BIRTH OF JOURNALISM

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 76, Issue 83, 8 April 1933, Page 13 (Supplement)

BIRTH OF JOURNALISM

• THE TATLER’S APPEARANCE | LIFE IN ADDISON’S DAY (BY M.W.A.) Nearly 224 years ago modern journalism was virtually created. On April 12, 1709 Sir Richard Steele produced the first Tatler which he published three times a week for the purpose, he said, of giving advices and reflections and “something ; which may be of entertainment to the fair sex.” The Tatler was not the only paper being circulated in London at the time, the year of Malplaquet, when rumours of war filled the air and the public mind was in an eager and excited condition with a “news sense” ready to be developed. Many others were being published daily, tri-week]y and weekly, while in 1672 Parisans had been entertained with the “Mercure.” In all the papers preceding the Tatler, however, there had been little literature, and it was Steele who, helped considerably by Addison, to whom he afterwards acknowledged his debt, discovered that the daily newspaper could be necessary and indispensable. Steele combined gossip, poetry, learning and the news of the day in his Tatler and appealed to a large field of readers. At first his essays contained not a little political news, for he had a penchant for polities which was irrepressible and eventually led to his being expelled from the House of Commons and being lashed by Swift’s searching pen. But to the advantage of the Tatler this political news was afterwards dropped and it was not until Steele published the Guardian that his party leanings led him to trouble. After some 80 numbers had been written, Addison, who had been in Ireland at the time Steele produced the first Tatler, became a contributor. The birth of the English essay may be said to have occurred with the Tatler, which, although its production, was popular, was comparatively short lived. On January 2, 1711, the last number was published. The venture had been successful, however, and two months later, Addison and Steele, working in conjunction, produced the Spectator, 555 numbers of which were to be published before it ended in December, 1712. In this newspaper moral essay and portrait in general, were combined with advantage and the figures of the Spectator, Sir Roger de Coverley, Will Wimble and Will Honeyeombe, the Spectator himself and the other members of the club are familiar to-day. Their exploits make interesting subjects and the lucidity of Addison’s pen lends a charm to their memory. Thus in some three years and eight months the newspaper was made popular ami the essay wa# created, lifted into a strong position and made one of the principal forms of which literature should thenceforth consist. Popular opinion held that it was Addison who was the most important figure in the venture, but it was really Steele who commenced the periodical. Less correct, he was overshadowed by the genius of Addison, who wrote with elegance, purity and correctness, and who succeeded in enlivening morality with wit and tempering wit with morality, indeed making morality fashionable in an age noted for licentiousness. Social conditions prevailing during the Augustan Age, in ; which these two friends lived, were not of the standard known to-day and England during the first half of the 18th. century was, in many respects, uncivilised. John Stuart Mill describes it as the age of strong men, coarse vice, little refinement or grace. Punishment and sport were cruel and corruption extended throughout all departments of the State. Travellers had to protect themselves as best they could from the attentions of highwaymen, ’who infested every road leading from Loudon. Addison tells of how Sir Roger de Coverley, that “good old knight.” when going to a play was accompanied by servants. They provided themselves with good oaken plants to protect their master from the Mohocks, a set of dissolute young rakes who, as Swift said, “play the devil about this town at night and slit people’s noses.” In those days the Americanisms were unknown but their place was occupied by a flow of language probably more to the point. On one occasion it is said that the Duchess of Marlborough called upon a lawyer without leaving her name. The clerk, however, knew that, she was a lady of quality, “Because,” he said, “she swore so dreadfully.” Ladies also used to receive gentlemen visitors in their bedrooms, foreign habits introduced by “travelled ladies.” Marriages were generally conducted on business principles, the main object being a good settlement, while abductions frequently occurred and women were treated Although Steele discovered in women a “liberal education,” his contemporaries treated them as pretty trifles, better lilted to amuse than to elevate. Addison, while striving to instruct tho fair sex, as he named them, apparently regarded them as being inferior and he delights to dwell on their foibles, dress and artificies practised by the flirt and the coquette. “The toilet is their great scene of business and the right adjustment of their hair the principal employment of their lives,” he said. Drunkenness was a familiar habit, especially among gentlemen and those occupying the higher positions of the State. Addison wondered how drunkenness should have the good fori tunc to be numbered as an incurable vice and tells how lie had . i been reckoning up with Will Funnell, the West Saxon, as to how I much liquor Funnell had drunk during the past 20 years of his life. It amounted, he says, to “23 hogsheads of October, four ton of Port, half a kilderkin of small beer, nineteen barrels of cyder, and three glasses of Champagne; besides which he had assisted at 400 bowls of punch, not to mention sips, whets and drams without number.” Addison reflects that the vice has its fatal effects on the mind, the body and the fortune of the person who is devoted to it. One wonders what Addison’s comments on the American system of bootlegging would be were he in a position to report his observations to-day. It is said that Swift found it perilous to dine with Ministers on account of the wine which circulated at their tables and that Pope, whose frail body could not tolerate excess, for it is reported that he received curvature of the spine as a result of his studies from the age of 12, hastened his end by good living. Steele, said Swift, was no disagreeable companion after the first bottle and Thackeray describes him as being perpetually tipsy.