“Look at that, Pen,” Warrington said. “There she is—the great engine—she never sleeps. She has her ambassadors in every quarter of the world—her couriers upon every road. Her officers march along with armies, and her envoys walk into statesmen’s cabinets. They are ubiquitous. Yonder journal has an agent, at this minute, giving bribes in Madrid, and another inspecting the price of potatoes in Covent Garden. Look! Here comes the Foreign Express galloping in. They will be able to give news to Downing Street to-morrow; funds will rise or fall, fortunes be made or lost; Lord B. will get up, and, holding the paper in his hand, and seeing the noble Marquis in his place, will make a great speech; and—and Mr. Doolan will be called away from his supper at the back kitchen; for he is the foreign sub-editor, and sees the mail on the newspaper sheet before he goes to his own.”
That was the feeling about the Press in Thackeray’s time, and it was still the feeling in the early Nineties; the sense of something almost superhuman in its intelligence. Thackeray, as a kind of gentleman, heartily scorned the newspaper people with whom he was thrown into professional contact, but he had a vast respect for the final result of all their efforts. To-day Thackeray, however gentlemanly, would not be ashamed to acknowledge being or knowing a leader-writer, but on the other hand he would sneer (as a fashionable thing to do) at the Press as an institution. Thirty years ago the actual Thackerayan view prevailed on both points, if a little weakened. There was still almost a sacredness attaching to serious print. Men were so anxious to respect the Press that they frowned on any tendencies to levity which might occasionally be found. A journal purporting to give news and views had gravity forced upon it. It is true that a great deal of licence was allowed to the comic and periodical Press, which was, on the whole, much less decorous than that of to-day. These publications, indeed, seemed to be tolerated rather on the old respectable principle that, since there must be wickedness, it is well to give it a definite outlet, so as to avoid the evils of general contamination. These papers were, so to speak, the journalistic _filles de joie_ who, by the sacrifice of their own reputation, safeguarded the vestal innocence of the responsible sheets. In their pages the reader could, if his tastes lay that way, find all the spice, suggestiveness, and scandalous piquancy he wanted. In the great dailies all was propriety and dullness. They were the work of the shorthand reporter and the leader-writer. Home news meant Parliament, public meetings, and police court “intelligence.” Foreign news meant (to quote Mr. Balfour) the “dull and doubtful details of the European diary daily transmitted by ‘our special correspondent.’” Leaders, broadly speaking, meant comment on the speeches and the despatches.