“Nothing in it, my dear fellow,” he replied. “You’ve only to follow strictly the rule of our office, and your leader will come as easy as sand off a shovel.”
“And the rule?”
“All leaders,” he replied, “are divided into three paragraphs, and no paragraph must begin with the word ‘The.’ Simple, ain’t it? Eh, what?”
An answer which seemed rather to argue that, his extraordinary journalistic capacity notwithstanding, he regarded the Press with a sentiment not far removed from cynical contempt.
And yet to have taken a first place as a writer on a journal boasting such a staff as the Telegraph then possessed should have gratified the ambition of any ordinary man. Mr. (subsequently Sir) Edwin Arnold was really Editor, though nominally working under the direction of Mr. Edward Lawson (now Lord Burnham). A courteous and accomplished gentleman, Arnold will perhaps be remembered by posterity in respect of his “Light of Asia.” That poem was an awakening for the easy-going, slow-thinking, credulous, missionary-meeting-supporting British public, who had been taught from infancy that Buddha was a false god, and the centre of a foul and degrading faith. To Sir Edwin Arnold is mainly due the fact that in England to-day there are thousands who have some appreciation of the life and the doctrines of “the teacher of Nirvana and the Law.” Sir Edwin had the courage of his Oriental convictions. He chose as his second wife a Japanese lady.
But the writer who had given the Telegraph its peculiar cachet, and whose work was readily recognized by the readers of the paper, was George Augustus Sala. Sala, I maintain, was the best all-round journalist of his time. Nothing came amiss to him. Although the Saturday and Matthew might affect to sneer at the erudition of his “leaders,” it may be mentioned here that those superior critics sometimes mistook for Sala’s the work of Williams, whose scholarship was at least equal to that of the detractors. As a descriptive writer, Sala was quite without a rival, and the public soon “tumbled” to his piping. The early vogue of the “Telly” was due to his brilliant and unceasing series of pen-pictures. One saw the pageants that he wrote about. Coronations, royal functions, the marriage of Princes, great cathedral services—these incidents lived again in his vivid columns. Sala’s versatility was amazing. He wrote at least one remarkable novel; he illustrated some of his own humours; he is the author of a ballad—printed for private circulation only—of which Swift would have been proud. His “Conversion of Colonel Quagg” is one of the most humorous short stories ever written. He wrote an excellent burlesque for the Gaiety Theatre. His articles on Hogarth, contributed to the Cornhill, at the suggestion of Thackeray, exhibit him as an art critic of insight and of profound technical knowledge. His lectures on the conflict between North and South, delivered on his return from his mission as Special Correspondent during the American War, drew the town. He was a fine linguist, and, at a time when the art of after-dinner speaking was still held in some repute, he was easily first among many rivals. In the preface to one of his books, he says of the proprietors of the paper with which he was identified: “They accorded me the treatment of a gentleman and the wages of an Ambassador.” It is pleasant to be able to reflect that, however high the scale of remuneration may have been, Sala was always worth a bit more than his pay.
There is one phrase of Sala’s which, by means of quotation, has become a household word. “‘Sir,’ said Dr. Johnson, ‘let us take a walk down Fleet Street,’” is piously repeated even by well-informed literary persons as a saying of the great dictionary-maker duly recorded in Boswell’s “Life.” Johnson and Boswell were both innocent of it. The saw was one of Sala’s harmless forgeries, and was used by him as the motto of Temple Bar when he edited that magazine. There appeared in Punch one week a clever skit entitled “Egoes of the Week.” This was a travesty of an article which Sala was then contributing to the Illustrated London News under the title of “Echoes of the Week.” The parody was merciless, and, as some thought, malicious. The weaknesses of Sala’s manner were rendered with laughable exaggeration. His peculiarities of diction were ruthlessly imitated and emphasized. Some of his friends hoped to see him incensed, and looked forward eagerly for reprisals. But Sala took the attack lying down, emulating the spirit of his own Colonel Quagg. And the reason for this evidence of magnanimity under attack somewhat puzzled his associates until it was discovered that the Punch parody was written by Sala himself!
Godfrey Turner was another of the “handy-men” of the Telegraph. He had not that élan in style which characterized his colleague Sala, but he was a most agreeable essayist, and turned out some extremely neat vers de société. His song, supposed to be written by Boswell on Dr. Johnson, has genuine humour. Boswell sets out sober in the first stanza; he becomes merry as he proceeds; when he gets to the last verse he is drunk, and blurts out his real opinion of the great lexicographer. That catastrophic verse ran something like this, I think:
“‘The man that makes a pun,’ says he,
‘Would e’en commit a felony.
And hanged he deserves to be’—
Says (hic) that old fool Doctor Johnson.”
Turner was a bit of a purist, and sought always for the fittest word; and he was as particular in his dress as in his “copy.” He was a stickler for “good form,” and sometimes, when engaged on a mission, would offer a gentle hint to some eager correspondent whose manner in public offended his fastidious taste. Sometimes the hint was taken in good part; sometimes it was resented. On one occasion it secured for poor Godfrey a retort which covered him for a moment with ridicule. It happened in this way: