REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 151, 27 June 1914, Page 15

REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNALIST

Mention is made of Edmund Yates in the latest instalment of Sir Henry Lucy's "Sixty Years in the Wilderness" (Cornhill Magazine). The episode of Yates's imprisonment in Holloway for a libel printed in the World is recalled, and we are told that although he characteristically made light of it, the experience affected him severely, mentally and plfysica.lly, and undoubtedly hastened his death, lie wrote to me (says Sir H. Lucy) from the Grande Hotel D'Albe, Champs Elysees, Paris, Easter Sunday, 1893: — "My dear Lucy,— l am greatly indebted to you for your kind and practical sympathy. But you were always a staunch and loyal friend. Fourteen months under the harrow, and what Mr. Micawbor called the 'final pulverisation' by the L.C.J. nearly broke me down. My nerves were unstrung, so I buried off for change. I have picked up wonderfully since I have been here, and have succeeded, pro tern, at least,, in dropping my burden. We have oceans of sympathy, ' and 'not without hope we suffer and 'we mourn.' Sir George Lewis is somewhat surprised about the appeal. In any, case I can never forget those who have stood by me at this time.— Very sincerely yours, Edmund Yates.' 1 It is a grim coincidence that Lord Coleridge died a week or two after Yates stepped off the stage of life ill London. The Lord Chief Justice once had the editor of the World under his thumb, and pressed it down upon him with a weight that some people besides Yates regarded as vindicative. Afterwards Yates had his opportunity of reprisal, and magnanimously declined to avail himself of it. Some years later Lord Coleridge suffered a domestic trouble which, boisterously breaking through the private circle, became fair game for the daily ,or weekly commentator. Ho naturally expected that Yates would, pay off old and deeply seared scores. When he held his hand. Lord Coleridge wrote a letter in which he not only acknowledged his generosity, but admitted that he had been too severe in his remarks and sentence in the libel suit.