Touching the Experimental Graft of a Utilitarian Spirit upon the Aesthetic Instinct in our Sisters
I HAD strolled about the galleries of Burlington House for a couple of hours on Press Day, looking a little at pictures here and there, but for the most part contemplating with admiration the zeal and good faith of the ladies and gentlemen who stopped, note-book in hand, before every frame: when some one behind me gave a friendly tug at my sleeve. I turned, to find myself confronted by a person I seemed not to know—a small young woman in an alpine hat and a veil which masked everything about her face except its dentigerous smile. Even as I looked I was conscious of regret that, if acquaintances were to be made for me in this spontaneous fashion, destiny had not selected instead a certain tall, slender, dark young lady, clad all in black and cock’s-plumes, whom I had been watching at her work of notetaking in room after room, with growing interest. Then, peering more closely through the veil, I discovered that I was being accosted by Miss Timby-Hucks.
“You didn’t know me!” she said, with a vivacious half-giggle, as we shook hands; “and you’re not specially pleased to see me; and you’re asking yourself, ‘What on earth is she doing here?’ Now, don’t deny it!”
“Well, you know,” I made awkward response—“of course—Press day——”
“Ah, but I belong to the Press,” said Miss Timby-Hucks.
“Happy Press! And since when?”
“O it’s nearly a fortnight now. And most interesting I find the work. You know, for a long time now I’ve been so restless, so anxious to find some opening to a real career, where I might be my genuine self, and be an active part of the great whirling stream of existence, and concentrate my mind upon the actualities of life—don’t you yourself think it will be just the thing for me?”
“Undoubtedly,” I replied without hesitation. “And do you find focussing yourself on the actualities—ah—remunerative?”
“Well,” Miss Timby-Hucks explained, “nothing of mine has been printed yet, you see, so that I don’t know as to that. But I am assured it will be all right. You see, I’m very intimate with a cousin of Mrs Umpelbaum, who is the wife of the proprietor of Maida Vale, and in that way it came about. Lady-reporters never have any chance, I am told, unless they have friends in the proprietor’s family, or know the editor extremely well. It all goes by favour, like—like——”
“Like the dearest of all the actualities,” I put in. “But how is it they don’t print your stuff?”