Editor of the Daily News

Abstract

(I) ‘The 21st of January, 1846, came at last,’ writes Russell, ‘and there was a wild rush for the first number. At the sight of the outer sheet, hope at once lighted up the gloom of Printing House Square, the Strand, and Shoe Lane. The Daily News, No. 1, was ill-printed on bad paper, and “badly made up”, and, despite the brilliant picture from Italy by Dickens, was a fiasco. There were reports that there had been a Saturnalia among the printers. I am not sure that there were not social rejoicings that night in the editorial chambers which had been so long beset by dread. Dickens had gathered round him newspaper celebrities, critics in art, music and literature, correspondents, politicians, statists. Yea, even the miscalled pennya-liner was there. But Dickens was not a good editor; he was the best reporter in London, and as a journalist he was nothing more. He had no political instincts or knowledge, and was ignorant of and indifferent to what are called “Foreign Affairs”; indeed, he told me himself that he never thought about them till the Revolution of 1848. He had appointed as manager his father, whom he is said to have immortalised in Micawber, and if his father was not really a Micawber, he was at all events destitute of the energy and experience of Delane, senior.¹ Dickens having all the tools at his hand to turn out a splendid newspaper, failed to exhibit even moderate carpentry. What he did was to shake the old confidence in established relations, break up old associations and raise the cost of the personnel in all departments.’