Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
“His pupil is a SURE CARD, a splendid woman, and a splendid singer. She
is so handsome that she might sing as much out of tune as Miss Ligonier,
and the public would forgive her; and sings so well, that were she as
ugly as the aforesaid Ligonier, the audience would listen to her. The
Ravenswing, that is her fantastical theatrical name (her real name is
the same with that of a notorious scoundrel in the Fleet, who invented
the Panama swindle, the Pontine Marshes' swindle, the Soap swindle--HOW
ARE YOU OFF FOR SOAP NOW, Mr. W-lk-r?)--the Ravenswing, we say, will do.
Slang has engaged her at thirty guineas per week, and she appears next
month in Thrum's opera, of which the words are written by a great ass
with some talent--we mean Mr. Mulligan.
“There is a foreign fool in the Flowers of Fashion who is doing his best
to disgust the public by his filthy flattery. It is enough to make
one sick. Why is the foreign beast not kicked out of the paper?”--The
Tomahawk, June 17.
The first three “anecdotes” were supplied by Mulligan to his paper,
with many others which need not here be repeated: he kept them up
with amazing energy and variety. Anecdotes of Sir George Thrum met you
unexpectedly in queer corners of country papers: puffs of the English
school of music appeared perpetually in “Notices to Correspondents” in
the Sunday prints, some of which Mr. Slang commanded, and in others over
which the indefatigable Mulligan had a control. This youth was the soul
of the little conspiracy for raising Morgiana into fame: and humble as
he is, and great and respectable as is Sir George Thrum, it is my belief
that the Ravenswing would never have been the Ravenswing she is but for
the ingenuity and energy of the honest Hibernian reporter.
It is only the business of the great man who writes the leading articles
which appear in the large type of the daily papers to compose those
astonishing pieces of eloquence; the other parts of the paper are
left to the ingenuity of the sub-editor, whose duty it is to select
paragraphs, reject or receive horrid accidents, police reports,
etc.; with which, occupied as he is in the exercise of his tremendous
functions, the editor himself cannot be expected to meddle. The fate
of Europe is his province; the rise and fall of empires, and the great
questions of State demand the editor's attention: the humble puff,
the paragraph about the last murder, or the state of the crops, or the
sewers in Chancery Lane, is confided to the care of the sub; and it
is curious to see what a prodigious number of Irishmen exist among the
sub-editors of London. When the Liberator enumerates the services of his
countrymen, how the battle of Fontenoy was won by the Irish Brigade, how
the battle of Waterloo would have been lost but for the Irish regiments,
and enumerates other acts for which we are indebted to Milesian heroism
and genius--he ought at least to mention the Irish brigade of the press,
and the amazing services they do to this country.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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