Revelations
SIR,—I feel that I must take up the cudgels in defence of the mid-Victorian ghosts of Grub Street which have by implication been besmirched in your columns by Mr David Frost when he wrote (July 22): 'There has never been a male columnist in this country who would merit that epitaph in New York: "Buried in the dirt he loved so well."' I must point out to Mr Frost that the inhabitants of Grub Street not only loved dirt, but revelled and wallowed in it; indeed, they went so far as to pay odoriferous tribute to it by exhibiting a marked aversion to the application of soap and water on the person. If Mr Frost were to take time off at the British Museum to pore through the yellowed pages of such effusions as the Tomahawk he would quickly realise that once again Victorian England had given the world a lead. Who can compare with the columnist of those days who, unfettered by any considerations of elementary good taste and decency, regaled his readers with piping-hot revelations of scandal in high life, with special reference to 'Teddy' and his Marlborough House Set?
The lives of those pioneers were not uneventful. Prison loomed before them if the law of criminal libel was involved, or a hospital bed after the application of a horse-whip by an outraged arm. According to Mr Wodehouse, one Pilbeam, who edited Society Spies, lived in constant peril, but nevertheless intrepidly refused to throw away his muck-rake. He was, of course, of a later epoch, but he boldly followed the trail others had blazed.
I entreat Mr Frost not to join in the fashionable cult of decrying England's past glories, but to give credit where credit is due—or should I write 'discredit'?
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