Note 8 — Chapter CXXIX · THE ADVERTISING AGENT.

“An obscure threepenny print, called the Daily News, published in its impression of November 2nd, an article purporting to be a notice of the leading works belonging to the sphere of Cheap Literature, but in which a vile, cowardly, and ruffian-like attack was made upon Mrs. Reynolds’s novel of ‘Gretna Green.’ The article alluded to appeared in the evening of the same date in the Express, a paper made up from the contents of the other, but of whose existence we were totally unaware until the occurrence of the matter in question. The attack, though evidently written by some silly boy, was so savage and malignant, and was made up of such a pack of atrocious lies, that it became necessary to take some kind of notice of it, although neither the Daily News nor its evening reflex enjoy a circulation or an influence sufficient to effect the amount of mischief which the dastardly scribe sought to accomplish. Our solicitors were accordingly instructed to write to the Editors of the News and Express, requiring a complete contradiction to the libel, or menacing an action as the alternative. The letter which our legal advisers despatched was a gentlemanly and talented remonstrance, which soon brought the stupid Editors of the Daily News and the Express to reason. Bradbury and Evans, the proprietors of those threepenny prints, shook in their shoes at the idea of an action, they already having enough law business on their hands in consequence of their treatment of Messrs. Powell and Wareing:—and, accordingly, the News and Express ate their own words, on Tuesday, Nov. 9th, in the following terms:—

“‘We have received a letter, protesting against Mrs. S. F. Reynolds’ work of “Gretna Green” being included in that list of popular works described as marked by “looseness, warmth of colouring in criminal scenes, and the false glow cast around guilty indulgencies.” We must admit that “Gretna Green” does not merit this; and that, whatever its faults it certainly contains nothing derogatory to the character or delicacy of a lady writer.’

“Now let our readers mark well the atrocity of the proceeding on the part of the News and the Express. They first denounce ‘Gretna Green’ in the strongest terms: they are afterwards compelled, by the fear 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 a miscreant’s part as to accuse a lady of writing with ’looseness,’ when he must have known the charge to be unfounded? He told a downright, deliberate, wilful lie: he has proclaimed himself, and likewise admitted himself to be, an abominable liar! And as such we denounce him.

“But of what value can criticisms of the News and Express be, when a contemptible scribe is thus allowed to make the columns of these prints the vehicle for his own beastly malignity? What authority can belong to a reviewer who is obliged to say on the 9th of November, ‘I was guilty of a foul, cowardly, and unjustifiable calumny against a lady’s character on the 2nd of November.’ And these two papers belong to men who are so very particular that they turned off their sub—editors. Messrs. Powell and Wareing, because, forsooth, these gentlemen gave insertion to a particular bankruptcy case which the bankrupt himself had written to implore Bradbury and Evans not to publish!

“We hope the contemptible slanderer who ‘does the criticisms’ for the News and Express will treat his readers (two grown-up persons and a small boy for the News, and the small boy without the grown-up persons for the Express) with an account of the origin, progress, and present condition of those threepenny things. If so, he must state how the News first came out at five-pence with the intention of smashing every thing,—how Charles Dickens was the man entrusted with the obstetric process of introducing this phenomenon to the world,—how froth was never so frothy, and vapouring never so 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 friend once spoke of his uppermost garment to Brummell, the ‘exquisite,’ laying his finger upon the collar thereof, said, ‘Do you call this thing a coat?’—and when the News first came out, people 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 seeing the utter folly of hoping to compete with the established 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 News to twopence-halfpenny! ‘Hurrah for the cheap newspaper press!’ 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 Athenæum office in Wellington Street to manage their paper for them. And such management as it has been! Mr. Dilk knows about as much of newspapers in general as he does of courtesy in the Athenæum in particular;—and Bradbury and Evans 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 News, 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 in all shapes and ways, with the hope of establishing it on some kind of basis or another;—and, after such a career, it fancies itself to be respectable and influential enough to undertake the duties of Mentor! But it has entrusted the office to a disgusting twaddler who scruples not to season his mawkish composition with diabolical lies, as a make-shift for ‘Attic salt.’ However, enough of this for the present:—we have compelled the News and the Express to acknowledge themselves to be slanderers;—but we are afraid that after all they have got the better of us, inasmuch as they probably provoked us only for the purpose of obtaining a gratuitous advertisement through the medium of any reply which might be made to them in The Miscellany.”—Reynolds’s Miscellany, No. 56.