“i work very quickly.”
The Picture Magazine, which started with this year, is likely to be nearly as successful as The Strand. After we had discussed the position and the prospects of the new paper which Mr. Newnes has started to fill the place in the Radical journalistic ranks of the P.M.G., we drifted into a general conversation on his habits of life, his occupations, and the varied qualities which go to the making of a successful business man, the future of popular journalism, and the like. “How do you manage to keep all your irons hot?” I asked my host; “you edit three papers, you are a member of Parliament, you build railways up the cliffs of popular watering-places, you play games, you do everything. How is it all done, pray, Mr. Newnes? What is the secret of your life?” “Well,” he slowly replied, and with a certain shy hesitation, for though prompt and energetic enough in actual business, no more modest man, or one more reluctant to speak of himself and his doings walks this earth—“well, though I don’t want to boast about it, yet the simple fact is, I work very quickly, and I get through my business much faster than most men do. I make up my mind, form my plans, and arrive at conclusions very rapidly. With regard to my editorial work, for instance, all ‘copy’ for the papers is sifted for me at the office, then it is sent up here, where I work three days a week, selecting that which I think shall go in, and marking it for press. I dictate the ‘Answers to Correspondents’ page to my private secretary. This page always takes up three hours a week. I get through my editorial, parliamentary and business work, and manage to get a good deal of leisure besides. Golf, tennis and chess take up my leisure. When I am in the country I have all my work sent there. The fact is, I work hard and I play hard, and I believe each is equally necessary for good health and real happiness. Curiously enough, I do not believe that naturally I am of a very systematic nature, but so much business forces me to be so.”
the tennis court.
“And as to the future of journalism generally, and of such papers as yours in particular, Mr. Newnes?” I queried. “With the spread of education and the increase of Board Schools, there is a great change coming over the masses, is there not?” “I think this,” he replied, “that many of the papers of the day are developing too much the gambling and lottery spirit, which I regard as a very evil one, and would not for a moment countenance. I think, as you say, that the Board Schools have immensely increased the number of buyers of papers of this kind, and it is a great source of satisfaction to me that I should have inaugurated a popular paper which should be taken largely by the masses, and which is absolutely pure. When I came out with Tit-Bits there was not a single popular paper containing fun or jokes or anything of the kind—except the illustrated ones—but what relied more or less upon prurient matter to tickle the fancies of prurient minds. Besides, my idea is that, just at present, the Board Schools tend to a certain hardness and narrowness of character, which is perhaps softened down by the development by these papers of the lighter side of human nature. Tit-Bits, I have reason to know, has in many cases induced the study of some science or literature on the part of a man or boy who has read some interesting ‘tit-bit’ on one of these subjects, and has desired, naturally enough, to know more about it.”
the conservatory.
in the billiard-room.