Mal Moulée: A Novel

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

"The school-girl who sends for the autograph of a public man pays him a graceful compliment, and he should write it for her without a murmur."

"Just in the same way, the whole public offers a quiet ovation to the man of reputation when an interviewer presents his card. The newspaper would never ask for an interview to publish, unless the masses of its readers desired it. And the interviewer should be met courteously, and the public man should realize that this sort of thing is the duty he pays on fame. If he has positively nothing of interest to say to the interviewer, or is too busily engaged to be interrupted, he should tell the caller so in a respectful and polite manner. Many a public man is badly treated by the reporter in print, because he treated the reporter badly in his house."

"But what have you to say of the interviewer who is well treated, and then repays the hospitality he has received by an article bristling with ridicule and untruthful misrepresentations of the personality or conversation of his entertainer? I have known this to occur."

"I do not believe it occurs very often," Homer answered. "When it does, there is usually personal malice at the bottom of it, or a catering to the lowest order of scurrilous journalism. It is a great pity that the victims in such cases have no dignified redress. A thorough caning ought to be considered consistent with the situation. But, I think, as a rule, respectable newspaper men endeavor to do the right thing by those who have treated them with courtesy in this matter. The trouble is, journals are not careful enough in the representatives they send on these commissions. It requires a great deal of delicate tact to write acceptably of a man's home-life and personality during his life-time. No thoughtless boy, or sensation-seeking reporter, should be commissioned with such a task. I positively know a New York journalist, who possesses a bright mind and wonderful command of language beside an easy and elegant deportment, who considers it fair play to gain information through private letters or confidential conversations with his friends, and then to use such knowledge for press purposes. He boasts of his skill in this respect."

"Impossible!" cried Percy, indignantly.

"Quite too possible," Homer replied. "His devotion to journalism, and his desire to feed the public appetite, has destroyed every particle of moral principle the fellow ever possessed. Of course, such a man reflects discredit upon the whole profession. That he is an exception to the rule, I know, but that he is retained at all upon a respectable journal, is to be regretted."

"There is still another feature of American journalism to be more regretted and blushed for, I think," said Percy. "That is, the attitude of our so called humorists and paragraphers toward public women. No where else in the world do women occupy so exalted and honored a position as they occupy in America. No other women in the world have accomplished so much in various public callings. Yet no where else are they subjected to such insults as they receive from the newspapers throughout the United States, from the prima donna to the President's wife, sister, or daughter."

"Are you not a little extreme in that statement, Mr. Durand?" asked Homer Orton. "You must recollect that the royal family are discussed very freely in print, and ladies who have become famous ought to consider themselves members of the royal family of Genius, and take newspaper criticisms as a natural consequence."

"It is not newspaper criticisms to which I refer," answered Percy. "Of course, half the success of an actress, a singer, an author or a painter depends upon public criticism, and often it happens that the severer the criticisms the greater the success. But it is the loose familiarity and the coarse jests of the item-seeker of which I speak. Only last week I saw a wretched little item, intended to be humorous, but actually brutal, going the rounds of the press, concerning the advanced years of a famous opera singer, a woman who has reflected credit on our nation by her brilliant and stainless career."

"I saw the item to which you refer," Mr. Elliott said, "and I wondered if it was consistent with the National boast that Americans are the kindest and most thoughtful men in the world toward ladies. It seemed to me an uncalled-for and ungentlemanly incivility toward a noble lady."