Some piquant people 1924

Front matter

BEFORE THE MAST —AND AFTER

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A SAILOR AND SHIPOWNER

By SIR WALTER RUNCIMAN, Bart.

Chapter I

Some more or less graceful introductory sentences—My sympathy for a murderer—Philandering on sermon money—Why an author got slated.

pp. 11-16 CHAPTER {I _ Arrival in London—A first exclusive—Enter Kennedy Jones—A pupil with scruples—The marquis they couldn’t turn out . . pp. 17-24 CHAPTER III

H. H. Asquith takes my tip; and loses his money—Frank Lockwood’s wit—Disgraceful allegation against Sir Sidney Colvin—Sir John Millais to the rescue—Sir Charles Warren upset—Bernard Shaw attempts ballet-dancing ; and teaches a policeman. 2 : - pp. 25-32

CHAPTER IV

A. B. Walkley and his Mrs. Harris—Bottomley covets the Liberal leadership—Why Cora Brown Potter had to “gag” in Shakespeare— The battle for “ the dockers’ tanner ”?—An alarmed tipster—How Melba was startled . : ; . : ; ° : - Ppp. 33-42

CHAPTER V

Enter Charles Hands—His missing autobiography—Settling a libel suit—Wholesale murder charges at {1 apiece—Hands reviews a prison van—Belle Bilton and the ubiquitous private detective—Incidents at a matrimonial agency—Still-born raid on a capitalist . - pp. 43-58

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6 CONTENTS

CHAPTER VI

Prince Edward and the baccarat scandal—A conspiracy of hush—Who broke it? The Jackson case—The great Spink pearl case—A badly used major—Sir Charles Russell throws up his brief—Sir Henry Hawkins pulls Lord Coleridge’s leg . ‘ ‘ : ; ‘ - pp. 59-68

CHAPTER VII

W, W. Astor decides to become a British peer—And my assistance is enlisted—A “ disaster’? that wasn’t—Shaw slates Le Gallienne—The poet whips him with a ten-lined scourge : ; . pp. 69-80

CHAPTER VIII

Rejecting a proprietor’s contributions—Interviewing John Burns, Labouchere, and Stead—My moral reputation sullied—I befriend a most awful scoundrel—A violated sanctuary—Arrest of a choice brace of blackmailers—Phil May and the cigars : ‘ . pp. 81-91

CHAPTER IX

The Ardlamont murder mystery—My interview with the leading Crown witness—The man who could not be found—A terrible jest at a terrible crisis—A verdict of ‘Not Proven ’’—Interviewing the original of Sherlock Holmes—Conan Doyle hitsout . , - pp. 92-108

CHAPTER X

Sir Charles Darling’s prophecy—Its fulfilment now over-due—Pugilism at the House of Commons—Fisticuffs and journalism—Pelissier challenged to a fistic duel—Harry Cust’s bull-dog . ‘ . pp. 109-116

CHAPTER XI

The debacle of Oscar Wilde—How he had censured the ethics of journalism—Fun at the Covent Garden Balls—Lord Brassey’s lapse— I upset Jerome K. Jerome—Robert Barr and Mark Twain. pp. 117-124

CONTENTS 3

CHAPTER XII

Mystery of a Gladstone exclusive—Charles Whibley and the ancient don—How to do a general election—Mr. Curzon and the magnificent Radical candidate—Charles Hands and Colonel North—An experience at Rider Haggard’s : : . . : - pp. 125-132

CHAPTER XIIl

Three Scotland Yard men—Melville and the anarchists—A spy unmasked—His trial, sentence, and escape—Frank Froest and Jabez Balfour —A police job more like a film drama—Read, the Southend murderer —A crafty and premeditated crime—A craftier sleuth . pp. 133-142

CHAPTER XIV

W. S. Gilbert mislays his sense of humour—His dignity collides with a piece of feminine impudence—He is stung into indiscreet letter-writing ; - and is sued for libel—Height of the theatre souvenir habit—Haddon Chambers and Barney Barnato collaborate in a play—The Jameson Raid interrupts the dramatists . : ; : : . pp. 143-151

CHAPTER XV

Harmsworth sends for a news-editor—A futile attempt to be prohibitive—A week-end at Elmwood—Early days of The Datly Mail—The sport of scoop-hunting—Arrival of Hands; and of George Steevens— Harmsworth’s practical joke She es ‘ , . pp. 152-165

CHAPTER XVI

Max Beerbohm and the “quaint old formula”—Max and Jerome K. Jerome—Lingard’s theatrical memories—An inquest to our rescue—The exclusive that should have been a classic—How it was mutilated : ; ° : : ° : pp. 166-175

CHAPTER XVII

Meeting again both Callan and Monson—Money-lending extraordinary—A man insured for £50,000o—Callan attempts to murder him— Monson threatens a libel suit; but gets five years—Lord Rosslyn and the usurer—Charles Brookfield’s letter—Upsetting Harmsworth’s social career—He cables to the Kaiser and the Sultan. - pp. 176-186

8 CONTENTS

CHAPTER XVIII

Temptation for a news-editor—It is resisted, with a struggle—Dangers of Sunday evenings—Other figures on the stage—The reporter who was sentenced to death—George Steevens’s debut as a war correspondent— Harmsworth has a narrow escape . ; ‘ : - pp. 187-193

CHAPTER XIX

The ignored disaster—George Bull and Joe Cahn—Art-dealing extraordinary—Actresses at a supper-party—Old masters offered and refused— Lionel Brough and stage realism—The ingenuity of a press-agent.

CHAPTER XX

Kruger and Lord Belgrave’s telegram—The passing of George Steevens —Rudyard Kipling under fire—Mafeking night—Charles Hands captures a Boer bullet—Breaking the news to his wife—Trying to treat her “ like a princess ”—Hands on the pressman’s duty . : . pp. 204-212

CHAPTER XxI

Harmsworth meets Ralph D. Blumenfeld; and finds me temporarily de trop—An earl’s trial by the House of Lords—Who “ Eric Leith” was—How Marie Corelli and Hall Caine fell out—I encourage the quarrel—Giving Harmsworth the sack . ; : :- Pp. 2E3—222

CHAPTER XXII

Harmsworth and the serial story—Putting an author in a quandary— The awkward dénouement of a stunt—Napoleon savours Waterloo— The rise of the cigarette—Adventures in the parliamentary lobby—Gerald du Maurier and the dramatists. ‘ : : « pp. 223-240

CHAPTER XXIII

Mandeville and London Opinion—Invention of limerick last-lining— Buying a paper “ for nothing ””—A solicitor’s letter from Lloyd George— Doings with Leonard Merrick, Bernard Shaw, Ashley Sterne, and Twells Brex—Shameless procedure of Harris Deans. : - Ppp. 241-255

CONTENTS 9

CHAPTER XXIV

A word or two with the Prince of Wales—The beginnings of auction bridge—Trouble with a plagiarist—We have him arrested—His handsome profit on the transaction—Dangers of villains’ names—A prevention from libel suits—Is £3,000 a year enough money ?—Wit from the war fronts : ; : : ; : : ; . pp. 256-264

CHAPTER XXV

Samples of the war humours—Pulling the press censor’s leg—That riot at the front—Why I retired from editorship—A deal with Lord Riddell—My musical friends—Stories of Sir Landon Ronald and Mark Hambourg—George Graves and Arthur Roberts. . pp. 265-277

CHAPTER XXVI

Sidney Dark, the hurricane author—Mostyn Pigott and Victor Bridges —Edgar Jepson and the book on bridge—The sphinx-like Eille Norwood— J. K. Snowden and Harmsworth—My solitary golf trophy—Why I really wrote this book ‘ : : : : . . pp. 278-287 asta Py ra NM LO IRN S ne 4 Ss >» > * , oo 3 OD

CHAPTER I.

Some more or less graceful introductory sentences—My sympathy for a murderer—Philandering on sermon money—Why an author got slated.

OR several years now I have been promising Pe that one day soon I would fling aside the pen, and wield in future no weapon deadlier than the driver or eke the niblick.

But now that the moment has brought the opportunity, and all journalistic responsibilities have ended, things haven’t worked out quite like that. After forty years. of strenuous press life, one finds that the ‘‘ copy ’’~ spinning habit cannot be relinquished suddenly and easily—especially as the moment synchronises with a temporary distaste for golf, the eye rebelling more persistently than ever to look at the ball. Hence this decision to make rather gradual my abstention from ink, dropping first from the top speed of newspaper-work into the lower gear of book-writing.

The type of book I was to write was ordained for me by my friends. The day I retired from editorship, Reginald Arkell accosted me with the remark—and it was rather disturbing at the time—‘ Now, of course, you'll sit down and give us a meaty volume of reminiscences.” I disclaimed with perfect sincerity any such intention. The peerage, I thought, had monopolised the reminiscence market, and I had no illusions concerning my own insignificance in the eyes of the publishers. ‘ But a II man who has been over so much grass as you have will have to relate it all,’ persisted Arkell; and probably from that moment the poison began to work. A few hours later Victor Bridges, at the close of a rubber of bridge, made some remark indicating that he was taking it for granted that I would be doing a book about my inky career; and the next day I met James Douglas, the editor of The Sunday Express. Now, Jimmy Douglas had once been a regular contributor to my little old paper, London Opinion, and he said: ‘‘ Now you are out of the editor’s chair you can be perfectly frank with me, so tell me whether your circulation dropped when my articles ceased.”

Of course Douglas had been a tower of strength to the paper with his brilliant work, but I could not resist one of those genial gibes with which most of us of my set are in the habit of endearing ourselves to one another. “¢ James,”’ I said, “my circulation had been dropping slightly while you were writing for me, and even the cessation of your articles did not stop the drop.” Jimmy grinned, declared that this was one of the best things I had ever said, and that it ought to go into my book of reminiscences. ‘That suggestion once again! You will see how difficult it was becoming for me to avoid the inevitable ; and when my old friend, Sidney Dark, forsook the lure of the bridge-table in order to give me a hint or two on how to deal with publishers, as discovered by an old campaigner, I was sorely tempted. In Oscar Wilde’s phrase, I am the kind of man who can resist anything except temptation. Hence these profound pages. ;

I shall have to rely largely upon memory and a stack of old letters for my reminiscences, for—unlike the children of Harry Nicholls—I have kept no book of press-cuttings. This allusion may want explaining. When at the height of his fame as a comedian at Drury

THE MURDERER LEFROY 13

Lane, under the Augustus Harris reign, Harry Nicholls told me that he had one day found his children quarrelling over some home-made theatricals they were playing, the characters being God and Gus Harris, and each wanted to be Gus Harris, regarding that as the “ lead.” I published this incident in some gossip column; and a few days later Harry Nicholls told me the children had each secured a copy of this paragraph, because each had decided to start with it a book of press-cuttings to chronicle their careers.

All my life I have been meeting interesting and even famous and illustrious people. ‘The first of these, I think, was a personage who was illustrious merely in crime—the murderer, Lefroy. I was seventeen at the time, and was an apprentice on The Sussex Daily News. I lived in rooms—nay, a room—near the Brighton railway station, and was on my way home to tea when I detected a stir inside the terminus.

As things appeared at that moment, a young gentleman named Arthur Lefroy had been assaulted on the way down from town. He bore several nasty open wounds on his face—prods with the ferule of an umbrella —and a gory collar: and he explained that his assailant had escaped from the carriage, while he, the victim, was temporarily unconscious through the pene of the attack.

So I wrote for ae evening edition of my paper, The Brighton Argus—and this was the first line that ever appeared about this sensational affair—a nice sympathetic little paragraph explaining how badly Mr. Lefroy had been treated, and how the railway police had been good Samaritans to him, and had bought him a nice clean collar, and tidied him up, and bathed his wounds. ‘That was that; and the paragraph, for the first hour or two of its existence, cut no ice and sold no quire.

But when, at about eight that evening, the newg began to get round the town, by a whisper here and a word there, that the body of Mr. Gold, obviously the victim of a dreadful crime, had been found in a tunnel ten or twelve miles out of Brighton, The Argus began to find itself in clamorous demand. I had become a “‘ best-seller ’—-with a certain degree of inadvertence, I admit, having regard to the failure of my paragraph to compass the real situation, but nevertheless a “‘ best-seller.”

Of my apprenticeship days | will not inflict upon you many sentences. I had started the pursuit of journalism at the age of fifteen. I was an orphan without any adult belongings except a grandfather, Thomas Irving ~ White, whose wife (his second wife) kept a millinery shop. In this shop were several pretty assistants, and among these was Margaret Bondfield, who was destined to become the first woman Front-Bencher. I well recall her—a childish figure of about fifteen or sixteen, with little black ringlets framing a piquant face dominated by piercing dark eyes, generally flashing in a devastating smile. |

But my days among these little milliners were but few. My grandfather’s affection for me, never, I fear, at all deeply implanted, was torn up by the roots when one day with boyish frankness I confided to him my undisguised and unflattering opinion of him. He seized the opportunity of washing his hands of me; and from that moment, on a salary of twelve shillings a week, I proceeded to keep myself, and get on as best I could in a world which nevertheless seemed an exceedingly pleasant place.

There were occasional additions to my humble twelve shillings. At Holy Trinity Church a silver-tongued incumbent, the Rev. Daly Cocking, preached every Sunday morning; and an advertisement acquainted me with the glad tidings that somebody in London wanted

CORN IN EGYPT 46 a shorthand note taken of these sermons, and was prepared to pay half a guinea a time for the transcripts. This was corn in Egypt for a young apprentice; and, concerning myself not at all whether the London buyer wanted the discourses for his own spiritual nourishment or for repetition to another congregation, I eagerly supplemented my apprentice allowance, and savoured something akin to affluence.

At all events I can recall that I entered the cheerful life of Brighton with zest and no feeling of financial restriction. J had sufficient, for instance, to learn the game of billiards, a not inexpensive pastime having regard to the harsh custom of the loser paying for the table; and there was always the half-crown or two in the pocket when Maude wanted to be taken to the roller-skating, or Kitty to the dance-hall. It seems wonderful to me as I now look back, but there it is. And for club I had the headquarters of the Fire Brigade, where ha’penny nap was going of a night whenever I looked in; and one of the fire station officials made a *‘ book”? and was always delighted to pay out on the infrequent occasions when one backed a winner.

The work on the paper was hard. We apprentices —and E. V. Lucas, who was one of us, would doubtless confirm this—were expected to take our turn and pull our weight with the full-fledged, experienced reporters, the £2 10s. per week plutocrats, and do our regular two or three columns per day of political meetings, Town Council debates, inquests, marriages, dramatic productions, police-court reports, or book-reviews. I recall vividly the first literary criticism I ever wrote, for circumstances compelled me to slate the volume unmercifully. I was sixteen at the time, and the author I encountered was an old-established favourite. ‘This was probably his fiftieth success. But his novel included a chapter about an inquest, and I, if callow as a littérateur, was a seasoned expert on the coroner’s job, and I detected some error of procedure in the author’s holding of the inquest. So I concentrated on that technical mistake. Lord! how I lashed into that ignoramus! What did I know of literature, who only corpses knew!

Nor was I only a confident book-reviewer. Critical articles, a column or two in length, about fat-stock shows, flower shows, gunnery competitions, coursing meetings, cricket matches, regattas—all fell to my lot; and ?’m not at all sure still whether the average journalist is not a better hand at these affairs than the mere expert. Lord Pembroke has said that as a rule the men who don’t know write, and the men who write don’t know. And Jl, knowing not the difference between a heifer and a steer —if there be a difference—did at least know my own limitations ; and my learned disquisitions upon why John Smith justly won the first prize for shorthorns, or why Lord Leconfield’s geraniums beat everybody else’s by a couple of blooms and a leaf, were always sound and weighty, for they were based upon shorthand notes of interviews I sought with half a dozen of the most knowledgeable folk at the functions. H. W. Massingham once, I fancy, scoffed at shorthand, and dubbed the journalist who used it a mere ‘ mechanic.” Shorthand may be a poor master, but it is an excellent slave to have about the house. The greatest descriptive writers may give you a vivid picture of a dramatic trial, but their work is in vain if they, failing the shorthand habit, have to omit that remarkable letter which is read out in court, that human document which, in dramatic intensity, is worth more than the whole of the rest of the case—the very keystone of the concern.

Chapter II

Arrival in London—A first exclusive—Enter Kennedy Jones—A pupil with scruples—The marquis they couldn’t turn out.

Y five years’ apprenticeship expired when I

was twenty; and my father having, I had

~ heard, once been in partnership in a publishing

business with Passmore Edwards, at this time the owner

of The Echo, I struck The Echo for a job, secured it, and came to London, the Mecca of our craft, in 1885.

I lived at Love’s Hotel, in Arundel Street, Strand, where the daughter of the house was Mabel Love, the future beautiful young actress of picture-postcard fame, then a dainty child of about eleven or twelve, who was always ready to run my errands in return for an occasional stick of chocolate.

My chief recollection of my arrival in the metropolis is my realisation of the utter disproportion of the work done by the London reporter in comparison with his provincial confrére.

Instead of my average of a couple of columns a day in Brighton, I now found that to be called upon for even one column a day was a rare event, unless there were heavy cases at the Law Courts or the Old Bailey. My comparative paucity of output alarmed me horribly at first. ‘The job couldn’t last, 1 feared. Each week-end as I drew my salary—which was the substantial, not to say dazzling figure of three guineas—I felt that I was well-nigh obtaining money under false pretences—a condition of frenzied finance which must end with an explosion at any moment. I don’t believe I-was ever

2 17 really at mental ease in this matter until I dropped upon my first big “‘ exclusive,” after a year of this persistent disquiet. ‘There was a sensational murder trial, the ‘Pimlico Poison Case,” in which Mrs. Bartlett was put upon her trial for the murder of her husband, and the Rev. Mr. Dyson was committed for trial as her accessory. The reverend gentleman had purchased the chloroform which had found its way to the dead man’s interior, and Mr. Dyson’s social relations with Mrs. Bartlett had proved to be distinctly intriguing. It came as a thunderclap to the public—and this was my “exclusive” to The Echo—when the Crown decided to take Mr. Dyson from the dock and call him as a witness for the prosecution against the woman. I obtained the news from Mr. Harry Poland, the Treasury prosecutor; and it made The Echo the great authority in this cause célébre, which ended in the acquittal of the beautiful Mrs. Bartlett.

On my arrival in London, I had expected to be overawed by the super-ability of the London journalist, and here further disillusionment awaited me. I had left behind me in Brighton a dozen men as good as any I ran up against in town while in pursuance of my daily assignments ; and the farther my experience extended the more confident I became that the provinces were full of men equally competent and much harder-worked than the fellows who had achieved Fleet Street and the Strand.

The surprise of this state of affairs abode with me so long that I must have been in the habit of talking about it, and in one instance my chatter had a far-reaching effect. I had been sent down to the Midlands on some case, and there, it appears—although I never remembered it—I met a young Birmingham reporter, Kennedy Jones, and imparted to him my discovery that there was nothing sacrosanct or preternaturally capable about the London journalists as compared with the average copy-slogger

RENDLE ON KENNEDY JONES 19 in the provinces. ‘This conversation, as Kennedy Jones Many years afterwards publicly announced, was the cause that determined him to come to London, to become eventually the colleague of Alfred Harmsworth, and the part-owner with him of The Evening News, The Daily | Mail, and The Times. The occasion of this announcement by Kennedy Jones was a dinner given to me by The Daily Mail when [left it in 1902 ; and Tom Rendle, who had to follow Jones in the toast-list, found in Jones’s declaration material for some of that caustic oratory in which he has long been facile princeps. Hadthe present company known earlier, said Rendle, what Kennedy Jones had just admitted, that it was Springfield who had brought to Fleet Street the disastrous descent upon it of K. J., it would not have been a dinner, but a burning at the stake or a boiling in oil that they would have organised for this Springfield who had caused them so much misfortune—a pronouncement that delighted Kennedy Jones, who ever loved to pose as the great strong tyrant, with the power of life and death in his hands. Money must have had a remarkable elasticity back in the eighties, for in 1887, on my three-guinea salary, I married and settled down in a little flat just by Baker Street station. For {45 you could get a nice flat in those days. We had a little maid, and little windowboxes full of bright blooms, and every element of bliss, except that the tradesmen would annoy my eighteenyear-old wife, with her hair in a slide on her shoulders, by addressing her as ‘“* Miss,”’ causing her to blush furiously, and to ask me what the stupid fellows thought she was doing there with me if she was “‘ Miss.”” And our {160- odd a year left us a margin for hospitality. For at this time my elder brother, George Springfield, found his affairs considerably unstuck, and had to come with his wife and child to live with us, and to share our humble three-guinea-a-week ménage, without being able to contribute anything to its resources, while he prepared to make a fresh start in life.

This brother of mine, although four years my senior, has always been fated to be rather looked after by me. At this time he had been attempting to run a drapery business at a Leicestershire village, and had not flourished. So I determined to teach him journalism : for I thought a lot of him in those days.

It wasn’t easy. A brother with four years’ advantage in age, both of us in our twenties, is very much more of a man than a junior ; and if my senior brother thought he had greater knowledge than myself about everything, including journalism, it was not altogether unnatural. But it made tuition difficult. The instructor was involved too often in argument ; and the pupil would not be told without challenging. He wrote not so much with ease as with Telegraphese. However, by degrees, I entrusted my pupil with larger and larger portions of my free-lance work, turning over to him the financial proceeds: and I discovered a nice little police-court, the press box of which was more or less untenanted. Here I planted my pupil—it was the Guildhall Police Court—and here, upon City drunk-and-disorderlies and peccant insurance clerks, he practised his style until he was able to fly alone.

This was when he obtained a sub-editorship on a financial paper ; but before he would settle down in this post there were scruples he found he had to subdue. He had a tender conscience in those times. His job entailed Sunday evening work for the Monday’s. paper, and, to my dismay, he jibbed at this breaking of the Sabbath. 1 pointed out that if he really felt he must indulge in Sabbatarianism, then he must either educate the public to eschew Monday morning papers or else drop journalism while he was yet on its threshold. He was a worshipper at the Rev. Page Roberts’s church in Vere Street, and

A MIRTHFUL MARQUIS 23 he decided to write for pastoral advice. ‘The good clergyman assured him that while Sunday work was indubitably inhibited, yet also equally incumbent upon man was it to do his duty in that state of life to which it had pleased God to call him. So at last my lofty-minded brother saw his way to accept this regrettable feature in press life, and to remove himself and his family from my little flat to a home of his own. I must have proved rather a good instructor of journalism, for my pupil eventually did rather well in the profession for a time, becoming, thirty years later, President of the Institute of Journalists, and honorary editor of the Institute Journal. Meanwhile, to return to Zhe Echo, I found I need not have been alarmed about the absence of opportunities. The big cases requiring their three- or four-column reports began to come along with tolerable frequency. There were the indictment of W. T. Stead for abducting the girl Eliza Armstrong, to prove the truth of his revelations about “‘ Modern Babylon,” and the Charles Dilke and Colin Campbell divorce suits. In this last, a valet giving evidence of what he saw through the keyhole when Captain Shaw, the Fire Brigade chief, had been shown into Lady Colin’s drawing-room occasioned so much mirth on the part of the then Marquis of Blandford that a barrister sitting next to his lordship, unaware of his identity, assured him that he would be turned out of court if he did not control his merriment. “ Turn me out of court!” said the Marquis. ‘“‘ They can’t ! I’m one of the co-respondents.” ‘Then there was Parnell’s repudiation in the House of Commons of the Pigott forgery—a sufficiently tense bit of drama to satisfy any young reporter’s craving for descriptive opportunities ; and there was the Old Bailey trial of John Burns and Cunninghame Graham for the “ Bloody Sunday” rioting in ‘Trafalgar Square. Mr. Burns professed to expect an acquittal, and when asked what ae 8 SOME PIQUANT PEOPLE would become of his wife if he went to prison, he breezily replied that he had ‘‘ made arrangements to leave her to the apathy of a callous world.” He got a sentence of six weeks, and very little longer than that period had passed when he was announced to “‘sing some pieces from The Mikado” before a proletarian audience at the Tottenham Court Road Atheneum: he was rather given to this sort of thing in those days.

Now “exclusives”? in those days were rarer birds than now, and I imagine my bit of luck in the Pimlico case must have brought me out of the shadows of obscurity ; for when T. P. O’Connor started The Siar in 1888, Robert Donald, who organised his staff for him, offered me the post of chief reporter thereon.

So I left The Echo, and thus just missed being a colleague of two interesting men who were at about this time shipped on by Passmore Edwards. His new editor was Mr. Pethick Lawrence, known to the Parliamentary wags of to-day as Mr. ‘‘ Pathetic”? Lawrence; and his new leader-writer was Ramsay MacDonald, Labour’s first Prime Minister.

I don’t profess to remember much about Passmore Edwards except that he pre-dated Carnegie in the habit of giving away thousands of pounds for the foundation and support of public libraries, and yet lived personally a life that was ascetic and almost penurious. A member of our staff—I think his name was McLachlan—had his silk hat bashed in during the Trafalgar Square riots : and as Mac was there in the paper’s service, he charged in his weekly expenses for a new hat. \“‘ What can a journalist possibly want with a new hat?” demanded Edwards, adding the almost superfluous information : “Why, I have not had a new hat for fifteen years ! ”

I jumped at Donald’s Szar offer, for the appointment carried with it the remuneration of four guineas a week.

Why, Rutland Barrington was playing leading réles in

PRESS REMUNERATION 23

Gilbert and Sullivan operas at the Savoy Theatre for £4 per week a little earlier than this, and by now had only reached £6. And it was at about this time that Jimmy Glover was adapting a play from the French for £3 cash down, with a promise to make it £3 tos. if the English version proved a success. (Many years later Jimmy related at the O. P. Club that this play did indeed prove a success, netting its purchaser about £20,000. “It is only fair to say,’ added Glover, “that when I wrote for the extra ten shillings it was paid without a murmur.’’)

Well, I was saying that Donald, bless him, had shattered my belief in the caution of the Scot by offering me four guineas weekly. I expect to show throughout these records a disposition to be precise about emoluments, for my period has corresponded with an advance so great in the rate of journalistic earnings that a continuance of this progression in the same ratio must promote our dear old inky way into one of the best-paid of all the crafts. And I cannot say that I personally have detected in this movement the impetus of the Institute of Journalists. The Institute certainly purports to be working for the better remuneration of its members, but in at least one glaring instance it has failed to practise what it preaches. It publishes a Fournal of its own, and it has been paying its editor exactly nothing. This editor is my brother, George Springfield, and I have often remonstrated with him over the circumstance that he, while in a well-paid job elsewhere himself, should be keeping a brother journalist out of a post by performing for nothing the functions that should be yielding a salary to somebody in want of it. My obliging but I think somewhat misguided relative has always replied that the Institute cannot afford to pay an editor to run its Fournal: and this, I think, is exactly the excuse that every bad newspaper-owner makes when he takes advantage of the necessitousness of a journalist to sweat his labour.