When a Man's Single: A Tale of Literary Life

When clever pressmen write this way,
'As Mr. J. A. Froude would say,'
Is it because they think he would,
And have they read a line of Froude?
Or is it only that they fear
The comment they have made is queer,
And that they either must erase it,
Or say it's Mr. Froude who says it?

Every one abandoned himself to the humour of the evening, and as song followed song, or was wedged between entertainments of other kinds, the room filled with smoke until it resembled London in a fog.

By and by a sallow-faced man mounted a table to show the company how to perform a remarkable trick with three hats. He got his hats from the company, and having looked at them thoughtfully for some minutes, said that he had forgotten the way.

'That,' said Simms, mentioning a well-known journalist, 'is K – . He can never work unless his pockets are empty, and he would not be looking so doleful at present if he was not pretty well off. He goes from room to room in the house he lodges in, according to the state of his finances, and when you call on him you have to ask at the door which floor he is on to-day. One week you find him in the drawing-room, the next in the garret.'

A stouter and brighter man followed the hat entertainment with a song, which he said was considered by some of his friends a recitation.

'There was a time,' said Simms, who was held a terrible person by those who took him literally, 'when that was the saddest man I knew. He was so sad that the doctors feared he would die of it. It all came of his writing for Punch.'

'How did they treat him?' Rob asked.

'Oh, they quite gave him up, and he was wasting away visibly, when a second-rate provincial journal appointed him its London correspondent, and saved his life.'

'Then he was sad,' asked Rob, 'because he was out of work?'

'On the contrary,' said Simms gravely, 'he was always one of the successful men, but he could not laugh.'

'And he laughed when he became a London correspondent?'

'Yes; that restored his sense of humour. But listen to this song; he is a countryman of yours who sings it.'

A man, who looked as if he had been cut out of a granite block, and who at the end of each verse thrust his pipe back into his mouth, sang in a broad accent, that made Rob want to go nearer him, some verses about an old university —

'Take off the stranger's hat!' – The shout
We raised in fifty-nine
Assails my ears, with careless flout,
And now the hat is mine.
It seems a day since I was here,
A student slim and hearty,
And see, the boys around me cheer,
'The ancient-looking party!'

Rough horseplay did not pass for wit
When Rae and Mill were there;
I see a lad from Oxford sit
In Blackie's famous chair.
And Rae, of all our men the one
We most admired in quad
(I had this years ago), has gone
Completely to the bad.

In our debates the moral Mill
Had infinite address,
Alas! since then he's robbed a till,
And now he's on the press.
And Tommy Robb, the ploughman's son,
Whom all his fellows slighted,
From Rae and Mill the prize has won,
For Tommy's to be knighted.

A lanky loon is in the seat
Filled once by manse-bred Sheen,
Who did not care to mix with Peate,
A bleacher who had been.
But watch the whirligig of time,
Brave Peate became a preacher,
His name is known in every clime,
And Sheen is now the bleacher.

McMillan, who the medals carried,
Is now a judge, 'tis said,
And curly-headed Smith is married,
And Williamson is dead.
Old Phil and I who shared our books
Now very seldom meet,
And when we do, with frowning looks
We pass by in the street.

The college rings with student slang
As in the days of yore,
The self-same notice boards still hang
Upon the class-room door:
An essay (I expected that)
On Burns this week, or Locke,
'A theory of creation' at
Precisely seven o'clock.

There's none here now who knows my name,
My place is far away,
And yet the college is the same,
Not older by a day.
But curious looks are cast at me,
Ah! herein lies the change,
All else is as it used to be,
And I alone am strange!

'Now, you could never guess,' Simms said to Rob, 'what profession our singer belongs to.'

'He looks more like a writer than an artist,' said Rob, who had felt the song more than the singer did.

'Well, he is more an artist than a writer, though, strictly speaking, he is neither. To that man is the honour of having created a profession. He furnishes rooms for interviews.'

'I don't quite understand,' said Rob.

'It is in this way,' Simms explained. 'Interviews in this country are of recent growth, but it has been already discovered that what the public want to read is not so much a celebrity's views on any topic as a description of his library, his dressing-gown, or his gifts from the king of Kashabahoo. Many of the eminent ones, however, are very uninteresting in private life, and have no curiosities to show their interviewer worth writing about, so your countryman has started a profession of providing curiosities suitable for celebrities at from five pounds upwards, each article, of course, having a guaranteed story attached to it. The editor, you observe, intimates his wish to include the distinguished person in his galaxy of "Men of the Moment," and then the notability drops a line to our friend saying that he wants a few of his rooms arranged for an interview. Your countryman sends the goods, arranges them effectively, and puts the celebrity up to the reminiscences he is to tell about each.'

'I suppose,' said Rob, with a light in his eye, 'that the interviewer is as much taken in by this as – well, say, as I have been by you?'

'To the same extent,' admitted Simms solemnly. 'Of course he is not aware that before the interview appears the interesting relics have all been packed up and taken back to our Scottish friend's show-rooms.'

The distinguished novelist in the chair told Rob (without having been introduced to him) that his books were beggaring his publishers.

'What I make my living off,' he said, 'is the penny dreadful, complete in one number. I manufacture two a week without hindrance to other employment, and could make it three if I did not have a weak wrist.'

It was thus that every one talked to Rob, who, because he took a joke without changing countenance, was considered obtuse. He congratulated one man on his article on chaffinches in the Evening Firebrand, and the writer said he had discovered, since the paper appeared, that the birds he described were really linnets. Another man was introduced to Rob as the writer of In Memoriam.