AS this rambling volume does not profess to be a guide to the newspaper press, I have not felt bound to follow any beaten track in its compilation. But I must confess that at the outset it was my intention to deal with that agreeable phase known as the Lady Journalist. Unhappily (or perhaps I should say, happily), “the extreme pressure on our space” will not permit of my giving more than a line or two to a theme which could only be adequately treated in a large volume. It has been my privilege to meet with three lady journalists, and I am bound to say that every one of the three seemed to me to combine in herself all the judgment of the trained journalist (male) with the lightness of touch which one associates with the doings of the opposite sex. All were able to describe garments in picturesque phrases, frequently producing by the employment of a single word an effect that a “gentleman journalist”—this is, I suppose, the male equivalent to a lady journalist—could not achieve at any price. They wrote of ladies being “gowned,” and they described the exact tint of the gowns by an admirable process of comparison with the hue of certain familiar things. They rightly considered that the mere statement that somebody came to somebody else’s “At Home” in brown, conveys an inadequate idea of the colour of a costume: “postman’s bag brown,” however, brings the dress before one’s eye in a moment. To say that somebody’s daughter appeared in a grey wrap would sound weak-kneed, but a wrap of eau de Tamise is something stimulating. A scarlet tea-jacket merely suggests the Book of Revelation, but a Clark-Russell-sunset jacket is altogether different.
They also wrote of “picture hats,” and “smart frocks,” and many other matters which they understood thoroughly. I do not think that any newspaper staff that does not include a lady journalist can hope for popularity, or for the respect of those who read what is written by the lady journalist, which is much better than popularity. I have got good reason to know that in every newspaper with which I was associated, the weekly column contributed by the lady journalist was much more earnestly read than any that came from another source.
Yes, I feel that the position of the lady in modern journalism is unassailable; and the lady journalists always speak pleasantly about one another, and occasionally describe each other’s “picture hats.”
In brief, the lady journalist is the silver mounting of the newspaper staff.
I once, however, received an application from a lady, offering a weekly letter on a topic already, I considered, ably dealt with by another lady in the columns of the newspaper with which I was connected. I wrote explaining this to my correspondent, and by the next post I got a letter from her telling me that of course she was aware that a letter purporting to be on this topic was in the habit of appearing in the paper, but expressing the hope that I did not fancy that she would contribute “stuff of that character.”
I did not have the faintest hope on the subject.
Now it so happened that the lady who wrote to me had some months before gone to the lady whose weekly letters she had derided, and had begged from her some suggestions as to the topics most suitable to be dealt with by a lady journalist, and whatever further hints she might be pleased to offer on the general subject of lady journalism. In short, all that she had learned of the profession—it may be acquired in three lessons, most young women think—she had learned from the lady at whom she pointed a finger of scorn.
This I did not consider either ladylike or journalist-like, so that I can hardly consider it lady-journalist-like.
Lady journalists have recently taken to photographing each other and publishing the results.