actress. A reader with a noble ambition who wishes to lecture, and
wants to hear of an establishment at which he can buy discourses
ready-made. A natty reader, who wants German polish for boots and
shoes. A sore-headed reader, who is editorially advised to use soap
and warm water. A virtuous reader, who writes to condemn married women
for listening to compliments, and who is informed by an equally
virtuous editor that his remarks are neatly expressed. A guilty
(female) reader, who confides her frailties to a moral editor, and
shocks him. A pale-faced reader, who asks if she shall darken her
skin. Another pale-faced reader, who asks if she shall put on rouge.
An undecided reader, who asks if there is any inconsistency in a
dancing-mistress being a teacher at a Sunday-school. A bashful reader,
who has been four years in love with a lady, and has not yet mentioned
it to her. A speculative reader who wishes to know if he can sell
lemonade without a licence. An uncertain reader, who wants to be told
whether he had better declare his feelings frankly and honourably at
once. An indignant female reader, who reviles all the gentlemen in her
neighbourhood because they don't take the ladies out. A scorbutic
reader, who wants to be cured. A pimply reader in the same condition.
A jilted reader, who writes to know what his best revenge may be, and
who is advised by a wary editor to try indifference. A domestic
reader, who wishes to be told the weight of a newly-born child. An
inquisitive reader, who wants to know if the name of David's mother is
mentioned in the Scriptures.
Here are ten editorial sentiments on things in general, which are
pronounced at the express request of correspondents, and which are
therefore likely to be of use in assisting us to form an estimate of
the intellectual condition of the Unknown Public:
1. All months are lucky to marry in, when your union is hallowed by
love.
2. When you have a sad trick of blushing on being introduced to a
young lady, and when you want to correct the habit, summon to your aid
a manly confidence.
3. If you want to write neatly, do not bestow too much ink on
occasional strokes.
4. You should not shake hands with a lady on your first introduction
to her.
5. You can sell ointment without a patent.
6. A widow should at once and most decidedly discourage the lightest
attentions on the part of a married man.
7. A rash and thoughtless girl will scarcely make a steady thoughtful
wife.
8. We do not object to a moderate quantity of crinoline.
9. A sensible and honourable man never flirts himself, and ever
despises flirts of the other sex.
10. A collier will not better his condition by going to Prussia.
At the risk of being wearisome, I must once more repeat that these
selections from the Answers to Correspondents, incredibly absurd as
they may appear, are presented _exactly as I find them_. Nothing is
exaggerated for the sake of a joke; nothing is invented, or misquoted,
to serve the purpose of any pet theory of my own. The sample produced
of the three million penny readers is left to speak for itself; to
give some idea of the social and intellectual materials of which a
portion, at least, of the Unknown Public may fairly be presumed to be
composed. Having so far disposed of this first part of the matter in
hand, the second part follows naturally enough of its own accord. We
have all of us formed some opinion by this time on the subject of the
Public itself: the next thing to do is to find out what that Public
reads.
I have already said that the staple commodity of the journals appears
to be formed of stories. The five specimen copies of the five separate
weekly publications now before me, contain, altogether, ten serial
stories; one reprint of a famous novel (to be hereafter referred to);
and seven short tales, each of which begins and ends in one number.
The remaining pages are filled up with miscellaneous contributions, in
literature and art, drawn from every conceivable source. Pickings from
Punch and Plato; wood-engravings, representing notorious people and
views of famous places, which strongly suggest that the original
blocks have seen better days in other periodicals; modern and ancient
anecdotes; short memoirs; scraps of poetry; choice morsels of general
information; household receipts, riddles, and extracts from moral
writers--all appear in the most orderly manner, arranged under
separate heads, and cut up neatly into short paragraphs. However, the
prominent feature in each journal is the serial story, which is
placed, in every case, as the first article, and which is illustrated
by the only wood-engraving that appears to have been expressly cut for
the purpose. To the serial story, therefore, we may fairly devote our
chief attention, because it is clearly regarded as the chief
attraction of these very singular publications.
Two of my specimen-copies contained, respectively, the first chapters
of new stories. In the case of the other three, I found the stories in
various stages of progress. The first thing that struck me, after
reading the separate weekly portions of all five, was their
extraordinary sameness. Each portion purported to be written (and no
doubt was written) by a different author, and yet all five might have
been produced by the same man. Each part of each successive story,
settled down in turn, as I read it, to the same dead level of the
smoothest and flattest conventionality. A combination of fierce
melodrama and meek domestic sentiment; short dialogues and paragraphs
on the French pattern, with moral English reflections of the sort that
occur on the top lines of children's copy-books; incidents and
characters taken from the old exhausted mines of the circulating
library, and presented as complacently and confidently as if they were
original ideas; descriptions and reflections for the beginning of the
number, and a "strong situation," dragged in by the neck and
shoulders, for the end--formed the common literary sources from which
the five authors drew their weekly supply; all collecting it by the
same means; all carrying it in the same quantities; all pouring it out
before the attentive public in the same way. After reading my samples
of these stories, I understood why it was that the fictions of the
regularly-established writers for the penny journals are never
republished. There is, I honestly believe, no man, woman, or child in
England, not a member of the Unknown Public, who could be got to read
them. The one thing which it is possible to advance in their favour
is, that there is apparently no wickedness in them. There seems to be
an intense in-dwelling respectability in their dulness. If they lead
to no intellectual result, even of the humblest kind, they may have,
at least, this negative advantage, that they can do no harm.
If it be objected that I am condemning these stories after having
merely read one number of each of them, I have only to ask in return,
whether anybody ever waits to go all through a novel before passing an
opinion on the goodness or the badness of it? In the latter case, we
throw the story down before we get through it, and that is its
condemnation. There is room enough for promise, if not for
performance, in any one part of any one genuine work of fiction. If I
had found the smallest promise in the style, in the dialogue, in the
presentation of character, in the arrangement of incident, in any of
the five specimens of cheap fiction before me, each one of which
extended, on the average, to ten columns of small print, I should have
gone on gladly to the next number. But I discovered nothing of the
kind; and I put down my weekly sample, just as an editor, under
similar circumstances, puts down a manuscript, after getting through a
certain number of pages--or a reader a book.
And this sort of writing appeals to a monster audience of at least
three millions! Has a better sort ever been tried? It has. The former
proprietor of one of these penny journals commissioned a thoroughly
competent person to translate The Count of Monte Christo for his
periodical. He knew that there was hardly a language in the civilised
world into which that consummate specimen of the rare and difficult
art of story-telling had not been translated. In France, in England,
in America, in Russia, in Germany, in Italy, in Spain, Alexandre Dumas
had held hundreds of thousands of readers breathless. The proprietor
of the penny journal naturally thought that he could do as much with
the Unknown Public. Strange to say, the result of this apparently
certain experiment was a failure. The circulation of the journal in
question seriously decreased from the time when the first of living
story-tellers became a contributor to it! The same experiment was
tried with the Mysteries of Paris and the Wandering Jew, only to
produce the same result. Another penny journal gave Dumas a commission
to write a new story, expressly for translation in its columns. The
speculation was tried, and once again the inscrutable Unknown Public
held back the hand of welcome from the spoilt child of a whole world
of novel-readers.
How is this to be accounted for?
Does a rigid moral sense permeate the Unknown Public from one end of
it to the other, and did the productions of the French novelists shock
that sense from the very outset? The page containing the Answers to
Correspondents would be enough in itself to dispose of this theory.
But there are other and better means of arriving at the truth, which
render any further reference to the Correspondents' page unnecessary.
Some time since, an eminent novelist (the only living English author,
with a literary position, who had, at that time, written for the
Unknown Public) produced his new novel in a penny journal. No shadow
of a moral objection has ever been urged by any readers against the
works published by the author of It Is Never Too Late To Mend; but
even he, unless I have been greatly misinformed, failed to make the
impression that had been anticipated on the impenetrable Three
Millions. The great success of his novel was not obtained in its
original serial form, but in its republished form, when it appealed
from the Unknown to the Known Public. Clearly, the moral obstacle was
not the obstacle which militated against the success of Alexandre
Dumas and Eugène Sue.
What was it, then? Plainly this, as I believe. The Unknown Public is,
in a literary sense, hardly beginning, as yet, to learn to read. The
members of it are evidently, in the mass, from no fault of theirs,
still ignorant of almost everything which is generally known and
understood among readers whom circumstances have placed, socially and
intellectually, in the rank above them. The mere references in Monte
Christo, The Mysteries of Paris, and White Lies (the scene of this
last English fiction having been laid on French ground), to foreign
names, titles, manners, and customs, puzzled the Unknown Public on the
threshold. Look back at the answers to correspondents, and then say,
out of fifty subscribers to a penny journal, how many are likely to
know, for example, that Mademoiselle means Miss? Besides the
difficulty in appealing to the penny audience caused at the beginning
by such simple obstacles as this, there was the great additional
difficulty, in the case of all three of the fictions just mentioned,
of accustoming untried readers to the delicacies and subtleties of
literary art. An immense public has been discovered: the next thing to
be done is, in a literary sense, to teach that public how to read.
An attempt, to the credit of one of the penny journals, has already
been made. I have mentioned, in one place, a reprint of a novel, and
later, a remarkable exception to the drearily common-place character
of the rest of the stories. In both these cases I refer to one and the
same fiction--to the Kenilworth of Sir Walter Scott, which is
reprinted as a new serial experiment in a penny journal. Here is the
great master of modern fiction appealing, at this time of day, to a
new public, and (amazing anomaly!) marching in company with writers
who have the rudiments of their craft still to learn! To my mind, one
result seems certain. If Kenilworth be appreciated by the Unknown
Public, then the very best men among living English writers will one
of these days be called on, as a matter of necessity, to make their
appearance in the pages of the penny journals.
Meanwhile, it is perhaps hardly too much to say, that the future of
English fiction may rest with this Unknown Public, which is now
waiting to be taught the difference between a good book and a bad. It
is probably a question of time only. The largest audience for
periodical literature, in this age of periodicals, must obey the
universal law of progress, and must, sooner or later, learn to
discriminate. When that period comes, the readers who rank by
millions, will be the readers who give the widest reputations, who
return the richest rewards, and who will, therefore, command the
service of the best writers of their time. A great, an unparalleled
prospect awaits, perhaps, the coming generation of English novelists.
To the penny journals of the present time belongs the credit of having
discovered a new public. When that public shall discover its need of a
great writer, the great writer will have such an audience as has never
yet been known.[3]
FOOTNOTES:
[2] It may be as well to explain that I use this awkward compound word
in order to mark the distinction between a penny journal and a penny
newspaper. The "journal" is what I am now writing about. The
"newspaper" is an entirely different subject, with which this article
has no connection.
[3] Five years have passed since this article was first published, and
no signs of progress in the Unknown Public have made their appearance
as yet. Patience! patience! (September, 1863).
SOCIAL GRIEVANCES.--III.
GIVE US ROOM!
[The Imperative Request of a Family Man.]
The entertainments of the festive season of the year, so far as I am
personally concerned, have at last subsided into a temporary lull. I
and my family actually have one or two evenings to ourselves, just at
present. It is my purpose to take advantage of this interval of
leisure to express my sentiments on the subject of evening parties and
ladies' dress.
Let nobody turn over this page impatiently, alarmed at the prospect of
another diatribe against Crinoline. I, for one, am not going to
exhibit myself in the character of a writer who vainly opposes one of
the existing institutions of this country. The Press, the Pulpit, and
the Stage, have been in the habit of considering themselves as three
very powerful levers, capable of being used with terrible effect on
the inert material of society. All three have tried to jerk that
flourishing foreign plant, Crinoline, out of English earth, and have
failed to stir so much as a single root of it. All three have run
full tilt against the women of England, and have not moved them an
inch. Talk of the power of the Press!--what is it, compared to the
power of a French milliner? The Press has tried to abridge the women's
petticoats, and has entirely failed in the attempt. When the right
time comes, a French milliner will abridge them at a week's notice.
The Pulpit preaches, the Stage ridicules; and each woman of the
congregation or the audience, sits, imperturbable, in the middle of
her balloon, and lets the serious words or the comic words, go in at
one ear and come out at the other, precisely as if they were spoken in
an unknown tongue. Nothing that I can remember has so effectually
crushed the pretensions of the Press, the Pulpit, and the Stage, as
the utter failure of their crusade against Crinoline.
My present object in writing is likely, I think, to be popular--at
least, with the ladies. I do not want to put down Crinoline--I only
want to make room for it. Personally, I rather like it--I do, indeed,
though I am a man. The fact is, I am a thoroughly well-disciplined
husband and father; and I know the value of it. The only defect in my
eldest daughter's otherwise perfect form, lies in her feet and ankles.
She is married, so I don't mind mentioning that they are decidedly
clumsy. Without Crinoline, they would be seen; with Crinoline (except
when she goes up stairs), nobody has the slightest suspicion of them.
My wife--pray don't tell her that I ever observed it--my wife used to
waddle before the invention of Crinoline. Now she swims voluptuously,
and knocks down all the light articles of furniture, whenever she
crosses the room, in a manner which, but for the expense of repairs,
would be perfectly charming. One of my other single daughters used to
be sadly thin, poor girl. Oh, how plump she is now! Oh, my
marriageable young men, how ravishingly plump she is now! Long life to
the monarchy of Crinoline! Every mother in this country who has
daughters to marry, and who is not quite so sure of their unaided
personal attractions as she might wish to be, echoes that loyal cry, I
am sure, from the bottom of her affectionate heart. And the Press
actually thinks it can shake our devotion to our Queen Petticoat?
Pooh! pooh!
But we must have room--we must positively have room for our petticoat
at evening parties. We wanted it before Crinoline. We want it ten
thousand times more, now. I don't know how other parents feel; but,
unless there is some speedy reform in the present system of
party-giving--so far as regards health, purse, and temper, I am a lost
man. Let me make my meaning clear on this point by a simple and
truthful process. Let me describe how we went to our last party, and
how we came back from it.
Doctor and Mrs. Crump, of Gloucester Place (I mention names and places
to show the respectable character of the party), kindly requested the
pleasure of our company a week ago. We accepted the invitation, and
agreed to assemble in my dining-room previous to departure, at the
hour of half-past nine. It is unnecessary to say that I and my
son-in-law (who is now staying with me on a visit) had the room
entirely to ourselves at the appointed time. We waited half-an-hour:
both ill-tempered, both longing to be in bed, and both obstinately
silent. When the hall-clock struck ten, a sound was heard on the
stairs, as if a whole gale of wind had broken into the house, and was
advancing to the dining-room to blow us both into empty space. We knew
what this meant, and looked at each other, and said, "Here they are!"
The door opened, and Boreas swam in voluptuously, in the shape of my
wife, in claret-coloured velvet. She stands five feet nine, and
wears--No! I have never actually counted them. Let me not mislead the
public, or do injustice to my wife. Let me rest satisfied with stating
her height, and adding that she is a fashionable woman. Her
circumference, and the causes of it, may be left to the imagination of
the reader.
She was followed by four minor winds, blowing dead in our teeth--by my
married daughter in Pink Moiré Antique; by my own Julia (single) in
Violet Tulle Illusion; by my own Emily (single) in white lace over
glacé silk; by my own Charlotte (single) in blue gauze over glacé
silk. The four minor winds, and the majestic maternal Boreas, entirely
filled the room, and overflowed on to the dining-table. It was a grand
sight. My son-in-law and I--a pair of mere black tadpoles--shrank into
a corner, and gazed at it helplessly.
Our corner was, unfortunately, the farthest from the door. So, when I
moved to lead the way to the carriages, I confronted a brilliant
intermediate expanse of ninety yards of outer clothing alone (allowing
only eighteen yards each to the ladies). Being old, wily, and
respected in the house, I took care to avoid my wife, and succeeded in
getting through my daughters. My son-in-law, young, innocent, and of
secondary position in the family, was not so fortunate. I left him
helpless, looking round the corner of his mother-in-law's
claret-coloured velvet, with one of his legs lost in his wife's Moiré
Antique. There is every reason to suppose that he never extricated
himself; for when we got into the carriages he was not to be found;
and, when ultimately recovered, he exhibited symptoms of physical and
mental exhaustion. I am afraid my son-in-law caught it--I am very much
afraid that, during my absence, my son-in-law caught it.
We filled--no, we overflowed--two carriages. My wife and her married
daughter in one, and I, myself, on the box--the front seat being very
properly wanted for the velvet and the Moiré Antique. In the second
carriage were my three girls--crushed, as they indignantly informed
me, crushed out of all shape (didn't I tell you, just now, how plump
one of them was?) by the miserably-inefficient accommodation which the
vehicle offered to them. They told my son-in-law, as he meekly mounted
to the box, that they would take care not to marry a man like him, at
any rate! I have not the least idea what he had done to provoke them.
The worthy creature gets a great deal of scolding in the house,
without any assignable cause for it. Do my daughters resent his
official knowledge, as a husband, of the secret of their sister's ugly
feet? Oh, dear me, I hope not--I sincerely hope not!
At ten minutes past ten we drove to the hospitable abode of Doctor and
Mrs. Crump. The women of my family were then perfectly dressed in the
finest materials. There was not a flaw in any part of the costume of
any one of the party. This is a great deal to say of ninety yards of
clothing, without mentioning the streams of ribbon, and the dense
thickets of flowery bushes that wantoned gracefully all over their
heads and half-down their backs--nevertheless, I can say it.
At forty minutes past four, the next morning, we were all assembled
once more in my dining-room, to light our bed-room candles. Judging by
costume only, I should not have known one of my daughters again--no,
not one of them!
The Tulle Illusion, was illusion no longer. My daughter's gorgeous
substratum of Gros de Naples bulged through it in half a dozen places.
The Pink Moiré Antique was torn into a draggle-tailed pink train. The
white lace was in tatters, and the blue gauze was in shreds.
"A charming party!" cried my daughters in melodious chorus, as I
surveyed this scene of ruin. Charming, indeed! If I had dressed up my
four girls, and sent them to Greenwich Fair, with strict orders to get
drunk and assault the police, and if they had carefully followed my
directions, could they have come home to me in a much worse condition
than the condition in which I see them now? Could any man, not
acquainted with the present monstrous system of party-giving, look at
my four young women, and believe that they had been spending the
evening under the eyes of their parents, at a respectable house? If
the party had been at a linendraper's, I could understand the object
of this wanton destruction of property. But Doctor Crump is not
interested in making me buy new gowns. What have I done to him that he
should ask me and my family to his house, and all but tear my
children's gowns off their backs, in return for our friendly
readiness to accept his invitation?
But my daughters danced all the evening, and these little accidents
will happen in private ballrooms. Indeed? I did not dance, my wife did
not dance, my son-in-law did not dance. Have we escaped injury on that
account? Decidedly not. Velvet is not an easy thing to tear, so I have
no rents to deplore in my wife's dress. But I apprehend that a
spoonful of trifle does not reach its destination properly, when it is
deposited in a lady's lap; and I altogether deny that there is any
necessary connection between the charms of society, and the wearing of
crushed macaroons, adhesively dotted over the back part of a
respectable matron's dress. I picked three off my wife's gown, as she
swam out of the dining-room, on her way up-stairs; and I am informed
that two new breadths will be wanted in front, in consequence of her
lap having been turned into a plate for trifle. As for my son-in-law,
his trousers are saturated with spilt champagne; and he took, in my
presence, nearly a handful of flabby lobster salad out of the cavity
between his shirt-front and his waistcoat. For myself, I have had my
elbow in a game-pie, and I see with disgust a slimy path of extinct
custard, meandering down the left-hand lappel of my coat. Altogether,
this party, on the lowest calculation, casts me in damages to the
tune of ten pounds, eighteen shillings, and sixpence.[4]
In damages for spoilt garments only. I have still to find out what the
results may be of the suffocating heat in the rooms, and the freezing
draughts in the passages, and on the stairs--I have still to face the
possible doctor's bills for treating our influenzas and our
rheumatisms. And to what cause is all this destruction and discomfort
attributable? Plainly and simply, to this. When Doctor and Mrs. Crump
issued their invitations, they followed the example of the rest of the
world, and asked to their house five times as many people as their
rooms would comfortably hold. Hence, jostling, bumping, and tearing
among the dancers, and jostling, bumping, and spilling in the
supper-room. Hence, a scene of barbarous crowding and confusion, in
which the successful dancers are the heaviest and rudest couples in
the company, and the successful guests at the supper-table, the people
who have the least regard for the restraints of politeness and the
wants of their neighbours.