“Washington Letter Writers”
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“WASHINGTON LETTER WRITERS.”
There are many peculiarities which contribute to the formation of that character and identity especially its own which is enjoyed by our National Capital, and not the least noteworthy among them is the fact that it is the resting place of the fraternity known as “Washington Letter Writers.”1 These gentry are sui generis, and to be found nowhere else than at the City of Magnificent Distances. While many of them are gentlemen of talent and ability, who have achieved high reputations for themselves and reflected great credit and honor upon the journals with which they have been connected, there is a large class of whom—either personally or as they are developed in the vocation they pursue—no community has especial reason to be proud. It is to this class, who alone have brought, in some degree, a stigma upon a profession as honorable as ever man practised under heaven, that we propose to call attention, that our readers may be able to separate the chaff from the wheat.
They are a perfect Falstaffian2 array—comprising and including in their ranks every shade and variety of lobby member, disgraced clergymen, used up whisky worn journalists, broken down political hacks, place and job hunters, discarded officials, and hangers-on any and everywhere where thrift may follow fawning. What can be expected of the effusions from the pens of such men, other than that they should partake in a large degree of the characteristics of their authors! It is idle to look for a silk purse from a sow’s ear—a homely saying, but a true one, and never more so than in its application to the case in point.
Quite in accordance with the eternal fitness of things, therefore, we find the main ingredients which go to make up the productions of this class of letter writers generally to be—a brief enumeration of some uninteresting facts which the telegraph has already patented, a mess of frivolous twaddle as to the motives and movements of the leading statesmen, some extravagant puffery of the smaller fry who otherwise would never be heard of, a rehash of current gossip and scandal, a paragraph or so of jejune criticism of political measures, minute and misty glimpses into the future, given with the confidence of Prescience itself, and windy vituperation of those who decline to recognize their claims to decency or a dinner, or who may belong to a political party they are hired to denounce. This, we repeat, is the staple of much of the newspaper columns headed “Washington Correspondence,” and what curiosities of American literature they exhibit, to be sure!
In the pursuit of their vocation, there is a harmony in all their operations that would be really beautiful were it not so disagreeably dirty. Eaves-dropping where men are engaged in private conversation, listening at doors ajar, open key-holes or window crevices, pumping out weak officials half drowned in copious potations of whiskey, and the like—these are never-failing means of obtaining information to which your practised Washington letter writer of the class we are describing never scruples to resort.
To look at the host of journals all over the country who ostentatiously parade the fact of their possessing one of these valuable contributors to their columns, one would suppose the name of the fraternity was legion, and yet most wofully would he be deceived who accepted this fact as a reliable indication of their exact number. In truth, it scarcely affords tolerable data upon which to base an attempt at approximation even. Among the other peculiarities which attach to these scribblers, is the Protean facility which they possess of presenting themselves to the public in as many shapes as they can secure a demand for. The supply has never yet, that we have heard, failed to meet the demand. To such a proficiency have they attained in this direction that most of them will readily undertake, and succeed in performing, too, the labor of supplying half a dozen journals of as many different shades of political sentiment, or partizan preference, with all the pabulum in the way of “Washington Correspondence” of the kind they prepare, that their readers can daily stomach: Anti slavery, Proslavery, Whig, Democrat, Know Nothing or Republican—it is all one to them—all is fish which appears to their net. To set down and write to the “Roaring River Republican” a complete exposure of the disgraceful motives influencing the Democratic Senator Smith to-day, and follow it on the next in the columns of the “Daily Democrat” with a slashing refutation of the slanderous and malicious charges against the Senator aforesaid, is as easy a task for your regular “Washington letter writer,” as to eat his dinner—at some one else’s expense.
Such is the character of some of those who assume to enlighten the people as to what is going on at the seat of national government. It is no fancy sketch, but will be recognised by many as a picture most true and real. Is it to be wondered at, then, that the land should be eternally rife with false rumors, when such blind guides are tolerated?