion. Of course this fate befalls only weaklings. A hardened supernumerary merely sits down, and finds on calculation that while one article out of a dozen may be accepted in England and paid for at the rate of three guineas a column, one out of every two will have a better chance of being paid for in Maoriland at the rate of one guinea a column ; so he decides that the grey old mother has no particular use for his talents. Except as an advertisement, writing for English or American journals is sheer waste of time — that is, for a genuine inhabitant of our Grub Street, who has got to keep his house and family there. Within the colonies a great deal depends upon your town, and the generosity or parsimony of the particular newspaper company that favours you; for the rest, your success or failure

turns upon your special capacities for the work. The first point gained is to drop your mission, whatever it might have been, and to write whatever pleases the great master of us all — modern Democracy — what interests it at the moment, what it wants to be told. Max Beerbohm, I see by " Literatui*e," agrees with Lord Rosebery, that the leading article should be abolished, and he cruelly sums it up as some anonymous person's idea of what the editor thinks, the proprietors think, the public thinks nice. Well, we do not quite deny this impeachment, but why this hanging sentence upon Grub Street? Its work is just as necessary as turning out dress materials of the latest fashions, or passing laws to suit the majority. It is hard work, too, always keeping one's finger on the public pulse. Then we have had to learn the trick of writing on everything undor the sun, from Kruger's old hat and Joubert's coat pockets up to Ruskin's Ideals and the Imperial Destiny of England. And it must all be done at lightning speed. What does a thankless public care about the cost to the human machine ? When a late cablegram comes in about midnight, who pauses to marvel at the luminous disquisition which appears next morning on the port of Hasan po or the province of Azerbaijan ? The only reward is a sneer at the editorial omniscience t We who know the editor, know that he is the last man in the world to consider himself omniscient ; his normal condition is to be feeling his mind a perfect vacuum, and to be making frantic attempts to fill it before twelve o'clock at night. Besides he did not write that article.

Given all the requisites of journalism, there is a chance of moderate success. In most large offices, for some odd weeks in the year, there is sure to be some one ill, or having a holiday to avoid getting ill, or being dismissed, or throwing up the business or the country on his account That is where the tired and trusted supernumerary conies in. But the great harvest time is the Parliamentary session, when all sorts and conditions of journalists flock to Wellington, A first-class journalist, who is reporting,

corresponding, and writing political notes and articles at the same tirno for different papers, may thrive well during those months. But the fraternity may consider mo a traitor if my account should beguile others into our midst and increase competition. So I hasten to add that the living, on the whole, is most precarious, and some of the work not much more intellectual than writing advertisements for patent medicines and soaps. Sometimes you may have a run of bad luck. You may work for days together, each day more nervously than the last, and your MSS. comes back, or it does not come back, according to tho habits of tho editor, but your article never appears. It does not always matter how well you work, or how promptly. You may be forestalled, or the paper may be filled with war or parliamentary news. Here are some of the contretemps that occur. A " topic "on some anniversary is duly sent in to the sub-editor, but he is away for a day, and when he returns the anniversary is passed and your topic is a stale fish. Or you post an article on some obviously important subject. Next clay, not yours but another article appears, and tho editor sends you a note thanking you courteously — editors, when they nro not in too great a hurry, are the most courteous men alive — but he had already written his article, or accepted another on your subject ; or he puts yours by for a day or two, and meanwhile his " dm temporary," as he calls the Opposition newspaper, has exploited your theme. Sometimes you inadvertently send him a scathing attack on his proprietors, or their vested interests, or his own most sacred sentiments — the few he has remaining after serving the public so long. Tho next time he meets you, ho is bland but not cordial. (Sometimes he forgets all about your MS., or the clerk behind the counter forgets, or the offico boy forgets. Nobody ever does know exactly who lost it, but when you go and inquire too solicitously after it, they smile, and smile, and you think them all villains. I pass over the editor's little way of changing your words to saifc his own ideas, and catting out all your best parts,

and joining two different quotations into one, or making it appear that you (or rather he) mast be the author of Kipling's lines. These are matters of pure sentiment.

I have spoken of a fraternity, bat the onlysort of freemasonry we have, is that we can always tell each other, just as an experienced teacher can always distinguish another of his own species. It is the Press supernumeraries that most haunt public libraries' and swoop down upon new books and papers and magazines. We know them by their look as of a bird of prey, hurriedly skimming over ten pages a minute till they settle down upon their chosen morsel and eagerly devour it; we know them by their profound indifference to the novel-reading, leisurely subscribers, but most of all by the fierce resentment with which they eye the other man who is enjoying the particular paper they themselves want.

We are not all alike. Many are mere dilettantes, professors, lecturers, sportsmen, specialists of all kinds who write only on their own subjects, and only for the exquisite joy of earning money they don't want by some way out of their own sphere. Even amongst the real journalists there- are many who eke out their living by other means, by

coaching, typing or casual office work. None of us are wealthy; some of us are poor. The best supernumeraries continually leave our ranks to become permanent "members of the staff" of some office. With large numbers the stop-gap stage is only temporary. Then there is an increasing number of women journalists pressing in, and bidding fair to rival the men. Some of them live in small cottages, and some groups of friends in a top flat of some big business buildings close to the office. It is romantic to live in a flat but not comfortable. If you are a Socialist you do not mind being uncomfortable, because you believe that living in a flat is part of the Millennium.

So much for the material rewards of unattached journalism. In regard to the " fame," it is a splendid training in altruism. If your work is really of its kind first-class, you can have the consciousness of merit to reward you. No one else knows whose it is. The editor gets the credit, but generally there is no credit to be got, so he gets the blame. Yet we could envy him even the thorns and pricks of power. For our part no one troubles to attack us. We are the unknown, the unnamed, the unseen, the people who in the public eye are not even shadows but non-existent.