CHAPTER XV

MY CONNECTION WITH JOURNALISM

I MUST allude briefly to my long connection with journalism.

When I settled in London in 1891, I had already done a good deal of journalism in New York and San Francisco. In the latter my writing had chiefly lain in travel-articles on Japan, to which San Francisco, as the Pacific Capital of the United States, naturally looks. In New York I had written on travel—much of my _Japs at Home_ appeared in travel-articles for the McClure Syndicate. But I also wrote a number of literary and personal articles for the _New York Independent_, the _Sun_, the _World_, and so on, such as my _Reminiscences of Cardinal Newman_ told in the first person. In doing this I found that what America demanded was the personal reminiscence.

When I came to England, I naturally sought work on the same lines, and had no difficulty in finding editors who saw the opening for this comparatively fresh line in British journalism.

I turned first to Fisher, of the _Literary World_, whom I had met at the Idler teas, and who had invited me to do some reviewing for him. He had _Table-Talk Notes_ as a feature, and here my first journalism appeared.

When I was helping Jerome to formulate _To-day_ in 1893, I suggested to him that we should have a book of the week, in which we told as much about the author as we knew, and that biographical gossip about authors and artists and actors should be one of our chief features. He was completely in favour of it, and I wrote a good deal for him, especially about authors.

About the same time, Lewis Hind became editor of the now defunct _Pall Mall Budget_, and I carried out the same idea for him in a regular _causerie_, to which we gave the name of the _Diner-Out_, and which I signed “St. Barbe”—the family name of my maternal grandmother.

Between these three papers I was pretty fully occupied. But my mind was turning towards a more congenial form of journalism—the travel-article. Percy Cox, a son of the Horace Cox whose name appeared on the _Queen_ as its publisher for so many years, was anxious to develop its travel side, and while the late Sievers Drewett was organising the wonderful travel department, which now has its annual _Queen Book of Travel_, he employed me to write a series of articles on my travels in Greece and Turkey, and a regular travel-serial on the trans-continental journey across Canada, which I amplified and brought out as _On the Cars and Off_.

While I was doing these, Clement Shorter, who had been a sort of literary editor to the _Queen_—all the important books being sent to him, and he writing a sort of _causerie_ about them—became too busy with his offspring, the _Sketch_, to do any more work for the _Queen_, and I was offered his place. My suggestion that we should have a signed “book of the week” for the most important book—unsigned minor reviews to be worked in anywhere about the paper—and that I should do my _Diner-Out_ column for the _Queen_, instead of the _Pall Mall Budget_, was accepted, and I began my literary connection with the _Queen_, which lasted for so many years. I kept the _Diner-Out_ for biographical gossip about authors chiefly, and for announcements of forthcoming books, which could be made interesting by personal gossip. Actual reviewing I kept as far as possible out of that column. In those days, though the _Queen_ was and always had been the chief ladies’ paper, it had not nearly so many departments of feminine interest as it has now, so there was plenty of space for book-reviewing, which became a very important feature of the paper. I was only responsible for the _Book of the Week_ and the _Diner-Out_, though I did perhaps a page of unsigned minor reviews, which were never attributed to me.

I had one faithful reader in her late Majesty, Queen Victoria. I learned this quite incidentally. I had taken a _manoir_ in Brittany for the summer, and at the house of Mrs. Burrowes, a niece of the late Lord Perth, met the lady who filled the post of reader to Her Majesty; Queen Victoria prefered having books and newspapers read aloud to her. This lady informed me that Her Majesty had my _Diner-Out_ column in the _Queen_ read to her every week, and was most amused by it.

As the woman’s side of the paper developed, the space for reviewing became more and more restricted, and the _Diner-Out_ became simply a column of small reviews, without any of its own features, and finally, I think, the name itself very often dropped out.

While I was doing the reviewing for the _Queen_, we were travelling a great deal in France, Italy, Sicily and Egypt. The books which I published on these countries were, as far as the travel portion of them was concerned, largely drawn from these articles in the _Queen_—beginning with _Brittany for Britons_. Some of them, such as the Normandy articles, I never did re-publish, and I contributed to the _Queen_ enough articles on Italy to form another volume, besides those which have already appeared in my books on Italy and Sicily.

I still do some reviewing for the _Queen_, but I do little other journalism now, except when I am approached by some newspaper to do an article on a subject upon which I have special knowledge.

The fact is, that in recent years I have employed my journalistic faculties on the preparation of books like _Who’s Who_, _Sladen’s London and Its Leaders_ and _The Green Book of London Society_, which need much the same kind of gifts as personal journalism does.

_The Green Book_ was a sort of one-line _Who’s Who_, which only mentioned the leading people in each walk of London life, except the bearing of a title. The selection of the chief personages and experts in each line—say, for instance, shooting or fishing or golf or writing books—was not made by any correspondence with the people themselves, but was entrusted to the chief expert in each line. Golf was by a runner-up for the Amateur Championship, fishing by the fishing editor of the _Field_, exploration by the secretary of the Royal Geographical Society, and so on.

_Who’s Who_ itself must form the subject of a separate chapter.

I have no older friend in journalism than Sidney Low. We went to Oxford, I think, on the same day—he was a Scholar of Balliol and I was a Scholar of Trinity—and we certainly knew each other very well there, and have been intimate friends ever since. His ability received early recognition. Before he had left Oxford ten years, he was editor-in-chief of a great London daily, and he has written books which have become standard works, like the _Dictionary of English History_, which has been through half-a-dozen editions. Since he gave up editing he has represented the leading papers on the most important special missions. He has been an alderman of the London County Council, and he has been one of the chief forces in literary society. If I were asked who had introduced me to the largest number of eminent persons, I should say Sidney Low—without hesitation. No man passes saner or more moderate judgments on the great questions of the hour. Indeed, I should say that Low stands in journalism for what a man who was at Oxford with both of us—George Cave, K.C., M.P.—stands in politics—for moderation in statement, combined with great firmness of principle and judgment.

With Low’s name I must couple that of the late Samuel Henry Jeyes, who was his colleague both on the _St. James’s Gazette_ and the _Standard_. He was a beloved friend of us both, but my intimacy with him began much earlier. He was my greatest friend at Trinity, Oxford, and one of the Oxford men of whom I saw most in after life. We were elected Scholars of Trinity on the same day; we had rooms on the same staircase; we went to all the same lectures till we passed mods., and I taught him to play billiards. It was the only game of manual skill which he ever did play. He lashed the adulation for sport which prevails at Oxford with the gibes of which he was such a master. When we had only been up at Oxford for a few days, A. J. Webbe, who was the special idol of Trinity because he was captain of the ’Varsity Eleven, asked all of us Trinity freshmen to meet some of the lions of the Oxford Eleven. All of us except Jeyes were vastly elated. We all, except Jeyes, talked our best cricket shop to make a good impression on the demigods. At last he could stand it no longer, and, waiting till there was a dead pause in the conversation, he said, “This b——y cricket!” I can remember the tableau still.

His reputation as a wit came up with him from Uppingham. All Uppingham men could remember how, when he was caught cribbing with a Bible on his knee at a Greek Testament lesson, and his class-master had said to him triumphantly, “What have you there, Jeyes?” he said, “A book, sir, of which no man need be ashamed,” and how when Thring, the greatest head master of his time, had asked him how he came to be ploughed in arithmetic for his Oxford and Cambridge certificate, he replied from Shakespeare, “I cannot reckon, it befits the spirit of a tapster”—a readiness which Thring would have been the first to appreciate.

Among the best things I remember him saying at Oxford are his definition of the Turks in a great debate over the Bulgarian atrocities, as a people “whose morals are as loose as their trousers, and whose vices are as many as their wives.” And it was he who said, “I don’t want to go to Heaven, because Gore (now Bishop of Oxford) is the only Trinity man who will be there, and I’d rather be with the rest.”

Jeyes never spoke at the Union—he despised it—or he would have been as great a success as the miraculous Baumann or Freeman, now Rector of Burton-on-Trent. I never remember hearing Cave speaking at the Union, though perhaps he did.

One of Jeyes’ wittiest retorts was to “Bobby” Raper, at that time Dean of Trinity, who was “hauling” him for some meretricious disregard of College discipline. The glib excuse was not wanting, but Raper was stern. “No no, Mr. Jeyes, that won’t do. You told me the exact opposite of that last term.” “I know I did, Mr. Dean, but that was a lie.”

He owed the Dean one, for the first thing he did when he went up to Trinity had been to go and call on the Dean and tell him that he had conscientious scruples against going to chapel.

“Morning chapel, you know, Mr. Jeyes,” said the Dean, “is a matter of discipline and not of religion, but if you really have conscientious objections, I’ll put on a roll-call for you at 7 a.m.”—Chapel was at 8 a.m., so Jeyes swallowed his nausea.

But Jeyes’ wit was tireless. He was a fine scholar—he made his pupils write wonderful Latin prose when he became a don at University—I presume during the undergraduacy of Lord Hugh and Lord Robert Cecil. But he tore himself away to be a journalist, and became in time an assistant-editor of the _St. James’s Gazette_, and later of the _Standard_.

As a journalist he was distinguished by incorruptibility of no common sternness. Though he had always spoken as a Liberal at Oxford (very likely out of malice, because all his friends were Conservatives), he was one of the pillars of Conservative journalism. He knew all the chiefs of the Conservative party, and enjoyed great influence with them. He was so rugged and unbending. I never knew a harder editor to “work.” He wrote a Spartan life of Chamberlain, for whom he had a great admiration, except in the matter of Tariff Reform.

He married an old friend of ours, the beautiful Viva Sherman, an American nearly related to the Senator-Vice-President and the General. Both before and after his marriage he was a frequent visitor at our house, and we often met at Ranelagh and elsewhere. He enjoyed a discussion with Norma Lorimer. Her wit provoked his, and their conversations were most brilliant to listen to.

At last poor Jeyes was struck down with cancer—aggravated, I believe, by cigar-smoking, in which he was a noted connoisseur. He bore it with magnificent fortitude, and for a long time kept it a secret. Even I did not know that he had been mortally ill till he was dead. But I was one of the three old Oxford friends who stood by his grave—his oldest friend, except H. B. Freeman, who read the service. Sidney Low was the other. Charles Boyd was there too, but he belonged to a much younger generation.

If Jeyes had known that his life would be so short, he would perhaps have devoted more time to book-writing. It is a pity—except for his country and the Conservative party—that he gave up so much of his life to necessarily ephemeral journalism. I always heard that but for a flaw in a will he would have been owner of one of the greatest provincial journals in England.

Peace be to his ashes. He was a merry soul, and if the theosophists are right about our astral bodies meeting the spirits of the departed, there is no one with whom I should so much enjoy an astral conversation as Jeyes. He would be such a volatile spirit. I can imagine the naïveté with which he would describe his experiences.

The Rev. Herbert Bentley Freeman—the Rector of Burton-on-Trent—a cousin of the historian, and a descendant, I believe, of the mighty Bentley of Phalaris renown, came up to Trinity from Uppingham in the same term as Jeyes. Freeman and A. A. Baumann, who was afterwards Conservative M.P. for Peckham, were the two most brilliant speakers at the Union in my day. The undergraduates said that both wrote their speeches beforehand, and learned them by heart and practised their delivery.

Years afterwards I met Baumann when he had given up his safe seat at Peckham and unsuccessfully contested a seat in the North, I think at Manchester.

“What made you give up Peckham?” I asked. “They would have gone on electing you there as long as you lived.”

“My dear chap, life isn’t worth living when you are member for Peckham. I live in South Kensington, and while I was member for Peckham I used to find my hall full of constituents by the time I came down for breakfast, and by lunch-time you’d have thought that I was having an auction of my furniture.”

But of all the men who were at Oxford with me, no one has been so prominent, then and now taken together, in intellectual circles as W. L. Courtney. Courtney was then a rather young New College don, who had the distinction of being married to an extremely smart-looking wife. That would have been a distinction by itself in the Oxford of that day, for few were married in a way suitable to impress undergraduates. Added to that, he cut the most eminent figure in athletics of any don in Oxford. He was the treasurer of the University Boat Club, while the dons respected him as the ablest man in Oxford at philosophy. I was not there when he gave it all up to come to London and be literary editor of the _Daily Telegraph_ and editor of the _Fortnightly Review_, but I can imagine the consternation which fell upon that ancient seat of learning when their bright particular star, the admiration alike of don and undergraduate, “chucked it,” as they say, for journalism. Of course he did wisely, for in an incredibly short space of time he had as distinguished a position in London as he had had at Oxford. His influence on literature has been immense. He has stood for the combination of scholarliness and up-to-dateness. His own books range from essays on the verge of fiction to some of the most important works on philosophy published in his generation. Incidentally, the creator of _Egeria_ is our best dramatic critic, and a writer of plays.

Both the late and the present editors of the _Field_, William Senior and Theodore Andrea Cook, came to our Addison Mansions receptions. That delightful man, William Senior, the “Red Spinner” of fishing journalism, and his wife came very often to us. Theodore Andrea Cook is the ideal editor for a great sporting paper like the _Field_, for he had not only been editor of a great daily, but he had rowed in the Oxford boat, and been a Scholar of his College, and he had captained the all-England team in the international fencing matches at the Olympic games which were held at Athens. He has also written very sound books on an unusual variety of subjects (one of which, his book on _The Spiral in Nature and Art_, was most widely discussed); and is one of the most delightful writers we have of travel-books on France. Of course, everything which he has written upon sport is _ex cathedra_.

Walter Jerrold, who lives a little higher up the river than I do, in an old house with a great garden, a very old friend, and a much older Vagabond than I, often came with his wife to us at Addison Mansions. Jerrold is a grandson of the famous wit, Douglas Jerrold. He was for more than a dozen years sub-editor of the _Observer_. But fortunately he found time for editing of another nature as well, which will help his own books to give him a permanent place in our literature. He is one of our best editors of nineteenth-century classics; his biographical and bibliographical introductions are the most useful of their kind—just what you would expect from the grandson of a man who was a star in the firmament of which he writes.

Clement Shorter, who married the Irish poetess, and was editor of the _Illustrated London News_ when we met at Rudolph Lehmann’s in the “nineties,” is another editor of books as well as papers. The Brontës are his special protégés. He is the acknowledged Brontë expert, and every one has read his new book on George Borrow. He has been great at founding—he not only founded the _Sketch_, the _Sphere_ and the _Tatler_, but he was one of the founders of the _Omar Khayyam Club_, beloved of Radical litterateurs, though it deals not with English politics, but English Persics. Here you are always sure of good speaking—Mr. Balfour and Mr. Asquith, and all the important Cabinet Ministers and ex-Cabinet Ministers have spoken there on occasion. I have never heard Shorter speak himself, but I understand that he is a very good political speaker, and I can picture him telling a Lincolnshire audience how wrong it is to have an income not half as great as his own, for Shorter has been deservedly prosperous. He is a great journalist—one of the pioneers of modern journalism. He was a Civil Service clerk when in 1890 he became editor of the _Illustrated London News_, and only a couple of years had passed before he started the _Sketch_, the model of a new class of paper, for the same office, and continued to edit both papers till 1900. Then he thought that he would like to have a paper of his own, and raised a hundred thousand pounds to found the _Sphere_ and the _Tatler_, with which he has been associated ever since, as editor of the former and director of both. They are rightly among the most popular illustrated papers of the day, for they have reduced the handling of the personal element to a science, and Shorter always was a brilliant editor. His success has been largely due to his colossal energy and industry. He has taken a minute interest in every detail of the production of both papers.

In the midst of all his journalistic labours, Shorter has found time to write some admirable books, and has made himself with two books a specialist on Napoleon in his period of exile at St. Helena.

Herbert White, the present editor of the _Standard_, is one of the best informed of all the English newspaper editors about Continental politics, because he went through such an arduous schooling in Austria and Germany, and knows German as well as he knows English. He married the niece of an Austrian political leader, and after war-correspondenting in the Græco-Turkish war of 1897, represented leading English, American and French newspapers at Vienna from 1897 to 1902, and Berlin from 1903 to 1911. Besides this he has taken twenty special journalistic missions in every country of the Continent except France and Russia.

I should be accused of sycophancy if I said all I should like to say of Robertson Nicoll, of whom I saw a good deal before we were both such busy men. But there are some things about Nicoll to which nobody can be blind, besides the position of respect which he enjoys in the literary community. He makes a _bona fide_ attempt to educate his party in politics, and his public in a spirit of commonsense and toleration instead of appealing to their prejudices, and no man has done more in the way of securing the publication of the books of unknown authors of merit, who have justified his expectations and given the world great books. Nicoll has been the sincere and enthusiastic friend of merit. I can say this without prejudice, because his firm have published nothing of mine.

Similarity of name, and their common friendship with the A. S. Boyds, makes me mention here James Nicol Dunn, whose editorship of the _Morning Post_ was marked by such an advance in the political weight of that paper. Dunn was managing editor of the _National Observer_ in its prime. For solid efficiency as a journalist, he had no superior in the country. It would have been a bad day for England when he left it to edit the _Johannesburg Star_, if it had not been so important that the chief organ of the Transvaal should be in such brave, moderate and judicious hands, at such a critical period in the history of South Africa.

T. P. O’Connor is a very old friend of mine. I met him first when we were both in America in 1888-1889, and we have been on terms of Christian names ever since. Though we differ strongly in politics, it has never affected our friendship, for T. P. is very fair to his enemies, except when he happens to have a special hatred for them. He has founded four papers—the _Star_, the _Sun_, _T. P.’s Weekly_ and _M. A. P._—but I am not sure as to how far he is still interested in any of them.

T. P. is to me a fascinating personality. He is so generous and genial. The swift recognition, the ready smile, the warm affectionate manner, have endeared him to hosts of friends, and every one recognises that he has a golden pen which invests everything he touches with interest, and an acute intelligence—acute enough to sift even the Humbert mystery and present a clear analysis of it, as witness his _Phantom Millions_.

He is a golfer too, and once upon a time used to play with W. G. Grace, who, it seems, in spite of his being the best cricketer that ever lived, always hits his shot along the ground except from the tee, though he drives and puts pretty well. I got this egregious piece of journalism from him when we were sitting next to each other at the dinner given by M. Escoffier, at that time, and probably still, cook at the Carlton Hotel, who gave a gourmet’s feast on the occasion of the publication of his book on cookery, published by Heinemann. Heinemann invited me. The chief thing I remember about the feast is that the wine Escoffier selected was _Pommery Naturel_, and that the _tour de force_ was lamb stuffed with sage and onions to replace the usual mint sauce.

John Malcolm Bulloch, the editor of the _Graphic_, who gave me such immense assistance when I was writing _Adam_ _Lindsay Gordon and His Friends in England and Australia_, is an author whose father and grandfather were authors before him. His specialities are the ancient University of Aberdeen, of which he is an M.A., and the great house of Gordon. He edited the _House of Gordon_ for the New Spalding Club, and has written many pamphlets on Gordon genealogy besides his book on _The Gay Gordons_.

I happen to enjoy the friendship of the editors of both the _Bookseller_ and the _Publishers’ Circular_. George H. Whitaker, who is a doctor by profession, saw a good deal of the world as a ship’s doctor when he was a young man. Now the world sees a good deal of him as head of the firm which publishes _Whitaker’s Almanack_, as well as editor of the _Bookseller_—famed, as a trade-organ ought to be, for the justice of its reviews.

R. B. Marston, who edits the _Publishers’ Circular_, edits the _Fishing Gazette_ also. He founded the Fly Fishers’ Club. The Marstons are famous fishermen—his father, Edward Marston, who has just died at a Nestor’s age, had been one of Izaak Walton’s chief followers both with pen and rod. R. B. is, besides writing books on fishing and photography, one of the chief writers on our food supplies in war, an energetic and patriotic public man.

My oldest acquaintance in journalism, except Sidney Low, is Penderel Brodhurst, the editor of the _Guardian_. We used to meet at Henley’s in the days before I went to America, which was in 1888. He was in those days the walking encyclopædia of the _St. James’s Gazette_, and afterwards edited the long-defunct _St. James’s Budget_. He was, as he is, a man wrapped up in his work: he could, if he had chosen, have been a personage in literary society on his very historical name, for he is a descendant of the Penderel who saved King Charles II in the oak at Boscobel, and enjoys a pension therefor, probably one of the oldest pensions still running in England, and he is, though he does not use his title, an Italian marquis (Penderel de Boscobel, created 1782).

Lindsay Bashford, being literary editor of the _Daily Mail_, has only had time to write one book—_Everybody’s Boy_—but that was a very good one. But he has a sufficient literary record apart from that, for he was lecturer on English literature at a French university.

J. A. Spender, the editor of the _Westminster_, is another author-editor. I have known him for many years. He comes of a brilliant family, for he is a son of Mrs. J. K. Spender, and brother of Harold Spender. He was an Exhibitioner of Balliol, and Harold was an Exhibitioner of University College, Oxford. Both of them are authors of half-a-dozen books, and both of them are wonderfully clever and well-informed men, real powers in journalism.

Sir Owen Seaman, of _Punch_, who was Captain of Shrewsbury School, and took a First in the Classical Tripos, and the Porson Prize at Cambridge, can best be described as the modern Calverley, for no one since Calverley has written such brilliant satirical lyrics. He was the “O. S.” of the _National Observer_, and who does not remember “The Battle of the Bays,” “In Cap and Bells” and “Borrowed Plumes”?

H. W. Massingham, of the _Nation_, the most conspicuous political journalist on the Liberal side, one of the few Liberals who dare to try and lead their party against its will, has only written a couple of books, both rather technical, _The London Daily Press_ and _Labour and Protection_.

Sidney Paternoster, the assistant-editor of _Truth_, is well known as a novelist, as is Adcock, of the _Bookman_, but, taken as a whole, editors of great newspapers are not writers of books.

Ernest Parke, director of the _Daily News_ and _Leader_ and the _Star_, was at one time a regular attendant at the Vagabond banquets, as was his sub., Hugh Maclaughlan. Parke and I saw the Coronation together from a seat in the triforium of Westminster Abbey right over the little square of Oriental carpet on which His Majesty King George V was crowned, so we had a splendid view of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Garter King-at-Arms, addressing the North, South, East and West as witnesses, and of the Dukes of Beaufort and Somerset, towering above Lord Kitchener as he walked between them, an object lesson which I suppose was not unintended. Parke is a great journalist, and made the _Star_ a force in literature. Leonard Rees, of the _Sunday Times_, who shines as a literary critic as well as a musical critic, with whom I have had much correspondence, I have never met personally. But Vivian Carter, who was on the staff of the Institution of Civil Engineers till only a dozen years ago, and has in the last five years edited the _Bystander_ with such conspicuous success, is a mutual friend of the C. N. Williamsons and myself. We meet there.

J. S. Wood, the founder and managing director of the _Gentlewoman_, and one of the real founders of the Primrose League, was often from the beginning at our at-homes, with his pretty Italian wife, and his daughters as they grew up. We used to meet them in the season at Ranelagh, too. Wood has been much more than a founder and editor of newspapers, for he has been connected with the management of several of our most important charities, and has himself been instrumental in raising a quarter of a million for them.

All the Kenealys (Arabella and Annesley, both authors, Edward and Noel, both editors) were frequent visitors at our flat, except Alexander Kenealy, the editor of the _Daily Mirror_, who was in America for twenty years before he became news editor of the _Daily Express_, and, later, editor of the _Mirror_. More than any of the others, Alexander Kenealy inherits the splendid abilities of his father, the famous Dr. Kenealy, Q.C., M.P., one of the greatest lawyers of his time, who took up the case of the Tichborne claimant when others had abandoned it as hopeless, and almost pulled him through.

Another of our editor friends was Edwin Oliver, at that time editor of _Atalanta_ and subsequently of the _Idler_, and, since 1910, of the widely influential _Outlook_.

I cannot conclude my chapter on journalism without reference to Sir Hugh Gilzean-Reid, whose pet plaything was the Institute of Journalists. He used often to come to our house with his charming daughters. Sir Hugh, who had made a considerable fortune out of journalism, large enough to let him live in Dollis Hill, the house near Willesden which Lord Aberdeen lent to Mr. Gladstone, never forgot the working journalist, and it was he who engineered the agitation which defeated the intention of two of the great London dailies to issue Sunday editions like the American _Sunday World_ and _Sunday Sun_. As Herbert Cornish was the creator, he was chief founder and first President of the Institute of Journalists also. He used to give large garden-parties at Dollis Hill, chiefly to people who appreciated its having been consecrated by the residence of Mr. Gladstone, though there were others, like ourselves, who went because we liked his family so much. He was a philanthropic man, and did an immense amount of good.

The first paid journalism I ever did was writing articles on public school life for the _Educational Reporter_ when I was a boy at Cheltenham. About the same time I wrote a story for _Bow Bells_ called “Douglas Thirlstaine’s Wooing,” which was not paid for, and soon after that I supplied unpaid notes about Cheltenham College to a Cheltenham paper, which had never been able to get them, as a favour to the late Frederick Stroud, who had got me out of the libel action brought by the editors of the _Shotover Papers_. I wish I could find that libel now. It was a small pamphlet of a few pages, published under the title of _Overshot_ by a printer in Turl Street, Oxford. I saw about the printing of it when I was up in Oxford competing for a scholarship at Trinity or Balliol, lodging with Ray, who was afterwards to be my scout, in one of the sixteenth-century cottages which now form part of Trinity.

In Australia the only money I made in journalism was five pounds which I received from the _Queenslander_ for the serial rights of a novel which I have never re-published, and a guinea which I received from the _Illustrated Australian News_ as a prize for the best poem on Federation.

When I got back to England, the first paid journalism I did was for the _Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News_, edited by A. E. T. Watson, who now edits the _Badminton Magazine_, and who projected and edits the _Badminton Library_, and is a member of the National Hunt Committee—one of the chief sportsmen in journalism. The subjects on which I wrote were Australian cricket and Australian poetry, like Gordon’s, and on both subjects I was the chief authority until I went to America, odd as it may seem now. I also wrote on Gordon for the _Graphic_, and had a long historical article in the _Cornhill_, and a serial novel—_Trincolox_—in _Temple Bar_.

When I went to America, I wrote a good deal for papers and magazines, but almost entirely in verse, except a series of articles which I had to telegraph from Montreal about the Carnival to a great American daily. I remember thinking that the telegraphing was such a useless expense for such unimportant stuff.

In Japan I wrote a good deal for the _Japan Gazette_, but my contributions were gratis, because there the editor, Nuttall, now one of the editors of the _Daily Telegraph_, was expected to write the whole paper himself. I used to help him, and he exerted himself to get various permissions for me. He was a very capable man, who kept his paper interesting though he had to make his bricks without straw.

However, when I got back to America from Japan I commenced journalism in real earnest. I wrote a good many articles at four pounds a column for the _San Francisco Chronicle_, and, as I have said, wrote for many papers in New York, and when I returned to England I introduced the American biographical journalism to many papers, and at one time was fully occupied with it, until I diverted the capabilities I used for it to the founding of _Who’s Who_.