Arthur T. Pask was a name with which the public became acquainted in the eighties. He wrote in Christmas numbers, annuals, and story magazines. He had established relations with the Standard, and used to write “turn-overs” for that journal. His copy always appeared to me to be devoid of merit, but personally he was a most interesting man. He was engaged in the Affidavit Department of the Royal Courts of Justice. One would have imagined that in that office he would come across plenty of material for his fictions. He preferred, however, to evolve these from his inner consciousness, and to this end he appeared to live in a set of circumstances of his own invention. At one time he became subject to the hallucination that he kept a yacht. He appeared in Fleet Street one day in the most weird sort of nautical rig. With his yachting cap, white shoes, and reefer jacket with brass buttons, he had the appearance of the steward of a penny steamer. He breathed a sea-air. His conversation was of the “Royal Squadron”; his similes were drawn from out the vasty deep. He had acquired something of the roll of the mariner, and his acquaintances humoured him in his delusion, and, if they laughed, Arthur himself also was perfectly happy. One of his nautical impromptus uttered by him during this phase has remained with me. We began discussing a comet then due in the heavens, and were talking the customary foolishness about the chances of that heavenly body striking the earth. Pask was equal to the occasion and ready with an expedient. “By Jove!” he exclaimed breezily, “we must throw out cork-fenders over our lee bow!”
A remarkable figure in those Fleet Street days was that of a man who was known by two nicknames, and whose real name appeared to have been quite forgotten. He was tall and thin, had a broken nose, a small stubbly moustache, and had acquired the peculiarly disagreeable habit of addressing every person with whom he had business as “Cocky.” This curious person had originally been a baker in Fetter Lane. But while his hands were busy in the bakehouse, his heart was in the race-course, and when his batch of bread was out of the oven and in the baskets of the distributors, the honest tradesman was off to the terminus to catch a train to Newmarket or Doncaster or Epsom. He became as well known on the race-course as Steele or the Duke of Westminster or John Porter. And the nickname bestowed on him—it originated in the Ring, no doubt—was “the Flying Baker.” There could, of course, be but one end to a sporting career of the kind. As Dick Dunn once said to him, not unkindly, “You should be bakin’ ’em, not backin’ ’em!” But no backer ever takes that sort of advice; he has so much faith in his own good luck, coupled with his sound knowledge of a handicap, that he keeps on to the end—the invariably bitter end. The “Flying Baker” had hoped to break the Ring, but the Ring broke the “Flying Baker.” The hungry creditors refused to be satisfied by bread alone. The unfortunate victim went through the Court, and Fleet Street and Fetter Lane knew him no more—for a time.
After a space of years he reappeared in his old haunts. He had obtained a post on one of the sporting papers. Whether he was on the editorial staff, or in the publishing department, or a mere messenger, I do not know. He came round to chambers with a note for me one day.
“I want an answer to this, Cocky,” he observed.
“You’re a bit familiar, don’t you think?” I ventured to remark.
“What say, Cocky?” he inquired, with the most innocent air in the world.
I considered it unadvisable to pursue the conversation. I wrote my reply to the note he had delivered, and handed it to him without a word.
“Well, so long, Cocky!” he said as he shambled off.
In this reincarnation of his he was known in Fleet Street as “Newman Noggs.” His real name need not be recorded here, as it is borne to-day by a son who has risen to considerable eminence in one of the artistic professions.