THE "SILLY season", when news dries up because of the absence on holidays of law-makers, law-interpreters and other movers and shakers, is as often noted in the breach as in the reality. When it does come true, for daily news columnists, like the staff ofThe Irish Times in London who were required to fill (literally) a column every day, the pressure of a quiet August could lead to desperation, as this column from 1883 demonstrates.
The news-mongers here are reduced to a state of actual privation. The centre of the distressed districts is of course Fleet Street, where it would be a case of actual famine but for the practical relief supplied by the voluntary correspondent and the mercenary aid of the penny-a-liner . We manage to subsist off the scraps these bring us but a glance at our daily sheets would show that we are woefully short in the matter of provender. It is declared the dullest season in the matter of sensation, real or romantic, which has overtaken us this long time, and of course the pressure of the destitution falls on the devoted crew whose calling is the collection, confection, and concoction of the daily history. We think of the time when country folks, before leaving London for home, would call into the “newsman’s” for a groat’s worth of his commodity to carry home, as may be read in the comedies of Jonson and Massinger, and we wonder how the paragraphist of that age made shift when we, with so many resources of civilisation ready to our hands, are so hard up.
Among the chief points of interest in our unspiced social chronicle we reckon first the fact that we have reached the era of St. Oyster’s Day. For some of us life is only worth living in so far as it gives opportunity for devouring what is called the “luscious bivalve”. We have maniacs of the mollusc among our gourmands who follow the oyster to the confines of navigation, as Lucullus followed the oyster’s first cousin. As soon as we touch that part of the calendar where the months begin to drop their r’s like Cockneys dropping their h’s, these fanatics forthwith quit the shores which yield the Whitstable and the Red Bank, and make for alien climes where their favourite food is only coming in. By this device they live all the year round in the pleasure of an open oyster season, and laugh at the lot of their less lucky brethren, consumed by the same desire, but obliged to stand till its enjoyment comes round with the swing of the spheres. Saturday will see in this town alone 10,000 temples crowded with 10 times 10,000 worshippers, every worshipper with his crustaceous idol in one hand, the pepper castor or vinegar cruet in his other hand, and true voracity playing round his parted lips. The indulgence grows dearer. I read today in a famous oyster house, “Best natives on Saturday, 4s per dozen.” ‘Tis but the first charge like the first step that costs. But 4s per dozen! “Picture it, think of it dissolute man. Eat of it, drink of it then if you can.” I see an evening paper says the close season in London is a fiction, and that one can enjoy his uninterrupted oyster throughout the year’s dull round. The Mackays and other millionaires can no doubt, but for the rabble, with incomes ranging from a couple of thousand downwards, the luxury is deadly, unless they are content with the poisonous Portugese or double-shelled assassin from Antwerp.
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