PERSONAL PARS.
THE PERSONAL PAR.
Closely connected with the Interview, and forming a natural sequel to any treatise upon that Exercise, is the Personal Par. It contains, as it were, all the qualities of the Interview condensed into the smallest possible space; it advertises the subject, instructs the reader, and is a yet sharper trial of the young writer’s character.
The homely advice given in the preceding section, where mention was made of “pride” and of “pockets,” applies with far more force to the Personal Par. With the Interview, it is well to mask one’s name; with the Personal Par, it is absolutely necessary to conceal it. The danger the author runs is an attraction to Mrs. Railston, who in her book strongly advises this form of sport—she herself does Bess in All About Them. On the other hand, Lieut.-Col. Lory says, in his Journalist’s Vade-mecum (p. 63): “A Personal Par should never be penned by the Aspirant to Literary honours. Undetected, it renders life a burden of suspense; detected, it spells ruin.”[9] He quotes twenty-five well-known peers and financiers who rose by steadily refusing to do this kind of work during their period of probation on the press.
The present guide, which is final, will run to no such extremes. Secrecy is indeed essential; yet there are three excellent reasons for writing Personal Pars, at least in early youth.
(1.) The Personal Par is the easiest to produce of all forms of literature. Any man or woman, famous or infamous for any reason, is a subject ready to hand, and to these may be added all persons whatsoever living, dead, or imaginary; and anything whatever may be said about them. Editors, in their honest dislike of giving pain, encourage the inane, and hence more facile, form of praise. Moreover, it takes but a moment to write, and demands no recourse to books of reference.
(2.) The Personal Par can always be placed—if not in England, then in America. Though written in any odd moments of one’s leisure time, it will always represent money; and the whole of the period from July to October, when ordinary work is very slack, can be kept going from the stock one has by one.