BARRIE AS HIPPOMENES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 244, 15 October 1931, Page 2

BARRIE AS HIPPOMENES

Ihe Journal had no editor in lhe proper sense: it came together in the early hours of each morning without any directing hand other than that of lhe foreman compositor. Barrie had almost a free hand in his own department, that of the editorial and literary columns. There were sub-editors and reporters who each did his work in a communal spirit which enabled the foreman to have enough type-matter set to fill lhe columns of the paper in order to go to press about two or three in the morning. It was Barrie's good fortune to be allowed to write as much as he lil(ed so long as the compositors were asking for "copy. To lhe end the Journal Was set by hand, its last day s witnessing the rise of the linotype throughout the newspaper world. The opportunity to fill columns of space with ones writings is one that atty earnest young journalist should welcome. Practice is the great thing and the knowledge that what he is writing will in an hour or two be set in type and printed is al once an encouragement and a restraint, since it imposes a sense of responsibility. But few journalists have ever rivalled Barrie either in capacity for work 01 ln ea 'l)> r 'P c ~ ness of style. In addition to writing his daily editorials, which at times would run to more than two columns of twelve hundred words in length, he also contributed every Monday a special article signed “Hippomenes," and every Thursday the same signature was appended to a column of gayly written notes headed "A Modern Peripatetic." There is no journalist on any daily paper in lhe British Isles to-day whose weekly tale of Work would equal that. IVe live in softer times. ... In all he wrote about eighty "specials” over the signature of Hippomenes, and a glance at the list which I compiled from the columns of the Journal many years ago is sufficient to prove their writer a born journalist; lhe quality of human interest inheres in their very titles. 1 hough we shall hear of Stevenson years later writing to Meredith that Barrie had a journalist al his elbow, it was a journalist whose mark was literature —not merely journalism and journalese—from the day he pul pen to paper. From "Barrie: the Story of a Genius,” by J. H. Hammer ton.