The Shadow of Great Britain

If you ask an Irish laborer in London where he is from, he will first tell you he is from Old Ireland, and then add, ”Every place has good people and bad people.”

This kind of evaluation also applies to those penny-a-liner journalists. If one were to ask what profession in this world has the greatest division between good and evil, it would certainly be them. Among them are those who uphold the truth and are fearless before power, free investigative journalists, and those who spin lies and cause trouble at the sight of money. Yet, sadly, among penny-a-liner journalists, there are far more of the latter than the former.

To deceive the sub-editor responsible for reviewing articles and achieve the goal of successfully passing an article, a penny-a-liner will even carefully design a ruse.

To maximize profit, sometimes two people will conspire together, agreeing that one will submit their article today, while the other sends in a detailed rebuttal the next day to the newspaper, claiming the first person’s report had factual errors, to convince the reviewing editor that the bizarre report is not entirely fictional.

Although once such a deception is uncovered, newspaper editors will naturally keep a close watch on future submissions from those involved, but the writers have ways to counter this. They may adopt a new pen name, or pay others to submit their work to avoid being blacklisted by the newspaper.

A considerable number of the ambiguous love stories and strange cases in London newspapers are the works of these penny-a-liner journalists’ imaginations.

In this business, some can even earn 200 to 250 pounds by recycling the same story template. Two or three years later, when the forgetful London readers no longer remember the story, he can use the old trick, modify the details, names, and locations, submit it to a different newspaper, and earn another 200 pounds.

The esteemed Mr. David Lewis is a distinguished figure among these penny-a-liner journalists.

He discovered the secret of this trade early on, abandoning the low-end approach of wandering aimlessly and chancing upon opportunities. Through consistent practice, he gradually developed a reusable story template.

His suicide report template is almost considered a unique craft within the industry, which he himself refers to as the ”drowning narrative.”

The story always begins similarly, with a London morning, fog, the Thames River embankment, outlined in a few words to create that moist, blurred atmosphere. Next, he arranges for a dignified but unfortunate person seeking death. If it’s a gentleman, he undoubtedly appeared at some club’s dinner last week. If it’s a lady, she always leaves a note full of depression, guilt, or betrayal.

In Lewis’s writings, the reasons for suicide always carry a vague romanticism: either for love, for debt, or for the collapse of faith. Of course, since science is increasingly celebrated by society lately, Lewis has also kept up with the times by adding being trapped by the nihilism of science to the list of motives...

These are the topics Lewis rotates through; he even has a notebook, arranged alphabetically, indexing various motives for suicide. When he is running low on inspiration, he only has to casually flip a page, and he can immediately cobble together a good story.

What truly makes Lewis adept is his handling of details.

He always manages to concoct seemingly credible yet unverifiable small details, such as ”the gentleman had a cracked pocket watch in his right coat pocket,” or ”he wore a ring on his left hand engraved with the initials M.L.” and so on.

Of course, even such utterly unprovable details sometimes accidentally turn out to be correct.

Earlier this year, Lewis did a ”detailed report” on a gentleman rumored to have jumped from Waterloo Bridge into the river. Forgive me, I really can’t say it was a ”truthful report.” Although Lewis claimed he witnessed it personally, and, with an extremely sentimental tone, expressed regret over the deceased’s rash act, exhaustively depicting the deceased’s physical characteristics, as expected, although the Thames River Police searched heavily, the body was never found.

When this news appeared in the Morning Paper, the next day, two gentlemen visited the newspaper office, expressing that the description of the unfortunate person in the news resembled a relative who had been missing for two days, and pleaded with the newspaper to allow them to meet the author to verify the identity of the deceased.

When the newspaper informed Lewis, inevitably, using his own elegant wording, he found himself in a predicament.

However, he immediately had a bright idea, confident that this thought would allow him to graciously extricate himself from the predicament.

He went to the newspaper office at once, where the two gentlemen were anxiously waiting for his arrival.

”Sorry to trouble you,” one of the gentlemen promptly rose when Lewis arrived, ”but this is indeed a heartbreaking case.”

”Indeed,” the other gentleman sighed, echoing the sentiment.

”You two are referring to that unfortunate person who drowned, aren’t you?” Lewis put on a solemn undertaker’s expression, seemingly very sympathetic to the pain the two gentlemen expressed.

”Yes, that unfortunate deceased. We... Alas, we are very worried he is our close relative, Mr. Lewis. Could you please describe his physical characteristics in detail? That way, we can confirm whether he really is our kin.”