"It is a curious fact that during his trial the London papers sold more copies than during the Franco-Prussian War, or any other recent eventful epoch. I confess that it never was proved absolutely to my mind that he was Arthur Orton; on the other hand, whilst there was the strongest presumption that he was, he entirely failed to make out that he was Sir Roger Tichborne. I remember once during the trial, in company with Mr. G. A. Sala, passing an evening with the 'stout nobleman' at his hotel in Jermyn Street. We found him very pleasant, and he told us many tales of his existence in Australia. He certainly had a wonderful command over his features. On that last day of the civil trial, the room at the hotel was filled with adherents, many of whom were Tichborne bondholders. Suddenly the Claimant walked in. He leant against the mantelpiece, took his cigar out of his mouth, and announced the fatal news. Great was the excitement, great was the despair and {117} the indignation. But the Claimant calmly smoked on, apparently the only person in the room who had no sort of interest in the matter."[23] Soon after Mr. Labouchere's founding of _Truth_, he became involved in several lawsuits, the most famous of which, at this period, was the one which indirectly led to his expulsion from the Beefsteak Club. He invariably commented with great wit and asperity upon his enemies, frustrated and otherwise, in the columns of his paper, and there is no doubt that its enormous popularity depended in large degree upon the fearlessness and unconventionality with which he attacked all persons of high degree and low, guilty of injustice, bullying, _snobisme_, or wilfully ignorant prejudice, who, for long, had been silently endured by their weaker brethren, for no other reason than because there had never before been a--Labby. Sometimes he was accused by an envious press of being a liar. The title he had chosen for his paper possibly provoked the criticism. He was rather sensitive on the subject, and expressed a certain amount of annoyance whenever the well-known ditty of Sir Henry Bridges, "Labby in our Abbey," which was published in M. A. P., was mentioned.[24] In _Truth_ he once produced what may be called an apposite alibi when confronted by the accusation. Some correspondent had referred rather pointedly to the existence of Lying Clubs in the last century. "There is no occasion to go back to the last century to prove the existence of Lying Clubs," {118} he wrote. "When I was at Bishop-Auckland in County Durham, a few years ago, I found a Lying Club existing and flourishing. There were different grades of proficiency. If a man could not lie at all, he was expelled. If he lied rather badly, he was given another trial. I never knew any one expelled. I was blackballed." [1] _The Daily News_ was the first Liberal daily paper to be published in London and at first cost fivepence. It was afterwards reduced to threepence.