Hazlitt found that "some Editors, moreover, have a way of altering the first paragraph: they have then exercised their privileges, and let you alone for the rest of the chapter;" that "Some Editors will let you praise nobody; others will let you blame nobody;" and that "Editors are a 'sort of tittle-tattle—' difficult to deal with, dangerous to discuss."[1]
It was to be expected that the fastidious Delane would make editorial emendations. "Much that appeared in The Times under the head of leading articles was so amended by his pen that it was in reality Delane's handiwork," acknowledges his biographer.[2] Henry Reeve, called by Delane "Il Pomposo," says that he rebelled against these editorial changes made in his leaders and he writes, "The moment an attempt was made to interfere with me and to garble my articles, I resigned [from The Times], and fell back on the 'Edinburgh Review'."[3]
O'Shea found sub-editorial tinkering with his manuscript "an intolerable nuisance" and often thought "changes were made out of pure wantonness to show one's privilege of intermeddling."[4] Paris was probably infected with this feeling at that time, for Theodore Child wrote, "It is a common complaint on the part of the representatives of the English press in Paris that their letters are mercilessly mutilated in the editorial room in London."[5]
The benevolent Howells, in giving an account of his Atlantic stewardship, says that "sometimes it [the proof-reading] took the character of original work, in that liberal Atlantic tra-
- ↑ William Hazlitt, "A Chapter on Editors," Men and Manners, pp. 307, 309, 304.
- ↑ A. I. Dasent, John Thadeus Delane, I, 68.
"Bob Lowe wrote such an article upon Bright. It made my hair stand on end, and I have had to alter it almost beyond recognition."—Ib., II, 159.
- ↑ J. K. Laughton, Memoirs of Henry Reeve, I, 339.—E. T. Cook puts the matter in quite a different light in Delane of "The Times," pp. 192–195, as does A. I. Dasent, John Thadeus Delane, I, 213–223, where the correspondence is given in full.
H. Brackenbury frequently contributed to the Athenaeum, but when "a new editor, a very young man," altered his proof, he says, "this mechanical editorship was not to my taste,and I ceased contributing to the paper."—Some Memories of My Spare Time, p. 81.
- ↑ Leaves from the Life of a Special Correspondent, II, 168–169.
- ↑ "The Paris Newspaper Press," Fortnightly Review, August, 1885, n. s., 38: 149–165.
