MY CONNECTION WITH JOURNALISM
I MUST allude briefly to my long connection with journalism.
When I settled in London in 1891, I had already done a good deal of
journalism in New York and San Francisco. In the latter my writing had
chiefly lain in travel-articles on Japan, to which San Francisco, as the
Pacific Capital of the United States, naturally looks. In New York I had
written on travel—much of my _Japs at Home_ appeared in travel-articles
for the McClure Syndicate. But I also wrote a number of literary and
personal articles for the _New York Independent_, the _Sun_, the
_World_, and so on, such as my _Reminiscences of Cardinal Newman_ told
in the first person. In doing this I found that what America demanded
was the personal reminiscence.
When I came to England, I naturally sought work on the same lines, and
had no difficulty in finding editors who saw the opening for this
comparatively fresh line in British journalism.
I turned first to Fisher, of the _Literary World_, whom I had met at the
Idler teas, and who had invited me to do some reviewing for him. He had
_Table-Talk Notes_ as a feature, and here my first journalism appeared.
When I was helping Jerome to formulate _To-day_ in 1893, I suggested to
him that we should have a book of the week, in which we told as much
about the author as we knew, and that biographical gossip about authors
and artists and actors should be one of our chief features. He was
completely in favour of it, and I wrote a good deal for him, especially
about authors.
About the same time, Lewis Hind became editor of the now defunct _Pall
Mall Budget_, and I carried out the same idea for him in a regular
_causerie_, to which we gave the name of the _Diner-Out_, and which I
signed “St. Barbe”—the family name of my maternal grandmother.
Between these three papers I was pretty fully occupied. But my mind was
turning towards a more congenial form of journalism—the travel-article.
Percy Cox, a son of the Horace Cox whose name appeared on the _Queen_ as
its publisher for so many years, was anxious to develop its travel side,
and while the late Sievers Drewett was organising the wonderful travel
department, which now has its annual _Queen Book of Travel_, he employed
me to write a series of articles on my travels in Greece and Turkey, and
a regular travel-serial on the trans-continental journey across Canada,
which I amplified and brought out as _On the Cars and Off_.
While I was doing these, Clement Shorter, who had been a sort of
literary editor to the _Queen_—all the important books being sent to
him, and he writing a sort of _causerie_ about them—became too busy with
his offspring, the _Sketch_, to do any more work for the _Queen_, and I
was offered his place. My suggestion that we should have a signed “book
of the week” for the most important book—unsigned minor reviews to be
worked in anywhere about the paper—and that I should do my _Diner-Out_
column for the _Queen_, instead of the _Pall Mall Budget_, was accepted,
and I began my literary connection with the _Queen_, which lasted for so
many years. I kept the _Diner-Out_ for biographical gossip about authors
chiefly, and for announcements of forthcoming books, which could be made
interesting by personal gossip. Actual reviewing I kept as far as
possible out of that column. In those days, though the _Queen_ was and
always had been the chief ladies’ paper, it had not nearly so many
departments of feminine interest as it has now, so there was plenty of
space for book-reviewing, which became a very important feature of the
paper. I was only responsible for the _Book of the Week_ and the
_Diner-Out_, though I did perhaps a page of unsigned minor reviews,
which were never attributed to me.
I had one faithful reader in her late Majesty, Queen Victoria. I learned
this quite incidentally. I had taken a _manoir_ in Brittany for the
summer, and at the house of Mrs. Burrowes, a niece of the late Lord
Perth, met the lady who filled the post of reader to Her Majesty; Queen
Victoria prefered having books and newspapers read aloud to her. This
lady informed me that Her Majesty had my _Diner-Out_ column in the
_Queen_ read to her every week, and was most amused by it.
As the woman’s side of the paper developed, the space for reviewing
became more and more restricted, and the _Diner-Out_ became simply a
column of small reviews, without any of its own features, and finally, I
think, the name itself very often dropped out.
While I was doing the reviewing for the _Queen_, we were travelling a
great deal in France, Italy, Sicily and Egypt. The books which I
published on these countries were, as far as the travel portion of them
was concerned, largely drawn from these articles in the
_Queen_—beginning with _Brittany for Britons_. Some of them, such as the
Normandy articles, I never did re-publish, and I contributed to the
_Queen_ enough articles on Italy to form another volume, besides those
which have already appeared in my books on Italy and Sicily.
I still do some reviewing for the _Queen_, but I do little other
journalism now, except when I am approached by some newspaper to do an
article on a subject upon which I have special knowledge.
The fact is, that in recent years I have employed my journalistic
faculties on the preparation of books like _Who’s Who_, _Sladen’s London
and Its Leaders_ and _The Green Book of London Society_, which need much
the same kind of gifts as personal journalism does.
[Illustration:
SIDNEY LOW
_Drawn by Yoshio Markino_
]
_The Green Book_ was a sort of one-line _Who’s Who_, which only
mentioned the leading people in each walk of London life, except the
bearing of a title. The selection of the chief personages and experts in
each line—say, for instance, shooting or fishing or golf or writing
books—was not made by any correspondence with the people themselves, but
was entrusted to the chief expert in each line. Golf was by a runner-up
for the Amateur Championship, fishing by the fishing editor of the
_Field_, exploration by the secretary of the Royal Geographical Society,
and so on.
_Who’s Who_ itself must form the subject of a separate chapter.
I have no older friend in journalism than Sidney Low. We went to Oxford,
I think, on the same day—he was a Scholar of Balliol and I was a Scholar
of Trinity—and we certainly knew each other very well there, and have
been intimate friends ever since. His ability received early
recognition. Before he had left Oxford ten years, he was editor-in-chief
of a great London daily, and he has written books which have become
standard works, like the _Dictionary of English History_, which has been
through half-a-dozen editions. Since he gave up editing he has
represented the leading papers on the most important special missions.
He has been an alderman of the London County Council, and he has been
one of the chief forces in literary society. If I were asked who had
introduced me to the largest number of eminent persons, I should say
Sidney Low—without hesitation. No man passes saner or more moderate
judgments on the great questions of the hour. Indeed, I should say that
Low stands in journalism for what a man who was at Oxford with both of
us—George Cave, K.C., M.P.—stands in politics—for moderation in
statement, combined with great firmness of principle and judgment.
With Low’s name I must couple that of the late Samuel Henry Jeyes, who
was his colleague both on the _St. James’s Gazette_ and the _Standard_.
He was a beloved friend of us both, but my intimacy with him began much
earlier. He was my greatest friend at Trinity, Oxford, and one of the
Oxford men of whom I saw most in after life. We were elected Scholars of
Trinity on the same day; we had rooms on the same staircase; we went to
all the same lectures till we passed mods., and I taught him to play
billiards. It was the only game of manual skill which he ever did play.
He lashed the adulation for sport which prevails at Oxford with the
gibes of which he was such a master. When we had only been up at Oxford
for a few days, A. J. Webbe, who was the special idol of Trinity because
he was captain of the ’Varsity Eleven, asked all of us Trinity freshmen
to meet some of the lions of the Oxford Eleven. All of us except Jeyes
were vastly elated. We all, except Jeyes, talked our best cricket shop
to make a good impression on the demigods. At last he could stand it no
longer, and, waiting till there was a dead pause in the conversation, he
said, “This b——y cricket!” I can remember the tableau still.
His reputation as a wit came up with him from Uppingham. All Uppingham
men could remember how, when he was caught cribbing with a Bible on his
knee at a Greek Testament lesson, and his class-master had said to him
triumphantly, “What have you there, Jeyes?” he said, “A book, sir, of
which no man need be ashamed,” and how when Thring, the greatest head
master of his time, had asked him how he came to be ploughed in
arithmetic for his Oxford and Cambridge certificate, he replied from
Shakespeare, “I cannot reckon, it befits the spirit of a tapster”—a
readiness which Thring would have been the first to appreciate.
Among the best things I remember him saying at Oxford are his definition
of the Turks in a great debate over the Bulgarian atrocities, as a
people “whose morals are as loose as their trousers, and whose vices are
as many as their wives.” And it was he who said, “I don’t want to go to
Heaven, because Gore (now Bishop of Oxford) is the only Trinity man who
will be there, and I’d rather be with the rest.”
Jeyes never spoke at the Union—he despised it—or he would have been as
great a success as the miraculous Baumann or Freeman, now Rector of
Burton-on-Trent. I never remember hearing Cave speaking at the Union,
though perhaps he did.
One of Jeyes’ wittiest retorts was to “Bobby” Raper, at that time Dean
of Trinity, who was “hauling” him for some meretricious disregard of
College discipline. The glib excuse was not wanting, but Raper was
stern. “No no, Mr. Jeyes, that won’t do. You told me the exact opposite
of that last term.” “I know I did, Mr. Dean, but that was a lie.”
He owed the Dean one, for the first thing he did when he went up to
Trinity had been to go and call on the Dean and tell him that he had
conscientious scruples against going to chapel.
“Morning chapel, you know, Mr. Jeyes,” said the Dean, “is a matter of
discipline and not of religion, but if you really have conscientious
objections, I’ll put on a roll-call for you at 7 a.m.”—Chapel was at 8
a.m., so Jeyes swallowed his nausea.
But Jeyes’ wit was tireless. He was a fine scholar—he made his pupils
write wonderful Latin prose when he became a don at University—I presume
during the undergraduacy of Lord Hugh and Lord Robert Cecil. But he tore
himself away to be a journalist, and became in time an assistant-editor
of the _St. James’s Gazette_, and later of the _Standard_.
As a journalist he was distinguished by incorruptibility of no common
sternness. Though he had always spoken as a Liberal at Oxford (very
likely out of malice, because all his friends were Conservatives), he
was one of the pillars of Conservative journalism. He knew all the
chiefs of the Conservative party, and enjoyed great influence with them.
He was so rugged and unbending. I never knew a harder editor to “work.”
He wrote a Spartan life of Chamberlain, for whom he had a great
admiration, except in the matter of Tariff Reform.
He married an old friend of ours, the beautiful Viva Sherman, an
American nearly related to the Senator-Vice-President and the General.
Both before and after his marriage he was a frequent visitor at our
house, and we often met at Ranelagh and elsewhere. He enjoyed a
discussion with Norma Lorimer. Her wit provoked his, and their
conversations were most brilliant to listen to.
At last poor Jeyes was struck down with cancer—aggravated, I believe, by
cigar-smoking, in which he was a noted connoisseur. He bore it with
magnificent fortitude, and for a long time kept it a secret. Even I did
not know that he had been mortally ill till he was dead. But I was one
of the three old Oxford friends who stood by his grave—his oldest
friend, except H. B. Freeman, who read the service. Sidney Low was the
other. Charles Boyd was there too, but he belonged to a much younger
generation.
If Jeyes had known that his life would be so short, he would perhaps
have devoted more time to book-writing. It is a pity—except for his
country and the Conservative party—that he gave up so much of his life
to necessarily ephemeral journalism. I always heard that but for a flaw
in a will he would have been owner of one of the greatest provincial
journals in England.
Peace be to his ashes. He was a merry soul, and if the theosophists are
right about our astral bodies meeting the spirits of the departed, there
is no one with whom I should so much enjoy an astral conversation as
Jeyes. He would be such a volatile spirit. I can imagine the naïveté
with which he would describe his experiences.
The Rev. Herbert Bentley Freeman—the Rector of Burton-on-Trent—a cousin
of the historian, and a descendant, I believe, of the mighty Bentley of
Phalaris renown, came up to Trinity from Uppingham in the same term as
Jeyes. Freeman and A. A. Baumann, who was afterwards Conservative M.P.
for Peckham, were the two most brilliant speakers at the Union in my
day. The undergraduates said that both wrote their speeches beforehand,
and learned them by heart and practised their delivery.
Years afterwards I met Baumann when he had given up his safe seat at
Peckham and unsuccessfully contested a seat in the North, I think at
Manchester.
“What made you give up Peckham?” I asked. “They would have gone on
electing you there as long as you lived.”
“My dear chap, life isn’t worth living when you are member for Peckham.
I live in South Kensington, and while I was member for Peckham I used to
find my hall full of constituents by the time I came down for breakfast,
and by lunch-time you’d have thought that I was having an auction of my
furniture.”
But of all the men who were at Oxford with me, no one has been so
prominent, then and now taken together, in intellectual circles as W. L.
Courtney. Courtney was then a rather young New College don, who had the
distinction of being married to an extremely smart-looking wife. That
would have been a distinction by itself in the Oxford of that day, for
few were married in a way suitable to impress undergraduates. Added to
that, he cut the most eminent figure in athletics of any don in Oxford.
He was the treasurer of the University Boat Club, while the dons
respected him as the ablest man in Oxford at philosophy. I was not there
when he gave it all up to come to London and be literary editor of the
_Daily Telegraph_ and editor of the _Fortnightly Review_, but I can
imagine the consternation which fell upon that ancient seat of learning
when their bright particular star, the admiration alike of don and
undergraduate, “chucked it,” as they say, for journalism. Of course he
did wisely, for in an incredibly short space of time he had as
distinguished a position in London as he had had at Oxford. His
influence on literature has been immense. He has stood for the
combination of scholarliness and up-to-dateness. His own books range
from essays on the verge of fiction to some of the most important works
on philosophy published in his generation. Incidentally, the creator of
_Egeria_ is our best dramatic critic, and a writer of plays.
Both the late and the present editors of the _Field_, William Senior and
Theodore Andrea Cook, came to our Addison Mansions receptions. That
delightful man, William Senior, the “Red Spinner” of fishing journalism,
and his wife came very often to us. Theodore Andrea Cook is the ideal
editor for a great sporting paper like the _Field_, for he had not only
been editor of a great daily, but he had rowed in the Oxford boat, and
been a Scholar of his College, and he had captained the all-England team
in the international fencing matches at the Olympic games which were
held at Athens. He has also written very sound books on an unusual
variety of subjects (one of which, his book on _The Spiral in Nature and
Art_, was most widely discussed); and is one of the most delightful
writers we have of travel-books on France. Of course, everything which
he has written upon sport is _ex cathedra_.
Walter Jerrold, who lives a little higher up the river than I do, in an
old house with a great garden, a very old friend, and a much older
Vagabond than I, often came with his wife to us at Addison Mansions.
Jerrold is a grandson of the famous wit, Douglas Jerrold. He was for
more than a dozen years sub-editor of the _Observer_. But fortunately he
found time for editing of another nature as well, which will help his
own books to give him a permanent place in our literature. He is one of
our best editors of nineteenth-century classics; his biographical and
bibliographical introductions are the most useful of their kind—just
what you would expect from the grandson of a man who was a star in the
firmament of which he writes.
Clement Shorter, who married the Irish poetess, and was editor of the
_Illustrated London News_ when we met at Rudolph Lehmann’s in the
“nineties,” is another editor of books as well as papers. The Brontës
are his special protégés. He is the acknowledged Brontë expert, and
every one has read his new book on George Borrow. He has been great at
founding—he not only founded the _Sketch_, the _Sphere_ and the
_Tatler_, but he was one of the founders of the _Omar Khayyam Club_,
beloved of Radical litterateurs, though it deals not with English
politics, but English Persics. Here you are always sure of good
speaking—Mr. Balfour and Mr. Asquith, and all the important Cabinet
Ministers and ex-Cabinet Ministers have spoken there on occasion. I have
never heard Shorter speak himself, but I understand that he is a very
good political speaker, and I can picture him telling a Lincolnshire
audience how wrong it is to have an income not half as great as his own,
for Shorter has been deservedly prosperous. He is a great journalist—one
of the pioneers of modern journalism. He was a Civil Service clerk when
in 1890 he became editor of the _Illustrated London News_, and only a
couple of years had passed before he started the _Sketch_, the model of
a new class of paper, for the same office, and continued to edit both
papers till 1900. Then he thought that he would like to have a paper of
his own, and raised a hundred thousand pounds to found the _Sphere_ and
the _Tatler_, with which he has been associated ever since, as editor of
the former and director of both. They are rightly among the most popular
illustrated papers of the day, for they have reduced the handling of the
personal element to a science, and Shorter always was a brilliant
editor. His success has been largely due to his colossal energy and
industry. He has taken a minute interest in every detail of the
production of both papers.
In the midst of all his journalistic labours, Shorter has found time to
write some admirable books, and has made himself with two books a
specialist on Napoleon in his period of exile at St. Helena.
Herbert White, the present editor of the _Standard_, is one of the
best informed of all the English newspaper editors about Continental
politics, because he went through such an arduous schooling in
Austria and Germany, and knows German as well as he knows English.
He married the niece of an Austrian political leader, and after
war-correspondenting in the Græco-Turkish war of 1897, represented
leading English, American and French newspapers at Vienna from 1897
to 1902, and Berlin from 1903 to 1911. Besides this he has taken
twenty special journalistic missions in every country of the
Continent except France and Russia.
I should be accused of sycophancy if I said all I should like to say of
Robertson Nicoll, of whom I saw a good deal before we were both such
busy men. But there are some things about Nicoll to which nobody can be
blind, besides the position of respect which he enjoys in the literary
community. He makes a _bona fide_ attempt to educate his party in
politics, and his public in a spirit of commonsense and toleration
instead of appealing to their prejudices, and no man has done more in
the way of securing the publication of the books of unknown authors of
merit, who have justified his expectations and given the world great
books. Nicoll has been the sincere and enthusiastic friend of merit. I
can say this without prejudice, because his firm have published nothing
of mine.
Similarity of name, and their common friendship with the A. S. Boyds,
makes me mention here James Nicol Dunn, whose editorship of the _Morning
Post_ was marked by such an advance in the political weight of that
paper. Dunn was managing editor of the _National Observer_ in its prime.
For solid efficiency as a journalist, he had no superior in the country.
It would have been a bad day for England when he left it to edit the
_Johannesburg Star_, if it had not been so important that the chief
organ of the Transvaal should be in such brave, moderate and judicious
hands, at such a critical period in the history of South Africa.
T. P. O’Connor is a very old friend of mine. I met him first when we
were both in America in 1888-1889, and we have been on terms of
Christian names ever since. Though we differ strongly in politics, it
has never affected our friendship, for T. P. is very fair to his
enemies, except when he happens to have a special hatred for them. He
has founded four papers—the _Star_, the _Sun_, _T. P.’s Weekly_ and _M.
A. P._—but I am not sure as to how far he is still interested in any of
them.
T. P. is to me a fascinating personality. He is so generous and genial.
The swift recognition, the ready smile, the warm affectionate manner,
have endeared him to hosts of friends, and every one recognises that he
has a golden pen which invests everything he touches with interest, and
an acute intelligence—acute enough to sift even the Humbert mystery and
present a clear analysis of it, as witness his _Phantom Millions_.
He is a golfer too, and once upon a time used to play with W. G. Grace,
who, it seems, in spite of his being the best cricketer that ever lived,
always hits his shot along the ground except from the tee, though he
drives and puts pretty well. I got this egregious piece of journalism
from him when we were sitting next to each other at the dinner given by
M. Escoffier, at that time, and probably still, cook at the Carlton
Hotel, who gave a gourmet’s feast on the occasion of the publication of
his book on cookery, published by Heinemann. Heinemann invited me. The
chief thing I remember about the feast is that the wine Escoffier
selected was _Pommery Naturel_, and that the _tour de force_ was lamb
stuffed with sage and onions to replace the usual mint sauce.
John Malcolm Bulloch, the editor of the _Graphic_, who gave me such
immense assistance when I was writing _Adam_ _Lindsay Gordon and His
Friends in England and Australia_, is an author whose father and
grandfather were authors before him. His specialities are the ancient
University of Aberdeen, of which he is an M.A., and the great house of
Gordon. He edited the _House of Gordon_ for the New Spalding Club, and
has written many pamphlets on Gordon genealogy besides his book on _The
Gay Gordons_.
I happen to enjoy the friendship of the editors of both the _Bookseller_
and the _Publishers’ Circular_. George H. Whitaker, who is a doctor by
profession, saw a good deal of the world as a ship’s doctor when he was
a young man. Now the world sees a good deal of him as head of the firm
which publishes _Whitaker’s Almanack_, as well as editor of the
_Bookseller_—famed, as a trade-organ ought to be, for the justice of its
reviews.
R. B. Marston, who edits the _Publishers’ Circular_, edits the _Fishing
Gazette_ also. He founded the Fly Fishers’ Club. The Marstons are famous
fishermen—his father, Edward Marston, who has just died at a Nestor’s
age, had been one of Izaak Walton’s chief followers both with pen and
rod. R. B. is, besides writing books on fishing and photography, one of
the chief writers on our food supplies in war, an energetic and
patriotic public man.
My oldest acquaintance in journalism, except Sidney Low, is Penderel
Brodhurst, the editor of the _Guardian_. We used to meet at Henley’s in
the days before I went to America, which was in 1888. He was in those
days the walking encyclopædia of the _St. James’s Gazette_, and
afterwards edited the long-defunct _St. James’s Budget_. He was, as he
is, a man wrapped up in his work: he could, if he had chosen, have been
a personage in literary society on his very historical name, for he is a
descendant of the Penderel who saved King Charles II in the oak at
Boscobel, and enjoys a pension therefor, probably one of the oldest
pensions still running in England, and he is, though he does not use his
title, an Italian marquis (Penderel de Boscobel, created 1782).
Lindsay Bashford, being literary editor of the _Daily Mail_, has only
had time to write one book—_Everybody’s Boy_—but that was a very good
one. But he has a sufficient literary record apart from that, for he was
lecturer on English literature at a French university.
J. A. Spender, the editor of the _Westminster_, is another
author-editor. I have known him for many years. He comes of a brilliant
family, for he is a son of Mrs. J. K. Spender, and brother of Harold
Spender. He was an Exhibitioner of Balliol, and Harold was an
Exhibitioner of University College, Oxford. Both of them are authors of
half-a-dozen books, and both of them are wonderfully clever and
well-informed men, real powers in journalism.
Sir Owen Seaman, of _Punch_, who was Captain of Shrewsbury School, and
took a First in the Classical Tripos, and the Porson Prize at Cambridge,
can best be described as the modern Calverley, for no one since
Calverley has written such brilliant satirical lyrics. He was the “O.
S.” of the _National Observer_, and who does not remember “The Battle of
the Bays,” “In Cap and Bells” and “Borrowed Plumes”?
H. W. Massingham, of the _Nation_, the most conspicuous political
journalist on the Liberal side, one of the few Liberals who dare to try
and lead their party against its will, has only written a couple of
books, both rather technical, _The London Daily Press_ and _Labour and
Protection_.
Sidney Paternoster, the assistant-editor of _Truth_, is well known as a
novelist, as is Adcock, of the _Bookman_, but, taken as a whole, editors
of great newspapers are not writers of books.
Ernest Parke, director of the _Daily News_ and _Leader_ and the _Star_,
was at one time a regular attendant at the Vagabond banquets, as was his
sub., Hugh Maclaughlan. Parke and I saw the Coronation together from a
seat in the triforium of Westminster Abbey right over the little square
of Oriental carpet on which His Majesty King George V was crowned, so we
had a splendid view of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Garter
King-at-Arms, addressing the North, South, East and West as witnesses,
and of the Dukes of Beaufort and Somerset, towering above Lord Kitchener
as he walked between them, an object lesson which I suppose was not
unintended. Parke is a great journalist, and made the _Star_ a force in
literature. Leonard Rees, of the _Sunday Times_, who shines as a
literary critic as well as a musical critic, with whom I have had much
correspondence, I have never met personally. But Vivian Carter, who was
on the staff of the Institution of Civil Engineers till only a dozen
years ago, and has in the last five years edited the _Bystander_ with
such conspicuous success, is a mutual friend of the C. N. Williamsons
and myself. We meet there.
J. S. Wood, the founder and managing director of the _Gentlewoman_, and
one of the real founders of the Primrose League, was often from the
beginning at our at-homes, with his pretty Italian wife, and his
daughters as they grew up. We used to meet them in the season at
Ranelagh, too. Wood has been much more than a founder and editor of
newspapers, for he has been connected with the management of several of
our most important charities, and has himself been instrumental in
raising a quarter of a million for them.
All the Kenealys (Arabella and Annesley, both authors, Edward and Noel,
both editors) were frequent visitors at our flat, except Alexander
Kenealy, the editor of the _Daily Mirror_, who was in America for twenty
years before he became news editor of the _Daily Express_, and, later,
editor of the _Mirror_. More than any of the others, Alexander Kenealy
inherits the splendid abilities of his father, the famous Dr. Kenealy,
Q.C., M.P., one of the greatest lawyers of his time, who took up the
case of the Tichborne claimant when others had abandoned it as hopeless,
and almost pulled him through.
Another of our editor friends was Edwin Oliver, at that time editor of
_Atalanta_ and subsequently of the _Idler_, and, since 1910, of the
widely influential _Outlook_.
I cannot conclude my chapter on journalism without reference to Sir Hugh
Gilzean-Reid, whose pet plaything was the Institute of Journalists. He
used often to come to our house with his charming daughters. Sir Hugh,
who had made a considerable fortune out of journalism, large enough to
let him live in Dollis Hill, the house near Willesden which Lord
Aberdeen lent to Mr. Gladstone, never forgot the working journalist, and
it was he who engineered the agitation which defeated the intention of
two of the great London dailies to issue Sunday editions like the
American _Sunday World_ and _Sunday Sun_. As Herbert Cornish was the
creator, he was chief founder and first President of the Institute of
Journalists also. He used to give large garden-parties at Dollis Hill,
chiefly to people who appreciated its having been consecrated by the
residence of Mr. Gladstone, though there were others, like ourselves,
who went because we liked his family so much. He was a philanthropic
man, and did an immense amount of good.
The first paid journalism I ever did was writing articles on public
school life for the _Educational Reporter_ when I was a boy at
Cheltenham. About the same time I wrote a story for _Bow Bells_ called
“Douglas Thirlstaine’s Wooing,” which was not paid for, and soon after
that I supplied unpaid notes about Cheltenham College to a Cheltenham
paper, which had never been able to get them, as a favour to the late
Frederick Stroud, who had got me out of the libel action brought by the
editors of the _Shotover Papers_. I wish I could find that libel now. It
was a small pamphlet of a few pages, published under the title of
_Overshot_ by a printer in Turl Street, Oxford. I saw about the printing
of it when I was up in Oxford competing for a scholarship at Trinity or
Balliol, lodging with Ray, who was afterwards to be my scout, in one of
the sixteenth-century cottages which now form part of Trinity.
In Australia the only money I made in journalism was five pounds which I
received from the _Queenslander_ for the serial rights of a novel which
I have never re-published, and a guinea which I received from the
_Illustrated Australian News_ as a prize for the best poem on
Federation.
When I got back to England, the first paid journalism I did was for the
_Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News_, edited by A. E. T. Watson, who
now edits the _Badminton Magazine_, and who projected and edits the
_Badminton Library_, and is a member of the National Hunt Committee—one
of the chief sportsmen in journalism. The subjects on which I wrote were
Australian cricket and Australian poetry, like Gordon’s, and on both
subjects I was the chief authority until I went to America, odd as it
may seem now. I also wrote on Gordon for the _Graphic_, and had a long
historical article in the _Cornhill_, and a serial novel—_Trincolox_—in
_Temple Bar_.
When I went to America, I wrote a good deal for papers and magazines,
but almost entirely in verse, except a series of articles which I had to
telegraph from Montreal about the Carnival to a great American daily. I
remember thinking that the telegraphing was such a useless expense for
such unimportant stuff.
In Japan I wrote a good deal for the _Japan Gazette_, but my
contributions were gratis, because there the editor, Nuttall, now one of
the editors of the _Daily Telegraph_, was expected to write the whole
paper himself. I used to help him, and he exerted himself to get various
permissions for me. He was a very capable man, who kept his paper
interesting though he had to make his bricks without straw.
However, when I got back to America from Japan I commenced journalism in
real earnest. I wrote a good many articles at four pounds a column for
the _San Francisco Chronicle_, and, as I have said, wrote for many
papers in New York, and when I returned to England I introduced the
American biographical journalism to many papers, and at one time was
fully occupied with it, until I diverted the capabilities I used for it
to the founding of _Who’s Who_.
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