Bohemian Days in Fleet Street

by William Mackay

The successes of the gallant General in war were only less renowned than his successes in love—that is to say, from the General’s own not very lofty point of view. His intrigues were, indeed, of a somewhat squalid character, occasionally involving the professional disqualification of the “slavey” at his lodgings, and his own temporary disappearance from his Fleet Street haunts.

He was a tall, muscular, well-knit, soldierly-looking man with a cavalry moustache and big imperial. His accent was that of the Lowland Scot. On one of Ansdell’s afternoons the General, “intoxicated,” to use a famous phrase, “by the exuberance of his own verbosity,” or from other causes, retired from the convivial circle, and stretched himself out to rest on a couch at the end of the room. While “he lay like a warrior taking his rest,” some habitués of the room decorated the face of the sleeping hero with burnt cork and red paint, and when their artistic work had been effected McIver looked more like a Sioux Indian on the war-path than a Scots free-lance seeking repose. Hours afterwards he woke, and found himself in a smoking-room now filled with strangers. A loud laugh greeted his appearance when he arose—a giant refreshed. There could be no mistake that the laughter was directed against him. In his most heroic vein he demanded the cause of the company’s hilarity, and was referred to the mirror that was fixed above the fireplace.

A wild Scottish whoop came from his throat. He turned on the assembly with a fierce expression and a commanding gesture. The laughter of the room broke out afresh. McIver was speechless with rage. He rushed from the place. But he was staying in the hotel at the time, and in half an hour returned in the opera-bouffe costume of a Brigadier-General in the army of a struggling nationality. He had washed the paint and charcoal from his face. He stood in the midst of the grinning assembly, and, drawing his sword, he inquired in an awful voice for the name of the perpetrator of the dastardly outrage, manifestly intent on cleaving that caitiff from helm to chine. But a fresh roar of inextinguishable laughter greeted his challenge. In the pages of “Under Fourteen Flags” he would have fallen upon that ribald crowd, cutting the infidels down man by man. In Fleet Street such a course was inexpedient. The beau sabreur, casting on the mockers a glance of superb disdain, exclaimed, “Ye’re a pauck o’ scoundrels sheltering a coward!” and stalked from the room with the air of a tragedy king, followed by the gibes of the now irate “scoundrels.”

Mr. Gladstone—the G.O.M., I mean—was accustomed to ask strange people to his breakfast-table. But no stranger guest did he ever entertain than when McIver sat with him at that meal to give the great statesman his experiences in the Balkan States. Gladstone welcomed anyone who could give him the slightest information regarding what were known in the eighties as “Bulgarian atrocities,” and the Brigadier-General returned to England reputedly abounding with reliable news from that part of Europe. If Mr. Gladstone was greatly in the habit of taking his facts about the Eastern Question from authorities of the McIver kidney, it is little wonder that he led his countrymen astray when he inflamed their passions on the topic of atrocities with which he had become obsessed.

A year or two since I saw the death of the hero of the “Fourteen Flags” announced in the Daily Telegraph. It was followed by quite a flattering obituary notice of the deceased officer. His many deeds of valour were referred to in terms which must have made all his friends regret that the tribute should have been delayed till the man himself was no longer alive to read it.

I have quoted above the initials G.O.M. as applied to Mr. Gladstone, and standing, of course, for “Grand Old Man.” Another and less reverent reading of the initials was given by one of Gladstone’s most devoted supporters, Mr. Labouchere. It must have been at a time when the doctors had stopped “Henry’s” cigarettes, or perhaps during one of those periods of shuffling the Ministerial cards when Labouchere felt annoyed at having his claims to office once more disregarded. Whatever the cause, to Mr. Henry Labouchere was quite rightly attributed the translation of G.O.M. into “God’s only mistake!”

Another of the regular members of the Ansdell circle was Morgan Evans. Evans was as good a fellow and as sound a journalist as ever tempted fortune in the Street of Adventure. But, like many a cultured man, he drifted into the wrong line—wrong, I mean, in so far as money-making is concerned. In journalism, as in other professions, that man makes most who specializes in certain subjects. Now, the subject on which Evans had specialized was scientific dairy-farming. In this study, his friendship with Professor Duguid and other leading lights in the veterinary world was of considerable service to him. The admirable series of articles which he contributed to the Field created widespread interest among those for whose edification they were written, and Evans might have gone on for ever treating on that subject and cognate ones in the Field and other papers dealing with agriculture. Such a course meant abundance of work at special rates. But Morgan Evans was a dreamer, and preferred the position of a free-lance writing spasmodically on general topics to that of the highly paid regular contributor on scientific or semi-scientific subjects.

With a miserably insufficient capital, and possessing absolutely no business capacity, Evans founded a monthly magazine entitled The Squire. He did me the honour to consult me about the prospects of such a venture. When I asked and ascertained what was the amount of capital behind the proposition, I strongly advised him to desist. It appeared to me that the title was more suited to a weekly paper on the lines of the Field, and I believed that if he would agree to the scheme a sufficient capital could be obtained. But Evans was impatient. He would hear of anything save delay. Besides, it was evident that he wanted the organ to be his own mouthpiece and under his own individual control. And this could only be achieved by the employment of his own capital. So he brought out the Squire, and his friends rallied round him. H. H. S. Pearse wrote charming articles about hunting; Vero Shaw wrote with interest and authority about the dog; I believe I contributed some dramatic articles. Evans himself wrote on general literature, and Montgomerie Rankin produced the inevitable verses. Every topic in which a country gentleman might take an interest was dealt with—except scientific dairy-farming! Evans had been fed up with that subject, and devoted himself to essays entirely detached from science of any sort. I forget who was responsible for the rather neat and appropriate title for the article dealing with the drama of the month; it was called “Partridge at the Play.”

The Squire lived for six months, and then fizzled out, the savings of poor old Morgan Evans having fizzled out too. He then returned to the unprofitable, but more congenial, rôle of casual contributor to the Press. During the last months of his life he did little and suffered much, and the end came mercifully and quickly. Evans was a rather short, yellow-bearded man, with a gentle voice and a most engaging smile. He hailed from the Principality, but was not at all of the type of Welshman that now affrights the imagination of the English.

An occasional visitor to Ansdell’s table was A. K. Moore. At that time Moore also was among those who wielded the free-lance. Among the journals that sometimes accepted his contributions was Punch. But Fleet Street was a long time discovering Moore’s merits. He was a graduate of Dublin University and a graduate of Oxford. He was an Irishman, he possessed a fine sense of humour, wrote a lucid, vigorous style, yet had to wait many years for a recognition of his gifts. When at last “he came into his own” by being appointed Editor of the Morning Post, he proved himself to possess all that his journalistic friends in Fleet Street claimed for him; but I imagine that it was a man somewhat soured by waiting who took command in the editorial sanctum of the Post. His duties were, however, discharged not only with fidelity, but with conspicuous ability, and the paper prospered greatly in his hands. He died in harness.