ABSTRACT
By the early 1860s he was writing one, two, or three leaders nearly every day and covering notable events at home or abroad as a special correspondent. But the pattern of his work changed dramatically, and in some respects permanently, on 14 November 1863, the day when he embarked on his first prolonged overseas assignment for the Telegraph: to write about America in the midst of the Civil War. He probably did not foresee how great a change it would prove to be, almost the start of a new career. As when he went to Russia in 1856,
his immediate motive for embracing it was at least as much financial as professional. He needed to get out of reach of his creditors, and he hoped to come back with a large enough sum to satisfy them: this time no less than £2,000.3 But within four months of his return in December 1864, he took flight again, to Algeria, and only a few months after getting back from there he was off on the first of several assignments to different parts of the Continent that kept him safely, and continuously, abroad for a further two years. Immediately after he came home for good, late in the summer of 1867, he had to place his affairs in the hands of the Bankruptcy Court. He opened his account of his assignment to Algeria (A Trip to Barbary) by likening himself to the Wandering Jew driven from place to place without respite; but the curse that kept him constantly on the move for nearly four years was neither divinely ordained nor, as he always liked to make out, one of the inescapable penalties of his calling. It was his own incurable improvidence. In this regard, overseas assignments were actually more a blessing than a curse, for the special correspondent abroad was not only safe from his creditors but was better paid than at home, could live more cheaply, and except in time of emergency was not necessarily expected to furnish copy every day. In America, Sala received £2,000 for writing the equivalent of two letters a week for twelve months,4 and the terms for his sojourns on the Continent would have been no less generous. At home, he probably never earned more than £1,250 a year from the Telegraph.
