“This,” I said to myself, “is what comes to a man who hires a waiter’s clothes. I have undoubtedly gone crazy. There are no English Life Guards in Copenhagen. But there is certainly a missing button at the back of my trousers.”
It was the chorus of the Tivoli Music Hall which was providing the Guard of Honor, and they were tall and lovely ladies.
I was caught napping again, not very long ago, when the King of the Belgians granted my request for a special interview. An official of the British Embassy, who conveyed that acceptance to me, also advised me that I must wear a frock coat and top hat when I visited the Palace, for that appointment which, he said, was at four o’clock. I had come to Brussels without a frock coat—and indeed I had not worn that detestable garment for years—and without a top hat. I decided to buy or hire them in Brussels.
It was Saturday morning, and I spent several hours searching for ready-made frock coats. Ultimately I hired one which had certainly been made for a Belgian burgomaster of considerable circumference—and I am a lean man, and little. I also acquired a top hat which was of a style favored by London cabbies forty years ago, low in the crown and broad and curly in the brim. I carried these parcels back, hoping that by holding my hat in the presence of Majesty, and altering the buttons on the frock coat, I might maintain a dignified appearance.
I did not make a public appearance in that costume however, as I missed the hour for the interview owing to a mistake of the British Embassy.
As a young man, before serious things like wars and revolutions, plagues and famines entered into my sphere of work, I spent most of my days on The Daily Mail, The Daily Chronicle, and other papers, chasing the “stunt” story, which was then a new thing in English journalism, having crossed the water from the United States and excited the imagination of such pioneers as Harmsworth and Pearson. The old dullness and dignity of the English Press had been rudely challenged by this new outlook on life, and by the novel interpretation of the word “news” by men like Harmsworth himself. Formerly “news” was limited in the imagination of English editors to verbatim reports of political speeches, the daily record of police courts, and the hard facts of contemporary history, recorded in humdrum style. Harmsworth changed all that. “News,” to him, meant anything which had a touch of human interest for the great mass of folk, any happening or idea which affected the life, clothes, customs, food, health, and amusements of middle-class England. Under his direction, The Daily Mail, closely imitated by many others, regarded life as a variety show. No “turn” must be long or dull. Whether it dealt with tragedy or comedy, high politics or other kinds of crime, it was admitted, not because of its importance to the nation or the world, but because it made a good “story” for the breakfast table.
In pursuit of that ideal—not very high, but not a bad school for those in search of human knowledge—I became one of that band of colleagues and rivals who were sent here, there, and everywhere on the latest “story.” It led us into queer places, often on foolish and futile missions. It brought us in touch with strange people, both high and low in the social world. It was my privilege to meet kings and princes, murderers and thieves, politicians and publicans, saints and sinners, along the roads of life in many countries. As far as kings are concerned, I cannot boast that familiarity once claimed by Oscar Browning who, when he showed the ex-Kaiser over Cambridge, asserted to the undergraduates who questioned him afterward that “He is one of the nicest emperors I have ever met.”
With rogues and vagabonds I confess I have had a more extensive acquaintance. The amusement of the game of finding a “story” was the unexpectedness of the situation in which one sometimes found oneself, and the personal experience which did not appear in print. As a trivial instance, I remember how I went to inquire into a ghost story and became, surprisingly, the ghost.
Down in the West of England there was, and still is, a great house so horribly haunted (according to local tales) that the family to which it has belonged for centuries abandoned its ancient splendor and lived near by in a modern villa. Interest was aroused when a young chemist claimed that he had actually taken a photograph of one of the ghosts during a night he had spent alone in the old house. I obtained a copy of this photograph, which was certainly a good “fake,” and I was asked to spend a night in the house myself with an Irish photographer who might have equal luck with some other spirit.
Together we traveled down to the haunted house, which we found to be an old Elizabethan mansion surrounded by trees, and next to a graveyard. It was dark when we arrived, with the intention of making a burglarious entry. Before ten minutes had passed the Irish photographer was saying his prayers, and I had a cold chill down my spine at the sighing of the wind through the trees, the hooting of an owl, and the little squeaks of the bats that flitted under the eaves. With false courage we endeavored to make our way into the house. Every window was shuttered, every door bolted, and we could find no way of entry into a building that rambled away with many odd nooks and corners. At last I found a door which seemed to yield.