Though he continued to speak of us as a chosen people, our mission of enlightenment was established on a paying basis by the success of our literary editors, who made of Peace the most feared and least loved review in London. As Hancock confined his criticism to novels and Mattrick to poetry, they could not be charged with rolling their own logs or obstructing a rival, though I noticed that Mattrick’s sweeping condemnations stopped short of “Mr. Hancock’s true lyrical genius” and Hancock’s devastating onslaughts on modern fiction made an exception in favour of Mr. Mattrick. My conscience became unquiet when books were sent out for review and I heard Hancock choosing critics who could be trusted to “sit on this sort of rot”; but, as the “rot” was usually written by men who seemed to be making a substantial income, I hoped that they could afford an occasional attack and console themselves with the knowledge that, in the Penmen’s Club, fifty yards away, a league of disgruntled novelists and poets was plotting the destruction of “the Hancock-Mattrick gang”.
“All the same,” Bertrand expostulated after a month or two, “we’re not running this paper so that one ill-tempered young gentleman can read what another ill-tempered young gentleman has said about a book he hasn’t troubled to finish. We’re not in touch yet with opinion. You don’t mix with enough people, George: it’s all the office, or the club, or Barbara’s parties.”
“But where am I to find your new men?,” I asked. “You say politics are no longer manufactured over a week-end party at Woburn. The political clubs only harbour your Tapers and Tadpoles. Where do men like Saltash and Wister and Foreditch do their work?”
“They take their pleasure at the Turf and Stage,” Bertrand answered sourly.
“I’m dining there with the O’Ranes to-night,” I said, as we began to walk home.
“Then you’ll probably meet them. New men, new meeting-places.” My uncle laughed mirthlessly. “If Pam or Johnnie Russell . . . It’s the rising tide of democracy. Agricultural depression and death duties have slowly strangled the landed classes; their social influence is tottering. Before the war, Asquith was almost the only prime minister, bar Dizzy, who wasn’t drawn from them; but the prime ministers of the future will come from the middle class . . . till they come from labour. And the stage changes with the actors,” he continued in a deep rumble that carried from the one side of Fleet Street to the other. “Circumspice! When the masses had been taught to read, Newnes gave them Tit-Bits; Pearson and Harmsworth followed with the cheap daily press; headlines took the place of news and arguments. The focus shifts to the newspaper office.”
We were passing a flamboyant, white-and-gold building described as a “Super Electric Palace de Luxe”; and I asked Bertrand if he thought pictures were coming to take the place of headlines.
“It’s not the instrument that matters, but the man who handles it,” he answered. “Does Saltash play on Ll-G. or does Ll-G. play on Saltash? You’ll know better to-night when you’ve seen the new stage with the new men on it. Your modern prime minister doesn’t waste his time with duchesses at Ross House or with dukes at the Carlton. He has suave young secretaries to feed the press; he has rich friends to provide him personally with the sinews of war. He has his publicity agent. And, if he’s wise, he has a chain of intermediaries running through the country, somebody always knowing somebody who knows somebody else, so that he can draw any one into his net at a moment’s notice.” As we crossed Waterloo Place, Bertrand glanced contemptuously at Mr. Gladstone’s old house in Carlton House Terrace. “There’d be no end to the buzzing if Ll-G. spent a week-end with Sir John Woburn: he must be trying to collar the Press combine! But if my Lord Lingfield entertains a few actresses and a jockey or two and a prize-fighter and if Woburn happens to come along . . .? That’s how politics are manufactured nowadays; and the Turf and Stage is the sort of place to see them manufacturing.”
5
Such a preparation was almost inevitably a preparation for disappointment; but the unexpected end of my first evening at the Turf and Stage left me no time to define my expectations nor judge whether they had been fulfilled. As Barbara had a headache, I entered the resplendent club-room off Hanover Square under Sonia’s protection; and, for all the scars that the last five years had left, I could have fancied for a moment that we were back in 1914 when the “Cottage Cabaret” and “Blue Moon” were tentatively opening their doors. I observed the same mirrored walls and plush sofas, the same small tables surrounding the same polished floor, the same high gallery and beaming, southern band. From the atmosphere I inhaled the same desolating quality, only to be rendered by the desolating name of “smartness”.