JOURNALISTIC DISCUSSIONS.
Percy did not "fly" for another month, and during that time seldom a day
passed that he did not spend a portion of it with Mrs. Butler and
Dolores.
To the artistic rooms on the Avenue Josephine, where he was made to feel
so perfectly at home, he sometimes brought a friend, and often found a
bevy of bright people when he arrived.
Dolores had formed a choice circle of acquaintances among the artists,
musicians, and scholars, during her prolonged sojourn abroad.
It seemed to Percy that he had never in his entire life before, met so
many charming people as he encountered under Dolores's roof in that one
month. There was as great a difference between the conventional society
to which he had been accustomed, and the interesting clique which graced
Dolores's parlors, as there is between a hotel bill of fare, and the
_mênu_ prepared for the palate of an epicure. One, monotonous insipid
and flavorless; the other, spiced, appetizing and varied.
Among the score of people whom Dolores gathered together under her roof,
there was a Mr. Elliott, a young English artist, a clever, cultured
fellow, though something of a cockney; Monsieur Thoré, a famed historian
and legislator; Madame Volkenburg, a middle-aged widow of a German
professor, a lady of vast experience and wide culture, whose
conversation overflowed with interesting reminiscences; and Homer Orton,
an American journalist, genius and wit.
Nowhere else, in no other class or profession, can be found so much
talent, and so much wit, as exists among our American journalists,
however they bury the former, and misdirect the latter gift.
With a better understanding of "_noblesse oblige_," with a little more
delicacy refining their wit, with a great deal more reverence for the
sacredness of homes and personalities, to what heights might not these
peerless minds elevate American journalism?
"Do you know," said Mr. Elliott, one evening in Percy's presence,
addressing the journalist, "do you know, Mr. Orton, you have greatly
surprised me?"
"Quite likely," responded Homer Orton, soberly gazing at his English
friend. "We Americans have always been surprising you Englishmen ever
since--but never mind dates. I should really like to know in what
especial manner I have surprised you, Mr. Elliott?"
"Well, in fact--now I beg you will not be offended, but in the fact that
you are such a deuced fine fellow, you know. I had quite another
impression of American newspaper men. I fancied you would not be
admitted to such society as this--that you were all fellows who would
sacrifice your best friends for an item, you know--"
"So we would--that is, most of us," Homer interrupted, gravely. "I am a
rare and beautiful exception."
"And I thought you were hardly the sort of person a lady like Miss King
would want in her home, you know," the Englishman continued. "But I find
you really a delightful fellow, you know, and quite a gentleman."
"Sir," said Homer, rising with his hand upon his heart, "language fails
me before a compliment like this. It is a new and trying position for me
to hear such words spoken of myself, and I hope you will excuse me while
I walk to another part of the room and unobserved wipe away a tear of
gratitude."
Then, suddenly dropping his tone of levity, the young man continued:
"But, seriously speaking, you are justified in your opinion of us as a
class, Mr. Elliott, and it is to be regretted. As Mr. Durand will
testify, our American eagle flaps his wings often with too much
freedom."
Percy, when appealed to, was glad to express his opinion upon a subject
to which he had recently given much thought.
"It is a question," he said, "which must before many years be
decided--just where the freedom of the press should end and where the
rights of individuals should begin. It seems to me that even our
so-called best newspapers take unnecessary and unlicensed liberties in
these days."
"But the public appetite demands such a varied and highly-spiced diet
that we are obliged to gratify it in every legitimate manner possible.
If we do not, our rival sheet will," explained Homer Orton.
"That is all very well when you _keep_ to legitimate means. But I call
the invasion of homes, and the cruel, and often untruthful, assertions
concerning the private life, of unoffending individuals, illegitimate
means of feeding a depraved appetite. The average newspaper humorist,
who utterly disregards the truth, in his anxiety to concoct a taking
item, I do not consider a necessary feature of high journalism--do you?
If he only succeeds in raising a laugh, he considers his object in life
attained. He reminds me of the tribe of the Damaras, who are described
as so utterly heartless that they roar with laughter on beholding one of
their number torn to pieces by a wild beast."
"Still it is not so much heartlessness, as insensibility and
thoughtlessness, and a desire to be bright and witty, which causes a
good many of these things to be written," Homer responded.
"I heard that very excuse, advanced only the other day," Percy replied,
"and I heard this response made which is quite _apropos_ now. It has
been observed by thoughtful naturalists that often when a lion or a bull
kills a man, the poor beast really has no malice in his heart, and does
not mean any harm. He only intended to play with his accidental comrade
of the moment. But then a lion has only claws and a bull only horns with
which to make their humor felt, and so they are fatally misunderstood.
It would seem to me, then, that the chief of a large newspaper ought to
consider himself as responsible for those accidents as the keeper of a
menagerie."
"But often the chief of a first-class newspaper has no idea of the
really scurrilous items which creep into his paper," explained Homer.
"Like the chief cook in a large hotel, he cannot taste of every dish
prepared by his subordinates, and no managing editor could survive the
strain, you know, of looking over his humorist's column every day. Our
madhouses would overflow, if such a method of journalism were
inaugurated."
"Still, it is a lax system which permits such errors (if we can call
them errors) to occur," Percy insisted, "and if guests were constantly
being poisoned or rendered ill through the criminal carelessness of the
hotel cook, I fancy he would be called to account for not knowing what
dishes his subordinates prepared. A newspaper should be the friend and
companion of the people, and a welcome guest in every home. Instead, it
is too often a treacherous spy, a maligner and falsifier. Almost every
day we read statements concerning people, which are absolutely without
foundation, and which result in no end of mischief and trouble."
"You no doubt refer to people in public life--politicians, authors,
actors, and the like--do you not?" asked Homer. "I know they are
considered targets for the shots of our humorists all over the country,
but then you must remember that if a man gives his name voluntarily to
the world, and forces his work or his personality upon the public, that
he cannot expect both the benefits of fame and the seclusion of private
life. It is unreasonable. He has in a measure given himself over to the
public, and he must take the consequences. And, really, the fact that
the busy newspapers of the present day give time and space to discussion
or comments upon any individual ought to be considered highly
complimentary."
"That depends entirely upon the nature of the comments," answered Percy.
"Nor do I refer entirely to public people. Our wealthy men, and their
wives and daughters, are subjected to the same coarse comments. Their
personal defects are ridiculed, and the pitiless and ghastly electric
light of publicity is turned on their most sacred joys or sorrows. Items
devoid of truth and wit, appear every day concerning people who have
committed no offense greater than to succeed in some special calling.
They are copied, enlarged upon, and believed by a majority of the
masses. It is a degenerate system of journalism which permits it. It is
high time some manly journalist began a crusade against it."
"I agree with you, perfectly," Homer Orton answered. "I would like to
have the leading newspapers of the country band together to protect the
people from insult and petty libels in their columns: and I would like
to see the Imaginary Interviewer done away with by every respectable
journal."
"What is the Imaginary Interviewer, pray?" queried the Englishman.
"He is a reporter, who, if he is refused admittance by any person he
wishes to interview, deliberately invents an interview; describes the
personality and manufactures the conversation to suit his own taste. No
one was ever more misused in this respect than your own Oscar Wilde,
unless it was Mrs. Langtry. The most astounding postures and inane
remarks were attributed to them by people who never saw them. It is not,
however, our first-class journals which have permitted this."
"Would you not recommend the abolishing of the interviewer entirely?"
suggested Percy.
"Certainly not," Homer responded. "The newspaper interviewer is a
benefit to the press, to the country, and to all public people who have
a name and a reputation to make. That is, when he is a truthful
gentleman, and does not abuse the hospitality of those who admit him to
their homes."
"The school-girl who sends for the autograph of a public man pays him a
graceful compliment, and he should write it for her without a murmur."
"Just in the same way, the whole public offers a quiet ovation to the
man of reputation when an interviewer presents his card. The newspaper
would never ask for an interview to publish, unless the masses of its
readers desired it. And the interviewer should be met courteously, and
the public man should realize that this sort of thing is the duty he
pays on fame. If he has positively nothing of interest to say to the
interviewer, or is too busily engaged to be interrupted, he should tell
the caller so in a respectful and polite manner. Many a public man is
badly treated by the reporter in print, because he treated the reporter
badly in his house."
"But what have you to say of the interviewer who is well treated, and
then repays the hospitality he has received by an article bristling with
ridicule and untruthful misrepresentations of the personality or
conversation of his entertainer? I have known this to occur."
"I do not believe it occurs very often," Homer answered. "When it does,
there is usually personal malice at the bottom of it, or a catering to
the lowest order of scurrilous journalism. It is a great pity that the
victims in such cases have no dignified redress. A thorough caning ought
to be considered consistent with the situation. But, I think, as a rule,
respectable newspaper men endeavor to do the right thing by those who
have treated them with courtesy in this matter. The trouble is, journals
are not careful enough in the representatives they send on these
commissions. It requires a great deal of delicate tact to write
acceptably of a man's home-life and personality during his life-time.
No thoughtless boy, or sensation-seeking reporter, should be
commissioned with such a task. I positively know a New York journalist,
who possesses a bright mind and wonderful command of language beside an
easy and elegant deportment, who considers it fair play to gain
information through private letters or confidential conversations with
his friends, and then to use such knowledge for press purposes. He
boasts of his skill in this respect."
"Impossible!" cried Percy, indignantly.
"Quite too possible," Homer replied. "His devotion to journalism, and
his desire to feed the public appetite, has destroyed every particle of
moral principle the fellow ever possessed. Of course, such a man
reflects discredit upon the whole profession. That he is an exception to
the rule, I know, but that he is retained at all upon a respectable
journal, is to be regretted."
"There is still another feature of American journalism to be more
regretted and blushed for, I think," said Percy. "That is, the attitude
of our so called humorists and paragraphers toward public women. No
where else in the world do women occupy so exalted and honored a
position as they occupy in America. No other women in the world have
accomplished so much in various public callings. Yet no where else are
they subjected to such insults as they receive from the newspapers
throughout the United States, from the _prima donna_ to the President's
wife, sister, or daughter."
"Are you not a little extreme in that statement, Mr. Durand?" asked
Homer Orton. "You must recollect that the royal family are discussed
very freely in print, and ladies who have become famous ought to
consider themselves members of the royal family of Genius, and take
newspaper criticisms as a natural consequence."
"It is not newspaper criticisms to which I refer," answered Percy. "Of
course, half the success of an actress, a singer, an author or a painter
depends upon public criticism, and often it happens that the severer the
criticisms the greater the success. But it is the loose familiarity and
the coarse jests of the item-seeker of which I speak. Only last week I
saw a wretched little item, intended to be humorous, but actually
brutal, going the rounds of the press, concerning the advanced years of
a famous opera singer, a woman who has reflected credit on our nation by
her brilliant and stainless career."
"I saw the item to which you refer," Mr. Elliott said, "and I wondered
if it was consistent with the National boast that Americans are the
kindest and most thoughtful men in the world toward ladies. It seemed to
me an uncalled-for and ungentlemanly incivility toward a noble lady."
"I often wonder," continued Percy, "if the fellows who perpetrate those
things stop and consider that the public women, whose names they use so
freely, are _somebody's_ sisters, wives, or mothers, and that, in nine
cases out of ten, they lead a public life, or first entered a public
career, to earn a living. If the newspaper men of the country ever do
take this view of the matter, I should think their first impulse would
be to shield and protect and _help_ every self-supporting woman in the
land. At all events, I should think every sensible journalist would
realize that, while it is the province of the newspaper to furnish able
criticism on the voice of the singer, the book of the author, the speech
of the orator, it is not its province to indulge in poor puns, or
insulting comments on the age, the personal defects, or the domestic
life of the singer, author or speaker. These things should be tabooed by
respectable journals, just as they are tabooed in respectable society.
Our journalists should be as careful, in their references to the private
matters of individuals in print, as they are in conversation in their
parlors, where scandalous or impertinent references to the absent would
be considered 'bad form.' Really, I do not understand how any of us who
read the daily papers dare boast of American chivalry."
"The chivalry of the average man," said Dolores, who approached the
group just at this moment, "consists in protecting a woman against every
man save himself. And now, gentlemen, we are to have a recitation from
Madame Volkenburg. Will you join us and listen?"