Profiting by the morning's conversation, Mrs. Hardup besieges unprotected Editors, contributes to the literature of her country most interesting weekly accounts of the doings of her friends and acquaintances, and, it is to be hoped, practically solves, to her own satisfaction, the secret of the way in which a good many of us manage to live now.
REMOVAL OF ANCIENT LANDMARKS
Lady Gwendoline: "Papa says I'm to be a great artist, and exhibit at the Royal Academy!"
Lady Yseulte: "And papa says I'm to be a great pianist, and play at the Monday Pops!"
Lady Edelgitha: "And I'm going to be a famous actress, and act Ophelia, and cut out Miss Ellen Terry! Papa says I may—that is, if I can, you know!"
The New Governess: "Goodness gracious, young ladies! Is it possible His Grace can allow you even to think of such things! Why, my Papa was only a poor half-pay officer, but the bare thought of my ever playing in public or painting for hire, would have simply horrified him—and as for acting Ophelia or anything else—gracious goodness, you take my breath away!"
For success in this walk of journalism, "literary culture must be eschewed, for with literary culture come taste and discrimination—qualities which might fatally obstruct the path of the journalistic aspirant." It was not by any means monopolized by amateurs, and Punch, in his series of "Modern Types" a few years later, traces, under the heading "The Jack of all Journalisms," the rise to power and influence of a humble but unscrupulous scribe, successively venal musical and dramatic critic, interviewer and picturesque social reporter, but always "the blatant, cringing, insolent, able, disreputable wielder of a pen which draws much of its sting and its profit from the vanities and fears of his fellow-creatures." The sketch is an ingenious composite photograph, in which those familiar with London journalism in the 'eighties and 'nineties will recognize in almost every paragraph the lineaments of one or other of the most notorious and poisonous representatives of the Society Press.
As we have seen, journalism was only one field for the commercial instincts of penurious "Society people." In 1887 Punch takes for his text the following paragraph from a daily paper:—
"One well-known West End Milliner is a graduate of Girton; another bears a title; a third conceals a name not unknown to Burke under a pseudonym.... Many of the best women of all classes are ready to do anything by which the honest penny may be earned."