Romance Without Sensation

Asked what makes a good editor, Editor Bruce Ingram of the Illustrated London News once replied: "The chef does not go out with his gun to shoot the pheasant. He does not gather the strawberries and pick the peas. But he knows where the best are to be found and he can combine [them] into a perfect meal. That is the function of the editor."

Last week, as he celebrated his 50th anniversary as editor of the world's oldest picture magazine, plump, jolly Chef Ingram was performing the neat feat of turning out a tasty and tasteful journalistic meal without spice. "Whatever success we've had," says 73-year-old Captain (World War I) Ingram, "has been due to a policy of romance without sensation."

The Artist's Eye. Nevertheless, the romance of a picture magazine became a 26,000-copy sensation on the day Founder Herbert Ingram, grandfather of the present editor, brought out the first issue in May 1842. It carried spot-news sketches of Queen Victoria's fancy-dress ball at Buckingham Palace, and of an "immense conflagration" at Hamburg. Drawn from eyewitness accounts, the Hamburg sketch appeared on Page One only a few days after news of the fire reached London.

The I.L.N. earned its greatest reputation by fast, accurate coverage of the border skirmishes and full-dress wars in which the expanding British Empire was almost constantly involved. War artists represented the I.L.N.--and the empire--on every battlefront from India to the Transvaal.

But the Illustrated London News did not rely on pictures alone: as succeeding Ingrams moved into the editorship, the work of such writers as Rudyard Kipling, James M. Barrie, Robert Louis Stevenson, Thomas Hardy, Arthur Conan Doyle, and G. K. Chesterton appeared in its pages. Soon after the present editor took over, at 23, he got a chance to show his mettle when Queen Victoria died. Only twelve hours after the bells of St. Paul's tolled the news, the News appeared with a special edition about the late Queen and the new King Edward VII. Two weeks later, Ingram stationed 24 artists along the funeral route, fitted their drawings together in a 48-page panorama.

The Camera's Eye. Photographs have long since crowded out most sketches, a trend not appreciated (by Ingram. "The camera," says he, "never sees many things that the eye sees. An artist can give a composite effect of a scene. The camera gets only what is happening at one particular fraction of a second." To keep costs down, Ingram hires photographers and artists on a free-lance basis, gets along with a permanent staff of twelve. That is one big reason why the News (and its subsidiaries) last year cleared $300,000 after taxes.

After 108 years, the weekly's bill of fare still features the royal family and the pageantry of Britain's self-liquidating empire, plus side dishes of art, exploration and archaeology. Ingram acquired his taste for digging the hard way: at 14, he fell into an Egyptian tomb, emerged with archaeological specimens and an unwavering devotion to the subject. (He also collects other items, from old Dutch masters to ship models.) Though he has 100,000 subscribers, Ingram admits he edits the Illustrated London News to please an audience of one. Says he, echoing good editors past & present: "Things that interest me interest our readers."

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