Morning journal and courier., 1884-12-08
LIFE OF A LIVELY EDITOR.
Personal "Reminiscences of HFr. Ed-
 runund Yates.

!
 I London Letter in Paris Morning News.l Messrs. R. Bentley & Son have published 1 their promised work, Edmund Yates: His
 Recollections and Experiences" MT. Yates
 fills two very pleasant volumes with gossip about himself and the various persons, dis tinguished and otherwise, whom he has met in his journey through life. The work is an
 autobiography of the editor of the World; it
 begins with his birth and ends with com
 plaeent fantasia over the great and marvel
 ous success of the journal which he founded
 In chapter VI, which covers the years
 1851-3, MT. Yates speaks of his mothers dis
 appointment at the non-fulfllment of the
 dream which she had imagined would be ac-
 complished when he returned from Germany
 dream in which all the leisure portion of
 his life was to be passed in her company and
 in improsi' rEts 1~is mind and making himself
 famous i. ,tgofaite decided upon.
 Mir Yat hee admission to the
 ranks of " men began to be his con
 stant thought; how he was encouraged in the
 hope that he might succeed, more than any
 thing else by reading the career of ''Pen-
 dennis,' whose position was so analogous to
 his own; and now, when he came to the ever
 to- be-quoted speech of Warrington about the
 power of the press his fate was sealed.
 F'To be member of that wonderful corpo-
 ration of the goosequill to be recognized as
 such, to be one of those jolly fellows who earned money and fame, as I thought, so ca silly and so pleasantly, was the one desire of my life, and if zeal and application could do it I determined that my desire should be grAtifed."
 Mr. Yates got his first engagement on the l Court Journal, being engaged at e1 week, and this, he says, irregularly paid. Myyf haf me at present moment duly cut and pasted in a 1 book by my mothers proud care-was pub l lished in the Court Journal of March 6, 1859, verses, On the Death of Thomas Moore. l His courtship and marriage are passed over l with a page or two, but to the first years of | his married life whole chapter is devoted, and it contains many interesting reminiscent
 ces. He made the acquaintance of Dickens ' in 1854
 FsThe other occasion on which I had been | with Dickens in the latter days of '55 was
 memorable to me as the first of very many
 subsequent delightful nights passed among odd scenes in close intimacy with him. We went on what would nowadays be called 8 l ''slumming" expedition, quite original in
 those days, but long since done to death. A 1 friend of Dickens, certain MT Delarne, g | banker in Genoa, who was on @ visit to Tavis- 1 tock House, had great desire to see some of I the low life in London, and Dickens accord 1 ingiy arranged with the police for a party ot us, of which was one, to dine early togeth- CT and then@'go the rounds of the thieves | quarters in Whitechapel, Ratclif Highway, | the dens of the Mint, SCc. It was 8 curious l experience; but the interest of it to me was l greatly increased by the fact that I was in l the company of the man whose genius 1 had | worshipped so long and so ardently; and | when he called me into the cab and we re- 1 turned alone together, he chatting freely and | charningly, I wondered whether fate could l have in store for me greater distinction ol l delight" | MT Yates, in the first chapter of his sec | ond volume, describes his connection with | the Garrick club and his difficulty" there l with:
 | 'fI had been member of this pleasant l company for nearly ten years, and suppose l l should have remained so until the present ! moment had I not had the good fortune in | 1858 to have been offered by Maxwell, the | publisher, employment on little periodical l called Town Talk, at salary of e3 per week.
 This offer I gladly accepted. My new bant- l ling was very different kind of production
 from the sheet which has in later years ap- ! propriated it's title.
 1 "FAbout the third week of my engagement | I went over to the printers, who was in Al | close of my official work, and F'made up" the
 paper It happened that in the previous
 weeks number I had written 8 pen-and-iEk sketch of Dickens, which had given satisfac-
 tion thought could not do better than
 follow on with a similar portrait of his great
 rival. That it was offensive or objectionable,
 or likely to bring me into trouble, I could not have thought, for that very evening l | mentioned at the Garrick club to a we'll | known hterateur, whom I at the time be- lieved to be friend of mine, the fact of my
 new engagement, with general idea of what
 was doing. I have not the least doubt it was from this person that Thackeray had his | information as to the writer"
 In the last chapter MT. Yates relates the
 history of the World. Over the advertising
 of the World he does not think he has ever | paid more than seventy pounds from it's first l number to the present day, and he attributes ! it's suddenly jumping into good circulation
 to an action taken by stockholder, who had
 threatened to horsewhip MT. Labouchere, 1 who then wrote the city article. "As a mat | ter of fact, the World was less than half a year old when it was an assured success"