That, Mr. Punch, is the question I have been asking myself for ever so long—"What on earth am I to do with my sons?" And this Mr. David Anderson, with a message that seems almost too good to be true, comes like the radiant genius on to the scene, and says, "Send them to me, your Grace, and I'll soon put 'em in the way of making from £300 to £1000 a year. What do you think of that?" What do I think of it? Well, all I can say is that it sounds to me like an Anderson's Fairy Tale!
Why, there's my elder son, the Marquis, just opened a market gardening business at Tooting in a small way, and though he drives his cart up to Covent Garden twice a week himself, I know he's not making a good thing of it. Plantagenet, my second, I'm not ashamed to own it, shoulders a butcher's tray; Bertram is a linen-draper's assistant in the Tottenham Court Road; and Algernon is, faute de mieux, loafing about railway stations, following cabs, in the hope of picking up a stray sixpence now and then for carrying the luggage upstairs when they arrive at their destinations. Poor boy! I had always meant him to have a Commission in the Guards, but hard times have rendered that project impossible—and he has come to this!
With one hundred and seventy farms on my hands, the whole of my property mortgaged, my house in Belgrave Square given up, and my establishment confined to a couple of floors in a back street in Islington, the family has, I need hardly say, to accept its altered fortunes with equanimity. But, if Mr. David Anderson is to be trusted, surely a brighter prospect opens before us! How he manages his instructions "in the practical and literary branches of journalism," is to me a mystery. How does he teach his "limited number" of pupils to report—say, an inaudible speech? Then there is their practical training for a crowd. Does he lead them at the present moment, to Trafalgar Square, and teach them, in the event of a collision with the police, to continue their labours up a lamp-post? Again, how about initiating them into the work of a correspondent mounted on the field of battle? Would their experience on a hired cab-horse let loose in the midst of a procession of the Unemployed afford the many useful experiences in this direction? Then, how about the leader-writing? I do not say that the journalist, like the poet, need necessarily be born one, yet for all that, the art of literary composition is not one that can be readily acquired by anybody.
Take my own case. I have written a lever du rideau in the shape of a farce, a light thing that plays only an hour and three-quarters, and though I have submitted it to seventeen managers in succession, I have never been able to induce one of them to try it even at a matinée. I have also written a pantomime and left it, endorsed with my title at the stage-door of a leading Metropolitan Theatre, from which however, notwithstanding that I have made repeated applications for it in person, I have never yet been able to succeed in getting it returned. But journalism is, I am aware, distinct from dramatic literature, and this inspires me with confidence. Indeed I shall lose no time in communicating with Mr. David Anderson and placing my four sons unreservedly in his hands. Even if they did not as "trained journalists" succeed in realising that brilliant level of £1000 per annum, with which his advertisement so alluringly concludes, they might possibly touch the figure half-way, and draw their modest five hundred a-piece. Need I say, my dear Mr. Punch, if they did, how they would restore the fortunes of a falling house, and in so doing, gladden the heart of yours hopefully,
A Duke in Difficulties.
The Too-Complete Letter-Writer.—M. Wilson.