Exactly as if they were shrimps or periwinkles! Very good measure, if you chance to like the stuff! “Dorothy, a Home Journal for Ladies,” in a rather attractive pale green cover, gives you every week a complete story, nearly half the length of an average English novel, and fairly well illustrated with full-page cuts. Each number contains, in addition, Dorothy’s Letter-Box, where all reasonable questions are answered, and Dorothy’s Drawing-Room, with items of fashionable news,—the whereabouts of the Queen, and the interesting fact that “the Duke and Duchess of Portland have been living quietly and giving no parties at Langwell, the Duke being desirous of affording the Duchess every chance of better regaining her health.” Also Hints for Practical Dressmaking, by “Busy Bee;” Our Homes, by “Lady Bird;” an occasional poem; and Notes on Handwriting, where you may learn that you have “ambition, an ardent, tender, affectionate, and sensitive nature, easily impressed, and inclined to jealousy. There is also some sense of beauty, vivid fancy, and sequence of ideas.” Now and then a doubting maid sends a scrap of her lover’s penmanship to be deciphered, and receives the following gentle encouragement:—
“Love Lies Bleeding.—I hardly like to say whether the writer of the morsel you inclose would make a good husband; but I should imagine him as thoughtful for others, romantic and loving, very orderly in his habits, and fairly well educated; rather hot-tempered, but forgives and forgets quickly.”
All this for a penny,—two cents of American money! No wonder “Dorothy” reaches her millions of readers. No wonder the little green books lie in great heaps on the counters of every railway station in England. She is, perhaps, the most high-toned of such weekly issues; but “The Princess,” in a bright blue cover, follows closely in her wake, with a complete story, illustrated, and Boudoir Gossip about Prince George of Wales, and Mrs. Mackay, and the Earl and Countess of Jersey. “Bow Bells” and “The Wide World Novelettes” are on a distinctly lower scale: the fiction more sensational, the cuts coarser, and the pink cover of “Bow Bells” flaunting and vulgar. “A Magazine of Short Stories” aims at being lively and vivacious in the style of Rhoda Broughton, and gives a good pennyworth of tales, verses, Answers to Correspondents, and a column of Familiar Quotations Verified that alone is worth the money. But the final triumph of quantity over quality, of matter over mind, is in the “Book for All,” published weekly at the price of one penny, and containing five separate departments, for women, girls, men, boys, and children. Each of these departments has a short illustrated story, poetry, anecdotes, puzzles, confidential talks with the editor, advice on every subject, and information of every description. Here you can learn “how to preserve your beauty” and how to make “royal Battenberg” lace, how to run a Texas ranch and how to go into mourning for your mother, how to cure stammering and how to rid a dog of fleas. Here you may acquire knowledge upon the most varied topics, from lung diseases in animals to Catherine of Russia’s watch, from the aborigines of Australia to scientific notes on the Lithuanian language. The Unknown Public must indeed be athirst for knowledge, if it can absorb such quantities week after week with unabated zeal; and, from the Answers to Correspondents, we are led to suppose it is ever eager for more. One inquiring mind is comforted by the assurance that “narrative monophone will appear in its turn,” and an ambitious but elderly reader is gently warned that “a person aged fifty might learn to play on the guitar, and perhaps be able to sing; but the chances are that, in both instances, the performance will not be likely to captivate those who are compelled to listen to it.” On the whole, after an exhaustive study of penny weeklies, I should say that, were I expected to provide a large family with reading matter and encyclopædic information at the modest rate of one dollar and four cents a year, the “Book for All” would be the journal of my choice.
It is not in penny fiction alone, however, that the railway book-stalls do a thriving trade. The shilling novels stand in goodly rows, inviting you to a purchase you are sure afterwards to regret. The average shilling novel in England differs from the average penny novel in size only; and, judged by measurement, the sole standard it is possible to apply, it should, to warrant its price, be about six times the length. “Lord Elwyn’s Daughter” and “The Nun’s Curse,” at a shilling each, bear such a strong family resemblance to their penny cousins, “Golden Chains” and “Her Bitter Burden,” that it needs their outward dress to distinguish them; and “Haunted” and “The Man who Vanished” carry their finest thrills in their title. Quite early in my search, I noticed at the Waterloo station three shilling novels,—“Weaker than Woman,” “Lady Hutton’s Ward,” and “Diana’s Discipline,” all advertised conspicuously as being by the author of “Dora Thorne.” Feeling that my ignorance of Dora Thorne herself was a matter for regret and enlightenment, I asked for her at once, to be told she was not in stock, but I might, if I liked, have “Lady Gwendolen’s Dream,” by the same writer. I declined “Lady Gwendolen,” and at the next station once more demanded “Dora Thorne.” In vain! The young man in attendance glanced over his volumes, shook his head, and offered me “Diana’s Discipline,” and a fresh book “The Fatal Lilies,” also by the author of “Dora Thorne.” Another stall at another station had all five of these novels, and a sixth one in addition, “A Golden Heart,” by the author of “Dora Thorne,” but still no “Dora.” Elsewhere I encountered “Her Martyrdom” and “Which Loved Him Best,” both stamped with the cabalistic words “By the Author of ‘Dora Thorne’;” and so it continued to the end. New stories without number, all from the same pen, and all countersigned “By the Author of ‘Dora Thorne,’” but never “Dora.” From first to last, she remained elusive, invisible, unattainable,—a Mrs. Harris among books, a name and nothing more.
Comedy is very popular at railway book-stalls: “My Churchwardens,” by a Vicar, and “My Rectors,” by a Quondam Curate; a weekly pennyworth of mild jokes called “Pick-Me-Up,” and a still cheaper and still milder collection for a half-penny called “Funny Cuts;” an occasional shabby copy of “Innocents Abroad,” which stands as the representative of American humor, and that most mysterious of journals, “Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday,” which always conveys the impression of being exceedingly amusing if one could only understand the fun. Everybody—I mean, of course, everybody who rides in third-class carriages—buys this paper, and studies it soberly, industriously, almost sadly; but I have never yet seen anybody laugh over it. Mrs. Pennell, indeed, with a most heroic devotion to the cause of humor, and a catholic appreciation of its highways and byways, has analyzed Ally Sloper for the benefit of the Known Public which reads the “Contemporary Review,” and claims that he is a modern brother of old-time jesters,—of Pierrot, and Pulcinello, and Pantaleone; reflecting national vices and follies with caustic but good-natured fidelity. “While the cultured of the present generation have been busy proving their powers of imitation,” says Mrs. Pennell, “this unconscious evolution of a popular type has established the pretensions of the people to originality.” But, alas! it is not given to the moderately cultivated to understand such types without a good deal of interpretation; and merely buying and reading the paper are of very little service. Here are the pictures, which I am told are clever; here is the text, which is probably clever, too; but their combined brilliancy conveys no light to my mind. Ally Sloper leading “a local German band” at Tenby, Ally Sloper interviewing distinguished people, may, like Mr. F.’s aunt, be “ingenious and even subtle,” but the key to his subtlety is lacking. As for Tootsie, and The Dook Snook, and Lord Bob, and The Hon. Billy, and all the other members of this interesting family who play their weekly part in the recurring comedy, they would be quite as amusing to the uninitiated reader if they followed the example of the erudite Oxonian, and conversed in “the Ostiak dialect of Tungusian.”
By way of contrast, I suppose, the other comic weeklies preserve a simplicity of character which is equaled only by their placid and soothing dullness. It is easy to understand the amount of humor conveyed in such jests as these, both of which are deemed worthy of half-page illustrations.
“Aunt Kate (in the park). Tell me, Ethel, when any of the men look at me.
“Little Ethel. It’s me they look at, aunty. You’re too old.”
“Dear friends again. Madge (rather elderly). What do you think of my new hat, Lily?
“Lily. It’s rather old-fashioned, dear, but it suits you.”