READER A PEEP BEHIND THE EDITORIAL CURTAIN.
The position in which Frere had placed himself prevented Bracy from
discerning his features as he entered, and he accordingly accosted his
visitor as follows:--
“My dear sir, I am really distressed to have kept you waiting, but as
you arrived I was just jotting down the result of a little flirtation
with the Muse.”
“And that is it, I suppose?” observed Frere, turning his face towards
the speaker and pointing to the document before alluded to.
“Why, Frere, is it you, man?” exclaimed Bracy in surprise. “As I’m a
sinner, I took you for that learned elder, Dr.-------. My young imp told
me you were a gentleman who wished to see me on particular business. If
that juvenile devil takes to telling lies _to_ instead of _for_ me,
I shall have to give him his due for once, in the shape of a sound
caning.”
“You may spare yourself the trouble,” returned Frere, “as by some
accident he has only spoken the truth this time; for I hope you don’t
mean to insinuate that I am anything but a gentleman, and I have most
assuredly come to you on business--that is, always supposing Mr. --------
of -------- Street has informed me correctly in regard to your
editorial functions.”
“What! has the _cacoethes scribendi_ seized you also, and tempted you
into the commission of some little act of light literature?” added
Bracy.
“Thank goodness, no,” answered Frere. “I’m happy to say I’m not so far
gone as all that comes to yet. No, this is a different case altogether,”
and he then proceeded to inform his companion of Rose’s, application,
and the necessity which existed to make her talents available for
practical purposes.
“Magazine writing affords rather a shady prospect for realising capital
in these days,” observed Bracy, shaking his head discouragingly. “Let’s
look at the young lady’s interesting efforts. Have you ever seen her?
Arundel’s sister ought to be pretty. What’s this? ‘The Preacher’s
Address to the Soul.’ Why, it’s a sermon in rhyme. Heaven help the girl!
what’s she thinking of?”
“Read it and you’ll see. I like it very much,” returned Frere, slightly
nettled at the reception his _protégées_ productions appeared likely to
meet with.
“Oh! it’s a sermon clearly,” continued Bracy; “here’s something about
vanity and the grave. I heard it all last Sunday at St. Chrysostom’s,
only the fellow called it gwave and gwace. He’d picked up some
conscientious scruple against the use of the letter R, I suppose.
It’s quite wonderful, the new-fangled doctrines they develop nowadays.
Hum--ha--‘Making the desert home,’--rather a young idea, eh? ‘Happy
birds,’--don’t like that, it puts one too much in mind of ‘jolly dogs’
or ‘odd fish.’ I should have said dicky birds, if it had been me; that’s
a very safe expression, and one that people are accustomed to. ‘The joy
of flowers,’--what on earth does she mean by that, now? I should say
nobody could understand that; for which reason, by the way, it’s the
best expression I’ve seen yet. Poetry, to be admired in the present day,
must be utterly incomprehensible. We insert very little, but that’s the
rule I go by. If I can’t understand one word of a thing, I make a point
of accepting it; it’s safe to become popular. ‘Love for time, Heaven for
eternity,’--well, that’s all very, nice and pretty, but I’m sorry to say
it won’t do; it’s not suited to the tone of the Magazine, you see.”
“I can’t say I _do_ see very clearly at present,” returned Frere; “what
kind of poetry is it that you accept?”
“Oh, there are different styles. Now here’s a little thing I’ve got in
the June part, ‘The Homeless Heart, by L. O. V. E.’ Her real name is
Mary Dobbs, but she couldn’t very well sign herself M.D.; people would
think she was a physician. She’s a very respectable young woman (such a
girl to laugh), and engaged to an opulent stockbroker. Now listen:
“‘Homeless, forsaken,
Deeply oppress’d,
Raving, yet craving
Agony’s rest;
Bitterly hating,
Fondly relenting,
Sinning, yet winning
Souls to repenting;
When for her sorrow
Comes a to-morrow,
Shall she be bless’d?’”
“That’s a question I can’t take upon myself to answer,” interrupted
Frere. “But if those are in the style you consider suited to the tone of
your Magazine, it must be a very wonderful publication.”
“I flatter myself it is, rather,” replied Bracy complacently. “But
that’s by no means the only style; here’s a thing that will go down with
the million sweetly. Listen to this,” and as he spoke he extracted
from a drawer a mighty bundle of papers labelled “Accepted Poetry,” and
selecting one or two specimens from the mass, read as follows:--
“THE COUNTESS EMMELINE’S DISDAINMENT.”
“Bitter-black the winter’s whirlwind wail’d around the haunted hall,
Where the sheeted snow that fleeted fester’d on the mouldering wall.
“But his blacker soul within him childish calm appear’d to view,
And when gazing, ’twas amazing whence the sceptic terror grew.
“Then her voice, so silver-blended, to a trumpet-blast did swell,
As she task’d him when she asked him, ‘Mr. Johnson, is it well?’
“Ashen-white the curdled traitor paled before her eagle eye,
Whilst denying, in replying, deeper grew his perjury.”
“There! I can’t stand any more of that, at any price!” exclaimed Frere,
putting his hands to his ears. “Unless you wish to make me seriously
ill, spare me the infliction of those detestable compound adjectives.”
“My dear fellow, you’ve no taste,” returned Bracy. “Why, that’s written
by one of our best contributors; an individual that will make Tennyson
look to his laurels, and do the Brownings brown, one of these days. But
if that’s too grand for you, here’s a little bit of pastoral simplicity
may suit you better:--
“‘TO A HERBLET, NAME UNKNOWN.
‘Once upon a holiday,
Sing heigho;
Still with sportive fancy playing
While all nature was a-maying,
On a sunny bank I lay;
Where the happy grass did grow,
‘Neath the fragrant lime-tree row,
Sing heigho!
‘There a little fairy flower,
Sing heigho!
Glancing from its baby eyes
With a look of sweet surprise,
Grew beneath a bower,
Brought unto my soul the dawning
Of a mystic spirit warning,
Sing heigho!
‘Then I wept, and said, despairing,
Sing heigho!
Fate is dark, and earth is lonely,
And the heart’s young blossoms only
Render life worth bearing----”
“Now then, what’s the matter with you?” inquired Bracy, interrupting
himself on seeing Frere snatch up his hat and umbrella.
“If you’re going to read any more of that, I’m off; that’s all,”
returned Frere. “My powers of endurance are limited.”
“Oh, if you are positively such a Hottentot as to dislike it,” rejoined
Bracy, “I’ll not waste any more of its sweet simplicity upon you; but,
you’ll see, the gentle public will rave about it to an immense extent.”
“Now tell me honestly, Bracy--you don’t really admire that childish
rubbish?”
Thus appealed to, Bracy’s face assumed an expression of most comical
significance; and after pausing for a moment in indecision, he replied--
“Well, I’ve a sort of respect for your good opinion, Frere, and I don’t
exactly like to send you away fancying me a greater ass than I am; so
I’ll honestly confess that, what between affected Germanisms on the
one hand and the puerilities of the Wordsworth-and-water school on the
other, the poetry of the present day has sunk to a very low ebb indeed.”
“Then don’t you consider it the duty of every honest critic to point
this out, and so guide and reform the public taste as to evoke from the
‘well of English undefiled’ a truer and purer style?” returned Frere
earnestly.
“My dear fellow, that all sounds very well in theory, but in practice,
I’m afraid (to use a metaphor derived from one of the humane and
intellectual amusements of our venerated forefathers), that cock won’t
fight. It may be all very well for some literary Don Quixote, with
a pure Saxon taste and a long purse, to tilt at the public’s pet
windmills, because he conceives them to be giant abuses. If he meets
with a fall, he need only put his hand in his pocket and purchase a
plaster, getting a triple shield of experience in for the money. But it
is far otherwise with a magazine. If that is to continue in existence it
must pay; in order to pay it must be rendered popular; to make a thing
popular you must go with the stream of public opinion, and not against
it. The only chance is to head the tide and turn it in the direction you
desire. But to attempt that a man ought to possess first-rate talent,
and I’m free to confess that I, for one, do not; and therefore, you see,
as people must be amused, I’m very willing to amuse them in their own
way, as long as I find it pleasant and profitable to do so. _Voila!_ do
you comprehend?”
“I comprehend this much,” returned Frere gruffly, “that the ground of
your argument is expediency and not principle; and I tell you plainly
that does not suit me, and I’m afraid Miss Arundel is too much of
my mind in that particular for her writings to suit your wonderful
magazine; so the sooner I take my departure the better for your
morning’s work.”
“Stay a moment, don’t get on stilts, man,” returned Bracy, resuming his
examination of Rose’s papers. “Is there nothing but verses? What have we
here? ‘My First Dinner-Party’--this seems more likely.”
He paused, and ran his eye over several of the pages, muttering from
time to time as he went along, “Yes, good lively style--quick powers of
observation--a very graphic touch--bravo! ha! ha! here, listen to this--
“‘Immediately before me stood a dish which even my inexperience believed
itself able to recognise; it was jelly of some kind, with certain dark
objects encased in it, as flies occasionally are in amber. These
opaque portions I settled, in my own mind, must be preserved fruit,
and accordingly (fearful lest, in my ignorance of fashionable dishes, I
should say “yes” to some tremendous delicacy which might prove utterly
impracticable), when invited to partake of it, I graciously signified
my assent. Imagine my horror when, on putting the first mouthful to my
lips, I discovered the jelly was savoury--_i.e_. all pepper and salt,
and the creature embedded in it a fragment of some dreadful fish! Eating
the thing was out of the question; the mere taste I had taken of it made
me feel uncomfortable: an attempt to conceal it beneath the knife and
fork proved utterly futile. I glanced at the butler, but he was too much
absorbed in his own dignity and the dispensation of champagne to observe
me; I gazed appealingly at a good-looking young footman, but he
merely pulled up his shirt-collar foppishly, thinking he had made an
impression; I even ventured to call, in a low voice, to the sprightly
waiter who had eloped with my untouched plate of lamb five minutes
before, but he did not hear me; and there I sat with a huge plateful of
horrible food before me, which I could neither eat nor get rid of, “a
cynosure for neighbouring eyes,” forced, as my fears suggested, to run
the gauntlet of all the mocking glances of the assembled company.’”
“There,” continued Bracy, “I call that a stunning description; I could
not have done it better myself. The girl writes so easily! Let me see,
18--25--28 lines in a page of manuscript; there’s not much of it, I
think I can get it in. I want two pages of amusing matter in the fourth
sheet.”
“Ahl something light, about two. Now I understand,” exclaimed Frere,
pointing to the mysterious document on the table; “that was not a
memorandum in regard to luncheon, then.”
“A what?” returned Bracy, shouting with laughter. “No,” he continued,
as soon as he had in some measure recovered his composure, “that is
the ‘make-up,’ as we call it, of the third and fourth sheets of the
Magazine.”
“Indeed!” returned Frere. “I should think it must require a great deal
of careful reflection to select suitable articles and arrange them
properly.”
“Eh! no, not a bit; the thing’s simple enough when you once get in the
way of it. Have plenty of variety, that’s the grand point--what one
doesn’t like, another will. Take large shot for big birds, and small
shot for little ones, and then you’ll bag the whole covey; that’s
my maxim. Now, look here: first we begin with a scientific article,
‘Questions on Quicksilver.’ There’s not one reader in a hundred that can
understand that paper when they’ve read it; and very few even of those
who can take it in care two straws about quicksilver--why should
they? But they all read it, because it’s a cheap way of getting up the
necessary amount of scientific jargon to hash into small talk. I never
look at that man’s papers myself; I know they’re safe, though I can’t
understand a word of ’em--but they’re a great help to the Magazine.
Then comes our friend, the ‘Homeless Heart.’ I put that in as a drop of
romantic barley-sugar to soften the women’s throats after swallowing the
science. Next we have ‘An Historical Parallel.’ Famous fellows they are;
the principal dodge in writing them is to take an ‘entirely new reading
of the character,’ as the actors say. In the present article, if I
recollect right, they prove Cour-de-Lion to have been a hypocritical
fanatic, and Cromwell a chivalric, magnanimous enthusiast. It’s safe to
take, depend upon it. ‘L’Incomprise’ tells its own tale--it’s as close
an imitation of Eugene Sue and George Sand as English morality will
tolerate, though the invention of guttapercha, or some other elastic
agent, enables even that stiff material nowadays to stretch to lengths
which would astonish our grandmothers. Then comes the ‘Plea for the
Industrial Classes’--a regular savage poke at the present Poor Law
(we’re obliged to do a little bit of political economy as well as our
neighbours, you know); it’s awfully heavy, but it will neutralise any
ill effects ‘L’Incomprise’ may have had on fathers of families all the
better. Lastly, there’s my own little thing, ‘Dog-cart Drives.’ Ahem!
have you seen that?”
“Not I,” replied Frere; “I’ve no time for reading tra---- I mean novels
and that sort of thing.”
“I believe it’s liked; I hear it’s a good deal talked about,” continued
Bracy with an air of bashful self-complacency. “‘Bell’s Life’ spoke very
handsomely of it last week; there were six whole lines devoted to it, I
think. Upon my word I should like you to read it.”
At this moment Frere suddenly discovered that he had remained over his
time, and should be too late for some deeply interesting experiments
that were to come off that morning at what his companion termed his
science shop; so receiving an assurance from Bracy that Rose’s sketch
should be inserted in the Magazine, and that he would consider what
would be her best mode of proceeding in regard to the poetry, the
friends shook hands and parted, Frere promising to make himself
acquainted with the subject-matter of “Dog-cart Drives” at an early
opportunity.