hasten my departure for Paris, and two days later the English Channel rolled between me and the Clock Tower.
Next time I entered the Press Gallery it was as the accredited representative of the Pall Mall Gazette. I came over from Paris to spend Christmas at home, and never went back to complete that continental tour in search of knowledge, which I fancy had been suggested by Goldsmith's trip with his flute. It happened that in the early days of 1870, the proprietor of the Pall Mall Gazette began the first of the series of chequered changes in the history of the journal, by starting it as a morning paper. I had been an occasional contributor in a humble way to the evening edition, and thought I might have a chance of an appointment on the staff of the new morning paper.
Outside the "Pall Mall" office.
Mentioning this to my friend Walter, he undertook to see it through, just as he had fallen in with the even more audacious proposal to enter the Press Gallery. I remember we were not far off Northumberland Street when the subject was broached, and might easily have walked there. But Walter could never embark upon enterprises of this kind unless he went in a cab, the driver being incited to go at topmost speed.
He left me in the cab whilst he ran up stairs to the office in Northumberland Street—I saw him going two steps at a time—and flung himself into the office of Mr. Fyffe, an old and highly-esteemed member of the Times staff, who had joined Mr. Frederick Greenwood in the editorial direction of the new development of the Pall Mall. What Walter said to Fyffe I never learned in detail, but subsequently had reason to guess he told him he had in the cab downstairs a young fellow who was (or would be) one of the wonders of the journalistic world, and that the morning edition of the Pall Mall would have no chance unless it secured his services.
However it came about; whether Fyffe had some work in hand and was anxious to be relieved from the embarrassing presence of his visitor bounding all over the room in the enthusiasm of his advocacy; or whether, as usually happens with a new paper, choice was limited, I was engaged then and there as assistant sub-editor at the salary of four guineas a week. I believe the regular average rate of remuneration was five guineas. But I was young and inexperienced; and after living in the Quartier Latin for nearly a year on fifteenpence a day, cultivating French literature on petits noirs, four guineas a week was a competency. "Trois de café" is what Daudet in his "Trente ans de Paris" calls this sip of nectar. "C'est a dire," he explains, "pour trois sous d'un café savoureux balsamique raisonnablement édulcoré." But Daudet must have frequented aristocratic quarters. At our crèmerie we never paid more than two sous, and, bent on attaining luxury, we demanded "un petit noir."
When the paper started, Mr. Fyffe did the Parliamentary summary, of which the Pall Mall made a feature, placing it on the leader page. One afternoon, after I had been on the staff for some six weeks, I looked in at the office, and found it in a state of consternation. Fyffe had been suddenly taken ill, and it was impossible for him to go down to the House to do the summary. Mr. Greenwood sent for me and asked me to take his place, for that night at least. To go down to the House of Commons and take an ordinary "turn" of reporting for the first time is, I suppose, a trying thing. To be bundled off at an hour's notice to fill the place of one of the most eminent Parliamentary writers of the day, and to supply a leading article on a subject of the surroundings of which one was absolutely ignorant, might seem appalling. It all came very naturally to me. I did my best in the strange, somewhat bewildering, circumstances, and as long as the morning edition of the Pall Mall lasted, I continued to write its summary. Fyffe came round again in a week; but he never more took up the summary, leaving it in my hands, with many words of kind encouragement.
It was in October, 1872, I joined the staff of the Daily News, having, under Mr. Robinson's watchful eye, gone through a
