Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 63.djvu/313

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

Thackeray, Mr. Yates, and the Garrick Club,’ printed for private circulation in 1859, a very scarce pamphlet. He restated the same facts in a chapter of his ‘Recollections.’

In 1860 he became acting editor of Maxwell's new serial, ‘Temple Bar,’ designed as a rival to the ‘Cornhill,’ with G. A. Sala as his nominal chief. By securing the novel ‘Aurora Floyd’ and the steady co-operation of Miss Braddon, he rendered what was perhaps his greatest service to ‘Temple Bar.’ For four years he was sole editor of this periodical, but he resigned it in the summer of 1867, and took charge of ‘Tinsley's Magazine,’ a new illustrated monthly, of which he edited four volumes, commencing August 1867. Twelve years later, in April 1879, he started yet another magazine, ‘Time: a Monthly Miscellany of Interesting and Amusing Literature,’ which he conducted for five years. In 1862, inspired by the example of his former intimate friend, Albert Smith (of whom he wrote a ‘Memoir,’ prefixed in 1860 to the volume entitled ‘Mont Blanc’), he conducted a short but successful lecturing season at the Egyptian Hall, his themes being mainly social; and in 1864, to fill a temporary gap in the novelist's department of ‘Temple Bar,’ he wrote a highly successful work of fiction, ‘Broken to Harness: a Story of English Domestic Life.’ Forster commented upon it at Gadshill, ‘It is really very good, my dear Dickens, quite as good as Anthony Trollope,’ to which Dickens replied, ‘That is not very high praise.’ Except that they were both servants of the post office, there is not much in common between the novelists. The novels of Yates are possibly superior in workmanship and construction, abounding as they do in strong situations, but they lack the abiding interest that attaches to the best of Trollope's work. They are very unequal; ‘Broken to Harness’ and ‘Black Sheep’ are perhaps the two best.

Having relinquished the ‘Lounger’ in the ‘Illustrated Times,’ Yates commenced similar columns, published every Monday, in the ‘Morning Star,’ headed ‘The Flâneur,’ and to the same paper contributed stories and essays styled ‘Readings by Starlight.’ At the close of the sixties, besides novels and ‘special’ work on the ‘Daily News,’ he was contributing regularly to ‘All the Year Round’ and the ‘Observer,’ and as ‘Mrs. Seton’ was contributing a weekly article, called ‘Five o'Clock Tea,’ to the ‘Queen.’ In 1871, in collaboration with A. W. Dubourg, he wrote a three-act drama, ‘Without Love,’ for the Olympic.

Meantime, in 1870, Yates abandoned his never very arduous duties in the missing-letter branch, and accepted a special post under Francis Ives Scudamore [q. v.], the first administrator of the telegraph department. His duty was by personal solicitation to obtain the consent of corporate bodies and private landowners to the erection of telegraph poles on their domains, in view of the great extension of the telegraph service contemplated by the government. These duties occupied two years, at the expiration of which Yates retired from the post office on a pension of 200l. a year (March 1872). In September 1872 he commenced at New York a lecturing tour in America. He was generally very well received. During five months he travelled twenty-six thousand miles, delivered 106 lectures, and cleared 1,500l. Moreover he obtained a post upon the staff of the ‘New York Herald’ worth 1,200l. a year. In the ‘Herald's tabard,’ as he styles it, he travelled for some months at a violent pace between the various capitals of Europe. Greatly needing rest, he determined upon realising a project which he had long had in his mind, the foundation of a relatively respectable ‘society paper.’ While in Paris, in the early summer of 1874 he got Grenville Murray [q. v.] to join him in embarking 500l., and on 8 July 1874 appeared the first number of ‘The World: a Journal for Men and Women.’ Yates was editor-in-chief, and his staff during the first year included Messrs. Labouchere, T. H. S. Escott, Archibald Forbes, F. I. Scudamore, H. W. Lucy, Dutton Cook, Mortimer and Wilkie Collins, Miss Braddon, and Mrs. Lynn Linton. Freed from the disgraceful personalities which had disfigured such predecessors as the ‘Age’ and the ‘Satirist,’ the ‘Queen's Messenger,’ the ‘Owl’ and ‘Echoes of the Clubs,’ the ‘World,’ after profitably encountering some not very serious legal opposition, was an established success within six months of its inception. Murray, who persisted in regarding the journal as an agency for the conduct of private vendettas, was bought out in December 1874 for 3,000l., and the ‘World’ became the sole property of its manager, Edmund Yates. A distinctive feature of the new weekly was the frequent use of the first person singular in its columns. Yates's success enabled him to indulge his hospitable instincts in Portland Place, and, in addition, to maintain a summer residence on the Upper Thames. The ex-member of the Garrick was now elected a member of the Carlton Club, His discretion, however, was not always above reproach, In January 1883 there appeared in the ‘World’ a libellous paragraph referring, though not by name, to the Earl of Lonsdale. Yates was found guilty of