The New Journalism, the New Imperialism and the Fiction of Empire, 1870-1900

Andrew Griffiths

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781137454362
• eBook ISBN: 9781137454386
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia britannica

Aggressive policy, enthusiastic news coverage and sensational novelistic style combined to create a distinctive image of Britain's Empire in late-Victorian print media. The New Journalism, the New Imperialism and the Fiction of Empire, 1870-1900 traces this phenomenon through the work of editors, special correspondents and authors.

1

Most Extraordinary Careers: Special Correspondents and the News Narrative

In Thomas Carlyle’s thunderous satire Sartor Resartus, the fictional Professor of Philosophy Herr Teufelsdröckh, mocks the British print media in terms which anticipate W.T. Stead’s later assertions of the power of the press:

The Journalists are now the true Kings and Clergy: henceforth Historians, unless they are fools, must write not of Bourbon Dynasties, and Tudors and Hapsburgs; but of stamped Broad-sheet Dynasties, and quite new successive Names, according as this or the other Able Editor, or Combination of Able Editors gains the world’s ear. Of the British Newspaper Press, perhaps the most important of all, and wonderful enough in its secret constitution and procedure, a valuable descriptive history already exists, in that language, under the title of Satan’s Invisible World Displayed.¹

Sartor Resartus was first published serially in Fraser’s Magazine from 1833 to 1834. The fact that Carlyle’s career depended upon the burgeoning periodical press adds irony to his satire (although periodical writing remained distinct from journalism in the strictest sense). The comments reproduced above indicate this duality of attitude towards the press of the early nineteenth century. Not only is the British press ‘the most important of all’, its proprietors and ‘Able Editors’ are the peers in history of Europe’s royal dynasties. Indeed, they have replaced them at the centre of historical narrative. However, Carlyle also has Teufelsdröckh confuse George Sinclair’s account of seventeenth-century witchcraft with a comprehensive history of Britain’s press: clearly, the attitudes earnestly expressed by Stead a mere half-century later in those articles ‘Government by Journalism’ and ‘The Future of Journalism’ were so far removed from the early nineteenth-century perception of the profession as to be comical.²

As Carlyle’s assertion suggests, the social standing of the journalist – defined as the reporter of news – was low indeed for much of the nineteenth century. Apparently little had changed since Samuel Johnson described the journalist as ‘a man without virtue who writes lies at home for his own profit’.³ The very word ‘journalism’ was a recent coinage: Gibbons Merle had discussed the social role of journalism in an 1833 Westminster Review article, adapting the word from the French.⁴ Yet Carlyle’s own attitude was thoroughly conflicted. Elsewhere, he aligned the newspaper with the Old Testament as a text of genuine influence.⁵ Indeed, a dramatic shift in attitudes towards journalism had been effected by the close of the century. By 1900, journalism was not merely a means to make a living; the best journalists could also make a name by their profession. As discussed in Chapter 5, an ambitious young man like Winston Churchill could rely on popular journalism as a means of serious political self-promotion in the late 1890s. By 1907, journalists were sufficiently confident of their status to form the National Union of Journalists to protect wages: this represents a significant step towards professional recognition.⁶ Such a situation is far removed indeed from Teufelsdröckh’s perception of the press as secretive and satanic.

One kind of journalist, however, had a greater significance at an earlier stage than his colleagues: this chapter argues that, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, it was around the special correspondent that the popular narrative of the British Empire was centred. Establishing exactly what the role of ‘special correspondent’ entailed and in what ways it can be distinguished from other journalistic roles is a challenging task. For this reason, few commentators have attempted to define the role of the special correspondent. As Lucy Brown points out, ‘The phrase “special correspondent” had no very precise meaning, nor had the phrases “occasional correspondent” and “special commissioner”. These titles were used at different times by different papers or journalists to describe someone who was working on a particular assignment’.⁷ Matthew Rubery refers to it as ‘generic term’ and names Nellie Bly, William Howard Russell and Henry Morton Stanley as examples.⁸ The breadth of roles suggested by this list of names – running from social campaigns through war correspondence to African exploration – threatens to defeat any attempt at definition, yet the special correspondent was a much more precisely defined figure in the popular imagination of Victorian Britain. Victorian commentators writing in the periodical and newspaper press supplied detailed impressions of a correspondent’s life from which a wealth of valuable information about the representation of the special correspondent may be gleaned.

Through those contemporary accounts, this chapter traces the popular image of the Victorian special correspondent and charts the transformation of the special correspondent from disreputable journalist to national celebrity (in parallel to the rise of journalism in general) in the second half of the nineteenth century. The leading role of the gentlemen of the press (a phrase which was as indicative of aspiration as it was of actuality for much of the century) in the formation of imperial discourse is the overarching focus of this chapter. It is necessary to note the particular contribution of war correspondents to that process. While war correspondents were a specialised sub-group of special correspondents, Victorian writers often used the terms interchangeably. As Britain entered the period with which this book is concerned, a band of specialist war correspondents including William Howard Russell, Archibald Forbes, Bennet Burleigh and George Augustus Sala were widely known to newspaper readers.⁹ Stefanie Markovits has argued that Russell’s coverage of the Crimean War was the beginning of a new, more ‘participatory’ form of journalism through which the newspaper correspondent emerged as ‘a first-person narrator/hero’.¹⁰ Following Habermas’s account of the development of the public sphere, Markovits reads the work of the special correspondent as part of a dialogue with the public, who wrote to the newspapers to express their responses to the latest news. Increasingly from the 1870s, the interaction in print observed by Markovits would be augmented by the sense that through the vivid prose of the special correspondents readers were experiencing empire vicariously.

Through the story of a man who impersonated two of the correspondents named above, the first section of this chapter examines the rise of the special correspondent and the nature of the role. The second portion of the chapter engages with the central role of the special correspondent in the twin processes of novelisation and journalisation. By means of carefully constructed personas and a readily identifiable literary style, the special correspondents became the heroes of their own novelistic narratives. A case study of Forbes’ career illustrates this process in action. The final section explores the representation of the special correspondent in fiction through a reading of selected texts, including Rudyard Kipling’s first novel, The Light That Failed (1891).¹¹

It is worth re-emphasising that this chapter focuses on the Victorian popular image of the special correspondent. That image – often constructed by the correspondents themselves – inevitably distorts a rich and complex history. For example, the focus on the conflicts and exotic settings of empire obscures the domestic work of special correspondents to a large degree. Similarly, the presentation of the special correspondent as a paragon of imperial masculinity elides the presence and contribution of female journalists. The frequent emphasis on correspondents’ feats of endurance and athletic prowess distract from the role of technology in the transmission of news. Consequently, the reader seeking detailed exploration of the role of female journalists, the origins of special correspondents (or of war correspondents) and the technical systems of newsgathering and dissemination should look elsewhere.¹² It was the romanticised, idealised version of the special correspondent who wielded such influence in imperial discourse that their work came to shape the experience of empire for British readers. Their work brought empire, news and fiction into the closest contact. In this sense, the special correspondents were the newest of new journalists.

A most extraordinary career

The extent to which the status of the special correspondent – and the journalist in general – had risen since Carlyle wrote Sartor Resartus is illustrated by an 1889 article published in The Belfast News-Letter. On 27 November, the newspaper ran a fascinating crime story under the headline ‘A “Special Correspondent.” An Extraordinary Career of Swindling.’ The article names several prominent journalists and special correspondents and gives a strong indication of what the public expected of them. Typically for the regional press of the time, the news is syndicated from the Daily Telegraph. Their man at the Manchester Assizes begins with an account of the bare facts of the case:

Ernest Norton Rolfe, alias Ross (or Rossiter) Raymonds, pleaded guilty – before Mr. Justice Charles – at the assizes here, to uttering a forged bill of exchange for £21, well knowing it to be a forgery, and was sentenced to a long term of penal servitude. His career has been a remarkable one. What his real name is nobody except himself knows. His nationality is equally obscure.¹³

The full story is colourful indeed. Rolfe was a consummate conman, financing a luxurious international lifestyle by impersonating several renowned special correspondents. This in itself indicates a remarkable change in the fortunes of the journalist – if also indicating that unscrupulous behaviour was expected at times. Plainly, Rolfe had been able to rely upon the fact that the right kind of journalist was both well regarded and trusted.

The correspondent recounted Rolfe’s catalogue of crimes with all the narrative panache expected of a special correspondent. Rolfe’s story began when ‘he got himself introduced into the journalistic circles of London’ and acquired some kind of accreditation from ‘a real (or pretended) syndicate of provincial journals, which sent him out to Egypt during the Tel-el-Kebir campaign.’ His salary, if such there was, he ‘supplemented [ … ] by extensive borrowings from various officers [ … ] none of whom have ever been repaid’.¹⁴ Thus far, Rolfe could have relied merely upon the gentlemanly honour of his victims rather than his particular status as a special correspondent. A sojourn in Paris followed, during which, posing ‘in Oriental costume,’ he claimed to be the representative of Egypt’s Khedive and convinced a hotel manager to redecorate his hotel in Oriental style for the arrival of the royal party.¹⁵ Staff practiced ‘the Eastern obeisance before Rolfe’ in preparation for the Khedive’s arrival.¹⁶ Predictably, no monarch appeared. Rolfe absconded, borrowing £100 from the hotel manager on his way out (in order to facilitate the royal progress, of course). His subsequent exploits relied ever more heavily on the good standing of the special correspondent.

At various times, we are given to understand, Rolfe impersonated James Greenwood (a well-known journalist who wrote for the Pall Mall Gazette and Daily Telegraph) and Bennet Burleigh (a renowned special correspondent, also of the Daily Telegraph) in order to obtain money on trust. Readers are informed that:

At Tunbridge Wells, he was Mr. James Greenwood, the ‘Amateur Casual,’ and got £21 on a forged bill of exchange. At Aberystwyth, he was Mr. Bennet Burleigh, the war correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, and swindled the proprietors of the local newspaper of a sum of money and board and lodgings for some days.¹⁷

Rolfe also borrowed the identity of the celebrated special artist Melton Prior in an attempt to obtain goods and money by fraud and subsequently used a false letter of introduction from another of the Daily Telegraph’s star special correspondents, George Augustus Sala, to cash a forged cheque for £21. After a final attempt to persuade an agent of the Illustrated London News to cash another forged cheque – this time impersonating Melton Prior the special artist again – Rolfe was arrested. The Telegraph’s man in the courtroom observed a transformation in Rolfe’s appearance: ‘When apprehended, he was well-dressed, self-confident, and jaunty; when he appeared in the dock here, he was dejected, depressed, dilapidated, unshaven, and very much thinner.’¹⁸ Mr. Justice Charles was clearly unimpressed by Rolfe’s indubitable audacity and panache: the ‘extraordinary career of swindling’ earned him a ten-year jail sentence.¹⁹

Rolfe’s case raises a number of intriguing issues. He certainly depended on the unregulated nature of journalism. Anyone might become a special correspondent; no specific qualification or accreditation was required. The manner of his fraud suggests that journalism still had a taint of disreputability about it, too. After all, no less a figure than Henry Morton Stanley had secured his first major scoop in Abyssinia by bribing a telegraph operator. Such behaviour was by no means unusual. Yet the very fact that anyone might seek to impersonate a journalist of any kind suggests that the reputation of the profession had improved sharply since the beginning of the century. An 1874 article in the Gentleman’s Magazine suggests an important reason for Rolfe’s choice of special correspondents as especially suited to his aims. The (appropriately anonymous) article stresses the fact that ‘in the case of the press reputation stands for nothing – means nothing – except perhaps in the case of a special correspondent’.²⁰ Of all the kinds of journalist Rolfe could have impersonated, the special correspondent was the only one where he could count on a name being recognised, let alone held in sufficient regard to facilitate the purloining of substantial sums of money. Evidently, by 1889 the names of the best-known correspondents carried substantial weight. The fact that Rolfe was able to inspire trust and acquire cash by means of this impersonation leaves little room for doubt about this.

There are other possible reasons for Rolfe’s decision to impersonate special correspondents. The extremes of a correspondent’s life may have appealed to Rolfe’s inclination to take chances; in an 1896 article series for The Boy’s Own Paper, journalist-turned-novelist G.A. Henty described a special correspondent’s life as ‘necessarily one of extremes. At one time he is living in a comfortable hotel and witnessing the most e...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Empire, News and Novels
• 1. Most Extraordinary Careers: Special Correspondents and the News Narrative
• 2. W.T. Stead, General Gordon and the Novelisation of the News
• 3. Romance or Reportage? Henry Rider Haggard and the Pall Mall Gazette
• 4. A Scramble for Authority: Stanley, Conrad and the Congo
• 5. Winston Churchill, the Morning Post and the End of the Imperial Romance
• Conclusion: Conflict, Friction and Fragmentation
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index