PRACTICAL LITERATURE
“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 theword “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 withcontretemps. If Gold Stick in Waiting drops his goldstick, 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 apied de nezyou will saythat “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 Vasaripassim, 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 “rapturouslyapplauded,” 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.