“Sir,—I have noticed that you have several times scissorized from the exchanges, articles over the signature of ‘Floy,’ and inserted them in our paper. It is my wish that all articles bearing that signature should be excluded from our paper, and that no allusion be made to her, in any way or shape, in the columns of the Irving Magazine. As you are in our business confidence, I may say, that the writer is a sister of mine, and that it would annoy and mortify me exceedingly to have the fact known; and it is my express wish that you should not, hereafter, in any way, aid in circulating her articles.
“Yours, &c., Hyacinth Ellet.”
“What does that mean?” said Gates; “his sister? why don’t he want her to write? I have cut out every article of hers as fast as they appeared; confounded good they are, too, and I call myself a judge; they are better, at any rate, than half our paper is filled with. This is all very odd—it stimulates my curiosity amazingly—his sister? married or unmarried, maid, wife, or widow? She can’t be poor when he’s so well off; (gave $100 for a vase which struck his fancy yesterday, at Martini’s.) I don’t understand it. ‘Annoy and mortify him exceedingly;’ what can he mean? I must get at the bottom of that; she is becoming very popular, at any rate; her pieces are traveling all over the country—and here is one, to my mind, as good as anything he ever wrote. Ha! ha! perhaps that’s the very idea now—perhaps he wants to be the only genius in the family. Let him! if he can; if she don’t win an enviable name, and in a very short time too, I shall be mistaken. I wish I knew something about her. Hyacinth is a heartless dog—pays me principally in fine speeches; and because I am not in a position just now to speak my mind about it. I suppose he takes me for the pliant tool I appear. By Jupiter! it makes my blood boil; but let me get another and better offer, Mr. Ellet, and see how long I will write articles for you to father, in this confounded hot garret. ‘His sister!’ I will inquire into that. I’ll bet a box of cigars she writes for daily bread—Heaven help her, if she does, poor thing!—it’s hard enough, as I know, for a man to be jostled and snubbed round in printing-offices. Well, well, it’s no use wondering, I must go to work; what a pile of books here is to be reviewed! wonder who reads all the books? Here is Uncle Sam’s Log House. Mr. Ellet writes me that I must simply announce the book without comment, for fear of offending southern subscribers. The word ‘slave’ I know has been tabooed in our columns this long while, for the same reason. Here are poems by Lina Lintney—weak as diluted water, but the authoress once paid Mr. Ellet a compliment in a newspaper article, and here is her ‘reward of merit,’ (in a memorandum attached to the book, and just sent down by Mr. Ellet;) ‘give this volume a first-rate notice.’ Bah! what’s the use of criticism when a man’s opinion can be bought and sold that way? it is an imposition on the public. There is ‘The Barolds’ too; I am to ‘give that a capital notice,’ because the authoress introduced Mr. Ellet into fashionable society when a young man. The grammar in that book would give Lindley Murray convulsions, and the construction of the sentences drive Blair to a mad-house. Well, a great deal the dear public know what a book is, by the reviews of it in this paper. Heaven forgive me the lies I tell this way on compulsion.
“The humbuggery of this establishment is only equalled by the gullibility of the dear public. Once a month, now, I am ordered to puff every ‘influential paper in the Union,’ to ward off attacks on the Irving Magazine, and the bait takes, too, by Jove. That little ‘Tea-Table Tri-Mountain Mercury,’ has not muttered or peeped about Hyacinth’s ‘toadyism when abroad,’ since Mr. Ellet gave me orders to praise ‘the typographical and literary excellence of that widely-circulated paper.’ Then, there is the editor of ‘The Bugbear,’ a cut-and-thrust-bludgeon-pen-and-ink-desperado, who makes the mincing, aristocratic Hyacinth quake in his patent-leather boots. I have orders to toss him a sugar-plum occasionally, to keep his plebeian mouth shut; something after the French maxim, ‘always to praise a person for what they are not;’—for instance, ‘our very gentlemanly neighbor and contemporary, the discriminating and refined editor of The Bugbear, whose very readable and spicy paper,’ &c., &c. Then, there is the religious press. Hyacinth, having rather a damaged reputation, is anxious to enlist them on his side, particularly the editor of ‘The Religious Platform.’ I am to copy at least one of his editorials once a fortnight, or in some way call attention to his paper. Then, if Hyacinth chooses to puff actresses, and call Mme. —— a ‘splendid personation of womanhood,’ and praise her equivocal writings in his paper, which lies on many a family table to be read by innocent young girls, he knows the caustic pen of that religious editor will never be dipped in ink to reprove him. That is the way it is done. Mutual admiration-society—bah! I wish I had a paper. Wouldn’t I call things by their right names? Would I know any sex in books? Would I praise a book because a woman wrote it? Would I abuse it for the same reason? Would I say, as one of our most able editors said not long since to his reviewer, ‘cut it up root and branch; what right have these women to set themselves up for authors, and reap literary laurels?’ Would I unfairly insert all the adverse notices of a book, and never copy one in its praise? Would I pass over the wholesale swindling of some aristocratic scoundrel, and trumpet in my police report, with heartless comments, the name of some poor, tempted, starving wretch, far less deserving of censure, in God’s eye, than myself? Would I have my tongue or my pen tied in any way by policy, or interest, or clique-ism? No—sir! The world never will see a paper till mine is started. Would I write long descriptions of the wardrobe of foreign prima donnas, who bring their cracked voices, and reputations to our American market, and ‘occupy suites of rooms lined with satin, and damask, and velvet,’ and goodness knows what, and give their reception-soirees, at which they ‘affably notice’ our toadying first citizens? By Jupiter! why shouldn’t they be ‘affable’? Don’t they come over here for our money and patronage? Who cares how many ‘bracelets’ Signora —— had on, or whose ‘arm she leaned gracefully upon,’ or whether her ‘hair was braided or curled’? If, because a lord or a duke once ‘honored her’ by insulting her with infamous proposals, some few brainless Americans choose to deify her as a goddess, in the name of George Washington and common sense, let it not be taken as a national exponent. There are some few Americans left, who prefer ipecac in homœopathic doses.”
CHAPTER LXXV.
“Hark! Nettie. Go to the door, dear,” said Ruth, “some one knocked.”
“It is a strange gentleman, mamma,” whispered Nettie, “and he wants to see you.”
Ruth bowed as the stranger entered. She could not recollect that she had ever seen him before, but he looked very knowing, and, what was very provoking, seemed to enjoy her embarrassment hugely. He regarded Nettie, too, with a very scrutinizing look, and seemed to devour everything with the first glance of his keen, searching eye. He even seemed to listen to the whir—whir—whir of the odd strange lodger in the garret overhead.