GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXII, Issue 7270, 7 March 1885, Page 5

GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA.

This famous litterateur will arrive by the mail boat from San Franciflco to-morrow. Mr. Sala has been described as the prince of English journalists. Certainly no English journalist possesses so wide a reputation, or is known by name in so many quarters of the world. His success is pre-eminent, proverbial. To paraphrase the celebrated dictum of Lord Macaulay, Tennyson is not more decidedly the first of living poets, Wilkie Collins is not more decidedly the first of living novelists, Gladstone is not more decidedly the first of living orators, than Sala ia the first of living journalists. There are many men on the Press whose attainments arc more profound, whose scholarship may be more brilliant, and whose wit may be more sparkling. But, as has been remarked by one who is himself a journalist of no small distinction, Mr. Sala combines brilliancy, wit, and ability of a high order, and combines them in such a serviceable form that he is to-day one of the most popular of English writers, and as a newspaper contributor without a rival in his own special line. Dr. Russell and Mr. Archibald Forbes may sketch a field of battle in a way that Mr. Sala could not touch ; but fields of battle do not, happily, often call for the descriptive powers of a Russell or a Forbes ; and, except upon a field of battle, Mr. Sala is practically a man without a rival. His readiness, his picturesque sensibility, his aptitude for vivid and graphic writing, his great powers of expression, and his still greater powers of illustration, constitute him the beau-ideal of a journalist. Art, literature, fiction, antiquities, are &11 alike to him. There is no subject that he is not prepared to write a column upon at ten minutes' notice — a comet, a speech, a coup d'etat, a crisis in Paris or Pekia ; and there are not many subjects upon which, if he takes up his pen at ten o'clock, he caunot by midnight turn out a chatty and readablo column for the next morning. Yet Mr. Sala is wont to tell his friends that he took to journalism; because he failed, only comparatively, of course, in literature. But it -was a good thing for journalism, whatever it may have been for literature, when he joined the staff of the Daily Telegraph. It was not then able to boast, as it does now, of possessing " the largest circulation in the world." It was a poor and struggling print. Colonel Sleigh, its original proprietor, was an able and speculative man ; but he had not the qualities necessary to run a newspaper successfully. The Telegraph sank into debt and difficulties. The principal creditor was Mr. Joseph Moses Levy, a printer in Shoe Lane. He took it over as a bad debt. No one thought it was worth having, But the Levys and their relations, the Law.«ons, possessed resources which Colonel Sleigh never commanded. They had also the sagacity and enterprise that were needed quite as much as money itself. Mr. Levy reduced the price of the paper from 2d to Id, secured all the beei telegraphic news, strengthened its parliamentary corps, and secured as contributors and critics men who were at least equal to those upon the staff of either of its contemporaries—Thornton Hunt, George Augustus Sala, Edwin Arnold, Sutherland Edwards, Godfrey Turner. The Daily Telegraph was made. Its career since then has been an unbroken success. Its profits amount to-day to considerably over £100,000 a-year. Mr. Edward Levy (he added the name of Lawaon after his uncle's death), the son of old Joseph Moses,, who took the Telegraph as a bad debt, is now rich beyond the dreams of avarice. Some two years ago he beeams the purchaser, at a coat of £170,000, of Hall Barn Park,near Beaconsfield, in Buckinghamshire, once the seat of the poet Waller. He has also a splendid town house in Arlington-street, which contains the room painted by Hogarth in his " Marriage a la Mode." Mr. Edmund Yates suggested Sala to the Levys, and he was forthwith enlisted on the staff. Previous to that he had been leading a somewhat Bohemian kind of existence. His mother was a public singer, and, as he tells his friends, he was born in a theatre. If he did not act, he painted scenery ; next he became an engraver ; next a magazine writer, and so on, until he joined the Telegraph. It has brought oat his powers as perhaps no other journal could have done; and he in turn has done more than any other man towards popularising the Telegraph. His graphic and industrious pen has produced for it .miles of manuscript upon every conceivable snbjest under the' sun. He has written for it in almost all lands, and about almost all countries. With "the wages of an ambassador and the treatment of a gentleman" he bas travelled for it to and from the uttermost parts of the earth, describing festivals, royal marriages, and state funerals ; and always describing them with point and brilliancy. In addition to his correspondence he has held a foremost place among the leader writers of the paper, and his social articles have helped to give the Telegraph an individuality which has greatly contributed to its success. ■ The Daily Telegraph possesses many able men upon its staff, men who have made politics the study of their lives, scholars, sportsmen, special correspondents of the most diversified and distinguished attainments, picturesque writers of all sorts, critics who have neither failed in literature nor art. But even among men of this calibre, the most strikingand conspicuous, figure is that of the man who, with a vivacity and energy that have never been surpassed, ha 3 travelled, over the greater part of the world as the special correspondent of the Telegraph, and is now, at 56, to be found in his study most mornings when in London turning out articles and critiques upon the topics of social life, of art or literature, marked by all the freshness and vigour of 35. The secret of immediate success in a public writer is said to be mediocre ideas and a taking style. Mr. Sala's ideas are by no means mediocre ; nor can they be said to be always strikingly original. But no one can dispute the attractiveness, the freshness, and piquancy of his style. As to hia success, whatever its explanation may be, it is conspicuous and indisputable. He has written books which constitute a library in themselves—works of travel, works of fiction, burlesques, biography. These works are to be found upon every bookstall and in every circulating library. Many of these have gone through .a succession of editions. But Mr. Sala, with all his diversified gifts, is pre-eminently and above all a journalist—a man endowed by" nature with the precise gifts that are needed in a special correspondont and in a writer of leading articles ; and it is as a leader writer and special correspondent that he will be best remembered. But he is something more. Ha is, what so few journalists are, a delightful conversationalist and fluent public speaker. Douglas Jerrold, who said so many bright and witty things at table, could say nothing when derated a few feet above it. He once broke down ignoiniciously in response to a toaet. Air. Sala scem3 to be just as much at home on his legs au at his desk. He is one of the most methodically industrious of writers. When ho is in London he writes a leader for the Telegraph every week day, and mostly an editorial note or leaderette as well. He has written over seven thousand leading articles for the Daily Telegraph, besides countless art criticisms and other matter. He does the "Echoes" and the "Playhouses" for the Illustrated London News. It is seldom ho haa not a book in hand, and he is an insatiable roader. Himself a magazine of knowledge on every conceivable subject—tho more recondite the more he is iikely to know all about it —he has subsidiary magazines in a perfect arsenal of common-place books, each with . elaborate cross index. His "workshop," on the second floor of his house in Mecklenburg Square, is a big room, whose walls are all shelves loaded with books of reference. He will overwhelm you with authorities in the twinkling of an eye. An art critic and au art collector for thirty years past, his house is a museum of art and curious things. Be does not insure his life; he knows a better plan, he argues, for making provision for hia beautiful and admirable wife in case he should pro-decease her. He spends his spare money in judicious purchases of rare articles of " bigotry and virtue." As a connoisseur he is never, at fault, and he relies on the steady growth in valuo of these artistic things as the years roll on. Mr. Sala is a compact, square-shouldered man, with a strong, loud laugh, a swarthy rubicund vieage, a remarkable nose, and a red tie ! Mr. Sala goes on by the mail boat to Sydney, but will return to New Zealand at a later period. His object in visiting the colonies is to lecture, and as he frankly admits " to make a big pile of money so that on my return to England I may be able to retire from professional life." This, however, we take to be one of Mr. Sala's jokes. We know at least that he has refused some very lucrative offers from Australasian journals on the plea that his visit to the colonies is a I

holiday from journalism. The lectures to be delivered in Australia and New Zealand are entitled "Culture, Custom, and Cookery," •' Raree Shows and Pageauts," and " The Pulpit, the Presa, the Forum, and the Stage. Wβ hope that Mr Sala will succeed in making "a big pile," and realising hie ambition of retiring from the laborious days of professional journalism. Mr. Archibald Forbes cherished a similar dream, but he was unfortunate. Mr. Sala hopes to pro6t by his confre're'e experience. " Whatever money I may make," he eays, " will be safely invested in the three per cents, for I do not want to lose it, as Forbes lost his, by mad speculation."