# The Strand Magazine/Volume 4/Issue 19/Illustrated Interviews

←No. 12
Illustrated Interviews
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Illustrated by John Gülich.
Layout 4
Illustrated Interviews.
NO. XIII. GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA.
Entrance hall. From a Photo. by Elliott & Fry.
EORGE AUGUSTUS SALA—or, as popularity has abbreviated him, "G.A.S."—is one of the merriest men of the nineteenth century. He is literally loaded with fun and good humour. Touch the veteran journalist on his anecdotal trigger and you will live all the happier after receiving a volley. Ask him a question and his answer is—an anecdote. It is his only hobby—to gather them up—and he is a past-master in the art of dispensing them in any sized quantities to meet the requirements of the most susceptible constitution. Mr. Sala and his wife are not favourably inclined towards flats, and infinitely prefer to live at Brighton, where they have a little house, and never lose an opportunity of leaving the darkness and blackness of Victoria-street for the welcome breezes of the Marine Metropolis; yet their little flat is pleasantness itself, and in order to reach it, you are welcome to enter the front door—always conveniently open—of No. 125, ring the bell of the passenger lift, and an obliging youth will immediately elevate you to the third floor. For such is the whereabouts of Sala's flat.
Mrs. Sala's cat. From a Photo. by Elliott & Fry.
His pictures are so many that he has positively had to fall back on the kitchen walls whereon to hang many a proof engraving and etching, whilst the lower part of the dresser in the same culinary department actually provides a resting-place for china and other ware of rare worth, in place of the customary pots and pans.
The entrance hall is a perfect little menagerie. Here, on shelves artistically draped with crimson ​plush, are china cows and horses, deer, canaries, and even a rhinoceros. The pig predominates. Mr. Sala believes in pigs for luck, and purchases one wherever he goes. The two places of honour, however, are given up to a large-sized cat and monkey. Let it be told in a whisper that Mrs. Sala confesses to the cat as her guardian angel, because it is most like a woman; whilst Mr. Sala leans towards the monkey, because it most resembles a —. A grandfather's clock is ticking in the corner.
Mr. Sala's monkey. From a Photo. by Elliott & Fry.
Here hangs a silver violin. It was made in Cawnpore, and was the property of some Rajah of India.
"I bought it in Leicester-square," said its owner. "It was marked £35. I went inside and offered a ten-pound note for it."
"'Oh!' exclaimed the proprietor, 'you're Mr. Sailor, you are! Well, look here, you can have it for £13.'
"'Right,' I said. 'Going to pay now?' he asked.
"'Yes.'
"'Then, take it out of the shop; for it's been hanging here for twenty-five years.'"
There are many fine engravings about, and just by the dining-room door is a stick given to Mr. Sala by Lord Wolseley, after his great campaign in South Africa.
The dining-room. From a Photo. by Elliott & Fry.
The dining-room overlooks Victoria-street. It is a little room, suggestive of comfortable meals and excellent company. G. A. S.'s personal dining-table is not very big—one and a half feet square. He always uses it, seldom sitting at the larger board, and sits in an easy-chair. The bronzes on the mantelboard are as exquisite as the china and Hanoverian ware set out on the bookshelves, and it would be difficult to find more works of art crowded into so small a space. Examples of Sir John Gilbert, Montalba, Copley Fielding, A. Vandyck, Gerard Dhow, Gustave Doré—represented by a grand scene in the Highlands—the original sketch in oils for Luke Fildes "Betty," and a very clever painting by Miss Genevieve Ward, the actress, of a monk enjoying an after-dinner pipe. ​Two dogs are from the brush of George Earle.
Mrs. Sala's study. From a Photo. by Elliott & Fry.
Mrs. Sala's study adjoins this room. On the mantelpiece is a small bust of Henry Irving as Hamlet, and near the window is a safe of strong proportions. On a silver shield is the following inscription: "George Augustus Sala, from Henry Irving, 1881. Safe Bind—Safe Find." Mr. Irving was once dining with Mr. Sala, when the latter brought out his common-place book, which was commenced in 1829, and is full of notes of delightful interest.
"Aren't you afraid of losing this?" the actor asked. "This wants taking into custody."
A few days afterwards the safe came.
On my way to the drawing-room and study—which is down a passage full of pictures and crowded with nick-nacks—I look in at the library, with its highly decorative stained glass windows. The famous cookery library is in a corner of the bedroom. It comprises over 300 volumes, dating from 1578 to the present day, of every country and in every language. Here is a cookery book in Greek, and a first edition of "Mrs. Glasse," worth £100. Even to-day dishes are prepared at the Victoria-street flat from an old cookery volume of Henry V.'s reign. It contains a receipt for a delicious oyster pattie. These old-time books are useful when you know how to leave out the peacocks' tongues and swans' livers from Elizabethan dishes.
The library. From a Photo. by Elliott & Fry. The drawing-room is now reached. Drawing back the curtains, one enters Mr. Sala's ​study. In the first apartment—the doors of which are inlaid with panels of fruit and flowers painted on satin—more artistic treasures are to be met with, from the brush and pencil of many a master hand. A large picture—finished by Millais—of the late Mrs. Sala, rests on an easel draped with blue plush.
The drawing-room. From a Photo. by Elliott & Fry.
It was whilst standing here that Mr. Sala paid a tribute of great tenderness to the memory of his late wife, and spoke as only a real man and true husband could of the woman who is his helpmate to-day. Journalists are the very worst of business men, and the veteran declares that he is no exception to the rule. Happy the journalist who possesses a wife of business instincts—a woman who can relieve him of all these worries, and leave him a free course to run his pen.
"My wife," says Mr. Sala, "is my man of business. She opens my letters, reads, and answers them, looks after contracts, and keeps my accounts. Therein lies one of my little secrets, you see. My wife takes upon herself all the worries of business, so I am enabled to work with an easy mind and a freedom of heart unattainable by any other means."
Bust by Mr. Sala, and the Dauphin's cabinet. From a Photo. by Elliott & Fry.
This small cabinet was made for the little Dauphin Mr. of France. Mr. Sala saw it in a pawnbroker's window in his early days, and paid £2 a month for it until he had purchased it outright for £15. He tells how, as a young man, when first married, the height of his ambition was to possess a silver soup-tureen. Again he patronised the pawnbroker's, and selected one "to be put by" at £35. Unfortunately, after paying £8 his subscription lapsed, and the pawnbroker profited to that extent. A bust of a baby reveals Mr. Sala's ability with the clay. Once, at Brighton, when ill and unable to write, he sent for some clay, and modelled it.
A very remarkable example of the sculptor's art rests on a table. Originally the Saint was in a semi-nude state. Ewing, a wonderfully clever Scotch sculptor, who modelled the children of the Prince of Wales, saw it one day. He took out his pocket-handkerchief and asked for some warm starch. Dipping the linen in this, his ingenious fingers wrapped it round ​the tiny statuette, as now seen, and, as the starch dried, the fabric stiffened, still retaining its most delicately natural folds. Poor Ewing! He died in poverty, and was buried in New York. A great actor, whose name has already been mentioned, stood by him till the last.
Saint draped in a handkerchief. From a Photo. by Elliott & Fry.
"Ape," aped by himself. From a Photo. by Elliott & Fry.
It is impossible to catalogue the curiosities in the study; every one of them has a history. A little stuffed canary was a present from the late Lady Rosebery. It died; it almost sang itself to death, so loud and sweet and frequent were its notes. These ostrich eggs hanging from the ceiling were stolen from a mosque in Morocco. Mr. Sala was the receiver, and he revels in his crime. This picture is curious. It is executed on a common fourpenny dish, purchased in the Tottenham Court-road. It was held over the smoke of a candle, and, after the artist had worked on it with his nails and penknife, a charming Italian landscape was the result. A table of eighteen different kinds of wood was presented to Mr. Sala by the New Zealand Government. A glass case contains presentation silver, including a massive service from the proprietors of The Daily Telegraph on Mr. Sala's fiftieth birthday. The pictures, too, are striking—dozens of Millais' engravings, Munkacski, Caton Woodville, Boughton, Story, and paintings by De Witt, Stothardt, Montalba, another Doré, a Keeley Halswelle, and numerous others from notable artists. Amongst the pictorial curiosities being some studies by E. M. Ward for his great picture of "Napoleon and Queen Louisa of Prussia at Tilsit, 1808"; "'Ape,' aped by himself," which means the late Carlo Pellegrini caricaturing himself; and a pictorially addressed envelope, which was done by Augustus Mayhew, one of the brothers Mayhew of Punch, the dog being a portrait of a pug belonging to the artist's wife, who was, and still is, a great breeder of pugs. On the top of a shelf is the bust of Beaconsfield. It will be remembered that Mr. Sala gave important evidence at the famous Belt trial, and stated how he saw the sculptor take a piece of clay and make the curl which was wont to be seen on the great statesman's forehead. This is the first cast for the statue in question.
Now it was that we settled down to talk. ​ Mayhew's Envelope. From a Photo. by Elliott & Fry. Mr. Sala discards his customary chair at the writing-table, on which stands a statuette of Thackeray; but, lighting a cigar—and is not G. A. S. generally accredited as being the best judge of a Havannah in London?—he meditatively walks the room, and tells, point by point and chapter by chapter, the story of his life. He wears a short smoking-jacket. He is of medium height, and is the happy possessor of a wonderfully level temper. He speaks kindly and good-naturedly of all his brother scribes, and writes the most microscopic hand amongst them all. He is three-and-sixty years of age, but prepared to pack his bag and start as "Special Correspondent" to Siberia at a couple of hours' notice. Though certainly the most versatile leader-writer of to-day, and justly regarded as being at the top of the journalistic tree, he is still a working man. His work is his recreation, the recreation of a moving mind. He has written more "leaders" than any man living. For the first five years of his thirty-four years' connection with The Daily Telegraph he wrote two a day; now, three hundred leaders a year is his estimate. He has no politics, and for upwards of twenty years not a line from his pen has appeared in The Daily Telegraph on home politics. He argues that, whatever the Government in power, it must needs be the best Government. He has seen the work of every government in every country, from the matter-of-fact and easy-going Parliament of the dwellers in Central Africa to that of Australia, where the supreme ruler is his royal highness—Working Man.
Learning to write.
George Augustus Sala was born in New-street, Manchester-square, on November 24, 1828, His father was an Italian, his mother being a professor of Italian singing. He was born at a time when children were sent out to be nursed. His nurse must have been a most diabolical young woman, for when it was decided by his mother to have little George Augustus home again, she attempted to kill her charge. This resulted in a long and serious illness, and the small life was despaired of.
"I was blind and deaf," he said, "from seven to half-past eight, that is, from 7 ​years to 8 1/2 years of age. Every oculist had a go at my eyes. I have still signs of the holes in my ears where I wore earrings, but all to no avail. During this time my sister read the Bible to me, and told me childish fairy tales. When, at last, I recovered my sight, I had a yearning to read all that my sister had told me, and I taught myself out of a big history of England."
Specimen of Mr. Sala's handwriting.
He learned to write as well—practised caligraphy from a black-letter Chaucer. This will account for Mr. Sala's peculiar print-like handwriting. What a happy picture—the little fellow on his knees, with the great volume against the back of the chair, tracing out letter by letter on a piece of paper. His parents' house was the resort of many foreigners of distinction. At ten years of age he could not speak a word of English, and after passing a few years at a school in France, came back to a school here for the purpose of learning the English language. He found it more difficult than Greek. As a child he wrote short stories—a notable one was a story of travel. But his childish fingers seemed destined for the clay, for at school in Paris he gained the first prize for modelling a map of South America.
"Every hill and mountain top, every river and valley was modelled in clay," said Mr. Sala. "That's what I call practical geography—that's what I should like to see in our schools to-day. We want practical lessons. I was sent to a school where lectures were object-lessons. We found something to learn in the green fields and flowers, knowledge in every article of furniture in the house, from the piano to the fire-irons. Why, I read my Greek Testament in a laurel grove! And whenever I had a spare moment, so surely was I to be found drawing and modelling."
Sketch by Mr. Sala.
So his childhood's days were passed, and eventually at fourteen he was apprenticed to Carl Schiller—a miniature painter. He also became a pupil at Leigh's Art School in Maddox-street. At sixteen he became assistant screen-painter to Beverley, at the Princess's Theatre. Beverley was a warm-hearted man. Without taking a halfpenny premium he was virtually young Sala's instructor in architectural drawing and perspective.
"Then my eyes began to trouble me again," said Mr. Sala. "You see, when a figure had to be introduced into a scene I was called in to do it. I was almost colour-blind. I put black into everything. In​deed, they called me the 'gentleman in black.' Even to this day the ink I use is a Japanese fluid of the deepest and darkest dye, such as music is copied with. My old skill in modelling stood me in good stead at the Princess's Theatre. I used to model masks for the pantomime and to paint "props." As a linguist I translated French farces, as a caligraphist used to copy out parts; from my early mathematical training I was put on to keep the accounts, stock books, wardrobe—you know the sort of thing—two pairs tights, seventeen dancers' dresses, three pairs of trunks, &c., and all for—fifteen shillings a week! Yet I was never so happy in my life; and at the end of every week I always had 2s. left to lay out during the week ensuing in tea and toast at Mr. Porter's coffee-shop in Long-acre. Porter was a greasy man who was the proud possessor of a still greasier library. There was streaky bacon and shilling butter on every page. But, as I ate my toast and swallowed my tea, I devoured that library. I read Fraser, John Bull in Theodore Hook's time, The Quarterly, Blackwood's Magazine from the commencement, and I know not what. I was unconsciously fitting myself for a leader-writer. I still kept up my painting, though, and well remember doing fifty illustrations of Jenny Lind at 1s. 6d. each for a man in the Burlington Arcade, who made a big profit out of them.
"At last I threw up the engagement at fifteen shillings a week, and years afterwards I remember the old manager at the Princess's saying to a friend, 'Look at him. I brought him out at fifteen bob a week, and now he is riding in his carriage!'"
The Study From a Photo. by Elliott & Fry.
Soon after this, young Sala got connected with the publishing firm of Ackerman & Co., doing all kinds of humorous productions for them, mainly etching on stone. Adolphe Ackerman—a man of great principle—insisted, however, that the young engraver should learn the whole process of engraving on copper and steel; and, having saved a little money, and being helped by Mr. Ackerman, he apprenticed himself to Henry Alkin for three years. He also illustrated many books—some written by Albert Smith, and others for Mr. Edward Lloyd, who founded Lloyd's News. Mr. Sala characterises these last pictures as being very ghastly. One in particular was for a small novel called "Heads of the Headless," but the picture block was not "strong" enough for Mr. Lloyd. He sent it back with the note: "More blood, and eyes larger!" So skilful did the young artist become in his new calling, that, at the age of twenty-four, he and Mr. Alkin were commissioned to execute an immense pano​rama of the funeral of the Duke of Wellington. Alkin did the horses, and Sala the hundreds of figures. They worked at it for six months, but the fumes of the acid acting on the steel plates so injured Sala's normally weak eyes that he was compelled in infinite degradation of spirit to give up the craft he so dearly loved—otherwise he would have gone blind. He still retains the needles he worked with, and the very paperweight to be seen on his study table is a copperplate on which he had worked more than forty years ago.
Mr. Sala's writing table. From a Photo. by Elliott & Fry.
"In 1850," continued the journalist, "I renewed my acquaintance with Dickens. I had written an article called 'The Key of the Street' for Household Words. From 1850 to 1856 I made £300 a year out of Dickens's paper. I did a little in the dramatic line with a dear, dead brother of mine, Charles. I wrote a panto. called 'Harlequin Billie Taylor,' under Charles Kean's management, receiving £100 for the opening and £5 a piece for the comic scenes. Then I did a translation of 'The Corsican Brothers' for the Surrey Theatre, and got a guinea a night for it. It ran 150 nights. Many other pieces followed, one of which was a burlesque in 1869 at the Gaiety, called 'Watt Tyler, M.P.,' in which Toole played the titular part. I was successful enough, though the late John Oxenford, in a criticism in The Times, said that my plays were evidently the production of a novice in theatrical matters!' Possibly Oxenford had never heard of the 15s. a week engagement at the Princess's.
"In 1856 I went to Russia for Dickens. We had a row about the travelling expenses, so I went on to The Illustrated Times. On the staff were James Hannay, Fred and James Greenwood, Sutherland Edwards, Edmund Yates, Edward Draper—a solicitor, who did the law and crime—and Old White, the doorkeeper of the House of Commons, who used to divulge the secrets of the House! My turning-point, however, came a year later, when the proprietors of The Daily Telegraph, then a young paper, sent for me. I was paid two guineas a leader, often writing two for three guineas. Since then I have been all over the world—in times of peace, war, and revolution. I have often been chaffed because I once said, in the preface of a book, that the proprietors of The Daily Telegraph gave me 'the wages of an ambassador and the treatment of a gentleman.' That which I stated was the precise and literal fact. Litigating journalists often have proposed to subpœna me with a view to testifying as to the custom and law in journalism. My answer invariably is, 'I can give no kind of testimony as to law or custom, inasmuch as I have never had any written engagement with The Daily Telegraph, who can dismiss me, or I could leave them, to-morrow. Their arrangements with me, both as regards home service and foreign missions, have always been of the friendliest and happiest character."
A fresh sample from a box of the choicest Havanahs having been lit, the clouds of smoke from the weed gave rise to many a merry recollection, both of a personal character and also associated with people whom Mr. Sala has met. The day I spent ​with Mr. Sala was very near to the opening of the Royal Academy. He protested strongly against the practice of Show-Sunday at artists' studios.
"If I go to a man's studio," he said, "how can I, whilst accepting his hospitality, condemn his picture to his face? If I praised it to him to-day, I should only have to slate it the next morning in my notice. It is not fair either to the critic or the artist."
But a cloud from the Havanah takes him back to the early days again.
"When Alexander II. was assassinated, I was dining at the Duke of Fife's, at Cavendish-square. It was a Sunday. The Russian Ambassador sent a messenger saying that he would be unable to be present, as an attempt had been made on the Czar's life, and he was gravely wounded. Later in the evening came another despatch saying that his Imperial Majesty was dead. I knew well enough that The D.T. people would be down on me that very night to go off to St. Petersburg, and I particularly wanted the next day in London. I roved about from club to club till three o'clock in the morning, but they ran me down the same day with a note from the editor saying, 'Please write leading article on the "Price of Fish at Billingsgate Market," and start for St. Petersburg by the night mail!' I went. I was compensated at the rate of £100 a week and all travelling expenses. I was present at the coronation of Alexander III., and some of my telegrams cost £300 to send. I was forwarding something like seven columns a day.
"I have never had to disguise myself in my calling, as some of my brother journalists have. I well remember an amusing instance of this at the Czar's coronation. The Court choir there on such occasions consists of men arrayed in long crimson cassocks, and wearing very long beards, who march along chanting very loudly. The representative of a Parisian paper whom I knew was much upset at not getting a pass to go in to the ceremony. He said he meant to go, however. The great day arrived. I was standing in my allotted seat, so to speak, when the choir approached. They were all chanting loudly, but one of their number, fully arrayed and bearded, seemed as though singing for dear life. He caught my eye and winked. It was my friend!
Everything in Russia is done by bribery. Still, bribery is not always successful, as the following will prove.
"I was present at the Jubilee gardenparty given by Her Majesty at Buckingham Palace. My flower dropped out of my button-hole. A very pretty young servant—presumably there for the purpose of looking after our wearing apparel, sticks, and umbrella—picked it up. Whilst in the act of putting it in my coat again, with a view to obtaining a peep into the Queen's rooms, I asked her if there was a chance of seeing them, at the same time endeavouring to slip a sovereign into her hand. She shrunk back.
"'I wish I could, sir,' she whispered, 'but there's a heye on me!'
The dry-wash process.
"Talking of queens naturally reminds me of kings. I have lunched with Alphonso XII. of Spain under most distressing circumstances. My friend Antonio Gallenga was with me. We were travelling with the King in a very sumptuous saloon carriage lent to us by Mr. ​Salamanaca, the great Madrid financier, which the authorities permitted to be attached to the Royal train from Madrid to Saragossa. After travelling all night in terribly cold weather, early in the morning one of His Majesty's aides-de-camp appeared and commanded us to 'join the Royal luncheon party at 11 a.m.' Alas! there is no rose without its thorn. The bitter weather had frozen all the water, and our faces were as black as sweeps'! We stared at one another—we were both black in the face. What was to be done? Good gracious! we could not sit before a king with such dark expressions as these!
"Gallenga was a man of infinite resource, and was apparently undismayed by this almost insurmountable obstacle.
"'Ever try candles'? he asked. 'The dry wash process. See,' and he took down some of the wax candles with which the carriage was lighted, and commenced rubbing his face with one of them. With infinite trust in Gallenga's wisdom I did likewise, and really, after some ten minutes' persistent rubbing, our faces certainly looked more respectable, though somewhat waxy and ghastly. The aide-de-camp entered, and we went forth to eat with the King. Now, the King's saloon was uncomfortably warm—very uncomfortably warm—and as the lunch proceeded it became inconveniently hot. When the coffee and cigarette stage arrived our faces were converted into a series of small streams—tears, sir, tears, such as tender fathers shed! In vain I tried to hide them, my pocket handkerchief was useless, and I left the Royal presence with a countenance like—but we will draw a veil over my features!"
"At the Derby."
I suggested that perhaps Mr. Sala knew Sothern—"Dundreary" Sothern.
"Knew him, yes," came the reply. "Sothern and I went to the Derby together once. I was very elaborately got up, and as neat and trim as a new pin. Now, I don't think I was in a frame of mind to get out of temper easily—I was in a capital humour, and never in a jollier mood.
"'Look here, Sala,' said Sothern, 'I'll bet you a new hat that you'll lose your temper before the Derby is run.'
"'Done!' I cried, and I felt another twenty-five shillings rattling in my trousers' pocket. Away went Sothern.
"Five minutes after a red-jacketed fellow came up and commenced brushing me down. I didn't want it, but I gave him a shilling. Then another came up—similar process, another shilling. At last altogether five brushes had been up, and at the sixth I seized the fellow and brushed him down.
"I'll trouble you for a new hat,' said somebody, quietly tapping me on the shoulder. It was Sothern.
Then we "remembered" some of the famous men the great journalist has come in contact with during his career. To begin with, there was Lord Brougham. It was Brougham who really taught Mr. Sala to speak in public. Before Mr. Sala made his first important public speech, Brougham had him round at his house and walked up and down his dining-room for an hour and more, ​giving him many a good hint. He wound up his advice by saying: "Always think in semicolons whilst speaking; by adhering to this rule you will never come to a full stop unless you wish it."
Then came Cruickshank—dear old George Cruickshank.
"I knew him well," said Mr. Sala, "and was one of the pall bearers at his funeral. When the old fellow was hard up he would go and sit in his publisher's office with a card round his neck on which was written: 'I am starving!' With such a suggestive appeal he never had to wait long without a cheque, but he always kept the card handy! Once Prince Albert—the Prince Consort—sent for him for the purpose of seeing his drawings. He arrived at Buckingham Palace, and was marched down countless corridors by a couple of footmen bearing long wands, Cruickshank following them in the rear, imitating them in a very exaggerated style. On they went—wand and imitation, imitation and wand. Suddenly a door opened from behind them, and a voice cried out: 'This is the room, Mr. Cruickshank.'
"Prince Consort had been watching Cruickshank's performance in infinite appreciation."
Mr. Sala has a great admiration for the genius, and a love for the memory, of Thackeray. He first saw Thackeray at a small club held on the first floor of a little old-fashioned tavern in Dean-street, Soho, kept by one Dicky Moreland, supposed to have been the last landlord in London who wore a pigtail and top-boots. Thackeray that night sang "The Mahogany Tree." His hair was not white then, but he wore the gold-rimmed spectacles, and stood as he always did, with his hands in his pockets.
A M. Alexis Soyer had constructed a place he called "The Symposium" on the site of the Albert Hall, where Mr. Sala was for a short period secretary. Soyer was very proud of the huge dining-tent he had put up, capable of dining 300 persons. It was made of blue and white canvas.
When taking Thackeray round the grounds one day, Soyer remarked, pointing out the huge tent: "This, Mr. Thackeray, is the baronial. hall."
"Oh! Baronial hall, is it!" said Thackeray; "it's more like a marquee!"
"And your photo, Mr. Sala?" I asked.
"Oh! yes—certainly. Had it specially taken in Rome for you. Notice the smile?" Then he added in a whisper, as he followed me on to the stairs, "The Roman photographer specially turned on a young man to tell me funny stories in Italian to make me laugh. That's the secret of it!"
Mr. Sala. From a Photo. by Le Lieure, Rome.
Harry How.