LITMIR.BIZ

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is an art: it is the art of lending to people and events intrinsically dull an interest which does not properly belong to them.

      This is a profound truth. If anyone doubts it, let him listen to a debate in the House of Commons, and compare the impressions of the evening with the impressions furnished by the parliamentary sketch in his daily paper the next morning. The difference will be little less than miraculous. Yet the bored observer of the previous night will find in the printed article no discrepancies, no insidious departures from sober fact; and as he reads it, the conviction will grow upon him that his own impressions were wrong, and that after all a debate in the House of Commons is a remarkably amusing and delightful entertainment. If the newspapers ceased to report the proceedings of Parliament, the uncomfortable benches of the Strangers' Gallery would for ever remain empty, simply because the delusion which now fills them nightly during the session would die for lack of sustenance. Again, take the case of the amiable feminine crowds which collect upon the Mall whenever Her Majesty holds a Drawing Room at Buckingham Palace. What has induced them to forsake lunch and the domestic joys in order to frequent that draughty thoroughfare? Nothing but accounts which they have read in vivacious newspapers of the sights to be seen there on these state occasions. They go; they see; they return fatigued and privately disappointed, with a vague feeling that some one has misled them. But with the arrival later in the afternoon of the vendor of special editions, they begin to be reassured. Under the heading "To-day's Drawing Room," they encounter a description of incidents which they themselves have witnessed. The sweet thought crosses their minds: "Perhaps that was written by the curious woman with eye-glasses who stood near to me;" and by the time dinner is over nothing would persuade them that the Mall on Drawing Room day is not one of the most interesting places in the world.

      So the journalist continues to gain a livelihood by forcing his rosy fallacies upon the weary world.

      * * *

      In order to substantiate further the proposition that the art of journalism is the art of lending interest to people and events intrinsically dull, let me draw attention to the treatment accorded by editors to those rare trifles of information which by general agreement are not in themselves dull. Such an item, a jewel of its kind, was the following: I copy it as it was allowed to appear in an evening newspaper justly renowned for enterprise, talent, and imagination, under date 16th January, 1897:

      "While walking in the Park at Tsarskoe Selo the Tsar beckoned to a gardener. The man hastened to obey, but a guard, thinking he was running up to attack the Emperor, shot him dead.

      "His Majesty was deeply affected by the occurrence."

      Observe the stark nakedness of it. There is no decorative treatment here, no evidence of an attempt to impress upon the report the individuality of the paper. The Editor rightly divined that the simple, splendid tragedy of the event offered no opportunity for a display of his art. His art, indeed, could have nothing to do with it. If all news were of a similar quality, the art of journalism, as it exists at present, would instantly expire, and a new art would arise to take its place, though what the nature of that new art would be, it is hazardous to guess. One may, however, assert that journalism in its highest development will only thrive so long and so far as the march of events continues, in the eyes of the majority, to be a dull, monotonous and funereal procession. The insensible hack may trust himself to present attractively an occurrence or a man that all the world concedes to be inherently attractive; but it needs a heaven-born artist, trained in the subtleties of his craft and gifted with the inexhaustible appreciative wonder of a child, to deal finely and picturesquely with, say, bi-metallism or the Concert of Europe.

      * * *

      And how to create interest where interest is not? Alas, no dissertation and no teacher can answer the question. As in other arts, so in journalism, the high essentials may not be inculcated. It is the mere technique which is imparted. By a curious paradox, the student is taught, of art, only what he already knows. Anyone can learn to write, and to write well, in any given style; but to see, to discern the interestingness which is veiled from the crowd--that comes not by tuition; rather by intuition.

      The best treatise on art can only hope:--

      1 To indicate the lines of study and training which should be pursued in order to acquire the measure of mechanical accomplishment necessary to the right using of the artistic faculty.

      2 If the artistic faculty exists but is dormant, to awaken it by means of suggestion; and having awakened it, to show how it may be properly excited to the fullest activity of which it is capable.

      This book is an attempt to do these things, for women, in the art of journalism.

      Chapter II

       Imperfections of the Existing Woman-Journalist.

       Table of Contents

      Despite a current impression to the contrary, implicit in nearly every printed utterance on the subject, there should not be any essential functional disparity between the journalist male and the journalist female. A woman doctor (to instance another open calling) is rightly regarded as a doctor who happens to be a woman, not as a woman who happens to be a doctor. She undergoes the same training, and submits to the same tests, as the young men who find their distraction in the music-halls and flirt with nurses. Her sex is properly sunk, except where it may prove an advantage, and certainly it is never allowed to pose as an excuse for limitations, a palliative for shortcomings. Least of all is she credited (or debited) with any abnormality on account of it. But towards the woman journalist our attitude, and her own, is mysteriously different. Though perhaps we do not say so, we leave it to be inferred that of the dwellers in Fleet Street there are, not two sexes, but two species--journalists and women-journalists--and that the one is about as far removed organically from the other as a dog from a cat. And we treat these two species differently. They are not expected to suffer the same discipline, nor are they judged by the same standards. In Fleet Street femininity is an absolution, not an accident. The statement may be denied, but it is broadly true, and can easily be demonstrated.

      Such a condition of affairs is mischievous. It works injustice to both parties, but more particularly to the woman, since it sets an arbitrary limit to healthy competition, while putting a premium on mediocrity. Is there any sexual reason why a woman should be a less accomplished journalist than a man? I can find none. Admitted that in certain fields--say politics--he will surpass her, are there not other fields in which she is pre-eminent, fields of which the man will not so much as climb the gate? And even in politics women have excelled. There are at least three women-journalists in Europe to-day whose influence is felt in Cabinets and places where they govern (proving that sex is not a bar to the proper understanding of la haute politique); whereas the man who dares to write on fashions does not exist.

      * * *

      That women-journalists as a body have faults, none knows better than myself. But I deny that these faults are natural, or necessary, or incurable, or meet to be condoned. They are due, not to sex, but to the subtle, far-reaching effects of early training; and the general remedies, therefore, as I shall endeavour to indicate in subsequent chapters, lie to hand. They seem to me to be traceable either to an imperfect development of the sense of order, or to a certain lack of self-control. I should enumerate them thus:--

      First, a failure to appreciate the importance of the maxim: Business is business. The history of most civil undertakings comprises, not one Trafalgar, but many; and in journalism especially the signal Business is business--commercial equivalent of England expects--must always be flying at the mast-head. On ne badine pas avec l'amour--much less with a newspaper. Consider the effects of any lapse from the spirit of that signal in a profession where time is observed more strictly than in pugilism, where whatever one does one does in the white light of self-appointed publicity, where a single error or dereliction may ruin the prestige of years! Consider also the rank turpitude of such a lapse! Alas, women frequently do not consider these things. Some of them seem to have a superstition that a newspaper is an automaton and has a will-to-live of its own; that somehow (they know not how) it will appear, and appear fitly,

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