Adventures in Journalism

by Philip Gibbs

I wrote another book, for another man, but in that case he was far more entitled to the credit, because it was actually his narrative, and the record of his own amazing adventures told to me, partly in French and partly in broken English. This was a story of the sea, called Fifteen Thousand Miles in a Ketch, by Captain Raymond Rallier du Baty, published in England by Nelson’s.

This young Frenchman is one of the most charming and courageous souls I have ever met, and I look back with pleasure to the days when we used to motor out to Windsor Forest and there, under the old oaks, he used to spread out his charts and describe his amazing voyage in a little fishing ketch, with his brother and a crew of six, from Boulogne-sur-mer to Sidney, in Australia, stopping six months on the way at the desert island of Kerguelen in the South Pacific, where they lived like primitive men of the Paleolithic age, fighting sea lions with clubs, to obtain their blubbers, and having strange and desperate adventures in their exploration of this mountainous island. The narrative I wrote from his spoken story was widely and enthusiastically reviewed, and I remember The Spectator went so far as to say that “it was worthy to have a place on the bookshelf by the side of Robinson Crusoe.”

Raymond du Baty, that handsome, brown-eyed, quiet, and noble young seaman of France, felt the call of the wild again after my acquaintance with him, and returned to the desert island for further exploration. After six months of solitude cut off from all the world and its news, a steamer came to the island and brought with it tidings of a world gone mad. It was Armageddon. Germany and Austria, Turkey and Bulgaria were at war with France, Great Britain, and Russia. Other nations were getting dragged in. The fields of Europe were drenched in the blood of the world’s youth. France was sorely stricken, but holding out with heroic endurance....

Imagine the effect of that news on a young Frenchman who had heard no whisper of it, until its horror burst with full force upon him in his island of eternal peace! He abandoned Kerguelen and went back to France. Within a fortnight he had gained his pilot’s certificate as an aviator, and was flying over the German lines with shrapnel bursting about his wings.

That, however, is later history, and takes me away from that second period of free lancing in London when I did many different kinds of work, and, on the whole, enjoyed the game.

One little enterprise at this time which interested me a good deal and enabled me to earn a considerable sum of money with hardly any labor—a rare achievement!—was an idea which I proposed to The Daily Graphic—for their correspondence column. My suggestion was to obtain from well-known people their views and ideals on the subject of “The Simple Life.” A further part of my amiable suggestion was that I should be paid a certain fee for every column of the kind which I obtained for the paper. The proposal was accepted, and my wife and I made a careful selection of names, including princes and princesses, dukes and duchesses, famous actors and actresses, society beauties, and, indeed, celebrities of all kinds. I then drafted a letter in which I suggested, in all sincerity, that our modern civilization had become too complex and too materialistic, and expressed the hope that I might be favored with an opinion on the possibility and advantages of a return to “The Simple Life.”

The response to these letters was amazing. Instinctively I had struck a little note which caused a lively vibration of emotion and sympathy in many minds. It was before the war or the shadow of war had fallen over Europe, and when great numbers of people were alarmed by the lack of idealism, the gross materialism, the frivolity, the decadence of our social state. There was also a revolt of the spirit against the artificiality of city life, a yearning for that “return to nature” which was so strong a sentiment in France before the Revolution, especially among the aristocratic and intellectual classes.

Something of the sort was acting like yeast in the imagination of similar classes in England and other countries. I received an immense number of answers to my inquiry, and many of them were extremely interesting and valuable as the revelation of that craving for simplicity in ideals and conduct of life, and for a closer touch with primitive nature and the beauty of eternal things. It was characteristic, I think, that people of high rank and easy circumstances were the warmest advocates of “The Simple Life.” The correspondence continued for weeks and months, and my title became a catchword on the stage, in Punch, and in private society. One of the most beautiful letters I received—it contained more than three thousand words—was from “Carmen Sylva,” describing a day in her life as Queen of Roumania. Afterward a selection of the letters was published in book form, and had a great success.

Another task I undertook more for love than lucre (I received only a nominal fee) was to help in the organization of the Shakespeare Memorial Committee. A considerable sum of money had been bequeathed by certain philanthropists for the purpose of honoring the memory of Shakespeare and encouraging the study of his works, by some national memorial worthy of his genius, as the world’s tribute to his immortal spirit. The honorary secretary and most ardent promoter of this scheme was Israel Gollancz—since knighted—a little professor at Oxford and London, with an immense range of scholarship in Anglo-Saxon and mediæval literature, and an insatiable capacity for organizing committees, societies, academies, and other groups devoted to the advancement of learning, and, anyhow, to agreeable social intercourse and intellectual rendezvous. Meeting the professor in a bun shop, I became enthusiastic with the idea of the Shakespeare Memorial, and willingly offered to help him get his first General Committee and organize a great public meeting at the Mansion House, to place the idea of the Memorial before the nation with an appeal for funds.

This work brought me into touch with many interesting people, apart from Sir Israel himself, for whom I have always had an affectionate regard, and among them I remember one of the grand old men of England—Doctor Furnivall, editor of the Leopold Shakespeare. He was over eighty years of age when I first met him, but he had the heart of a boy, the gayety of D’Artagnan, the Musketeer, and the debonnair look of an ancient cavalier. Every Sunday he used, even at that age, to take out an eight of shopgirls on old Father Thames, and once every week he held a reception at the top of a tea shop in Oxford Street, when scholars old and young, journalists, and pretty ladies used to crowd round him, enamored by his silvery grace, his exquisite courtesy, the wit that played about his words like the mellow sunshine of an autumn day. He was always very kind to me, and I loved the sight of him.