The Mysteries of London, Vol. IV — page 82: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

wn ee LC DIATE I tt ET EMSA LS SO SO Ay mS Nar em ve me ~— wa ee al a a a ne re ees i TNO MYSTURILS OF LONDON. 5 Lv 4 CP EY cogs wh tek CHAPTER CXXX. ‘rocritical, according to circumstances, in its literary icl+—and wishy-washy in the extreme in its 2: der. ~ Well, ] sm excessively obliged to you for this most us. ful warning,” observed Mr. Bubbleton Styles. “You live nothing to say against the Weekly Dispatch— the Sendo Limes—Bell’s Life in London——” «All good papers!” exclaimed the advertising agent. “ But here is a list of those metropolitan and pr wincial journals in which I should recommend you tu advertise.” “I place myself entirely in your hands.” answered the promoter of the grandest rainvay scheme ever de- viscd: and, thrusting his hands into his breeches pockets, he rattled a little silver and a great many halfpence, saying, “ Shall I give you a hundred or so in advance? or will you send in the account--——” “ Pray do not think of offering any sum in advance, Mir. Styles—my dear Mr. Styles! cried the agent. “I¢ is but a trifle: threo hundred guineas will cover the outlay for this first batch of advertisements—and Iwill send in my little account to the secretary when the Board meets.” “ Very good,” rejoined the promoter ;—and, having come to this excellent understanding, the two gentle- inen parted—Mr. Styles betaking himself to Garra- way’s Coffee-house, where he ate his lunch standing at the bar, and afterwards returning to his office at Crosby [all Chambers. PERDITA. A WEES had elapsed since the arrival of Mrs. and Miss Vitzhardinge in the great metropolis; and as yet they appeared to be no nearer to an acquaintanceship with Charles Hatfield than they were on the day when they first beheid him issue from Lord Etlingham’s mansion ; —for that it was he whom they had seen on the oc- race alluded to, the mother had satisfactorily ascer- ained. Indeed, tie old woman had not been idle. Every evening, for a couple of hours, did she watch in the immediate vicinity of the Earl’s dwelling to obtain an interview with the young man: but he did not appear to go out after dusk. Mrs. Fitzhardinge accordingly began to think of changing her tactics, and endeavouring to catch him in the day-time, when fortune at last favoured her views ;—for on the eighth night of her loiterings in Pall Mall, she had the satisfaction of sceing him sally forth shortly after nine o'clock. Unhesitatingly accosting him, she said, “Mr, Hat- fieid, will you accord me your attention for a few moments?” The young man turned towards her, and beheld a very ugly, plainly-attired, old lady: -he nevertheless answered her respectfully, because she had addressed him in a manner denoting genteel breeding. We phenomenon to the world,—how froth was never so frothy, and vapouring never 60 vapoury, as when the bills, placards, and advertisements appeared,—and how the mountain at last brought forth a mouse! In fact, no failure was ever more miserable—more ludicrous—more contemptible than that of the Daily News. When a fricud once spoke of his uppermost garment to Brummell, the ‘exquisite,’ laying his finger upon the collar thereof, said, ‘Do you call this thing 4 coat ?’—and when the News first came out, pcople held it up between the tips of their forefinger and thumb, and asked each other innocently, ‘ Do you call this thing a newspaper ?’ Well, after continuing remarkably sickly for some time, and sceing the utter folly of hoping to compete with the esta- blshed daily newspapers, Bradbury and Evans—dear, kind, worthy souls !—said one morning to each other, * This will never do: the public will not be gulled—we must really sell our wares at what they are worth ;'—and so down went the price of the Nets to twopence-halfpenny! ‘Hurrah for the cheap newspaper presst{’ vociferated they who now affect to look down with contempt on cheap literature altogether : and forthwith they fetch Mr. Dilk all the way from the Atheneum office in Wellington Street te manage their paper for them. And such management as it has been! Mr. Dilk knows about es much of newspapers in general as he docs of courtesy in the Atienaum in particular ;—and Bradbury and Lvans very soon found that a twopenny-halfpenny daily thing was ‘no go.’ The price is accordingly raised to threepence ; and, just to eke out by hook and by crook, the Express is issued as an evening paper, its contents being precisely those of the Hers, with perhaps half-a-dozen lines of new matter just to make a show under the head of ‘ Latest Intelligence. Thus has the Daily News been tinkered about m all shapes and ways, with the hope of establishing it on some kind of basis or another ;—and, after such a career, it fancics itself to be respectable and influential enough to undertake the dutics of Mentor! But it bas entrusted the office toa dis- gusting twaddler who scruples not to scason his mawkish composition with diabolical lies, as a make-shift for * Attic salt.’ However, enough of this for the present:—we have compelled the Nevs and the Lzpress to acknowledge them- selves to be slandercrs;—but we aro afraid that after all they have got the better of ts, inasmuch as they probably provoked us onjy far the purpose of obtaining @ gratutieus advertisement through the medium of any reply which might be made to them in Tue Miscreinany.”—Reynolds’s Lfis- cellany, Vo, 56 law Dueine-s on their hands in consequence of their treat- ment of Messcs. Powell and Warcing ;—and, accordingly, the Vers and Lrpress ate their own words, on Tuesday, Nov. 9th, in the following terms :— ‘*We have received a letter, protestine against Mrs. S. F. Reynoids’s work of “ Gnrtna Green” being included in the hist of popular works described as marked by ‘* looseness, warmth of colouring in criminal scenes, and the false glow cart around guilty induicgencies.’ We must admit that ““Gurrna Green” docs not merit this; and that, whutever its faults, it certainly contains nothing derogatory to the charactcr or delicacy of a lady writer.’ “Now Jct our readers mark well the atrocity of the pro- cecding on the part of the Ners and the Erpress. They first denounce ‘GRETNA Gnern’ in the strongest terms: they are afterwards compelled, by the year of law proceedings, to ‘admit that Gretna Green” does not merit this,’ and that * it contains nothing derogatory to the character or delicacy of a lady writer” Then how dared the wretched scribe to act such & miscreant’s part as to accuse a lady of writing with ‘looseness,’ when he must have known the charge to be un- founded? Ile told a downright, deliberate, wilful lie: he hfs proclaimed himself, and likewise udmitted himself to be, an. abominable Jiar! Andas such we denounce him. Dut of what value can erlticisms of the ews and Lerpress be, when a contemptible scribe is thus allowed to make the columns of these prints the velticle for his own beastly inulignity? What anthority can belong to a reviewer who is obliged to say on the 9th of November, ‘1 -vas guilty of a foul, cowardly, and nnjustifiable calumny against a lady’s churacter on the 2nd of November.’ And these two papers Lelong to men who are £0 very particular that they turned off their sub-editors, Messrs. Powell and Warclug, because, forsooth, these gentlemen gayo insertion to a particular bankruptcy case which the bankrupt himself had written to implore Bradbury and Evans zoi to publish! ““We hopo the contemptible slanderer who ‘does the etiticisms’ for the News and Lerpress will treat hiis readers (two grown-up persons and a small boy for the Weves, and the small boy without the grown-up persons for the Z-xpress) with an account of the origin, progress, and present condi- tion of those threepenny things. If so, he must state how the Nes first came out at fivepence with the intention of srnashing every thing,—how Charles Dickens was the man entrusted with the obsteteric process of introdycing this CON