As one of the literary editors of The Daily Chronicle, I had a good deal of experience of the inside of newspaper life, and, on the whole, some merry times. The hours were long, for I used to get to the office shortly after ten, and, more often than not, did not leave till midnight. Having charge of the magazine page, which at that time was illustrated by black and white drawings, I was responsible for the work of three artists, alleged to be tame, but with a strain of wildness at times, which was manifested by wrestling bouts, when all of us were found writhing on the floor in what looked like a death struggle, when the door was opened by the office boy or some less distinguished visitor. One of them was Edgar Lander, generally known as “Uncle” in the Press Club, and in Bohemian haunts down Chelsea way. Endowed with a cynical sense of humor, a gift for lightning repartee which dealt knock-out blows with the sure touch of Carpentier, and a prodigious memory for all the characters of fiction in modern and classical works, he gave a good lead to conversation in the large room over the clock in Fleet Street where we had our workshop. Another of the artists was Alfred Priest, afterward well known as a portrait painter, and three times infamous in the Royal Academy as the painter of “the picture of the year.” He was, and is, a philosophical and argumentative soul, and Lander and he used to trail their coats before each other, in a metaphorical way, with enormous conversational results, which sometimes ended in violence on both sides. The third artist, nominally under my control, but like the others, entirely out of it, was Stephen Reid, whom I have always regarded as a master craftsman of the black and white art, which he has now abandoned for historical painting. A shrewd Scotsman also with a lively sense of humor, he kept the balance between his two colleagues, and roared with laughter at both of them.
We were demons for work, although we talked so much, and the page we produced day by day was, by general consensus of opinion, I think, the best of its kind in English journalism. We gave all our time and all our energy to the job, and I suppose there are few editors in the world, and few artists, who have ever been seen staggering down Fleet Street, as once Alfred Priest and myself might have been observed, one midnight, carrying a solid block of metal weighing something like half a hundredweight, in order that our page might appear next day. That was a full-page block with text and pictures, representing some great floods in England in which we had been wading all day. We were so late in getting back with our work that the only chance of getting it into the paper was to act as porters from the blockmakers to The Daily Chronicle press. We nearly broke our backs, but if it had been too late for the paper we should have broken our hearts. Such is the enthusiasm of youth—ill rewarded in this case, as in others, because the three artists were sacked when black and white drawings gave way to photography. Afterward Edgar Lander of my “three musketeers” lost the use of his best arm in the Great War, where, by his old name of “Uncle” and the rank of Captain, he served in France, and gave the gift of laughter to his crowd.
In those good old days of The Daily Chronicle, long before the war, there was a considerable sporting spirit, inspired by the news editor, Ernest Perris, who is now the managing editor, with greater gravity. Perris, undoubtedly the best news editor in London, was very human in quiet times, although utterly inhuman, or rather, superhuman, when there was a “world scoop” in progress. It was he who challenged Littlewood, the dramatic critic, to a forty-mile walk for a £10 bet, and afterward, at the same price, anybody who cared to join in. I was foolishly beguiled into that adventure, when six of us set out one morning at six o’clock, from the Marble Arch to Aylesbury—a measured forty miles. We were all utterly untrained, and “Robin” Littlewood, the dramatic critic, singularly like Will Shakespeare in form and figure, refused to let his usual hearty appetite interfere with his athletic contest. It was a stop for five-o’clock tea which proved his undoing, for although he arrived at Aylesbury, he was third in the race, so losing his £10, and was violently sick in the George Inn. Perris was an easy first, and I was a bad second. I remember that at the thirtieth mile I became dazed and silly, and was seen by people walking like a ghost and singing the nursery rhymes of childhood. That night when the six returned by train to London, they were like old, old men, and so crippled that I, for one, had to be carried up the steps of Baker Street Station.
Another hobby of Perris’s was amateur boxing, and I had an office reputation of knowing something of the science of that art, as I had a young brother who boxed for Oxford.
Perris, after various sparring bouts in which he had given bloody noses to sub-editors and others, challenged in mortal combat my friend Eddy, whom I have already introduced in this narrative. There had been some temperamental passages between the news editor and this young writer, so that, if the conflict took place, it would be lively. I acted as Eddy’s second in the matter, and assuming immense scientific knowledge, coached him as to the right methods of attack. At least I urged upon him the necessity of aggressive action in the first round, because if he once gave Perris a chance of hitting out, Eddy would certainly be severely damaged, for Perris is a big man with a clean-shaven face of a somewhat pugilistic type, and with a large-sized fist.
This little meeting between the news editor and his chief reporter aroused considerable interest in the office, and some betting. Quite a little crowd had collected in the sub-editorial room for the event. It was not of long duration. At the words, “Time, gentlemen,” Eddy, heroic as any man inspired by anxiety, made an immediate assault upon Perris, like a swift over-arm bowler, and by a fluke of chance, landed the news editor a fearful blow on the head. It dazed him, but Eddy was not to be denied, and continued his attack with the ferocity of a man-eating tiger, until Perris collapsed.... After that, with greedy appetite for blood, he made mincemeat of a young man named “Boy” Jones, who asked for trouble and got it.
These little episodes behind the scenes of life in Fleet Street kept up the spirits and humor of men who, as a rule, worked hard and long each day, and were always at the mercy of the world’s news, which sent them off upon strange errands in the Street of Adventure, or tied them to the desk, like slaves of the galleys.
My next experience in editorship was when I was appointed literary editor of a new daily paper called The Tribune, the history of which is one of the romantic tragedies of Fleet Street.
Its founder and proprietor was a very tall, handsome, and melancholy young man named Franklin Thomasson, who came from that city of Bolton in the Black Country where I had been managing editor of the Tillotson Syndicate. He had the misfortune of being one of the richest young men in England, as the son of an old cotton spinner who had built up the largest cotton mills in Lancashire. It was, I believe, a condition of his will that his son should establish a London journal in the Liberal interest. Anyhow, Franklin Thomasson, who was an idealist of that faith, started The Tribune as a kind of sacred duty which he had inherited with his money. He appointed as his editor-in-chief a worthy old journalist of an old-fashioned type, named William Hill, who had previously been a news editor of The Westminster Gazette, an excellent evening paper with only one defect—it did not publish news. At least, it was not for any kind of news that people bought it, but entirely for the political philosophy of its editor, J. A. Spender, who was the High Priest of the Liberal Faith, and for the brilliant cartoons of “F.C.G.,” who did more to kill Chamberlain and tariffs than any other power in England.
There were many people of knowledge and experience who warned Franklin Thomasson of the costly adventure of a new daily paper in London. Augustine Birrell, disastrous failure as Chief Secretary for Ireland, but distinguished for all time as a genial scholar and essayist, was one of them. I went to see him with William Hill, and toward the end of the interview, in which he was asked to become a kind of literary godfather to the new venture, he said to Franklin Thomasson, with a twinkle in his eyes,