“Driving gloves!” he exclaimed. “What do you mean? You didn’t drive here?”
“Certainly,” I answered, “the phaeton is at the door.”
“You drove down Holborn at this crowded hour of the day?”
“Yes,” I mildly replied.
He looked out of the window and saw the carriage and horses standing in the street below. By this time I was in the passage. He called me back, scanned me curiously, and, turning to Miss Lowe, said suddenly, and without any preliminary canter:
“Let her do the articles. A woman who can drive a pair along the crowded London streets in the season ought to be able to write a sporting article.”
Perhaps his conclusion was as illogical as his previous opinion of woman’s capability in the sporting line had been. Anyway, as it gave me the opportunity I wanted, I was not disposed to question, much less to quarrel, with it. So began the first series of sporting articles to appear in a woman’s paper. The little set was a success. This was my first essay in journalism, just done at the time for the fun of the thing. I think I made about fifteen pounds over it, and promptly distributed my earnings where most sadly required.
Any little earnings then were devoted to charity, and I always called them my “charity money.” It was the generousness of superfluity. Now, when I can’t help giving away a great deal more than I ought to afford, it is the “extravagance of generosity.”
Having tried my hand at journalism I was satisfied, just as I had tried my hand as a girl in my teens at exhibiting oil-paintings at the Lady Artists’ Exhibitions or china plaques elsewhere; or as later, when I exhibited photographs and won a Kodak prize of five pounds for horses galloping across the open prairie. It is nice to make an attempt at anything and everything, and sometimes such experience becomes of value. Truly, journalism did so to me when, six years after those first half-dozen sporting articles appeared for “the fun of the thing,” I had to look to my pen, or my brush.
