Bohemian Days in Fleet Street

by William Mackay

The Pelican may, at first sight, appear to be an exception to the rule which associates ill luck with the selection of a bird name for a paper. But, with all respect to Mr. Boyd, the Pelican is scarcely a paper in any large or liberal use of that term. It is a little organ owned, edited, and principally written, by one man. It has discovered a nice adjustment between the minimum of “copy” and the maximum of advertisement. But the circulation is good, and the advertisers are quite satisfied, so no one else need cavil; however, I should not advise any future promoter to attempt success on Mr. Boyd’s lines, even with a good bird name to start out on.

Another bird which, having for many years suffered severely from the pip, at length died a lingering death, not greatly regretted by the public for which it fatuously “clucked,” was The Bird o’ Freedom. This weird fowl was hatched in the hot incubators of the Sporting Times. Its memorial tablet is now affixed, together with that of the Man of the World, among the titles of the parent paper. No paper has so many titles incorporated as the Pink Un.

“How much money should you have to start a daily newspaper?” I once asked the owner of one of our great dailies.

“Two hundred and fifty thousand pounds,” he answered promptly.

Many daily papers have been started on less than that sum, and a few of them have succeeded. But my experience of Fleet Street confirms the estimate of the eminent man whom I have quoted. It is not the mere start, of course, that demands that large capital sum; it is the income expended in keeping the thing going until it reaches the paying point that renders desirable a big capital. The best sub-edited paper that ever saw the light in London was The Echo. Its editing also was good. But for sub-editing it held, in its time, an easy pre-eminence. No one knows—no one ever will know—the amount of capital sunk in that venture successively by the publishers in La Belle Sauvage Yard, by Baron Grant, and by Passmore Edwards. Sanguine speculators succeeded each other in prolonging its existence. It was the very type and model of what an evening paper should be. It lived for many years. It never paid. It is one of the mysteries of the profession.

A much shorter shrift was accorded by the public—that difficile and insensate public!—to The Hour. This ambitious Tory organ was edited by Captain Hamber, who had held a corresponding post on the Standard. Hamber was one of the most remarkable men I ever met. He possessed some rather pronounced eccentricities; but he was a gentleman ad unguem, and he had the authentic editorial flair. But the faith of the proprietors of the Hour could not have been equal to the proverbial grain of mustard-seed. For—at least, so Hamber more than once told me—they “shut down” on the very day on which, for the first time, the paper showed a profit. On the collapse of this Conservative venture the gallant Captain was offered the editorship of the Morning Advertiser. Thus he could—and did—boast of having controlled the destinies of three morning papers. He did not, however, very greatly relish his connection with the “’Tiser,” as it was irreverently called by the Street. But he did his work well and conscientiously, and succeeded in what should have seemed an impossible task—that, namely, of raising the tone and increasing the influence and circulation of the organ of the British Bung.

Hamber always treated his licensed victualling proprietors with a sort of lordly tolerance, and they forgave his mood in return for the good fortune which had attended his conduct of their property. Indeed, they evinced the unbounded confidence they bestowed in him by always granting any advances for which he asked, for he was afflicted with a chronic need of advances. Once or twice the worthy men gave him a bonus to discharge some pressing obligations. His salary was £1,000 a year; but had it been £5,000 a year, Hamber would have contrived to get through it. To be in debt was his métier. Yet he was fond of lecturing members of the staff, who evinced a faculty for following his brilliant example on the folly and wickedness of the thing. Indeed, I have known him to be interrupted in the delivery of a homily of the kind by the intrusion of a Sheriff’s officer charged with an ultimatum to the genial editor himself.

His handwriting was the very worst I ever attempted to make out. As a matter of fact, he could not decipher it himself. But there was one compositor in each of the offices in which he had edited who could set up his copy, though, as Hamber often said, “whether he really sets up exactly what I wrote is quite another matter. But he always swears he does, and I’m blessed if I can contradict him!” Before Captain Hamber took to journalism he had become known as having been the man who enrolled and commanded the German Legion during the Crimean War. Neither Hamber nor his Legion was ever called to the front; but it was generally admitted that in this matter he had acted promptly and patriotically. Hamber was a staunch party man, a member of the Junior Carlton Club from its foundation, and he possessed an unrivalled acquaintance with the fine art of party tactics. It is not altogether to the credit of the party that his last days should have been passed under a cloud to which there was no silver lining. He was a man physically of great proportions, but had acquired a stooping habit and unmilitary gait. And his great frame contained a heart as big as the shell that enshrined it.

The forerunner of the halfpenny dailies was The Morning. The one circumstance against that wonderfully well edited paper was that it came before its time. It was founded by Mr. Chester Ives, one of the most popular and most accomplished of the American colony in London. He edited the paper himself, and surrounded himself with a really smart and reliable staff. Among other men whom he introduced was a young man from the North who afterwards became associated with the Harmsworths in the promotion of their successful newspaper undertakings. Notwithstanding the bold bid which the Morning made for public favour, it failed to “catch on,” and we watched its disappearance with regret—but not as those without hope. Poor Chester Ives! since the above lines were penned he has passed from amongst us, and under peculiarly painful circumstances.

H. J. Byron brought out a penny rival to Punch, to which he gave the somewhat jejune title Comic News. But there was nothing at all jejune about the contents. The editor seemed to have inspired his staff with his own spirit of wild and irresponsible fun. The thing was a roar from beginning to end. The title displayed a caricature of the royal arms, with the mottoes “Dieu et mon droit” and “Honi soit qui mal y pense” riotously rendered, “Do ’em and drwaw it” and “On his walks he madly puns.” It was the funniest thing ever produced, but it did not take with the many-headed. I strongly suspect that the public imagined that “H. J.” was laughing at and not with them.