“I haven’t written any, as yet. The difficulty was to find a subject,” Miss Timby-Hucks rejoined. “O that awful ‘subject’! I thought and thought and thought till my head was fit to burst. I went to see Mrs Umpelbaum herself, and asked her to suggest something. You know she writes a great deal for the paper herself. She said they hadn’t had any ‘Reminiscences of Carlyle’ now for some weeks; but afterwards she agreed with me that would not be quite the thing for one to begin with. She couldn’t suggest anything else, except that I should have a chat with my dressmaker. Very often in that way, she said, lady-reporters get the most entertaining revelations of gossip in high life. But it happened that just then it was not—not exactly convenient—for me to call upon my dressmaker; and so that suggestion came to nothing, too.”
“I had no idea lady-journalism was so difficult,” I remarked, with sympathy.
“O indeed, yes!” Miss Timby-Hucks went on. “One can’t expect to be en rapport, as we journalists say, with Society, without spending a great deal of money. There is one lady-reporter, Mrs Umpelbaum told me, who has made quite a leading position for herself, solely through hairdressers and American dentists. But I don’t mind admitting that that would involve more of an outlay than I could afford, just at the moment.”
“So you never got a subject?” I asked.
“Yes; finally I did. I was over at the Grundys’, telling my troubles, and Uncle Dudley—you know, being so much with the girls, I always call him that—Uncle Dudley said that the fashionable thing now was interviews, and that lady-journalists did this better than gentlemen-reporters because they had more nerve. By that I suppose he meant a more delicate nervous organisation, quicker to grasp and absorb fine shades of character. But that hardly helped me, because whom was I to interview, and about what? That was the question! But Uncle Dudley thought a moment, and was ready with a suggestion. Everything depended, he said, upon making a right start. I must pick out a personality and a theme at once non-contentious and invested with popular interest His idea was that I should begin by interviewing Mr T. M. Healy on ‘The Decline of the Deep-Sea Mock-Turtle Fisheries on the West Coast of Ireland.’ If I could get Mr Healy to talk frankly on this subject, he felt sure that I should chain public attention at a bound.”
“Superb!” I cried. “And did you do it?”
“No,” Miss Timby-Hucks confessed; “I went to the House and sent in my card, but it was another Irish Member who came out to see me—I think his name was Mulhooly. He was very polite, and explained that since some recent sad event in one of the Committee Rooms, fifteen I think its number was, it was the rule of his party that, when a lady sent in a card to one Member, some other Member answered it. It prevented confusion, he said, and was not in antagonism to the expressed views of the Church.”
“Talking of nothing,” I said, leading the way over to a divan, on which we seated ourselves: “you seem to have finally secured a subject. I assume you are doing the Academy for Maida Vale.”
“Yes,” replied Miss Timby-Hucks with gentle firmness; “you might say I have done it. I have been here since the very minute the doors opened, and I’ve gone twelve times round. I wish I could have seen you earlier. I should so like to have had your opinion of the various works as we passed.”
“It is better not,” I commented. “There are ladies present.”