THE LONDON TIMES IN ITS GLORY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2817, 11 March 1908, Page 86

THE LONDON TIMES IN ITS GLORY.

(T.P.'s Weekly.) [The revolution which is now occurring in the management of the Times newspaper recalls the great days when it knew not change or fear. A picture of the Times in 1858, was contributed by that great journalist, George Augustus Sala, to the Welcome Guest of May 8, 1858.— T.P.] " <w The office of The Times and Evening Mail is, as all civilircd men should know, situated in Printing Houee Square and Playhouse Yard, in the parish of St. Anne's, Blackfriars, in the City of London. Printing House Square is to me interesting at all times of the day and right. In tho afternoon, the dullest, of :tts existence, when the compositors are gone away, the editors not home, the last number of the last edition of the day's sheet printed, and the mighty steamengine for a time hushed, 1 wander into its piecincts often; make some small pretexts of taking out a slip of paper, and wending my way towards the advertising department ; but soon retrace my 6teps, ana, to tell the truth, irune about the square in such a suspicious and prowling mannev that if they kept any spoons on the premises I should most probably be ordered off by the compositor on duty. Look over the door of the advertisement office. Above that portal is a handsome marble slab, a votive tablet, in commemoration of a great victory The Times once gamed — not a legal victory, but one of power and influence with the people, and especially with the commercial community, by its exposure, anent the trial of Bogle v. Lawson, of the most extensive and remarkable fraudulent conspiracy ever brought to light in the mercantile world. The Times refused to be reimbursed for the heavy costs with which they had been saddled in defending the action brought by Mr Bogle, a banker of Florence, against the publisher of The Times, Mr Lawson. But a subscription amounting to £2700 had been raised, and thi6 handsome sum, which The Times proprietors refused to accept, v/as at last laid out in the foundation of two scholarships at Christ's Hospital and the City of London Schools lor the benefit of pupils of these institutions proceeding to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. It is, however, as the shades of evening gather round the " Cour dcs Miracles " which encompasses The Times office that the- scene which it and the square present becomes more interesting. For early in the evening the giant steam-engine begins to throb, and, as the hour advances, the monster is fed with reams on reams of stout white paper, which he devours as though they were so many wafers. It gets late in Printing House Square ; the tub-editors have been for some time in their rooms ; the ineffable mysteries of The Times editors, proprietors, Cabinet Ministers, lord chancellors, generate of the Jesuits, for aught I know, have arrived from their club in broughams and in cabs. Who shall tell? That stout goodhumoured looking gentleman with the umbrella and the ecclesiastical neck-cloth may be the writer of the comic leading articles, just arrived with his copy. No ; h« has vainly tried the door of the advertising office, which is closed. Perhaps he it only X.Y.Z., who, in the second column, entreats P.Q.R. to return to his disconsolate parents ; or the inventor of some rew tooth powder with a Greek name ; or the discoverer of the " fourteen-shil-iings trousers." It is getting later, and the windows of the great office are all blazing with gae. The steam-engine not only throbs ; it pants, it groans, it puffs, it snorts, it bursts into a wild clanging paean of printing. Sub-editors are now hard at work cutting down " flimsy," ramming sheets of "copy"' on files, endlessly conferring with "perspiring foremen. Ineffable mysteries (I presume) are -writing terribly slaughtering articles in carpeted rooms, by the light of Argand lamps. Do they have cake and wine, I wonder, in these rooms? Sherry and sandwiches, perhaps, and on field-nights lobsters. It is getting later, but there ie no sign of diminution yet in the stream of cabs that drive into the Square. Every one who is in debt, and everyone who is in difficulties, and everybody who fancies tnat he, or any friend, relation, or connection of his, has a grievance, and can put pen to paper, four letters together in orthography and four words in syntax, must neede write a letter to The Times; and of the metropolitan correspondents of that journal, the immense majority themselves bring their letters down to the office, thinking, happily, that they might meet the editor standing "promiscuous" on the doorstep, and after some five minutes' button-holding secure, irrevocably, the insertion of their communications. I don't at all envy the gentleman whose duty it is to open and read (do they read them all?) the letters addressed to the editor of The Times. It is getting later and later. Un ! anxious waiters for to-morrow's news, The Times hais its secrets by this time. State secrets, literary secrets, secrets artistic and dramatic ; secrets of robbery, and fire, and murder — it holds them all fast now, admitting none to its confidence but the ineffables, the printers, and the everthrobbing steam engine; but it will divulge its secrets to millions at 5 o'clock to-morrow morning. Later and later still. The last- report from the late debate m the Commons has come in ; the last paragraph of interesting news, dropped in the box by a stealthy penny-a-liner, has been eliminated from a mass of rejected flimsy; the foreign expresses are in type; the slaughtering leadeis glare in their "chases," presaging woe and disasters to Ministers to-morrow ; the last critic, in a whits neck-cloth, has hurried down wita his column and a-half on the last new spectacle at the Princess's ; The Times

has become tight and replete with matter, as one who has dined well and copiously. . . . The ''formes,"' or iron-framed and wedged-up masses of type, are, in other words, on the machine ; and at the rate of 12,000 an, hour the damp, broad sheets >roll from the grim iron instrument of the dissemination of light thioughout tho world. As you walk away from Printing House Square in the cool of the morning and reflect, I hope with salutary results, upon the busy scene you have witnessed, just bestow one thought, and mingle with it a large meed of admiration, for the man who, in his generation, truly made The Times what it is now — John Walter of Bearwood, member of Parliament. He put flesh on the dry bones of an almost moribund newspaper. He, by untiring and indomitable energy and perseverance, raised the circulation twenty-fold, and put it in the wav of attaining the gigantic publicity and popularity which it has now achieved. It ia true that Mr Walter realised a princely fortune by his connection with The Time 6, and left his son, the present Mr John Walter, M.P., a lion's share in the magnificent inheritance he had created. But he did much solid good to others beside himself. This brave old pressman, who, when an express came in from Paris — the French King's speech to the Chambers, indeed, in 1835 — and when there were neither editors nor compositors to be found at hand, braveJy took off his coat, and, in his shirt-sleeves, first translated, and then, taking a turn at case, proceeded to set up in type his own manuscript. Mr Walter was one of the pioneers of liberal knowledge, and men like him do more to clear the atmosphere of ignorance and prejudice than whole colleges full of scholiasts and dialecticians.