London at the End of the Century:A Book of Gossip
a Beckett, Arthur William
1900
THE POSITION OF THE PRESS
WHAT perhaps will strike an intelligent foreigner-- and every foreigner who visits the metropolis is considered intelligent--on his entrance to London at the end of the century, will be the hoardings and their placards. He will find these records of the time of very great merit in many directions, for now-a-days our bill-posting has frequently the artistic assistance of eminent supporters of the Royal Academy. He will learn that the modern Babylon has numberless theatres, hotels, and newspapers. If he has visited the old ground before-say twenty years ago, for so important an incident as a journey to England is not to be undertaken too frequently- he will notice that what were once units have become scores. If he is standing opposite the advertisement | |
2 | station in front of the Hotel Cecil, he will only have to right-about turn and take a diagonal march into the Adelphi theatre to see in the saloon of that popular place of entertainment a painting of a hoarding by the late John Parry, bearing the artist's signature, dated . Comparing the actuality with the canvas, he will readily understand the enormous progress that has been made during the last fifty years. At the time when the famous entertainer, who found a successor in the late Corney Grain, was singing for a livelihood and using his palette as a distraction, railway travelling was in its babyhood, and marine excursions chiefly represented by a very primitive steam boat, built by the General Steam Navigation Company, and bound for Margate. A few weekly papers suggested that journalism was also in its infancy. In we had no ; The existed, but its present pictorial contemporaries had to be created. During the century which has come to its last days I have played many parts; civil servant, barrister, private secretary, playwright, and novelist; but the chief role that I have filled since the years closed over my boyhood has been journalistic. Under these circumstances it is not unnatural that, when writing of London at the end of the century, , and all that means to a pressman, should first attract my attention. |
