Bohemian Days in Fleet Street

by William Mackay

In the absence of any record, and having no desire to engage in research at the British Museum, I should roughly compute the number of publications started in my time and since died the death at between forty and fifty. I confine myself in this estimate to papers founded during the twenty years of my Press experience, and issues with which I had some intimate or remote personal connection. And here permit me to give another crumb of advice to that unfortunate boy of mine who may develop journalistic leanings. I would say to him:

“My son, when sinners entice thee to found a newpaper, be sure you do not call it after the name of a bird.”

That way disaster lies. There is ill luck in the selection. Even Chantecler would fail to draw the public if put on a Fleet Street publication. There is a fatality about feathers. It has happened so, perhaps, since journalists abandoned the goose-quill for the Gillott, the pencil, and the stylus. But that it is so there can be no manner of doubt. The smartest, breeziest, and best-written little paper of which I have any recollection was The Owl. It appeared only during the Parliamentary session. It was a sort of co-operative concern carried on by a group of able men in politics and Society. It came somewhat before my time, and I am shaky in my recollections of its short but brilliant career. I think Bowles fleshed his maiden sword in its columns, and Hume Williams the Elder wrote in it his “Diary of a Disappointed Politician.” The other members of the group were persons of higher social distinction. The profits of the issue were expended on dinners at Greenwich—I wonder why people ever did dine at Greenwich?—and on a box at the opera. But the paper did not live, and now “The Owl, for all his feathers, is a’ cold.”

The Cuckoo made its early flights with a strong pinion. It was started as an evening paper by Edmund Yates, and was frankly named after the predatory fowl because it made free with the nests of its morning contemporaries. Yet in truth it did not sin half so largely in this direction as the other evening papers, and its original matter was smart, ably written, and cheery. But who cares in these days to hear of original matter in a paper? Nowadays matter doesn’t matter. From Yates the devoted Cuckoo passed, by purchase, into the hands of my friend “Jimmy” Davis. “Jimmy,” in his desire to make his journal spicy, lowered its tone. He was very fond of writing what he called “snaky” paragraphs, and too ready to accept, without making due inquiries, items of curious information about people in Society. It was useless to reason with him on the subject. A short time before the end came I met the sub-editor in Fleet Street, evidently labouring under a stress of emotion. I asked him what was the matter.

“If we don’t dry up we’ll be smashed tip,” he replied. “Look at this! He insists on its going in!”

“He,” of course, was Davis, and “it” was a paragraph dealing with the private life of a very great lady indeed. This particular item got crushed out at the last minute. But the risks of criminal libel run every day by “Jimmy” would appal the modern journalist. This notwithstanding, the Cuckoo died a natural death. Contrary to general expectation, it “dried up,” and was not “smashed up.”

The bat is not what naturalists would call a bird, but I feel sure Davis thought it was. For his second venture was a weekly publication called The Bat. In his earlier paper he had gone out of his way to attack Society people; in the Bat he found a savage delight in crucifying Stage folk. In this direction he probably went as far as any man ever did go without suffering from reprisals. He was less fortunate when he turned his attention to the leading men on the Turf. Lord Durham, being advised that the Bat had gone beyond the limits of fair criticism, took criminal proceedings. The redoubtable James, having a lawyer’s notion of what the upshot would be, and a nice appreciation of the advantages of liberty, repaired to France, where he remained in exile for several years. George Lewis, indeed, boasted that as long as he (Lewis) lived Jimmy should never return to his native land. And when two Jews feel like that about each other, you may safely anticipate trouble. But Mrs. Davis brought her personal influence to bear on Lord Durham, and, the Hatton Garden threat notwithstanding, “Jimmy,” who had got as far as Boulogne, was permitted to return to London—absent from which centre of activity he was never really happy.

Some few years before his death Davis founded yet another paper. This time he combined in his title his taste both for ornithology and for mythology. He called his paper The Phœnix. He now showed his pristine smartness without his old-time scurrility. The paper was, indeed, very well done—bright, original, and mordantly humorous. But the day for that sort of thing was closing in. There was no longer any public for six-pennyworth of smartness. Seeing this, the accommodating proprietor reduced his price to twopence; but even at that figure his smartness proved unsaleable. At the other end of the town, however, he was making money “hand over fist,” as the vulgar saying has it. His “Floradora” was running at a West End theatre and playing to crowded houses. I suspect that a considerable amount of the money which he made out of comic opera was lost in comic journalism. I wrote for Davis on all his papers, and although he usually owed me a balance at the moment of the inevitable “smash-up” or “dry-up,” that balance was so inconsiderable in each case, as compared with the sums that I had taken from him, that I never thought of pressing him. Davis was essentially a good “pal.” He has followed his papers and his other enterprises into the grave. May the turf lie light on him! The Turf pressed him rather heavily here.

Another bird of ill omen was The Hawk. This was hatched out by Augustus Moore, an Irishman very well known in the eighties on the Press, but in later years better known in connection with the stage and stage plays. Augustus Moore was the brother of George of that ilk, an author who first came into notice by means of a collection of verses, chiefly imitations of Swinburne, and called “Pagan Poems,” and afterwards notorious for some faithful studies of domestic servants given to the public in the guise of fiction of the Zolaesque order of literature. In his labours on the Hawk, Augustus Moore was greatly assisted by his compatriot and copartner, Mr. J. M. Glover, known in later days as the conductor at Drury Lane and onetime Mayor of Bexhill-on-Sea.

Moore passed through many vicissitudes in carrying on the Hawk, all of them encountered in that spirit of cheery optimism which characterized the adventurers of the jocund days—the boys of the Old Brigade, as Clement Scott called them. But the financial position at last became impossible. Moore sold out his interest for a small sum, and the Hank came under the control of John Chandor, an implacable enemy of Moore’s, and a sort of Ishmael in his attitude with respect to society generally. Chandor’s reign was brief but lurid. He hit out all round, not with the rapier, but with the bludgeon, and at last, getting into a fracas at the Aquarium with some gentlemen holding commissions in the army, he attacked these men by name in his paper. The Colonel of the regiment insisted on his officers obtaining an apology or bringing an action. No apology was forthcoming. The action was taken; heavy damages were imposed. The venomous bird of prey had made her last flight.