Some Thoughts on Journalism

"For to admire an’ for to see,
For to be’old this world so wide–
It never done no good to me,
But I can’t drop it if I tried."

I

Journalism is an art like another; and its essence is in the lines I have quoted above. For it is clear that if you are not one of those given to "beholding this world" off and on–a world to admire, or, at any rate, to assess at its correct valuation–you have not the makings of a journalist in you. Observation is the be-all and end-all of the profession. The same qualification, I admit, is required of your full-blown poet, novelist, or essayist: which is really, however, only another way of saying that there is not much, if any, difference between journalism and literature. I have, in my time, read pronouncements after pronouncements emanating from some of the so-called pandits of ‘letters’, to the effect that the two are quite different things, and that, if they meet at all, they meet only, like two parallel straight lines, at infinity. Well, this heresy ought, in my humble opinion, to be killed–and killed, too, as speedily as possible. Journalism and literature should not be looked upon in this fashion: the fashion, that is, in which Prince Henry regarded himself and Hotspur: to wit, that the same orb could not contain both. The lines in which that typical John Bull gave expression to that remarkable sentiment is to be found in the First Part of King Henry IV. At long last the Prince of Wales and Harry Percy find themselves face to face in personal combat; and Prince Henry says:

"Why, then, I see

A very valiant rebel of the name.

I am the Prince of Wales; and think not, Percy,

To share with me in glory any more:

Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere,

Nor can one England brook a double reign,

Of Harry Percy and the Prince of Wales."

II

I submit that it is a very false view of the matter. I go further and assert that those who would place them in water-tight compartments are rendering no service to either. I am aware that it is mostly the literary people that love to draw this red-herring across the trail: not, be it remembered, the literary people sui generis, the literary people "to the manner born," but those that are the notoriously unsuccessful imitators of them. Everywhere it seems to be a law of nature that the menials, so to speak, not the masters, should rant and rave about their goods in all places, and irrespective of the hour and the season. I repeat that it is only the camp-followers of literature, not the genuine artists themselves, that are in the habit of making so much fuss about that (alleged) distinction. It may be argued, of course, that, whereas journalism abides our question, literature does not. My point is that the finest journalism and the finest literature are alike imperishable: that there is not, if I may put it so, enough evidence to cover a three-penny bit to show that the one is very much inferior to the other. The misunderstanding has. I believe, arisen in this way. Journalism has not produced as many remarkable men as literature, That is why the vast majority of people are apt to jump to the conclusion that journalism is, ipso facto, much below literature as a form of human endeavour. It is hardly fair to journalism. This is brought out clearly in G. B. S’s tribute to that non pareil among journalists, the late Mr. H. W. Massingham: Massingham, than whom you could not imagine a more civilised human being, as Mr. J. L. Garvin wrote of C. P. Scott of the Manchester Guardian. Mr. Shaw’s tribute takes this form:

"As I write these lines, comes the news of the death of our friend and contemporary, William Archer. The two vacant places seem to make a prodigious gap in the surviving front rank of late Victorian journalism. But Archer, like myself, was a journalist only inasmuch as he wrote for the papers to boil his pot. Massingham was the perfect master journalist: the born editor without whom such potboiling would have been for many of us a much poorer and more sordid business. If he had left behind him a single book, it would have spoilt the integrity of his career and of his art. I hope I have made it clear that this was his triumph and not his shortcoming. I could lay my hand more readily on ten contributors for his successor than on one successor for his contributors. A first rate editor is a very rare bird, indeed: two or three to a generation, in contrast to swarms of authors, is as much as we get; and Massingham was the first of that very select flight."

(H. W. M.: Cape, 1925.)

III

I commenced my article with the remark that the essence of journalism consists in properly observing the world; and went on to say that the basic principle of literature is also the same: drawing the inference, in the process, that, broadly speaking, the two are not separate entities but run into each other imperceptibly. It is as if they were tethered in neighbouring stalls and a kick would, at any time, bring down the partition. I may, perhaps, put it like this: journalism is the vestibule of literature. Many famous men of letters are, and have been, journalists first and authors afterwards. I shall even assert that journalism is a necessary introduction to literature: at any rate, it has been so ever since newspapers began to function. Newspapers serve many queer trades: not least, that queerest trade of all–namely, literature. Those whose brows are very high will do well to read, mark, and inwardly digest this; otherwise, they may be fated to end as all brows and no literary appraisers–much as the Cheshire cat was said to be all grin and not enough of cat. That excellent writer, Mr. Ivor Brown, has emphasised this, in his own trenchant fashion, in his article, "Journalism and Literature," in the Fortnightly Review for January, 1932:

‘There is, fundamentally, no distinction between literature and journalism, except the temporal condition of periodical appearance and the material fact that one is printed with a cloth cover and the other is bounded by a sheet of paper. People are apt to sneer at journalism, partly because they confuse the well-considered work with the mere gossip, partly because it is available for a penny or two pence. The snobbery of price is a very large and very discreditable element in the public opinion of this country….Free education may be a social necessity, but the absence of a price is bad for education."

IV

To take only a few instances, were not Addison, Steele, Johnson, Hazlitt, journalists first and authors afterwards? What about Andrew Lang, George Saintsbury, George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, Arnold Bennett, Thomas Earle Welby, Robert Lynd, J. B. Priestley, Edward Shanks, and others too numerous to mention? All, all were, and are, journalists. If they had not been journalists first they could not, I dare to say, have been such great men of letters later on. It is not merely that journalism supplies a first-class training ground for your would-be litterateurs. But for that incentive, some of them might not have had the inclination to dedicate their lives to literature at all. I am not here addressing those all-sufficient persons who deem it quite comme il faut to sneer at journalism and at journalists: they would not, be assured, abate their ill manners were it but to save their souls. I am here addressing those who are still keeping open minds, and those who are still willing to listen to the other man’s point of view. As for the hoity-toity fellows, I cannot do better than apply to them these lines of Kipling:

"But he that is costive of soul to his fellow,
In the ways and the works and the woes of this life,
Him food shall not fatten, him drink shall not mellow,
And his inwards shall brew him perpetual strife;
His eye shall be blind to God’s glory above him–
His ear shall be deaf to Earth’s laughter around.
His friends and his Club and his dog shall not love him–
And his widow shall skip when he goes underground."

V

Cutting the cackle and coming to the ‘osses, I should like to suggest that the first requisite in those intending to take up the profession of journalism is an all-absorbing interest in it: else they had better become engme-drivers or super-salesmen or cinema-actors or professional boxers. If journalism is not in their bones, nothing–not even machine-guns–can turn them into capable journalists. That, I hope, is clear enough. This is what Coleridge had in his mind when he penned the line:

"O, Lady, we receive but what we give."

If you do not come to journalism con amore, you can never make much of yourself as a journalist. Taking up journalism pour passer le temps has never yet paid anyone. If your passion for journalism is kept up at white heat always, through good report as well as bad, you stand quite a sporting chance of becoming a top-notch journalist, though you may not have seen the inside of a newspaper office even once in your life; and by the same token, you may serve in a newspaper office till your hairs turn grey and yet fail to earn the name of ‘journalist’–properly so called. I mean, and not a mere apology for it. That, I am afraid, is a point that has not received sufficient attention: here, as elsewhere, many are called but few chosen. We should not permit ourselves to be deluded by appearances. We ought, on the other hand, to go about like Diogenes with a lamp, or, better still, with (in Sam Weller’s expressive phrase) "a pair o’ patent double million magnifyin’ gas microscopes of hextra power," in search of the journalists that are really worthy of the name: the most of them that answer to the description being no more entitled to that sobriquet than every player in a film or a drama is justified in calling himself or herself an actor or actress. No: a truly competent journalist is a rare ave in terris; and the sooner this is realised the better it will be for the profession as a whole.

VI

The man who cannot write well need not, in my view of the matter, ever hope to fashion himself into even a passable journalist. There are, I agree, many varieties of journalists, but it is my firm conviction that, to whatever branch of journalism one may belong, one must have an eye, first, to style–to the apparatus of writing. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (how I envy those who have had the privilege of studying their English Literature under him!) once defined literature as "memorable writing." It is probably the soundest definition of literature that we have. I am not sure that it is not the soundest definition of journalism as well. Journalism is not a whit less "memorable writing"; and we may cut the Gordian knot by saying, with finality, that that journalism which cannot lay claims to being even "north-north-west," "memorable writing" may be anything under the sun but assuredly not journalism. Journalists themselves, it grieves me to say, have not always attached sufficient importance to this aspect of the question. If an engine-driver, for instance, is shown to have made a mistake, he is at once ‘fired.’ But not so a journalist. If journalists also were required to pay the penalty for their errors of omission and commission, they too would, in a trice, become extraordinarily alive to the mechanics of writing. Style, then, is absolutely necessary; what is not less necessary is to be capable of exhibiting it when time is pressing hard. The merit is not with your literary gentleman who has leisure both to appear learned and to polish his periods; the merit is with your working journalist, who is notoriously always in a hurry, who has no books at hand for reference, and who yet contrives to supply his readers, daily or weekly, with some columns of matter about which he need not be ashamed of himself in the final reckoning. A certain kind of mother-wit, if I may call it so, is absolutely essential. As the late Mr. C. E. Montague so beautifully observes, though in another connexion (he is contrasting quantity and quality as regards reading):

"If you read in the Polonian spirit, not dulling your palm with entertainment of each new-hatched, unfledged commodity of Mr. Mudie’s and Mr. Boot’s, but reading an old book again when a new one comes out, you will find that the whole of what you have read is comfortably within reach of your hand whenever it is wanted for a professional purpose. All of it is like that relatively small part of a bank’s assets which figures on the balance-sheet as in hand or at call, whereas the accumulations of most of your widely read men seem to be somewhat deeply and remotely invested. No doubt their resources are well employed, in a sense, as Antonio’s were when he had one argosy upon the high seas bound to Tripolis, another to the Indies, and a third to Mexico. But as soon as the cry was for cash, Antonio was hammered upon the Rialto. So you will often see men with, the learning of an Acton or a Bryce graveled for lack of a ready quotation at a pinch when some fellow who never had any learning to speak of will pop out the one perfect thing as surely as if he enjoyed plenary inspiration. Is it too much to say that the wit of your most voluminous readers is prone to move slowly? That it is somehow weighed down with the themes, the stature, bulk and big assemblance of their acquisitions? I once heard J. A. Froude and Andrew Lang talking at dinner. Froude, I fancy, knew ten times as much as did Lang. But whatever Lang new was a there. He kept it mobilised the whole time. He could bring it to bear in an instant, while most of Froude’s forces were like the Russian rural reservists who had first to walk for a week to the nearest railway station when mobilisation was ordered. Oh, give me always, as Falstaff advises, a little, lean......bald shot,’ that will about and about, rather than one of those Samsons or Sandows of learning. I mean, of course, for human nature’s daily use in the more lightsome walks of literature and her agreeable arbours. No blaspheming of divine Knowledge is intended, except in the minor article of her not always stirring her stumps as much as she might." (See his essay on "Quotation," in his A Writer’s Notes on his Trade: Chatto and Windus: 1930.)

VII

In whatever way we may judge it, the ability to write at a moment’s notice is absolutely essential. And sometimes it is not without its advantages. There is a charm in spontaneity, which is woefully lacking in your studied efforts. The same author from whom I have already quoted has this excuse to offer for reprinting some of his dramatic criticisms. (In passing, I may add that that doyen of living English dramatic critics, Mr. James Agate, gives it as his considered opinion, in his Playgoing–Jarrolds–that C. E. Montague was "the finest dramatic critic and the best writer about the theatre in any age or clime.") Says "C. E. M.":

"And yet for old theatre notices there may be a kind of excuse. You wrote them in haste, it is true, with few books about you, or moments to look a thing up; hot air and dust of the playhouse were still in your lungs; you were sure to say things that would seem sorry gush or rant if you saw them again in the morning. How bad it all was for measure, containment, and balance! But that heat of the playhouse is not wholly harmful. Like Sherrissack in the system of Falstaff, it hath a twofold operation: ‘it ascends me into the brain….makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes.’ At least, it sometimes gives you that illusion; below yourself in certain ways, you hope you are above yourself in others." (See his "Prefatory Note" to his Dramatic Values: Chatto and Windus: 1910.)

VIII

In other words, your A₁ journalist must have the knack of writing at the tips of his fingers. Pope boasted that he lisped in numbers because the numbers came. Alter it a little and it will be found to apply equally suitably to your accomplished journalist. For this purpose it is essential that he must have an eye, always, for the best writing going: only so can he expect to be even moderately successful. Above all, he must studiously avoid the gutter press. Let him choose a few excellent papers and periodicals, and then let him stick to them like glue. There he will find both the best journalism and the best literature. I cannot do better than conclude my article with another quotation from Mr. Ivor Brown’s contribution to the Fortnightly Review, a reference to which was made in the earlier part of my article:

"I suggest that we want a Little Journalism movement as well as a Little Theatre movement, the little journalism to be the voice of the few speaking to those who are not magnetized and mesmerised by a clamour about the net sales of two millions and the consequent financial ability to hire the big guns of the fiction world to write cheery little essays on the Nature of God–these to be sandwiched among the details of the latest and loathliest murder. Big Journalism hands out considerable prizes but not, as a rule, for literature. It has its own ends and its own high standards of efficiency. But the sweetening and enrichment of the common life by wise and witty criticism of social habits and by informed criticism of the arts and sciences, it does not conceive to be its business. The minor organs do that: They have ever been, since the times of Defoe, Steele and Addison, the nurses of the literature which was later to be in glory between covers. The big journalism is a legitimate industry in the commercial scramble; the little journalism is a social necessity in a civilized community. It is our duty and our advantage to remember its past, to consider its present and to foster its future." (My italics.)