23 - By the Fireside: Margaret Oliphant's Armchair Commentaries

Summary

One does not expect to obtain from a ‘Commentary in an Easy-Chair’ much information as to either the objects, methods, or record of Trade-Unionism.

(Spectator 27 Sep 1890: 406)

THIS WAS THE OPINION of May E. Abraham, Honorary Treasurer of the Women's Trade Union League, who wrote to the editor of the Spectator in 1890, questioning the accuracy of Margaret Oliphant's commentary on female rag-sorters in one of her many opinion-pieces about women's employment and the plight of the poor. It was clearly dismissive of Oliphant's credentials as a social commentator who apparently derived her knowledge of trade unionism not from real-life experience, but through Walter Besant's Children of Gibeon (1886), a novel often cited approvingly by Oliphant in relation to discussion of East End ‘sweaters’ and needlewomen. Abraham's letter to the editor, headed ‘A Commentary in an Office-Chair,’ was clearly mocking Oliphant's ‘Easy Chair,’ suggestive as it was of the unprofessional bystander's take on issues too complicated for her to understand. Oliphant, for her part, was equally unimpressed by ‘the little trumpet from the Women's Trade-Union League’ (Spectator 4 Oct 1890: 439).

Margaret Oliphant (1828–97) wrote two sets of periodical ‘Commentaries’ between 1888 and 1890: ‘A Fireside Commentary’ for the St James's Gazette from January to June 1888, and ‘A Commentary from [changed to ‘in'] an Easy Chair’ for the Spectator from December 1889 to November 1890. Published toward the end of a long career in periodical journalism, which had been concentrated in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, and continued in that journal through her ‘Old Saloon’ series until 1892, these relaxed-sounding articles allowed Oliphant, as a ‘Looker-on’ (as she called herself in a later Blackwood's series), to range freely over topics which caught her fancy. The term ‘Looker-on’ in itself is significant for Oliphant, and will be further unpacked shortly. In the meantime, as Judith Van Oosterom has observed, both the Spectator and St James's Gazette series showed Oliphant ‘less on her guard,’ revealing ‘more sides to her character,’ and not all of them ‘particularly pleasant’ (2004: 247).

One purpose of this essay collection is to consider how women journalists made use of ‘space’ in periodicals as places where they could develop both their subjectivities and their opinions, especially on issues affecting women.