Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 63.djvu/312

 Frederick Hodgson, proprietor of Hodgson's ale, known as ‘Brown Stout.’ Theodore Hook, who was present at the christening, said he should have been named ‘Bingo Stingo.’ His parents were united in one desire—to keep their son off the stage. Edmund had childish recollections of many of the celebrities of the day, but none of the theatre. He was educated at a preparatory school at Highgate, and then at Highgate school under Dr. Dyne. In 1846 he was sent for a year to pick up German under a professor at Düsseldorf. On 11 May 1847, when only sixteen, though he looked some years older, through the influence of Lord Clanricarde, one of the patrons of his father, he obtained an appointment in the secretary's department at the general post office, and rose in 1862 to be head of the missing-letter department at a salary of 500l. His godfather, Edmund Byng, gave him some useful introductions, and in December 1848 he was elected a member of the Garrick Club. The animal spirits which elicited some paternal advice from Sir Rowland Hill gave place, after the first few years of office life, to a desire for literary distinction, which was stimulated by an early marriage at the age of twenty-two. He began by writing for the ‘Court Journal’ at a salary of a pound a week, ‘very irregularly paid,’ contributing mainly theatrical criticism; his maiden verses ‘On the Death of Thomas Moore’ were published on 6 March 1852. He was soon contributing to the ‘Leader,’ ‘Bentley's Miscellany,’ and ‘Chambers's Journal,’ and in this same year (1852) was one of the original members of the Fielding Club, so named by Thackeray. In 1853 he was one of a goodly company of well-known contributors to the ‘Keepsake,’ which was kept alive after Lady Blessington's death by her niece, Marguerite Power. Next year he moved from Marylebone to Doughty Street. His father's name was a password to a section of literary and Bohemian society, and he rapidly became friendly with such men as Peter Cunningham, Charles Dickens, John Delane, John Oxenford, the Broughs, G. A. Sala (whom he subsequently introduced to the proprietors of the ‘Daily Telegraph’), and Frank Smedley, with whom, in 1856, he collaborated in a shilling book, ‘Mirth and Metre, by Two Merry Men.’ He had a special kindness for Smedley, of whom he gives a sympathetic portrait in his ‘Recollections.’ He had already contributed to the then popular ‘shilling light literature’ a series of sketches called ‘My Haunts and their Frequenters’ (1854), and about the same time he became dramatic critic and occasional reviewer to the ‘Daily News,’ a post which he retained for six years, at a salary of 4l. a week. In August 1855 he edited the first number of the ‘Comic Times,’ the outcome of a short-lived feud between Herbert Ingram and Messrs. Bradbury & Evans, which ran for four months, and was then suddenly extinguished upon the intervention of Mark Lemon, in the interests of ‘Punch.’ Yates transferred his staff of humourists to a new venture, ‘The Train,’ in which in the space of thirty months he ran through 900l. In the meantime he had become a contributor to ‘Household Words,’ and early in 1857 was produced at the Adelphi ‘A Night at Notting Hill,’ by Nicolas Herbert Harrington and Yates; it is described by the latter as ‘a riotous and ridiculous but exceedingly funny farce.’ It was followed by ‘My Friend from Leatherhead,’ played by Mr. Toole at the Lyceum on 23 Feb. 1857; a sketch for Mr. and Mrs. German Reed, and a comedietta for the Princess's called ‘If the Cap fits.’ In conjunction with Harrington he wrote three more farces: ‘Your Likeness—One Shilling,’ performed at the Strand Theatre, April 1858; ‘Double Dummy’ (Lyceum, 3 March 1858); and ‘Hit him, he has no Friends!’ (Strand, 17 Sept. 1860).

From an early period Yates had been possessed by the idea of introducing a column of personal gossip into a respectable paper. He unfolded this novel idea to [q. v.], who, when he started the ‘Illustrated Times’ in 1855, made the experiment with a column entitled ‘The Lounger at the Clubs.’ Yates was so successful with this that in May 1858 he was selected by John Maxwell to edit a new paper, to be called ‘Town Talk.’ As a foil to an adulatory notice of Dickens in the first number, Yates composed for No. 2 a very impertinent and unfriendly sketch of Thackeray. A sneer about his time-serving was hotly resented by Thackeray, who contended that the only place where Yates could have mixed the colours for the pretended portrait was the Garrick Club, as a member of which body he demanded reparation. A painful altercation ensued, and was only concluded by Yates's name being struck off the list of members (20 July 1858). He bore the decision with courage, but it was a very severe blow. His chief adviser throughout the affair had been Dickens, between whom and Thackeray a lasting coolness ensued. The squabble smouldered for some time. ‘Young Grub-Street’ in the ‘Virginians’ was regarded as a hit at Yates, who retorted in a bitter travesty upon ‘Bouillabaisse,’ printed in the ‘Illustrated Times,’ 29 Jan. 1859. Yates stated his version of the affair in ‘Mr.