The English reader would ask at once, how do we know that the parlor maid is pretty? We don't. But our artistic sense tells us that she ought to be. Pretty parlor maids are the only ones we take any interest in: if an ugly parlor maid poisoned her employer's family we should hang her. Then again, the English reader would say, how do we know that the man is a clubman? Have we ascertained this fact definitely, and if so, of what club or clubs is he a member? Well, we don't know, except in so far as the thing is self-evident. Any man who has romance enough in his life to be poisoned by a pretty housemaid ought to be in a club. That's the place for him. In fact, with us the word club man doesn't necessarily mean a man who belongs to a club: it is defined as a man who is arrested in a gambling den;
or fined for speeding a motor or who shoots another person in a hotel corridor. Therefore this man must be a club man. Having settled the heading, we go on with the text:
"Brooding over love troubles which she has hitherto refused to divulge under the most grilling fusillade of rapid-fire questions shot at her by the best brains of the New York police force, Miss Mary De Forrest, a handsome brunette thirty-six inches around the hips, employed as a parlor maid in the residence of Mr. Spudd Bung, a well-known clubman forty-two inches around the chest, was arrested yesterday by the flying squad of the emergency police after having, so it is alleged, put four ounces of alleged picrate of potash into the alleged coffee of her employer's family's alleged breakfast at their residence on Hudson Heights in the most fashionable quarter of the metropolis. Dr. Slink, the leading fashionable practitioner of the neighbourhood who was immediately summoned said that but for his own extraordinary dexterity and promptness the death of the whole family, if not of the entire entourage, was a certainty. The magistrate in committing Miss De Forrest for trial took occasion to enlarge upon her youth and attractive appearance: he castigated the moving pictures severely and said that he held them together with the public school system and the present method of doing the hair, directly responsible for the crimes of the kind alleged."
Now when you read this over you begin to feel that something big has happened. Here is a man like Dr. Slink, all quivering with promptness and dexterity. Here is an inserted picture, a photograph, a brick house in a row marked with a cross (+) and labelled "The Bung Residence as. it appeared immediately after the alleged outrage." It isn't really. It is just a photograph that we use for this sort of thing and have grown to like. It is called sometimes:--"Residence of Senator Borah" or "Scene of the Recent Spiritualistic Manifestations"
or anything of the sort. As long as it is marked with a cross (+) the reader will look at it with interest.
In other words we make something out of an occurrence like this.
It doesn't matter if it all fades out afterwards when it appears that Mary De Forrest merely put ground allspice into the coffee in mistake for powdered sugar and that the family didn't drink it anyway. The reader has already turned to other mysteries.
But contrast the pitifully tame way in which the same event is written up in England. Here it is:
SUBURBAN ITEM
"Yesterday at the police court of Surbiton-on-Thames Mary Forrester, a servant in the employ of Mr. S. Bung was taken into custody on a charge of having put a noxious preparation, possibly poison, into the coffee of her employer's family. The young woman was remanded for a week."
Look at that. Mary Forrester a servant?
How wide was she round the chest? It doesn't say. Mr. S. Bung? Of what club was he a member? None, apparently. Then who cares if he is poisoned? And "the young woman!" What a way to speak of a decent girl who never did any other harm than to poison a club man. And the English magistrate! What a tame part he must have played: his name indeed doesn't occur at all: apparently he didn't enlarge on the girl's good looks, or "comment on her attractive appearance,"
or anything. I don't suppose that he even asked Mary Forrester out to lunch with him.
Notice also that, according to the English way of writing the thing up, as soon as the girl was remanded for a week the incident is closed. The English reporter doesn't apparently know enough to follow Miss De Forrest to her home (called "the De Forrest Residence" and marked with a cross, +) . The American reporter would make certain to supplement what went above with further information of this fashion.
"Miss De Forrest when seen later at her own home by a representative of The Eagle said that she regretted very much having been put to the necessity of poisoning Mr. Bung. She had in the personal sense nothing against Mr. Bung and apart from poisoning him she had every respect for Mr. Bung. Miss De Forrest, who talks admirably on a variety of topics, expressed herself as warmly in favour of the League of Nations and as a devotee of the short ballot and proportional representation."
Any American reader who studies the English Press comes upon these wasted opportunities every day. There are indeed certain journals of a newer type which are doing their best to imitate us. But they don't really get it yet. They use type up to about one inch and after that they get afraid.
I hope that in describing the spirit of the English Press I do not seem to be writing with any personal bitterness. I admit that there might be a certain reason for such a bias. During my stay in England I was most anxious to appear as a contributor to some of the leading papers. This is, with the English, a thing that always adds prestige.
To be able to call oneself a "contributor" to the Times or to Punch or the Morning Post or the Spectator, is a high honour. I have met these "contributors" all over the British Empire. Some, I admit, look strange. An ancient wreck in the back bar of an Ontario tavern (ancient regime) has told me that he was a contributor to the Times:
