Theodore Emil Argles (c. 1851 – 9 October 1886) was an Australian journalist described as "amazingly clever and desperately erratic",[1] who wrote under a variety of names, including "Pasquin", "Harold Grey" and "The Pilgrim".
Argles was born in England, the son of a Jewish-French solicitor and his English wife,[2] and having come into some money (from parents wishing to be quit of a troublesome son, one commentator suggested),[3] made a tour of Europe and South America before emigrating to Australia, settling first in Victoria, and contributed some anonymous pieces to an Adelaide paper before moving to Sydney and deciding on the life of a journalist.
[6] In October 1878 he moved to Melbourne, where he wrote a pamphlet "The Pilgrim", which offended some influential people, and he was given a week to leave the Colony, ostensibly under the Influx of Criminals Act, for being in Victoria illegally.
[7] He moved to Adelaide, where in January 1879 his brother Frank Argles was charged with five separate forgery offences, and was sentenced to four years' imprisonment with hard labour.
A report he wrote, as "The Wanderer", for The Advertiser on the seamy side of Adelaide[9] brought a libel action from Robert Taylor, landlord of the City Hotel on the corner of Hindley and Morphett streets, who felt he had been wronged.
He returned to Sydney, where, as "Pasquin", he wrote for "Freeman's" another series of sketches, published between February and July 1880, entitled "The Social Kaleidoscope", a phrase echoed by G. R. Sims.
He died at Brougham Street, Woolloomooloo after years of suffering from consumption and the effects of heavy drinking, in which absinthe played a part.
[17] (as listed in The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature)[18] A series of articles "Unorthodox Sydney" by "A Pilgrim" published by Freeman's Journal between April and October 1877: