“Pray, Sir,” a leader-writer is said to have asked Delane, “how do you
say ‘good fellow’ in print?” and to have been answered, “Sir, you should
not say it at all.” There are thousands of ambitious young people to-day
who want to know how you say good fellow, or awful snipe, or old bean,
or whatever, in print, and that is why there are Schools of Journalism.
A paper of instructions from one of these excellent institutions has
lately fallen into my hands, and there seems no reason for withholding
it from publication. It appears to be in the nature of a preliminary
introduction to what a distinguished journalist has well called
“practical literature.” For Journalists, in Matthew Arnold’s quotation,
drive at practice, and to be practical you must begin by learning the
shibboleths—that is to say, the turns of phrase and modes of treatment
that long experience has approved and constant readers are accustomed to
expect. There is no mystery about it; they are much more simple than a
vain people supposeth. But it is all-important to get them right at the
outset—or, as is said in practical literature, from the word “go”—and
the advice the paper has to give about them is as follows:—
_Descriptive Articles on Great Occasions._—The beginner will probably
find there is very little to describe. He must learn to invent. Street
crowds have a pestilent habit of not cheering at the appropriate moment;
your first business will be to make them. Celebrities flash by in closed
carriages, totally hidden by the police; you will ruthlessly expose them,
bowing to the storm of applause which sweeps across the multitude filling
the square and lining the classic steps of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. If
the Royal Family is present you will need especial tact. Find the golden
mean between the familiar and the abject. Be human, like Euripides. Above
all, the homely “note” is recommended. You cannot say too often that the
King “looked bronzed.” Thousands of pallid readers who go to Margate for
a week in order to come back looking bronzed will appreciate that. It is
loyal, it attests that robust health that we all desire for his Majesty,
and at the same time it is homely. “I, too, have been bronzed,” the
reader says, as the barber at Byron’s funeral said, “I, too, have been
unhappy.” Whatever is offered the Queen, a bouquet, a trowel, a sample
of the local product the Queen will “smilingly accept.” If she tastes
the men’s (or boy scouts’ or factory girls’) soup, she will “pronounce
it excellent.” Preserve a cheerful tone, especially with _contretemps_.
If Gold Stick in Waiting drops his gold stick, you will note that “the
Royal party were highly amused” and that “the little Princess laughed
heartily.”
_Politics and International Affairs._—Here practical literature takes
a hint from the other sort. Be historical. Be reminded of the great
Westminster Election and the Duchess of Devonshire. Remember Speaker
Onslow. Compare whatever you dislike to the Rump. Magna Charta and Habeas
Corpus must now be allowed a rest, but you may still allude to Thermidor
and Brumaire, the Mountain and the Cordeliers Club. “Mr.” Pitt sounds
well. Open your leader with “Nothing in the annals of diplomacy since
the Treaty of Utrecht (or the Treaty of Vienna, or whatever other treaty
you can think of) has so disgraced,” &c. The second paragraph should
begin “Nor is that all.” Be slightly archaistic. Words like “caitiff”
and “poltroon” may be discreetly used. Books recommended for the course:
Gibbon, Junius, early volumes of Punch, Mahan’s “Sea Power,” and (for
quotations) R. L. Stevenson’s “Wrong Box.”
_Foreign Correspondence._—Remember that the particular capital you
happen to be posted at is the real hub of your newspaper, and wonder
every morning “what those fellows at the London office can be about” to
print so much stuff about their silly local affairs. Practise political
divination from the minutest data. If some little actress at the Marigny,
or Belasco’s, makes you a _pied de nez_ you will say that “the Gallic
temper (or public opinion in the Eastern States) is showing signs of
dangerous exasperation.” If you find a junior Attaché lunching at the
golf club on Sunday, you will say “the political tension is now at any
rate momentarily relaxed.” If they charge you a few centimes or cents
more for your box of chocolates you will say “the population is now
groaning under famine prices, and State intervention cannot be much
longer delayed.”
_Criticism of the Arts and the Theatre._—As criticism is not practical,
it hardly comes within the scope of instructions on practical literature.
But newspapers, after all, must be filled, and, if the advertisements
permit, room may be found even for criticism. Fortunately, it requires
little if any instruction. The office boy, if he is not proud, may be
turned on to it at a pinch. The charwomen, when they can be spared from
their more useful work, often prove neat hands at it. Ideas are to be
discouraged; a few catchwords are all that is necessary, with one decent
hat for Private Views and one ditto dress suit for First Nights. The
art critic will do well to find a new and unknown artist and track him
down from show to show, comparing him in turn to Tintoretto, the lesser
Umbrians, and the Giottos at Padua. (See Vasari _passim_, a repertory
of delightful names.) The theatrical critic will make it his chief
care to construct a striking sentence which the managers can quote,
without excessive garbling, in their advertisements. It can end with
“rapturously applauded,” with “rocked with laughter,” or with “for many
a night to come.”
_N.B._—Personally conducted parties of students taken to the theatre to
see leading actresses “making great strides in their art” and “having
the ball at their feet” and to watch Mr. Collins “surpassing himself.”
They will afterwards be shown cases of type and instructed in the
thermometrical test of the temperature at which it becomes “cold print.”
... The paper does not end here. In a special section on the language of
the poster, it offers a prize for any hitherto undiscovered application
of the word “amazing.” It goes on to give instructions to writers on
cricket, golf, and sport, with a stock selection of anecdotes about
“W.G.” and “E.M.,” and a plan to scale of the Dormy House and Mr. Harry
Tate’s moustache when he addresses the ball and the audience. But these
are awful mysteries which I dare not follow the paper in profaning.