Adventures in Journalism

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Adventures In Journalism

[Illustration: Decoration]

Adventures In Journalism

by

Philip Gibbs

Author of “Now It Can Be Told,” “More That Must Be Told,” etc.

[Illustration: Logo]

Harper & Brothers, Publishers New York and London

Adventures In Journalism

Copyright, 1923 By Harper & Brothers Printed in the U.S.A.

First Edition

Adventures In Journalism

Adventures in Journalism

I

The adventure of journalism which has been mine--as editor, reporter, and war correspondent--is never a life of easy toil and seldom one of rich rewards. I would not recommend it to youth as a primrose path, nor to anyone who wishes to play for safety in possession of an assured income, regular hours, and happy home life.

It is of uncertain tenure, because no man may hold on to his job if he weakens under the nervous strain, or quarrels on a point of honor with the proprietor who pays him or with the editor who sets his task. Even the most successful journalist--if he is on the writing side of a newspaper--can rarely bank on past achievements, however long and brilliant, but must forever jerk his brain and keep his curiosity untired.

As nobody, according to the proverb, has ever seen a dead donkey, so nobody has ever seen a retired reporter living on the proceeds of his past toil, like business men in other adventures of life. He must go on writing and recording, getting news until the pen drops from his hand, or the little bell tinkles for the last time on his typewriter, and his head falls over an unfinished sentence.... Well, I hope that will happen to me, but some people look forward to an easier old age.

I have known the humiliation of journalism, its insecurity, its never-ending tax upon the mind and heart, its squalor, its fever, its soul-destroying machinery for those who are not proof against its cruelties. Hundreds of times, as a young reporter, I was stretched to the last pull of nervous energy on some “story” which was wiped out for more important news. Often I went without food and sleep, suffered in health of body and mind, girded myself to audacities from which, as a timid soul, I shrank, in order to get a “scoop”--which failed.

The young reporter has to steel his heart to these disappointments. He must not agonize too much if, after a day and night of intense and nervous effort, he finds no line of his work in the paper, or sees his choicest prose hacked and mangled by impatient subeditors, or his truth-telling twisted into falsity.

He is the slave of the machine. Home life is not for him, as for other men. He may have taken unto himself a wife--poor girl!--but though she serves his little dinner all piping hot, he has to leave the love feast for the bleak streets, if the voice of the news editor calls down the telephone.

So, at least, it was in my young days as a reporter on London newspapers, and many a time in those days I cursed the fate which had taken me to Fleet Street as a slave of the press.

Several times I escaped; taking my courage in both hands--and it needed courage, remembering a wife and babe--I broke with the spell of journalism and retired into quieter fields of literary life.

But always I went back! The lure of the adventure was too strong. The thrill of chasing the new “story,” the interest of getting into the middle of life, sometimes behind the scenes of history, the excitement of recording sensational acts in the melodrama of reality, the meetings with heroes, rogues, and oddities, the front seats at the peep show of life, the comedy, the change, the comradeship, the rivalry, the test of one’s own quality of character and vision, drew me back to Fleet Street as a strong magnet.

It was, after all, a great game! It is still one of the best games in the world for any young man with quick eyes, a sense of humor, some touch of quality in his use of words, and curiosity in his soul for the truth and pageant of our human drama, provided he keeps his soul unsullied from the dirt.

Looking back on my career as a journalist, I know that I would not change for any other. Fleet Street, which I called in a novel _The Street of Adventure_, is still my home, and to its pavement my feet turn again from whatever part of the world I return.

When I first entered the street, twenty years ago alas! the social status of press men was much lower than at present, when the pendulum has swung the other way, so that newspaper proprietors wear coronets, the purlieus of Fleet Street are infested with barons and baronets, and even reporters have been knighted by the King. In my early days a journalist did not often get nearer to a Cabinet Minister than the hall porter of his office. It was partly his own fault, or at least, the fault of those who paid him miserably, because the old-time reporter--before Northcliffe, who was then Harmsworth, revised his salary and his status--was often an ill-dressed fellow, conscious of his own social inferiority, cringing in his manner to the great, and content to slink round to the back doors of life, rather than boldly assault the front-door knocker. Having a good conceit of myself and a sensitive pride, I received many hard knocks and humiliations which, no doubt, were good for my soul.

I resented the insolence of society women whom I was sent to interview. Even now I remember with humiliation a certain Duchess who demanded that, in return for a ticket to her theatrical entertainment, I should submit my “copy” to her before sending it to the paper. Weakly, I agreed, for my annoyance was extreme when an insolent footman demanded my article and carried it on a silver salver, at some distance from his liveried body, lest he should be contaminated by so vile a thing, to Her Grace and her fair daughters in an adjoining room. I heard them reading it, and their mocking laughter.... I raged at the haughty arrogance of young government officials who treated me as “one of those damned fellows on the press.” I laughed bitterly and savagely at a certain Mayor of Bournemouth who revealed in one simple sentence (which he thought was kind) the attitude of public opinion toward the press which it despised--and feared.

“You know,” he told me in a moment of candor, “I always treat journalists as though they were gentlemen.”

For some time I disliked all mayors because of that confession, and a year or two later, when conditions were changing, I was able to take a joyous revenge from one of them, who was the Mayor of Limerick. He did not even treat journalists as though they were gentlemen. He treated them as though they were ruffians who ought to be thrust into the outer darkness.

King Edward was making a Royal Progress through Ireland--it was before the days of Sinn Fein--and, with a number of other correspondents, some of whom are now famous men, it was my duty to await and describe his arrival at Limerick and report his speech in answer to the address.

Seeing us standing in a group, the Mayor demanded to know why we dared to stand on the platform where the King was about to arrive, when strict orders had been given that none but the Mayor and Corporation, and the Guard of Honor, were permitted on that space. “Get outside the station!” shouted the Mayor of Limerick, “or I’ll put my police on to ye!”

Explanations were useless. Protests did not move the Mayor. To avoid an unpleasant scene, we retired outside the station, indignantly. But I was resolved to get on that platform and defeat the Mayor at all costs. I noticed the appearance of an officer in cocked hat, plumes, and full uniform, whom I knew to be General Pole-Carew, commanding the troops in Ireland, and in charge of the royal journey. I accosted him boldly, told him the painful situation of the correspondents who were there to describe the King’s tour and record his speeches. He was courteous and kind. Indeed, he did a wonderful and fearful thing. The Mayor and Corporation were already standing on a red carpet enclosed by brass railings, immediately opposite the halting place of the King’s train. General Pole-Carew gave the Mayor a tremendous dressing down which made him grow first purple and then pale, and ordered him, with his red-gowned satellites, to clear out of that space to the far end of the platform. General Pole-Carew then led the newspaper men to the red carpet enclosed by brass railings. It was to us that King Edward read out his reply to the address which was handed to him, while the Mayor and Corporation glowered sulkily.

Unduly elated by this victory, perhaps, one of my colleagues who had been a skipper on seagoing tramps before adopting the more hazardous profession of the press, resented, a few days later, being “cooped up” in the press box at Punchestown races which King Edward was to attend in semi-state. Nothing would content his soul but a place on the Royal Stand. I accompanied him to see the fun, but regretted my temerity when, without challenge, we stood, surrounded by princes and peers of Ireland, at the top of the gangway up which the King was to come. I think they put down my friend the skipper as the King’s private detective. He wore a blue reefer coat and a bowler hat with a curly brim. By good luck I was in a tall hat and morning suit, like the rest of the company. Presently the King came, in a little pageant of state carriages with outriders in scarlet and gold, and then, with his gentlemen, he ascended the gangway, shaking hands with all who were assembled on the stairs. The skipper, who was a great patriot, and loved King Edward as a “regular fellow,” betrayed himself by the warmth of his greeting. Grasping the King’s hand in a sailorman’s grip, he shook it long and ardently, and expressed the hope that His Majesty was quite well.

King Edward was startled by this unconventional welcome, and a few moments later, after some whispered words, one of his equerries touched the skipper on the shoulder and requested him politely to seek some other place. I basely abandoned my colleague, and betrayed no kind of acquaintance with him, but held to the advantage of my tall hat, and spent an interesting morning listening to King Edward’s conversation with the Irish gentry. Prince Arthur of Connaught was there, and I remember that King Edward clapped him on the back and chaffed him because he had not yet found a wife. “It’s time you got married, young fellow,” said his illustrious uncle.

That memory brings me to the importance of clothes in the career of a journalist. It was Lord Northcliffe, then Alfred Harmsworth, who gave me good advice on the subject at the outset of my journalistic experience.

“Always dress well,” he said, “and never spoil the picture by being in the wrong costume. I like the appearance of my young men to be a credit to the profession. It is very important.”

That advice, excellent in its way, was sometimes difficult to follow, owing to the rush and scurry of a reporter’s life. It is difficult to be correctly attired for a funeral in the morning and for a wedding in the afternoon, at least so far as the color of one’s tie.

I remember being jerked off to a shipwreck on the Cornish coast in a tall hat and frock coat which startled the simple fishermen who were rescuing ladies on a life line.

A colleague of mine who specialized in dramatic criticism was suddenly ordered to write a bright article about a garden party at Buckingham Palace. Unfortunately he had come down to the office that morning in a blue serge suit and straw hat, which is not the costume worn on such occasions. One of the King’s gentlemen, more concerned, I am sure, than the King, at this breach of etiquette, requested him to conceal himself behind a tree.

The absence of evening dress clothes, owing to a hurried journey, has often been a cause of embarrassment to myself and others, with the risk of losing important news for lack of this livery.

So it was when I was invited to attend a banquet given to Doctor Cook in Copenhagen, when he made his claim of having discovered the North Pole. For reasons which I shall tell later in these memories, it was of great importance to me to be present at that dinner, where Doctor Cook was expected to tell the story of his amazing journey. But I had traveled across Europe with a razor and a toothbrush, and had no evening clothes. For a shilling translated into Danish money, I borrowed the dress suit of an obliging young waiter. He was a taller man than I, and the sleeves of his coat fell almost to my wrists, and the trousers bagged horribly below the knees. His waistcoat was also rather grease-stained by the accidents inevitable to his honorable avocation. In this attire I proceeded self-consciously to the Tivoli Palace where the banquet was held. I had to ascend a tall flight of marble steps, and, being late, I was alone and conspicuous.

Feeling like Hop-o’-my-Thumb in the giant’s clothes, I pulled myself together, hitched up my waiter’s trousers, and advanced up the marble stairs. Suddenly I was aware of a fantastic happening. I found myself, as the fairy tales say, receiving a salute from a guard of honor. Swords flashed from their scabbards and my fevered vision was conscious of a double line of figures dressed in the scarlet coats and buckskin breeches of the English Life Guards.

“This,” I said to myself, “is what comes to a man who hires a waiter’s clothes. I have undoubtedly gone crazy. There are no English Life Guards in Copenhagen. But there is certainly a missing button at the back of my trousers.”

It was the chorus of the Tivoli Music Hall which was providing the Guard of Honor, and they were tall and lovely ladies.

I was caught napping again, not very long ago, when the King of the Belgians granted my request for a special interview. An official of the British Embassy, who conveyed that acceptance to me, also advised me that I must wear a frock coat and top hat when I visited the Palace, for that appointment which, he said, was at four o’clock. I had come to Brussels without a frock coat--and indeed I had not worn that detestable garment for years--and without a top hat. I decided to buy or hire them in Brussels.

It was Saturday morning, and I spent several hours searching for ready-made frock coats. Ultimately I hired one which had certainly been made for a Belgian burgomaster of considerable circumference--and I am a lean man, and little. I also acquired a top hat which was of a style favored by London cabbies forty years ago, low in the crown and broad and curly in the brim. I carried these parcels back, hoping that by holding my hat in the presence of Majesty, and altering the buttons on the frock coat, I might maintain a dignified appearance.

I did not make a public appearance in that costume however, as I missed the hour for the interview owing to a mistake of the British Embassy.

As a young man, before serious things like wars and revolutions, plagues and famines entered into my sphere of work, I spent most of my days on _The Daily Mail_, _The Daily Chronicle_, and other papers, chasing the “stunt” story, which was then a new thing in English journalism, having crossed the water from the United States and excited the imagination of such pioneers as Harmsworth and Pearson. The old dullness and dignity of the English Press had been rudely challenged by this new outlook on life, and by the novel interpretation of the word “news” by men like Harmsworth himself. Formerly “news” was limited in the imagination of English editors to verbatim reports of political speeches, the daily record of police courts, and the hard facts of contemporary history, recorded in humdrum style. Harmsworth changed all that. “News,” to him, meant anything which had a touch of human interest for the great mass of folk, any happening or idea which affected the life, clothes, customs, food, health, and amusements of middle-class England. Under his direction, _The Daily Mail_, closely imitated by many others, regarded life as a variety show. No “turn” must be long or dull. Whether it dealt with tragedy or comedy, high politics or other kinds of crime, it was admitted, not because of its importance to the nation or the world, but because it made a good “story” for the breakfast table.

In pursuit of that ideal--not very high, but not a bad school for those in search of human knowledge--I became one of that band of colleagues and rivals who were sent here, there, and everywhere on the latest “story.” It led us into queer places, often on foolish and futile missions. It brought us in touch with strange people, both high and low in the social world. It was my privilege to meet kings and princes, murderers and thieves, politicians and publicans, saints and sinners, along the roads of life in many countries. As far as kings are concerned, I cannot boast that familiarity once claimed by Oscar Browning who, when he showed the ex-Kaiser over Cambridge, asserted to the undergraduates who questioned him afterward that “He is one of the nicest emperors I have ever met.”

With rogues and vagabonds I confess I have had a more extensive acquaintance. The amusement of the game of finding a “story” was the unexpectedness of the situation in which one sometimes found oneself, and the personal experience which did not appear in print. As a trivial instance, I remember how I went to inquire into a ghost story and became, surprisingly, the ghost.

Down in the West of England there was, and still is, a great house so horribly haunted (according to local tales) that the family to which it has belonged for centuries abandoned its ancient splendor and lived near by in a modern villa. Interest was aroused when a young chemist claimed that he had actually taken a photograph of one of the ghosts during a night he had spent alone in the old house. I obtained a copy of this photograph, which was certainly a good “fake,” and I was asked to spend a night in the house myself with an Irish photographer who might have equal luck with some other spirit.

Together we traveled down to the haunted house, which we found to be an old Elizabethan mansion surrounded by trees, and next to a graveyard. It was dark when we arrived, with the intention of making a burglarious entry. Before ten minutes had passed the Irish photographer was saying his prayers, and I had a cold chill down my spine at the sighing of the wind through the trees, the hooting of an owl, and the little squeaks of the bats that flitted under the eaves. With false courage we endeavored to make our way into the house. Every window was shuttered, every door bolted, and we could find no way of entry into a building that rambled away with many odd nooks and corners. At last I found a door which seemed to yield.

“Stand back!” I said to the Irish photographer. I took a run and hurled my shoulder against the door. It gave, and I was precipitated into a room--not, as I found afterward, part of the Elizabethan mansion, but a neighboring farmhouse, where the farmer and his family were seated at an evening meal. Their shrieks and yells were piercing, and they believed that the ghosts next door were invading them.... I and the photographer fled without further explanation.

On another day I went down into the country to interview a dear old clergyman, who had reached his hundredth year, and had been at school with the famous Doctor Arnold of Rugby. The old gentleman was stone deaf and for some time could not make out the object of my visit. At last it seemed to dawn on him. “Ah, yes!” he said. “You are the gentleman who is coming to sing at our concert to-night. How very kind of you to come all the way from London!” Vainly I endeavored to explain that I had come to interview him for a London paper. Presently he took me by the arm, and led me into his drawing-room, where a charming old lady was sitting by the fire knitting.

“My dear,” said the centenarian parson, “this gentleman has come all the way from London to sing at our concert to-night.”

I explained to her gently that it was not so, but she was also deaf, and could only hear her husband when she used her ear trumpet.

“How very kind of you to come all this way!” she said graciously.

Presently another old gentleman appeared on the scene and I was presented to him as the young gentleman who had come down from London to sing at the concert.

“Pardon me,” I said; “it’s all a mistake. I’m a newspaper reporter.”

But the second old gentleman ignored my explanation. He had only caught the word “concert.”

“Delighted to meet you!” he said. “We are all looking forward to your singing to-night!”

I slunk out of the house later, and drove back fifteen miles to the station. On the way I passed an old horse cab conveying a young man in the opposite direction. I felt certain that he actually was the young gentleman who was going to sing at the concert that night.

On another occasion I had the unfortunate experience of being taken for Mr. Winston Churchill. It was his luck and not mine, because it was at a time when a great number of Irishmen were lusting for his blood. I am no more like Mr. Churchill than I am like Lloyd George, except that we are both clean shaven and both happened to be driving in a blue car. It was on a day when there was trouble in Belfast (that city of peace!) and the Orangemen had sworn to prevent Churchill from speaking to the Catholic community on the Celtic Football Ground. They lined up for him thousands strong outside the railway station where he was due to arrive, and their pockets were loaded with “kidney” stones, and iron nuts from the shipyards. Churchill is a brave man, and faced them with such pluck that they did not attempt to injure him at that moment of his arrival, though afterwards they attacked his car in Royal Avenue and would have overturned it but for a charge of mounted police. He made his speech to the Catholic Irish and slipped out of Belfast by a different station. The mobs of Orangemen were awaiting his return in a blue car to a hotel in Royal Avenue, and it was my car, and my clean-shaven face under a bowler hat which went back to that hotel and caused a slight mistake among them. I was suddenly aware of ten thousand men yelling at me fiercely and threatening to tear me limb from limb. The police made a rush, and I and my companion escaped with only torn collars and the loss of dignity after a wild scrimmage on the steps of the hotel. For hours the mob waited outside for Mr. Winston Churchill to depart, and I did not venture forth until the news of his going spread among them.

Such incidents are not enjoyable at the time. But a newspaper man with a sense of humor takes them as part of his day’s work, and however trivial they may be, bides his time for big events of history in which, after his apprenticeship, he may find his chance as a chronicler of things that matter.

II

It is one of the little ironies of a reporter’s life that he finds himself at times in the company of those who sit in the seats of the mighty and those who possess the power of worldly wealth, when he, poor lad, is wondering whether his next article will pay for his week’s rent, and jingles a few pieces of silver in a threadbare pocket.

It is true that most newspaper offices are liberal in the matter of expenses, so that while a “story” is in progress the newspaper man is able to put up at the best hotels, to hire motor cars with the ease of a millionaire, and to live so much like a lord that hall porters, Ministers of State, private detectives, and women of exalted rank are willing to treat him as such, if he plays the part well, and conceals his miserable identity. But there is always the feeling, to a sensitive fellow on the bottom rung of the journalistic ladder, that he is only a looker-on of life, a play actor watching from the wings, even a kind of Christopher Sly, belonging to the gutter but dressed up by some freak of fate, and invited to the banquet of the great.

The young newspaper man, if he is wise, and proud, with a sense of the dignity of his own profession, overcomes this foolish sense of inferiority by the noble thought that he may be (and probably is) of more importance to the world than people of luxury and exalted rank, and that, indeed, it is only by his words that many of them live at all. Unless he writes about them they do not exist. He is their critic, their judge, to some extent their creator. He it is who--as a man of letters--makes them famous or infamous, who gives the laurels of history to the man of action--for there is no Ulysses without Homer--and who moves through the pageant of life as a modern Froissart, painting the word pictures of courts and camps, revealing what happens behind the scenes, giving the immortality of his words to little people he meets upon the way, or to kings and heroes. That point of view, with its youthful egotism, has been comforting to many young gentlemen who have taken rude knocks to their sensibility because of their profession; and there is some truth in it.

As a descriptive writer on London newspapers, I had that advantage of being poor among the rich, and lowly among the exalted. Among other experiences which fell to my lot was that of being a chronicler of royal processions, ceremonies, marriages, coronations, funerals, and other events in the lives of kings and princes.

I was once a literary attendant at the birth of a Princess, and look back to that event with particular gratitude because it gave me considerable acquaintance with the masterpieces of Dutch art and the beauties of Dutch cities. I also learned to read Dutch with fair ease, owing to the long delay in the arrival of Queen Wilhelmina’s daughter.

For some reason, at a time before the Great War had given a new proportion to world events, this expectation of an heir to the Dutch throne was considered of enormous political importance, as the next of kin was a German prince. Correspondents and secret agents came from all parts of Europe to the little old city of the Hague, and I had among my brothers of the pen two of the best-known journalists in Europe, one of whom was Ludovic Nodeau of _Le Journal_ and the other Hamilton Fyfe of _The Daily Mail_.

Every night in the old white palace of the Hague we three, and six others of various nationalities, were entertained to a banquet in the rooms of the Queen’s Chamberlain, the Junkheer van Heen, who had placed his rooms at our disposal. Flunkeys in royal livery, with powdered wigs and silk stockings, conducted us with candles to a well-spread table, and always the Queen’s Chamberlain announced to us solemnly in six languages, “Gentlemen, the happy event will take place to-morrow!”

To-morrow came, and a month of to-morrows, but no heir to the throne of Holland. Three times, owing to false rumors, the Dutch Army came into the streets and drank not wisely but too well to a new-born Prince who had not come!

Ludovic Nodeau, Hamilton Fyfe, and I explored Holland, learned Dutch, and saw the lime tree outside the palace become heavy with foliage, though it was bare at our coming.

The correspondent of _The Times_ had a particular responsibility because he had promised to telephone to the British Ambassador, who, in his turn, was to telegraph to King Edward, at any time of the day or night that the event might happen. But the correspondent of _The Times_, who was a very young man, and “fed up” with all this baby stuff, absented himself from the banquet one night. In the early hours of the morning, when he was asleep at his hotel, the Queen’s Chamberlain appeared, with tears running down his cheeks, and announced in six languages that a Princess had been born.

It was Hamilton Fyfe and I who gave the news to the Dutch people. As we ran down the street to the post office men and women came out on the balconies in their night attire and shouted for news.

“Princess! Princess!” we cried. An hour later the Hague was thronged with joyous, dancing people. That morning the Ministers of State linked hands and danced with the people down the main avenue--as though Lloyd George and his fellow ministers had performed a fox-trot in Whitehall. With quaint old-world customs, heralds and trumpeters announced the glad tidings, already known, and driving in a horse cab to watch I had a fight with a Dutch photographer who tried to take possession of my vehicle. That night the Dutch Army rejoiced again, boisterously.

Although I cannot boast of familiarity with emperors, like Oscar Browning, and have been more in the position of the cat who can look at a king, according to the proverb, I can claim to have heard one crowned head utter an epigram on the spur of the moment. It was in the war between Bulgaria and Turkey in 1912, and I was standing on the bridge over the Maritza River at Mustapha Pasha (now the new boundary of the Turks in Europe) when Ferdinand of Bulgaria arrived with his staff. Because of the climate, which was cold there, I was wearing the fur cap of a Bulgarian peasant, a sheepskin coat, and leggings, and believed myself to be thoroughly disguised as a Bulgar. But the King--a tall, fat old man with long nose and little shifty eyes, like a rogue elephant--“spotted” me at once as an Englishman, and, calling me up to him, chatted very civilly in my own language, which he spoke without an accent. At that moment there arrived the usual character who always does appear at the psychological moment in any part of the world’s drama--a photographer of _The Daily Mail_. Ferdinand of Bulgaria had a particular hatred and dread of cameramen, believing that he might be assassinated by some enemy pretending to “snap” him. He raised his stick to strike the man down and was only reassured when I told him that he was a harmless Englishman, trying to carry out his profession as a press photographer.

“Photography is not a profession,” said the King. “It’s a damned disease.”

One of the pleasantest jobs in pre-war days was a royal luncheon at the Guildhall, when the Lord Mayor of London and his Aldermen used to give the welcome of the City to foreign potentates visiting the Royal Family. The scene under the timbered roof of the Guildhall was splendid, with great officers of the Army and Navy in full uniform, Ministers of State in court dress, Indian princes in colored turbans, foreign ambassadors glittering with stars and ribbons, the Lord Mayor and Aldermen in scarlet gowns trimmed with fur, and the royal Guest and his gentlemen in ceremonial uniforms. In the courtyard ancient coaches, all gilt and glass, with coachmen and footmen in white wigs and stockings, and liveries of scarlet and gold, brought back memories of Queen Anne’s London and the pictures of Cinderella going to the ball. The gigantic and grotesque figures of Gog and Magog, carved in wood, grinned down upon the company as they have done through centuries of feasts, and at the other end of the hall, mounted in a high pulpit, a white-capped cook carved the Roast Beef of Old England, while music discoursed in the minstrels’ gallery.

Our souls were warmed by 1815 port, only brought out for these royal banquets, and we sat in the midst of the illustrious and in the presence of princes, with a conviction that in no other city on earth could there be such a good setting for a good meal. There I have feasted with the ex-Kaiser, the Kings of Portugal, Italy, and Spain, several Presidents of the French Republic, and the King and Queen of England. I remember the 1815 port more than the speeches of the kings.

I also remember on one occasion at the Guildhall that it was a brother journalist who seemed to be the most popular person at the party. Admirals of the Fleet clapped him on the back and said “Hullo, Charlie!” Generals and officers beamed upon the little man and uttered the same words of surprise and affection. Diplomats and foreign correspondents who had met “dear old Charlie” in South Africa, Japan, Egypt, and the Balkans, and drunk wine with him in all the capitals of Europe, greeted him when they passed as though they remembered rich jests in his company. It was Charles Hands of _The Daily Mail_, war correspondent, knight-errant of the pen, ironical commentator on life’s puppet show, and good companion on any adventure.

I once spent an afternoon with the King of Spain and his grandees, though I had no right at all to be in their company. It was at the marriage of a prince of the House of Bourbon with a white-faced lady who had descended from the Kings of France in the old _régime_. This ceremony was to take place in an old English house at Evesham, in the orchard of England, which belonged to the Duke of Orleans, by right of blood heir to the throne of France, as might be seen by the symbol of the _fleur-de-lis_ carved on every panel and imprinted on every cup and saucer in his home of exile, where he kept up a royal state and looked the part, being a very handsome man and exceedingly like Henri IV, his great ancestor.

The Duke of Orleans could not abide journalists, and strict orders were given that none should be admitted before the wedding in a pasteboard chapel, still being tacked up and painted to represent a royal and ancient chapel on the eve of the ceremony.

For fear of anarchists and journalists a considerable body of police and detectives had been engaged to hold three miles of road to Wood Norton and guard the gates. But I was under instructions to describe the preparations and the arrival of all the princes and princesses of the Bourbon blood who were assembling from many countries of Europe. With this innocent purpose, I hired a respectable-looking carriage at the livery stables of Evesham, and drove out to Wood Norton. As it happened, I fell into line with a number of other carriages containing the King and Queen of Spain and other members of the family gathering. Police and detectives accepted my carriage as part of the procession, and I drove unchallenged through the great gilded gates under the Crown of France.

I was received with great deference by the Duke’s major domo, who obviously regarded me as a Bourbon, and with the King and Queen of Spain and a group of ladies and gentlemen, I inspected the pasteboard chapel, the wedding presents, the floral decorations of the banqueting chamber, and the Duke’s stables. The King of Spain was very merry and bright, and believing, no doubt, that I was one of the Duke’s gentlemen, addressed various remarks to me in a courteous way. I drove back in the dark, saluted by all the policemen on the way, and wrote a description of what I had seen, to the great surprise of my friends and rivals.

Next day I attended the wedding, and saw the strange assembly of the old Blood Royal of France and Spain and Austria. One of the Bourbon princes came from some distant part of the Slav world, and, in a heavy fur coat reaching to his heels, a fur cap drawn over his ears, a gold chain round his neck, and rings, not only on all his fingers, but on his thumbs as well, looked like a bear who had robbed the jewelers’ shops in Bond Street. At the wedding banquet one of the foreign noblemen drank too deeply of the flowing cup, and, upon entering his carriage afterward, danced a kind of _pas seul_ and hummed a little ballad of the Paris boulevards, to the scandal of the footmen and the undisguised amusement of King Alfonso.

I made another uninvited appearance among royalty, and to this day blush at the remembrance of my audacity, which was unnecessary and unpardonable. It was when King George and Queen Mary opened the Exhibition at the White City at Shepherd’s Bush, London.

They had made a preliminary inspection of the place, on a filthy day when the exhibition grounds were like the bogs of Flanders, and when the King, with very pardonable irritation, uttered the word “Damn!” when he stepped into a puddle which splashed all over his uniform. “Hush, George!” said the Queen. “Wait till we get home!”

On the day of the opening, vast crowds had assembled in the grounds, but were not allowed to enter the exhibition buildings until the royal party had passed through. The press were kept back by a rope at the entrance way, in a position from which they could see just nothing at all. I was peeved at this lack of consideration for professional observers, and when the royal party entered and a cordon of police wheeled across the great hall to prevent the crowd from following, I stepped over the rope and joined the royal procession. As it happened, the police movement had cut off one of the party--a French Minister of State who, knowing no word of English, made futile endeavors to explain his misfortune, and received in reply a policeman’s elbow in his chest and the shout of “Get back there!”

I took his place. The King’s detective had counted his chickens and was satisfied that I was one of them. As I was in a new silk hat and tail coat, I looked as distinguished as a French Minister, or at least did not arouse suspicion. The only member of the party who noticed my step across the rope was Sir Edward Grey. He did not give me away, but smiled at my cool cheek with the suspicion of a wink. As a matter of fact, I was not so cool as I looked. I was in an awkward situation, because all the royal party and their company were busily engaged in conversation, with the exception of Queen Alexandra who, being deaf, lingered behind to study the show cases instead of conversing. Having no one to talk to, I naturally lingered behind also, and thus attracted the kindly notice of the Queen Mother, who made friendly remarks about the exhibition, not hearing my hesitating answers. For the first time I saw a royal reception by great crowds from the point of view of royalty instead of the crowd--a white sea of faces, indistinguishable individually, but one big, staring, thousand-eyed face, shouting and waving all its pocket handkerchiefs, while bands played “God save the King” and cameras snapped and cinema operators turned their handles. When I returned to my office I found the news editor startled by many photographs of his correspondent walking solemnly beside Queen Alexandra.... The French Minister made a formal protest about his ill treatment.

King Edward was not friendly to press correspondents, especially if they tried to peep behind the scenes, but many times I used to go down to Windsor, sometimes to his garden parties, and often when the German Emperor or some other sovereign was a guest at the castle. I am sure there was more merriment in the Castle Inn where the journalists gathered than within the great old walls of the castle itself, where, curiously enough, my own father was born.

These royal visits were generally in the autumn, and the amusement of the day was a _battue_ of game in Windsor Forest, in which the Prince of Wales, now King George, was always the best shot. The German Emperor was often one of the guns, but seemed to find no pleasure in that “sport”--which was a massacre of birds, and preserved an immense dignity which never relaxed. Little King Manuel, then of Portugal, shivered with cold in the dank mists of the English climate, and only King Alfonso seemed to enjoy himself, as he does in most affairs of life.

Another journey to be made once a year by a little band of descriptive writers--we were mostly always the same group--was when King Edward paid his yearly visit to the Duke of Devonshire in his great mansion at Chatsworth, in the heart of Derbyshire. Always there was a torchlight procession up the hills from the station to the house, and the old walls of Chatsworth were illumined by fireworks which turned its fountains into fairy cascades, and the great, grim, ugly mansion into an enchanter’s palace. Private theatricals were provided for the entertainment of the King--Princess Henry of Pless and Mrs. Willie James being the star turns. The performances struck me as being on the vulgar side of comedy, but King Edward’s love of a good laugh was a reasonable excuse, and surely a king, more than most men, gains more wisdom from the vulgar humor of people than from the solemnities of state.

I used to be billeted in a cottage at Eversley near Chatsworth, while other members of the press put up at an old hotel kept by an old lady who had more dignity even than the Duchess. She insisted upon everybody going to bed, or turning out, at eleven o’clock, and this was a grievance to a young journalist named Holt White, then of _The Daily Mail_, who was neck and neck with me in a series of chess games. One night when we were all square on our games and walking back together to the cottage at Eversley, he said: “We must have that decisive game. Let’s go back and get the chess things.”

I agreed, but when we returned to the hotel, we found it in darkness and both bolted and barred. By means of a clasp knife, Holt White made a burglarious entry into the drawing-room, but unfortunately put his foot on a table laden with porcelain ornaments, and overturned it with an appalling crash. We fled. Dogs barked, bells rang, and the dignified old lady who kept the hotel put her head out of the window and screamed “Thief!” This attempted burglary was the talk of the breakfast table next morning at the Devonshire Arms, and was only eclipsed in interest by a “scoop” of Holt White’s, who startled the readers of _The Daily Mail_ by the awful announcement that the Duke had cut his whiskers, historic in the political caricatures of England.

I had the honor of acting as one of a bodyguard, in a very literal sense, to King Edward on the day he won the Derby. When Minoru won, a hundred thousand men broke all barricades and made a wild rush toward the Royal Stand, cheering with immense enthusiasm. According to custom, the winner had to lead in his horse, and without hesitation King Edward left the safety of his stand to come on to the course amid the seething, surging, stampeding mass of roughs. The Prince of Wales, now King George, looked very nervous, for his father’s sake, and King Edward, though outwardly calm, was obviously moved to great emotion. I heard his quick little panting breaths. He was in real danger, because of the enormous pressure of the foremost mob, being pushed from behind by the tidal wave of excited humanity. The King’s detective shouted and used his fists to keep the people back, as involuntarily they jostled the King. The correspondents, photographers, and others linked arms and succeeded in keeping a little air space about the King until he had led his horse safely inside.

By a curious freak of chance, I and a young colleague on the same paper--_The Daily Chronicle_--were the first people in the world, outside Buckingham Palace, to hear of the death of King Edward.

The official bulletins were grave, but not hopeless, and the last issued on the night of his death was more cheerful. All day I had been outside the Palace, writing in the rain under an umbrella, a long description of the amazing scenes which showed the depths of emotion stirred in the hearts of all classes by the thought that Edward VII was passing from England.

I believe now that beyond the hold he had on the minds of great numbers of the people because of his human qualities and the tradition of his statesmanship and “tact,” there was an intuitive sense in the nation that after his death the peace of Europe would be gravely disturbed by some world war. I remember that thought was expressed to me by a man in the crowd who said: “After Edward--Armageddon!” It was a great, everchanging crowd made up of every condition of men and women in London--duchesses and great ladies, peers and costers, actresses, beggars, workingwomen, foreigners, politicians, parsons, shop girls, laborers, and men of leisure, all waiting and watching for the next bulletin. At eight o’clock, or thereabouts, I went into the Palace with other press men, and Lord Knollys assured us that the King was expected to pass a good night, and that no further bulletin would be issued until the following morning.

With that good news I went back to the office and prepared to go home, but the news editor said, as news editors do, “Sorry, but you’ll have to spend the night at the Palace--in case of anything happening.”

I was tired out, and hungry. I protested, but in vain. The only concession to me was that I should take a colleague, named Eddy, to share the vigil outside the Palace.

Eddy protested, but without more avail. Together we dined, and then decided to hire a four-wheeled cab, drive into the palace yard, and go to sleep as comfortably as possible. This idea proceeded according to plan. By favor of the police, our old cab was the only vehicle allowed inside the courtyard of the Palace, though outside was parked an immense concourse of automobiles in which great folk were spending the night.

Eddy unlaced his boots, and prepared to sleep. I paced the courtyard, smoking the last cigarette, and watching the strange picture outside.

Suddenly a royal carriage came very quietly from the inner courtyard and passed me where I stood. The lights from a high lamp-post flashed inside the carriage, and I saw the faces of those who had been the Prince of Wales and Princess Mary. They were dead white, and their eyes were wet and shining.

I ran to the four-wheeled cab.

“Eddy!” I said, “I believe the King is dead!”

Together we hurried to the equerries’ entrance of the Palace and went inside through the open door.

I spoke to one of the King’s gentlemen, standing with his back to the fire, talking to an old man whom I knew to be the Belgian Minister.

“How is the King?” I asked.

He looked up at the clock, with a queer emotional smile which was not of mirth, but very sad.

“Sir,” he said, in a broken voice, “King Edward died two minutes ago.”

The news was confirmed by another official. Eddy and I hurried out of the Palace and ran out of the courtyard. From the Buckingham Palace Hotel I telephoned the news to _The Daily Chronicle_ office.... The official bulletin was not posted at the gate until an hour later, but when I went home that night I held a copy of my paper which had caught the country editions, with the Life and Death of King Edward VII.

III

On the day following the death of King Edward, I obtained permission to see him lying in his death chamber. The little room had crimson hangings, and bright sunlight streamed through the windows upon the bed where the King lay with a look of dignity and peace. I was profoundly moved by the sight of the dead King who had been so vital, so full of human stuff, so friendly and helpful in all affairs of state, and with all conditions of men who came within his ken.

In spite of the severe discipline of his youth in the austere tradition of Queen Victoria--perhaps because of that--he had broken the gloomy spell of the Victorian Court, with its Puritanical narrowing influence on the social life of the people, and had restored a happier and more liberal spirit. Truly or not, he had had, as a young Prince of Wales, the reputation of being very much of a “rip,” and certain scandals among his private friends, with which his name was connected, had made many tongues wag. But he had long lived all that down when, in advanced middle age, he came to the throne, and no one brought up against him the heady indiscretions of youth.

He had played the game of kingship well and truly, with a desire for his people’s peace and welfare, and had given a new glamour to the Crown which had become rather dulled and cobwebbed during the long widowhood of the old Queen. In popular imagination he was the author of the Entente Cordiale with France, which seemed to be the sole guarantee of the peace of Europe against the growing menace of Germany, though now we know that it had other results. Anyhow, Edward VII, by some quality of character which was not based on exalted idealism but was perhaps woven with the genial wisdom of a man who had seen life in all its comedy and illusion, and had mellowed to it, stood high in the imagination of the world, and in the affection of his people. Now he lay with his scepter at his feet, asleep with all the ghosts of history.

His death chamber was disturbed by what seemed to me an outrageous invasion of vulgarity. In life King Edward had resented the click of the camera wherever he walked, but in death the cameramen had their will of him. A dozen or more of them surrounded his bed, snapping him at all angles, arranging the curtains for new effects of lights, fixing their lenses close to his dead face. There was something ghoulish in this photographic orgy about his deathbed.

The body of King Edward was removed to Westminster Hall, whose timbered roof has weathered seven centuries of English history, and there he lay in state, with four guardsmen, motionless, with reversed arms and heads bent, day and night, for nearly a week. That week was a revelation of the strange depths of emotion stirred among the people by his personality and passing. They were permitted to see him for the last time, and, without exaggeration, millions of people must have fallen into line for this glimpse of the dead King, to pay their last homage. From early morning until late night, unceasingly, there were queues of men and women of all ranks and classes, stretching away from Westminster Hall across the bridges, moving slowly forward. There was no preference for rank. Peers of the realm and ladies of quality fell into line with laboring men and women, slum folk, city folk, sporting touts, actors, women of Suburbia, ragamuffin boys, coster girls, and all manner of men who make up English life. History does not record any such demonstration of popular homage, except one other, afterward, when the English people passed in hundreds of thousands before the grave of the Unknown Soldier in Westminster Abbey.

I saw George V proclaimed King by Garter King-at-Arms and his heralds in their emblazoned tabards, from the wall of St. James’s Palace. Looking over the wall opposite, which enclosed the garden of Marlborough House, was the young Prince of Wales with his brothers and sister. That boy little guessed then that this was the beginning of a new chapter of history which would make him a captain in the greatest war of the world, where he would walk in the midst of death and see the flower of English youth cut down at his side.

At Windsor, in St. George’s Chapel, I saw the burial of King Edward. His body was drawn to the Castle on a gun carriage by bluejackets, and the music of Chopin’s Funeral March, that ecstasy of the spirit triumphing over death, preceded him up the castle hill. Against the gray old walls floral tributes were laid in masses from all the people, and their scent was rich and strong in the air. On the castle slopes where sunlight lay, spring flowers were blooming, as though to welcome this home-coming of the King. Kings and princes from all nations, in brilliant uniforms, crowded into St. George’s Chapel, and it was a foreign King and Emperor who sorted them out, put them into their right places, acted as Master of the Ceremony, and led forward Queen Alexandra, as though he were the chief mourner, and not King George. It was the German Kaiser. The Kings of Spain and Portugal wept unaffectedly, like two schoolboys who had lost their father, and indeed, this burial of King Edward in the lovely chapel where so many of his family lie sleeping was strangely affecting, because it seemed like the passing of some historic era, and was so, though we did not know it then, certainly.

The task fell to me of describing the coronation of the new King in Westminster Abbey, and of all the great scenes of which I have been an eyewitness, this remains in my memory as the most splendid and impressive. As a lover of history, that old Abbey, which has stood as the symbol of English faith and rule since Norman days, is to me always a haunted place, filled with a myriad ghosts of the old vital past. And the coronation of an English king, in its ancient ritual, blots out modernity, and takes one back to the root sentiment of the race which is our blood and heritage. One may, in philosophical moments, think kingship an outworn institution, and jeer at all its pomp and pageantry. One’s democratic soul may thrust all its ritual into the lumber room of antique furniture, but something of the old romance of its meaning, something of its warmth and color in the tapestry of English history, something of that code of chivalry and knighthood by which the King was dedicated to the service of his peoples, stirs in the most prosaic mind alive when a king is crowned again in the Abbey Church of Westminster.

The ceremony is, indeed, the old ritual of knighthood, ending with the crowning act. The arms and emblems of kingship are laid upon the altar, as when a knight kept vigil. He is stripped of his outer garments, and stands before the people, bare of all the apparel which hides his simplicity, as a common man.

There was a dramatic moment when this unclothing happened to King George. The Lord Chamberlain could not untie the bows and knots of his cloak and surcoat, and the ceremony was held up by an awkward pause. But he was a man of action, and pulling out a clasp knife from his pocket, slashed at the ribbons till they were cut....

Looking down the great nave from a gallery above, I saw the long purple robes of the peers and peeresses, the rows of coronets, the little pages, like fairy-tale princes, on the steps of the sanctuary, the Prince of Wales himself like a Childe Harold, in silk doublet and breeches, the Archbishop and Bishops, Kings-at-Arms, and officers of state, busy about the person of the King who was helpless in their hands as a victim of sacrifice, clothing him, anointing him, crowning him, before the act of homage in which all the Lords of England moved forward in their turn to swear fealty to their liege, who, in his turn, had sworn to uphold the laws and liberties of England. A cynic might scoff. But no man with an artist’s eye, and no man with Chaucer and Shakespeare in his heart, could fail to see the beauty of this mediæval picture, nor fail to feel the old thrill in that heritage of ancient customs which belong to the poetry and the heart of England.

I, at least, was moved by this sentiment, being, in those days, an incurable romantic, though the war killed some of my romanticism. But even romance is not proof against the material needs of human flesh, and as the ceremony went on, hour after hour, I felt the sharp bite of hunger. We had to be in our places in the Abbey by half-past seven that morning, and keep them until three in the afternoon. I had come provided with half a dozen sandwiches, but, with a foolish trust in hungry human nature, left them for a few minutes while I walked to the end of the gallery to see another aspect of the picture below. When I came back, my sandwiches had disappeared. I strongly suspected, without positive proof, a famous lady novelist who was in the next seat to mine. It was a deplorable tragedy to me, as after the ceremony I had to write a whole page for my paper, and there was no time for food.

Among other royal events which I had to record was King George’s Coronation Progress through Scotland, which was full of picturesque scenes and romantic memories. The Scottish people were eager to prove their loyalty and for hundreds of miles along the roads of Scotland they gathered in vast cheering crowds, while all the way was guarded by Highland and Lowland troops of the Regular and Territorial Armies. For the first time I saw the fighting men of bonnie Scotland, and little dreamed then that I should see their splendid youth in the ordeal of battle, year after year, and foreign fields strewn with their bodies, as often I did, in Flanders and in France.

There were four or five correspondents, of whom I was one, allowed to travel with the King. We had one of the royal motor cars, and wherever the King drove, we followed next to his equerries and officers. It was an astonishing experience, for we were part of the royal procession and in the full tide of that immense, clamorous enthusiasm of vast and endless crowds which awaited the King’s coming. Our eyes tired of the triumphal arches, floral canopies, flag-covered cities and hamlets, through which we passed, and of those turbulent waves of human faces pressing close to our carriage. Our ears wearied of the unceasing din of cheers, the noise of great multitudes, the skirl of the pipes, the distressing repetition of “God Save the King” played by innumerable brass bands, sung for hundreds of miles by the crowds, by masses of school children, by Scottish maidens of the universities, by old farmers, standing bareheaded as the King passed. We pitied any man who had to pass his life in such a way, smiling, saluting, keeping the agony of weariness out of his eyes by desperate efforts.

I am bound to say that the correspondents’ car brightened up the royal procession considerably. One of our party was an Edinburgh correspondent, who has been made by nature in the image of a celebrated film actor of great fatness, with a cheery, full-moon face of benevolent aspect. The appearance of this figure immediately following the King, and so quick upon the heels of solemnity, had a devastating effect upon the crowds. They positively yelled with laughter, believing that they recognized their “movie” favorite. Highland soldiers, with their rifles at the “present,” stiff and impassive as statues, wilted, and grinned from ear to ear. Scottish lassies from the factories and farms, whose eyes had shone and cheeks flushed at the sight of the King, had a quick reaction, and shrieked with mirth.

They could not place the correspondents at all. Some thought we were “the foreign ambassadors.” Others put us down as private detectives. But the most astonishing theory as to our place and dignity in the procession was uttered by an old Scottish farmer at Perth. The King had halted to receive a loyal address, and the crowd was jammed tight against our carriage. We could hear the comments of the crowd and the usual question about our identity. The old farmer gazed at us with his blue eyes beneath shaggy brows, and plucked his sandy beard.

“Eh, mon,” he said, seriously, “they maun be the King’s barstards.”

I laughed from Perth to Stirling Castle, and back again to Edinburgh.

We dined in old castles, lunched with Scottish regiments, saw the old-time splendor of Holyrood at night, with old coaches filled with the beauty of Scottish ladies passing down the High Street where once, in these old wynds and courtyards, the nobility of Scotland lived and quarreled and fought, and where now barefoot bairns and ragged women dwell in paneled rooms in direst poverty. Again and again they sang old Jacobite songs as the King passed, forgetting his Hanoverian ancestry, and one sweet song to Bonnie Charlie--“Will ye no come back again?”--haunts me now, as I write.

With the King, we saw the great shipbuilding works on the Clyde, where thousands of riveters gathered round the King, cheering like demons, and looking rather like demons with their black faces and working overalls. The King was admirable in his manner to all of them, and, though his fatigue must have been great, his good nature enabled him to hide it. His laughter rang out loudest when he passed under the hulk of a ship on the stocks and saw scrawled hugely in chalk upon its plates: “Good old George! We want more Beer!”

Another great scene of which I was an eyewitness was the King’s Coronation Review of the British fleet at Spithead. It was a marvelous pageant of the grim and silent power of the British navy as the royal yacht passed down the long avenues of battleships and cruisers, in perfect line, enormous above the water line, terrible in the potentiality of their great guns. Every navy in the world had sent a battleship to salute the King-Admiral of the British navy. The Stars and Stripes, the Rising Sun of Japan, the long coils of the Chinese Dragon, the tricolor of France, the imperial colors of Germany, were among the flags, which included those of little nations, with a few destroyers and light cruisers as their naval strength.

All the ships were “dressed” and “manned,” with sailors standing on the yard arms and along the decks, and as the King’s yacht passed each ship, the royal salute was fired, and the crew cheered lustily in the echo of the guns. All but one ship, which was the _Von der Thann_ of Germany. No sound of cheering came from that battleship, but the German crew maintained absolute silence. Few noticed it at the time, but I remarked it with uneasy foreboding.

I also contrasted it later with the greeting given to the Kaiser by a group of English people at Hamburg, not a year before the war, in which England and Germany devoted all their strength to each other’s destruction. I was on a voyage in one of the Castle Line boats, and we put off at Hamburg to be entertained by the Mayor in his palace of the Town Hall. The Kaiser was expected, and we lined up to await his arrival. It was heralded by the three familiar notes of his motor horn, and when he appeared there was a loud “Hip, hip, horrah!” from the English party. The Emperor acknowledged the greeting with a grim salute. He had no love for England then in his heart, and believed, I think, in that “_unvermeidlicher Krieg_”--that “unavoidable war”--which was already the text of German newspapers, though in England the warnings of a few men like Lord Roberts seemed to be the foolishness of old age, and popular imagination refused to believe in a world gone mad and tearing itself in pieces for no apparent cause.

When that war happened, I caught a glimpse, now and again, in lulls between its monstrous battles, of the man I had seen when he went weeping from the bedside of King Edward; whom I had seen bowing his head under the burden of the crown which came to him; whom I had followed in triumphant processions through his peaceful kingdom--peace seemed so lasting and secure, then--and who had come to visit his youth of the Empire, dying in heaps in defense of their race and power and tradition, as they truly believed, and as, indeed, was so, whatever the wickedness and folly that led to that massacre, on the part of statesmen of all countries who did not foresee and prevent the world conflict.

On his first visit the King was not allowed to get anywhere near the firing line, but was restricted to base areas and hospitals and convalescent camps, and distant views of the battlefields. On his second visit, he insisted upon going far forward, and would not be deterred by the generals, who, naturally, were intensely anxious for his safety.

With another war correspondent--Percival Phillips, I think--I went with the King over the Vimy Ridge where there was always, at that time, the chance of meeting a German shell, and to the top of “Whitesheet Hill,” which was a very warm place indeed a few days after the battle which captured it. The Prince of Wales was with his father, and by that time well hardened to the noise of guns and shell bursts. To the King it was all new, but he was perfectly at ease and lingered, far too long, as the generals thought, among the ruins of a convent, reduced to the size of a slag-heap, on the top of the hill looking over the German lines. As though they were aware of his visit, the Germans put down a very stiff dose of five-point-nines on the very spot where the King had been standing, but a few minutes too late, because he had just descended the slope of the hill and was examining one of the monster mine craters which we had blown at the beginning of the battle. He was there for ten minutes or so, and had hardly moved away before the Germans lengthened their range and laid down harassing fire around the crater. The King adjusted his steel hat, and laughed, while the Prince of Wales strolled about, looking rather bored.

The Prince did a real job out there, and though, as an officer on the “Q” side of the Guards, he was not supposed to go into the danger zone, he was constantly in forward places which were not what the Tommies called “health resorts.” I met him one day going into Vermelles, which was a very ugly place indeed, with death on the prowl amid its ruins. He and a Divisional General left their car on the edge of the ruins while they walked forward, and, on their return, found that their poor chauffeur had had his head blown off.

Another time when the King saw a little of the “real thing” was when he visited the Guards in their camp behind the lines near Pilkem. Their headquarters were in an old monastery, and the King and the officers took tea in the garden, while the band of the Grenadiers played selections from Gilbert and Sullivan. I remember it was when they were playing “Dear Little Buttercup” that three German aëroplanes came overhead, flying very low. To our imagination they seemed to be searching for the King, and we expected at any moment they would unload their bombs upon his tea table and his body. Our anti-aircraft guns immediately opened fire, and there was a shrieking of three-inch shells until the blue sky was all dappled with the white puffs of the “Archies.” The enemy planes circled round, had a good look, and then flew away without dropping a bomb, much to our relief, for one good-sized bomb would have made a horrible mess in the Guards’ camp, and might have killed the King.

That afternoon I was trapped into a little conspiracy against the King by the old abbot of the monastery. He was immensely anxious for the King to sign the visitors’ book, but the officers put the old man off by various excuses. Feeling sorry for his disappointment, I promised to say a word to the King’s aide-de-camp, and advised the old gentleman to intercept the King down the only path he could use on his way out, carrying the great leather book, and a pen and ink, so that there would be no escape. This little plot succeeded, to the huge delight of the abbot, and the monks who afterward gave me their united blessings.

On the King’s first visit to the army in France, a most unfortunate accident happened to him, which was very painful and serious. He was reviewing part of the Air Force on a road out of Béthune, mounted on a horse which ought to have been proof against all the noise of military maneuvers. But it was too much for the animal’s nerves when, at the conclusion of the review, the silent lines of men suddenly broke into deafening cheers. The horse reared three times, and the King kept his seat perfectly. But the third time, owing to the greasy mud, the horse slipped and fell sideways, rolling over the King. Generals dismounted, and ran to where he lay motionless and a little stunned. They picked him up and put him into his motor car, where he sat back feebly, and with a look of great pain. I happened to be standing on a bank immediately opposite, and one of the King’s A.D.C.’s, greatly excited, ran up to me and said: “Tell the men not to cheer!” It was impossible for me, as a war correspondent, to give any such order, and, indeed, it was too late, for when the King’s car moved down the road, the other men, who had not seen the accident, cheered with immense volleys of enthusiastic noise.

The King tried to raise his hand to the salute, but had not the strength. He had been badly strained, suffered acute pain, and that night was in a high fever. On the following day I saw him taken away in an ambulance, like an ordinary casualty, and no soldiers in the little old town of Béthune knew that it was the King of England who was passing by.

Before the end of his second visit, the King received the five war correspondents who had followed the fortunes of the British Armies in France through all their great battles, and he spoke kind words to us which we were glad to hear.

IV

In spite of my long and fairly successful career as a journalist, I have rarely achieved what is known as a “scoop,” that is to say, an exclusive story of sensational interest. On the whole, I don’t much believe in the editor or reporter who sets his soul on “scoops,” because they create an unhealthy rivalry for sensation at any price--even that of truth--and the “faker” generally triumphs over the truthteller, until both he and the editor who encouraged him come a cropper by being found out.

That is not to say that a man should not follow an advantage to the utmost and his luck where it leads him. It is nearly always luck that is one of the essential elements in journalistic success, and sometimes, as in a game of cards, it deals a surprisingly fine hand. The skill is in making the best use of this chance and keeping one’s nerve in a game of high stakes.

The only important “scoop” that I can claim, as far as I remember, was my discovery of Doctor Cook after his pretended discovery of the North Pole. That was due to a lucky sequence of events which led me by the hand from first to last. The story is amusing for that reason, and this is the first time I have written the narrative of my strange experiences in that affair.

My first stroke of luck, strange as it may seem, was my starting twenty-four hours later than forty other correspondents in search of the explorer at Copenhagen. If I had started at the same time, I should have done what they did, and perhaps taken the same line as they did. As it was, I had to play a lone hand and form my own judgment.

I had arrived at the _Daily Chronicle_ office from some country place when E. A. Perris, the news editor, now the managing editor, said in a casual way:

“There’s a fellow named Doctor Cook who has discovered the North Pole. He may arrive at Copenhagen to-morrow. Lots of other men have the start of you, but see if you can get some kind of a story.”

I uttered the usual groan, obtained a bag of gold from the cashier, and set out for Copenhagen by way of the North Sea. On a long and tiresome journey I repeated the name “Doctor Cook,” lest I should forget it, wondered if I knew anything about Arctic exploration, and decided I didn’t, and accepted the probability that I should be too late to find the great explorer, and shouldn’t know what to ask him if I found him.

I arrived in Copenhagen dirty, tired, and headachy in the evening. I wanted above all things a cup of strong coffee, and with the German language, communicated my desire to a taxi driver. He took me to a rather low-looking café, filled with men and women and tobacco smoke. That was my second stroke of luck, for if I had not gone to that particular café I should never have met Doctor Cook in the way that happened.

Over my cup of coffee I looked at the Danish paper, and could read only two words, “Doctor Cook.” A young waiter served me, and when I found that he spoke English, I asked him if Doctor Cook, the explorer, had arrived in Copenhagen.

“No,” said the waiter. “He ought to have been here at midday. But there’s a fog in the Cattegat, and his boat will not come in until to-morrow morning. All Denmark is waiting for him.”

So he had not arrived! Well, I might be in time, after all. I looked round for any journalist I might know, but did not see a familiar face.

Presently, as I sat smoking a cigarette, I perceived a suddenly awakened interest among the people in the café. It was due to the arrival of a very pretty lady in a white fur toque, with a white fox-skin round her neck, accompanied by another young lady, and a tall Danish fellow with tousled hair. They took their seats at the far end of the café.

The young waiter came up to me and whispered with some excitement:

“Did you see that beautiful lady? That is Mrs. Rasmussen!”

The name meant nothing to me, and when I told him so, he was shocked.

“She’s the wife of Knud Rasmussen, the famous explorer. It was he who provided Doctor Cook with his dogs before he set out for the North Pole. They are great friends.”

I was aware that luck was befriending me. From that lady, if I had the pluck to speak to her, I could at least find out something about the mysterious Doctor Cook, and perhaps get a good story about him, whether I could meet him or not.

I struggled with my timidity, and then went across the café and made my bow to the pretty lady, explaining that I was a newspaper man from London, who had come all the way to interview Doctor Cook, who was, I understood, a friend of her distinguished husband. Could she tell me how to find him?

Mrs. Rasmussen who was highly educated and extremely handsome, spoke a little French, a little German, and a very little English. In a mixture of these three tongues we understood each other, helped out by the young Dane, who was Peter Freuchen, a well-known traveler in the Arctic regions, and a very good linguist.

Mrs. Rasmussen was friendly and amused. She told me it was true her husband was a great friend of Doctor Cook, and that he was the last man who had seen him before he went toward the North Pole. For that reason she wanted to be one of the first to greet him. A launch, or tug, belonging to the director of the Danish-Greenland Company, had made ready to go down the Cattegat to meet the _Hans Egede_ with Doctor Cook on board, and she had hoped to make that journey. But the fog had spoiled everything, and the launch would leave in the morning instead at a very early hour. It was very disappointing!

“Surely,” I said, “if you really want to go, it would be excellent to travel to Elsinore to-night, put up at a hotel, and get on board the launch at dawn. If you would allow me to accompany you----”

Mrs. Rasmussen laughed at my adventurous plan.

According to her, the last train had gone to Elsinore.

“Let us have a taxi and drive there!”

She told me that no motor car was allowed to drive at night beyond a certain distance from Copenhagen. It would mean a fine, or imprisonment, for the driver without special license.

It seemed incredible.

I summoned my friendly young waiter, and asked him to bring in a taxi driver. In less than a minute a burly fellow stood before me, cap in hand. Through the waiter I asked him how much he wanted to drive a party that night to Elsinore. He shook his head, and, according to the waiter, replied that he could not risk the journey, as he might be heavily fined.

“How much, including the fine?” I asked.

If he had demanded fifty pounds, I should have paid it--with _Daily Chronicle_ money.

To my amazement, he asked the modest sum of five pounds, including the fine.

I turned to Mrs. Rasmussen, Peter Freuchen, and the other lady, and invited them all to make the journey in “my” motor car.

They hesitated, laughed, whispered to each other, and were, as I could see, tempted by the lure of the adventure.

“But,” said Mrs. Rasmussen, “when we get there, supposing you were not allowed on the launch by the Director of the Danish-Greenland Company? He is our friend. But you are, after all, a stranger!”

“I should have had an amusing drive,” I said. “It would be worth while. Perhaps you would tell me what Doctor Cook says, when you return.”

They laughed again, hesitated quite a time, then accepted the invitation. It was arranged that we should start at ten o’clock, when few people would be abroad outside the city, where we should have to travel with lights out to avoid the police. There still remained an hour or so. We had dinner, talked of Doctor Cook, and at ten o’clock started out in the taxi, and I thought how incredible it was that I should be sitting there, opposite a beautiful lady with a silver fox round her throat, with a laughing girl by her side, and a young Danish explorer next to the driver, riding through Denmark with lights out, to meet a man who had discovered the North Pole, and whose name I had never heard two days before. These things happen only in journalism and romance.

We had not gone very far when, driving through a village, we knocked over a man on a bicycle. People came running up through the darkness. Peter Freuchen leaped down from his seat to pick up the man, who seemed to be uninjured, and there was a great chatter in the Danish tongue, while I kept on shouting to Freuchen, “How much to pay?” After a while he resumed his seat and said, “Nodings to pay!” So we went on again, and after a long, cold drive without further incident, reached Elsinore, where Hamlet saw his father’s ghost.

At the hotel there we had something hot to drink, and then Mrs. Rasmussen caught sight of a dapper little man who was the Director of the Danish-Greenland Company and the owner of the launch which was to meet Doctor Cook.

I was left in the background while my three companions entered into conversation with him. From the expression on their faces, I soon saw that they were disappointed, and I resigned myself to the thought that I had the poorest chance of meeting the explorer’s ship at sea.

Presently Mrs. Rasmussen came back.

“He won’t take us,” she said.

“Hard luck!”

“But,” she added, “he will take you!”

That sounded ridiculous, but it was true. The pompous little man, it seemed, had had applications from half the ladies of Copenhagen, including his own wife, perhaps, to take them on his tug to meet the hero of the North Pole. He had refused them all, in order to favor none at the expense of others. It was impossible for him to take Mrs. Rasmussen and her friends. He very much regretted that. But when they told him that I was an English journalist, he said there would be a place for me with two or three Danish correspondents.

Amazing chance! But hard on the little party I had brought to Elsinore! They were very generous about the matter, and wished me good luck when I embarked on the small tug which was to steam out to a lightship in the Cattegat and at dawn go out to meet the _Hans Egede_, as Cook’s ship was called. Like a fool, I left my overcoat behind and nearly perished of cold, until an hour later I had climbed up an iron ladder to the lightship in a turbulent sea and descended into the skipper’s cabin, where there was a joyous “fugg” and some hot cocoa spiced with a touch of paraffin.

At dawn we saw, far away up the Cattegat, a little ship all gay with bunting. It was the _Hans Egede_. We steamed toward it, lay alongside, and climbed to its top deck up a rope ladder. There I saw a sturdy, handsome Anglo-Saxon-looking man, in furs, surrounded by a group of hairy and furry men, Europeans and Eskimos, and some Arctic dogs. There was no journalistic rival of mine aboard, except the young Danes with us.

I went up to the central figure, whom I guessed to be Doctor Cook, introduced myself as an English press man, shook hands with him, and congratulated him on his heroic achievement.

He took my arm in a friendly way, and said, “Come and have some breakfast, young man.”

I sat next to him in the dining saloon of the _Hans Egede_, which was crowded with a strange-looking company of men and women, mostly in furs and oilskins, with their faces burned by sunlight on snow. The women were missionaries and the wives of missionaries, and their men folk wore unkempt beards.

I studied the appearance of Doctor Cook. He was not bearded, but had a well-shaven chin. He had a powerful face, with a rather heavy nose and wonderfully blue eyes. There was something queer about his eyes, I thought. They avoided a direct gaze. He seemed excited, laughed a good deal, talked volubly, and was restless with his hands, strong seaman’s hands. But I liked the look of him. He seemed to me typical of Anglo-Saxon explorers, hard, simple, true.

In response to my request for his “story,” he evaded a direct reply, until, later in the morning, the Danes and I pressed him to give us an hour in his cabin.

It was in the saloon, however, that he delivered himself, unwillingly, I thought, into our hands. As the two or three young Danes knew but little English, the interview became mainly a dialogue between Doctor Cook and myself. I had no suspicion of him, no faint shadow of a thought that all was not straightforward. Being vastly ignorant of Arctic exploration, I asked a number of simple questions to extract his narrative; and, to save myself trouble and get good “copy,” I asked very soon whether he would allow me to see his diary.

To my surprise, he replied with a strange defensive look that he had no diary. His papers had been put on a yacht belonging to a man named Whitney, who would take them to New York.

“When will he get there?” I asked.

“Next year,” said Doctor Cook.

“But surely,” I said, still without suspicion, “you have brought your journal with you? The essential papers?”

“I have no papers,” he said, and his mouth hardened.

“Perhaps I could see your astronomical observations?” I said, and was rather pleased with that suggestion.

“Haven’t I told you that I have brought no papers?” he said.

He spoke with a sudden violence of anger which startled me. Then he said something which made suspicion leap into my brain.

“You believed Nansen,” he said, “and Amundsen, and Sverdrup. They had only their story to tell. Why don’t you believe me?”

I had believed him. But at that strange, excited protest and some uneasy, almost guilty, look about the man, I thought, “Hullo! What’s wrong? This man protests too much.”

From that moment I had grave doubts of him. I pressed him several times about his papers. Surely he was not coming to Europe, to claim the greatest prize of exploration, without a scrap of his notes, or any of his observations? He became more and more angry with me, until for the sake of getting some narrative from him, I abandoned that interrogation, and asked him for his personal adventures, the manner of his journey, the weights of his sledges, the number of his dogs, and so on. As I scribbled down his answers, the story appeared to me more and more fantastic. And he contradicted himself several times, and hesitated over many of his answers, like a man building up a delicate case of self-defense. By intuition, rather than evidence, by some quick instinct of facial expression, by some sensibility to mental and moral dishonesty, I was convinced, absolutely, at the end of an hour, that this man had not been to the North Pole, but was attempting to bluff the world. I need not deal here with the points in his narrative, and the gaps he left, which served to confirm my belief....

In sight of Copenhagen the _Hans Egede_ was received by marvelous demonstrations of enthusiasm. The water was crowded with craft of every size and type, from steam yachts to rowing boats, tugs to pinnaces, with flags aflutter. Cheers came in gusts, unceasingly. Sirens shrieked a wailing homage, whistles blew. Bands on pleasure steamers played “See the Conquering Hero Comes.”

Doctor Cook, the hero, was hiding in his cabin. He had to be almost dragged out by a tall and splendid Dane named Norman Hansen, poet and explorer, who afterward constituted himself Doctor Cook’s champion and declared himself my enemy, because of my accusations against this man.

Doctor Cook came out of his cabin with a livid look, almost green. I never saw guilt and fear more clearly written on any human face. He could hardly pull himself together when the Crown Prince of Denmark boarded his ship and offered the homage of Denmark to his glorious achievement.

But that was the only time in which I saw Cook lose his nerve.

Landing on the quayside, I had to fight my way through an immense surging crowd, which almost killed the object of their adoration by the terrific pressure of their mass, in which each individual struggled to get near him. I heard afterward that W. T. Stead, the famous old journalist of the _Review of Reviews_, which afterward I edited, flung his arms round Doctor Cook, and called upon fellow journalists to form his bodyguard, lest he should be crushed to death.

On the edge of the crowd I met the first English journalist I had seen. It was Alphonse Courlander, a very brilliant and amusing fellow, with whom I had a close friendship. When he heard that I had been on Cook’s ship and had interviewed him for a couple of hours, he had a wistful look which I knew was a plea for me to impart my story. But this was one of the few times when I played a lone hand, and I ran from him, and jumped on a taxi in order to avoid the call of comradeship. I knew that I had the story of the world.

In a small hotel, distant from the center of the city, I wrote it to the extent of seven columns, and the whole of it amounted to a case of libel, making a definite challenge to Cook’s claim and ridiculing the narrative which I set forth as he had told it to me. When I had handed it into the telegraph office I knew that I had burned my boats, and that my whole journalistic career would be made or marred by this message.

During the time I had been writing, Doctor Cook had been interviewed by forty journalists in one assembly. W. T. Stead, as doyen of the press, asked the questions, and at the end of the session spoke on behalf of the whole body of journalists in paying his tribute of admiration and homage to the discoverer of the North Pole. Spellbound by Stead’s enthusiasm, and not having had my advantage of that experience on the _Hans Egede_, there was not a man among that forty who suggested a single word of doubt about the achievement claimed by Cook. By a supreme chance of luck, I was alone in my attack.

I will not disguise my sense of anxiety. I had a deep conviction that my judgment was right, but whether I should be able to maintain my position by direct evidence and proof, was not so certain in my mind. I knew, next day, that my dispatch had been published by my paper, for great extracts from it were cabled back to the Danish press and they caused an immense sensation in Copenhagen, and as the days passed in an astounding fortnight, when I continued my attack by further and damning accusations against Cook, I was the subject of hostile demonstrations in the restaurants and cafés, and the Danish newspaper _Politiken_ published a murderous-looking portrait of me and described me as “the liar Gibbs”--a designation which afterward they withdrew with handsome apologies.

The details of the coil of evidence I wove about the feet of Cook need not be told in full. He claimed that he had told his full story to Sverdrup, a famous explorer in Copenhagen, and that Sverdrup pledged his own honor in proof of his achievement.

Afterward I interviewed Sverdrup and obtained a statement from him that Cook had given no proof whatever of his claim.

He professed to have handed his written narrative and astronomical observations to the University of Copenhagen, and it was claimed on his behalf by the Danish press that these papers had been examined by astronomical and geographical experts who were absolutely satisfied that Cook had reached the North Pole.

From the head of the University I obtained a statement that Cook had submitted no such papers and had advanced no scientific proof.

Using his own narrative to me, which I had scribbled down as he talked, I enlisted the help of Peter Freuchen and other Arctic travelers, to analyze his statements about his distances, his sledge weights, the amount of food drawn by his dogs, and his time-table. They proved to be absurd, and when he contradicted himself to other interviewers, I was able, with further expert advice, to contradict his contradictions. It was a great game, which I thoroughly enjoyed, though I worked day and night, with only snatches of rest for food and sleep.

But I had some nasty moments.

One was when a statement was published in every newspaper of the world that the Rector of the Copenhagen University had flatly denied my interview with him and reiterated his satisfaction with the proofs submitted by Doctor Cook.

_The Daily Chronicle_ telegraphed this denial to me and said, “Please explain.”

I remember receiving that telegram shortly after reading the same denial in the Danish newspapers, brought to me by Mr. Oscar Hansen, the Danish correspondent of my own paper, who was immensely helpful to me. I was thunderstruck and dismayed, for if the Rector of the University denied what he had told me, and maintained a belief in the _bona fides_ of Cook, I was utterly undone.

At that moment W. T. Stead approached me and put his hand on my shoulder. He, too--still the ardent champion of Cook--had read that denial.

“Young man,” he cried, in his sonorous voice, “you have not only ruined yourself, which does not matter very much, but you have also ruined _The Daily Chronicle_, for which I have a great esteem.”

“Mr. Stead,” I said, “I am a young and obscure man, compared with you, and I appeal to your chivalry. Will you come with me to the Rector of Copenhagen University and act as my witness to the questions I shall put to him, and to the answers he gives?”

“By all means,” he said, “and to make things quite beyond doubt, we will take two other witnesses--the correspondent who issued the statement about the denial, and another of established character.”

The two other witnesses were a French count, acting as the correspondent of a great French newspaper and the representative of a news agency who had issued the university statement, and believed in its truth.

It was a strange and exciting interview with that Rector. For a long time he refused to open his lips to say a single word one way or the other about the Cook case. He relented slowly when W. T. Stead made an eloquent plea on my behalf, and said that my honor was at stake on his word.

The correspondent who had published the denial of my interview tried to intervene, speaking in rapid German which I could hardly follow, endeavoring to persuade the Rector to uphold the statement issued with regard to the University. But the Frenchman, acting as my second, as it were, sternly bade him speak in English or French which all could understand, and to give me the right of putting my questions. This was upheld by Stead.

I put my questions exactly word for word as I had done in the first interview.

Had Doctor Cook submitted any journal of his travels to the University?

Had he submitted any astronomical observations?

Had he presented any proof at all of his claim to have reached the Pole?

The Rector hesitated long before answering each question in the negative. The man was profoundly disturbed. Undoubtedly, as I knew later, the University, with the King as its President, had deeply involved itself by offering an honorary degree to Cook. As its chief representative, this man was in a difficult and dangerous position, if he turned down Cook’s claim. It was at least five minutes before he answered the last question. Then, as an honest man, he answered, as he had done before when I saw him alone, “No!”

I breathed a deep sigh of relief. If he had been a dishonest man, my reputation and career would have been utterly ruined.

I asked him to sign the questions and answers as I had written them down, but for a long time he refused to put his signature. Then he signed, but as he handed me the paper, he said: “Of course that must not be published in the newspapers.”

I protested that in that case it was useless, and both Stead and the French correspondent argued on my behalf. I had the paper in my breast pocket, and when the Rector gave a timorous consent to its publication, I left the room with deep words of thanks, and fairly ran out of the gate of the University lest he should change his mind, or the paper should be taken from me. It was published in _The Daily Chronicle_, and in hundreds of other papers.

A second blow befell me.

I had resumed acquaintanceship with Peter Freuchen and Mrs. Rasmussen, and at lunch one day she showed me a long letter which she had received from her husband, the explorer who, as I have told, had been Cook’s best friend, and had provided his dogs and Eskimos.

Mrs. Rasmussen, smiling, said: “You, of all men, would like to read that letter.”

“Alas that I do not know Danish!” I answered.

She marked one paragraph with a pencil, and said, “Perhaps I will let you copy out those words.”

It was Peter Freuchen who copied out the words in Danish, and Oscar Hansen who translated them into English, on a bit of paper which I tore out of my notebook.

They were a repudiation by Knud Rasmussen of his faith in Cook, and a direct suggestion that he was a knave and a liar.

These words were, of course, vitally interesting to me, and, indeed, to the world, for the fame and honor of Rasmussen were high, and his name had been used as the best guarantee of Cook’s claim. With Mrs. Rasmussen’s permission, I telegraphed her husband’s words in my message that day. They were immediately reproduced in all the Danish papers, and made a new sensation.

But my private sensation was far more emotional when, in crossing a square the following evening, a Danish journalist showed me a paper and said, “Have you seen this?”

It was a formal denial by Mrs. Rasmussen that she had ever shown me a letter from her husband, or that he had ever written the words I had published.

That was a severe shock to me. I could not understand it, or indeed believe it. That very day Peter Freuchen and Mrs. Rasmussen had been my guests at lunch, and as friendly as possible. Probably some malicious journalist had invented the letter....

It was late at night, and I could not find either Peter Freuchen or Mrs. Rasmussen, nor did I ever see the lady again, because, on account of certain high influences, she disappeared from Copenhagen.

I remembered the bit of paper on which the words had been written down in Danish by Peter Freuchen and translated into English by Oscar Hansen. That document was very precious, and my only proof, but I couldn’t find it in my pockets or my room. My room at the hotel was a wreck of papers, but that one scrap evaded all search. At last, down on my hands and knees, I found it screwed up under the bed, and gave a cry of triumph.

My old friend and true comrade, Oscar Hansen, made an affidavit that he had translated Freuchen’s words, the editor of a news agency swore to Freuchen’s handwriting, and I issued an invitation to Mrs. Rasmussen to submit her husband’s letter to a committee of six, half appointed by herself and half by me. If they denied that the letter contained the words I had published, I would pay a certain heavy sum, which I named, to Danish charities. That invitation was not accepted, and my words were believed.

I have already described in a previous column of these memories the banquet to Doctor Cook which I attended in the dress clothes of my young friend the waiter. It was an historic evening, for, in the middle of that dinner came the famous message from Peary in which he announced his own arrival at the Pole and repudiated Cook’s claim.

I stood close to Doctor Cook when that message was handed to him, and I am bound to pay a tribute to his cool nerve. He read the message on the bit of flimsy, handed it back, and said, “If Peary says he reached the Pole, I believe him!”

His manner at all times, after that temporary breakdown on the _Hans Egede_ was convincing. It was marvelous on the day when the doctor’s degree--the highest honor of the University--was conferred upon him, and before all the learned men there he ascended the pulpit of the University chapel and in a solemn oration stretched out his arms and said, “I show you my hands--they are clean!”

At that moment I was tempted to believe that Cook believed he had been to the North Pole. Sometimes, remembering the manner of the man, I am tempted to think so still--though now there is no doubt that he never went anywhere near his goal.

I used to meet him on neutral ground at the American Minister’s house in Copenhagen, where I handed round Miss Egan’s tea cakes. Doctor Cook would never accept any cake from me! Maurice Egan, the Minister, was immensely courteous and kind, and Miss Egan confided to me that if I proved to be right about Doctor Cook, in whom she believed, she would lose her faith in human nature. Since then, though I was proved right, she has regained her faith in human nature, as I know from her happy marriage in the United States.

One other slight shock disturbed my mental poise in this fortnight of sensation. It was when I read in the _Politiken_ a challenge to a duel, publicly addressed to me by Norman Hansen, the poet and explorer. He was a tall man, six foot three or so in his socks, and very powerful. I am five-foot-six or so in my boots. If we met, I should die. I did not answer that challenge! But on the day when Doctor Cook left Copenhagen, with a wreath of roses round his bowler hat, and when I had done my job with him, the crowd which had gone down to the quayside to see the last of him, parted, and I found myself face to face with Norman Hansen.

Some one in the crowd said:

“When is that duel to be fought?”

Norman Hansen came toward me, and held out his hand, with a great jolly laugh.

“We will never fight with the sword,” he said, “but only with the pen!”

We didn’t even fight with the pen, for he lost all faith in Cook, and sometimes from northern altitudes I get kind and generous messages from him.

W. T. Stead maintained his belief in Cook until the University of Copenhagen formally rejected Cook’s claim and canceled his honorary degree, when the evidence of his own papers, which afterward arrived, and the story of his own Eskimos, left no shred of doubt in his favor.

Then I had a note from the great old journalist.

“I have lost and you have won,” he wrote, and after that used generous words which I need not publish.

Truly it was a queer, exciting incident in my journalistic life, and looking back upon it, I marvel at my luck.

V

By a young journalist, or an old one, there is always an adventure to be found in London, as in any great city of the world where the passions of men and women, the conflict of life, the heroism and crimes of human nature, its dreams, its madness, and its faith, are but thinly masked behind the commonplace aspect of modern streets, and beneath the drab cloak of dullness of modern civilization.

It was my hobby in those early Fleet Street days to explore the underworld of London and to get behind the scenes of its monstrous puppet show. I sought out the queer characters not yet “standardized” by the discipline of compulsory education or the conventions of middle-class manners.

I dived into the foreign quarters of London and found that most nations of Europe, and the races of the East, had their special sanctuaries in the great old city, in which they preserved their own speech and habits and faith.

In the Russian quarter I met victims of the tyranny of Czardom, who had escaped from Siberian prisons and still bore the marks of their chains and lashes; and the Russian Jews, too, who had come to England to save themselves from the pogroms of Riga and other cities. I found many of them working as tailors and seamstresses in back rooms of tenement houses, Whitechapel way, abominably overcrowded, but earning high wages. It was a revelation to me that they did most of the “black” work for great West End firms, so that Mayfair received its garments from the East End, with any diseases that might be carried with them from those fœtid little factories. Thousands of them were employed in cigarette factories, and spent their days filling little spills of paper with the yellow weed, incredibly fast. According to the tradition of not muzzling the ox that treads the corn, they were allowed to smoke as much as they liked, and both men and women smoked continually.

I made a study of German London, which, at that time, before something happened like an earthquake, had as many German clubs as any good-sized city of the Fatherland, and several German churches, workers’ unions, theatrical and musical societies.

In Soho I poked about French London, lunched at the _Petit Riche_ or dined at the Gourmet, and between Wardour Street and Old Compton Street met the French girls who made artificial flowers for the ballets and pantomimes, silk tights for the fairies of the footlights, and embroidered shoes which twinkled on the boards.

Italy in London was one of my earliest discoveries as a young writer in search of the picturesque. It was but a ten minutes’ walk from my first office, and often in lunch time I used to saunter that way, stopping to listen to the English cheap-jacks in Leather Lane, on the other side of Holborn, and then plunging into a labyrinth of narrow lanes and courtyards entirely inhabited by Italians.

It was a little Naples, in its color, its smells, its dirt. Across the courtyards Italian women stretched their “washing”; and blue petticoats and scarlet bodices, and silk scarves for women’s hair gave vivid color to these London alleys. The women, as beautiful as Raphael’s Madonnas, sang at their washtubs, surrounded by swarms of _bambini_.

Here, under a baker’s shop kept by an Italian _padrone_, slept o’ nights the little organ grinders and hurdy-gurdy boys, who used to wander through the London suburbs and far into the countryside, to the delight of English nurseries from which coppers were flung down to these grubby, dark-eyed urchins with little shivering monkeys in their coat pockets or on their music boxes. They were the slaves of the _padrone_ and had to bring him all their earnings and get beaten if they did not bring enough, before they slept in the cellars of this London slum, among the black beetles and the rats.

In one back yard lived a gray bear, belonging to two wanderers from the mountains of Savoy, and I used to hear the rattle of his chains before they led him out on his hind legs with a big pole between his paws.

Above a big yard crowded with piano organs sat, in a little room at the top of a high ladder, a fat old Italian who put the music on the streets. He sat before an open organ case with a roll of cartridge paper into which he stabbed little holes, which afterward made the notes played by a spiked cylinder when the organ grinder turned his handle. It was he who selected the tunes, thus conferring immortality on many poor devils of musicians who heard their melodies whistled by the errand boys to this music of the streets, and became famous thereby. But it was the fat old Italian at the top of the tall ladder who was the interpreter of their genius to the popular ear of the great public of the streets and slums. He put in the trills, and the “twiddley bits,” stabbing with his bradawl on the cartridge roll, as though inspired by the divine afflatus, while his hair, above a massive face and three chins, was all curls and corkscrews, as though crotchets, and quavers, semiquavers, and demi-semiquavers, arpeggios and chromatics were thrusting through his brain.

In other yards were men all white from head to heel, who made the plaster casts of Napoleon and Nelson, Queen Victoria and General Gordon, Venus and Mercury, and other favorite characters of history, sold by hawkers in Ludgate Hill and other haunts of high art at low prices. They also made the casts of classical figures for art schools and museums.

In the back yards, the basements and the slum kitchens was another profitable form of industry which was a monopoly of Italians in London in the pre-war days. That was the ice cream trundled through the streets with that alluring call to youth, “Hokey-pokey penny a lump!” From surroundings appallingly free from sanitary supervision came this nectar and ambrosia which the urchins of the London streets found an irresistible temptation.

It was a careless word on the subject of this lack of sanitation in the ice-cream factories which nearly ended my career as a journalist before it was fairly begun. Requiring some additional photographs for the second instalment of some articles I was writing for a magazine--the first, almost, that I ever wrote--I went one Sunday morning to Italy in London with an amateur photographer. We went into one of the courtyards where I had made friends with some of the pretty washerwomen, but I was no sooner observed by a few of them than, as though by magic, the courtyard was filled with a considerable crowd of those whom the Americans call “Wops.”

They came up from the basements where they slept as many as forty in a cellar--organ grinders, ice-cream vendors, bear leaders, waiters. I was obviously the object of passionate dislike. They surrounded me with violent gestures and torrential speech, not one word of which did I understand. At first I was mildly curious to know what all this noise was about, but I saw that things were serious when several young men began to flash about their clasp-knives. Help came at a critical moment. Three London “Bobbies” appeared on the scene, as they generally do, in the nick of time.

“Now, what’s all this about?”

Seldom before had I heard such a friendly and comforting inquiry.

The crowd melted away. In the quietude that followed, one young waiter who remained explained to me that my published article on the Italian quarter had caused great offense, as my reference to the ice-cream factories had been taken as an insult. I had used the phrase “dirty places” and the Italian colony desired my death. They did not get it that Sunday morning. But I was sorry to have hurt their feelings, as I had an affectionate regard for those people.

I was abominably near a nasty accident, owing to a misplaced sense of humor, when the Mohammedans in London celebrated the Feast of Ramadan, as they do each year at the Holborn Restaurant. That is one of the most unlikely places in which to meet Romance. On all the other days of the year it is given over to public banquets of Odd Fellows and Good Fellows, Masons, and Rotarians, and the business man of London when he puts on a hard white shirt, and expands his manly bosom under the influence of comradeship, and the sense of holding an honorable place among his fellow men of the same social grade as himself. Yet, in the Holborn Restaurant there is the mystery and the romance of the East, an astonishing, and almost incredible, assembly of Oriental types, on that day of Mohammedan rejoicing.

The first time I went, there were several Indian princes in richly colored turbans and gold-embroidered coats, some Persians in white robes, Turks wearing the scarlet fez, a number of Arabs, some full-blooded African negroes, and a group of Indian students. White tablecloths, used as a rule by business men at their banquets, were spread on the floor, and these were used as kneeling mats by the Mohammedans, who bowed to the East with their foreheads touching the ground and joined in a chant, rising and falling in the Oriental scale, with strange wailings, as one among them read extracts from the Koran, and between whiles seemed to carry on a musical and melancholy conversation with the Faithful.

My trouble was that I wanted to laugh. There was nothing to laugh at, and much to admire in the intense faith of these Mohammedan worshipers, but there are times, probably due to nervousness, when some little demon tickles one into a desperate desire to relieve one’s emotion by mirth. It is what schoolgirls call “the giggles.” I caught the eye of an enormous negro, staring at me ferociously, and I failed to hide a fatuous smile. It was the queer nasal lamentations of those kneeling men, and this scene in the Holborn Restaurant, where I had dined the very night before with business men in boiled shirts, which stirred my sense of the ridiculous, against all my spirit of reverence and decency. I was alarmed at myself, and hurriedly left the room.

Outside the door I leaned against the wall and laughed with my handkerchief to my mouth, because of this Arabian Nights’ dream in the ridiculous commonplace of the Holborn Restaurant. As I did so, the tall negro who had been eying me appeared suddenly before me in the darkness of the passage. His eyes seemed to blaze with rage, and all the wrath of Islam was in him, and he crouched a little as though to make a spring at me. My misplaced sense of humor left me immediately! I was out of the Holborn Restaurant and on top of a ’bus bound for Oxford Circus, with astonishing rapidity.

It was not only among the foreigners of London that I found strange scenes and odd characters. The life of a journalist brings him into touch with the eccentricities of human nature, and trains him to keep his eyes open for rare birds, philosophers in back streets, odd volumes in the bookshelf.

It was by accident that I discovered a very queer fellow who revealed to me a romantic profession. I was calling on a Member of Parliament in the old Queen Anne house behind Westminster Abbey, when I saw a smart gig standing by the pavement, a well-dressed young man with a clean-shaven face, long nose, and green eyes, and, up against the wall, a sack. It was the sack which astonished me. Filled with some bulky-looking material, it was not like an ordinary sack, but was heaving in a most peculiar way. I ventured to address the young man with the gig.

“What on earth’s the matter with that sack?”

He grinned, and said, “Want to know?”

Then, very cautiously, he opened the mouth of the sack, made a sharp nip with forefinger and thumb, and brought out a big-sized rat.

“There are four hundred in that bag,” he remarked proudly, “and all alive and kicking. One has to handle ’em carefully. They bite like blazes.”

“What are they for?” I asked. “What are you going to do with them?”

“Sell ’em to fancy gents who like a little sport with their dogs on Sunday, down Mitcham way. Care to have my card?”

He handed me a visiting card, and I read the inscription, which notified that my new acquaintance was

“_Rat Catcher to the Lord Mayor and the City of London._”

I made an appointment with this dignitary, and found that he was the modern Pied Piper, who spent his nights in luring the rats of London from riverside warehouses, city restaurants, and other establishments along the bed of the Thames where they swarmed by the thousand.

“Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats, Brown rats, black rats, grey rats, tawny rats, Grave old plodders, gay young friskers, Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins, Cocking tails and pricking whiskers, Families by tens and dozens....”

Every night when the city folk had left their chop-houses or their warehouses, this mysterious fellow with the greenish eyes went in quietly with four big wire cages, some netting, and a long willow wand. The nets, which had pouched pockets, he put up against the passages and doorways. Then, in the absolute darkness, he stood motionless for an hour. Presently there came a patter of tiny feet, a squeaking, a glint of ravenous little eyes. They were all round him, searching for the crumbs, ravenously. Suddenly he uttered a strange beastlike cry, in his throat, like yodeling, and whipped the floor with his long white wand. The rats were mesmerized, stupefied. They tried to make their way back to their holes, but fell into the poacher’s nets, dozens and scores, on a good hunting night. He emptied them into the cages, covered them with white cloths, stood motionless again, waited again, made a second bag. At dawn he departed with his sack well loaded, to sell to “fancy gents” at four-pence each, in the suburbs of London.

The foreign element in London was, on the whole, very law abiding. For centuries London had been the sanctuary of political refugees from many countries of persecution, and it was a tradition, and a good tradition, of England, that no questions should be asked as to the political faith of those who desired shelter from their own rulers. Even the revolutionaries of Europe, and the “intellectual” anarchists, had the good sense, for a long time, not to stir up trouble or attack the laws of the land in which they found such generous exile. This rule, however, was abruptly broken by a gang of foreign bandits who carried out a series of alarming robberies, and, when tracked down at last, shot a police inspector and wounded others.

One of their own men was mortally wounded in the affray and carried bleeding to a house in Grove Street, Whitechapel, one of the worst streets in London, where he died. He was a young Russian, as handsome as a Greek god, in the opinion of the surgeons of the London Hospital, with whom I happened to be lunching when one of the juniors rushed in with the news that the corpse had been secured, against all competitors, by the “London.”

It was the death of this Russian which gave the clue to the habits and whereabouts of the gang with whom he had been connected. Their women were caught, and “blew the gaff,” and it was discovered that the leader of the gang was another young Russian called Peter the Painter. Scores of Scotland Yard detectives set out on the trail, and another police inspector lost his life in the endeavor to arrest three of the bandits at a house in Sidney Street, Whitechapel, where they defied all attempts at capture by a ruthless use of automatic pistols. Siege was laid to the house by the police and detectives, armed with revolvers, and an astounding episode happened in the heart of London.

For some reason, which I have forgotten, I went very early that morning to the _Chronicle_ office, and was greeted by the news editor with the statement that a hell of a battle was raging in Sidney Street. He advised me to go and look at it.

I took a taxi, and drove to the corner of that street, where I found a dense crowd observing the affair as far as they dared peer round the angle of the walls from adjoining streets. Heedless at the moment of danger, which seemed to me ridiculous, I stood boldly opposite Sidney Street and looked down its length of houses. Immediately in front of me four soldiers of one of the Guards’ regiments lay on their stomachs, protected from the dirt of the road by newspaper “sandwich” boards, firing their rifles at a house halfway down the street. Another young Guardsman, leaning against a wall, took random shots at intervals while he smoked a woodbine. As I stood near him, he winked and said, “What a game!”

It was something more than a game. Bullets were flicking off the wall like peas, plugging holes into the dirty yellow brick, and ricocheting fantastically. One of them took a neat chip out of a policeman’s helmet, and he said, “Well, I’ll be blowed!” and laughed in a foolish way. It was before the war, when we learned to know more about the meaning of bullets. Another struck a stick on which a journalistic friend of mine was leaning in an easy, graceful way. His support and his dignity suddenly departed from him.

“That’s funny!” he said, seriously, as he saw his stick neatly cut in half at his feet.

A cinematograph operator, standing well inside Sidney Street, was winding his handle vigorously, quite oblivious of the whiz of bullets which were being fired at a slanting angle from the house, which seemed to be the target of the prostrate Guardsmen.

A large police inspector, of high authority, shouted a command to his men.

“What’s all that nonsense? Clear the people back! Clear ’em right back! We don’t want a lot of silly corpses lying round.”

A cordon of police pushed back the dense crowd, treading on the toes of those who would not move fast enough.

I found myself in a group of journalists.

“Get back there!” shouted the police.

But we were determined to see the drama out. It was more sensational than any “movie” show. Immediately opposite was a tall gin palace--“The Rising Sun.” Some strategist said, “That’s the place for us!” We raced across before the police could outflank us.

A Jew publican stood in the doorway, sullenly.

“Whatcher want?” he asked.

“Your roof,” said one of the journalists.

“A quid each, and worth it,” said the Jew.

At that time, before the era of paper money, some of us carried golden sovereigns in our pockets, one to a “quid.” Most of the others did, but, as usual, I had not more than eighteenpence. A friend lent me the necessary coin, which the Jew slipped into his pocket as he let me pass. Twenty of us, at least, gained access to the roof of “The Rising Sun.”

It was a good vantage point, or O.P., as we should have called it later in history. It looked right across to the house in Sidney Street in which Peter the Painter and his friends were defending themselves to the death--a tall, thin house of three stories, with dirty window blinds. In the house immediately opposite were some more Guardsmen, with pillows and mattresses stuffed into the windows in the nature of sandbags as used in trench warfare. We could not see the soldiers, but we could see the effect of their intermittent fire, which had smashed every pane of glass and kept chipping off bits of brick in the anarchists’ abode.

The street had been cleared of all onlookers, but a group of detectives slunk along the walls on the anarchists’ side of the street at such an angle that they were safe from the slanting fire of the enemy. They had to keep very close to the wall, because Peter and his pals were dead shots and maintained something like a barrage fire with their automatics. Any detective or policeman who showed himself would have been sniped in a second, and these men were out to kill.

The thing became a bore as I watched it for an hour or more, during which time Mr. Winston Churchill, who was then Home Secretary, came to take command of active operations, thereby causing an immense amount of ridicule in next day’s papers. With a bowler hat pushed firmly down on his bulging brow, and one hand in his breast pocket, like Napoleon on the field of battle, he peered round the corner of the street, and afterward, as we learned, ordered up some field guns to blow the house to bits.

That never happened, for a reason which we on “The Rising Sun” were quick to see.

In the top-floor room of the anarchists’ house we observed a gas jet burning, and presently some of us noticed the white ash of burnt paper fluttering out of a chimney pot.

“They’re burning documents,” said one of my friends.

They were burning more than that. They were setting fire to the house, upstairs and downstairs. The window curtains were first to catch alight, then volumes of black smoke, through which little tongues of flame licked up, poured through the empty window frames. They must have used paraffin to help the progress of the fire, for the whole house was burning with amazing rapidity.

“Did you ever see such a game in London!” exclaimed the man next to me on the roof of the public house.

For a moment I thought I saw one of the murderers standing on the window sill. But it was a blackened curtain which suddenly blew outside the window frame and dangled on the sill.

A moment later I had one quick glimpse of a man’s arm with a pistol in his hand. He fired and there was a quick flash. At the same moment a volley of shots rang out from the Guardsmen opposite. It is certain that they killed the man who had shown himself, for afterward they found his body (or a bit of it) with a bullet through the skull. It was not long afterward that the roof fell in with an upward rush of flame and sparks. The inside of the house from top to bottom was a furnace.

The detectives, with revolvers ready, now advanced in Indian file. One of them ran forward and kicked at the front door. It fell in, and a sheet of flame leaped out.... No other shot was fired from within. Peter the Painter and his fellow bandits were charred cinders in the bonfire they had made.

So ended the “Battle of Sidney Street,” which created intense excitement and indignation throughout England, and threw a glare of publicity on to the secret haunts of the foreign anarchists in London.

I was one of those who directed the searchlight, for the very next day, with Eddy, my colleague, I took up residence at 62 Sidney Street, and explored the underworld of Whitechapel and the Anarchist clubs of the Russian and German Jews, who were the leading spirits of a philosophy which is now known as Bolshevism. And in that quest I had some strange adventures, and met some very queer folk.

VI

Before taking lodgings in Sidney Street, Whitechapel, to study the haunts of Peter the Painter and his fellow “thugs,” I tried to get a room in the house in Grove Street to which the handsome young Russian had been carried when he was mortally wounded by the police.

With my companion Eddy, I knocked at the door of this dark little dwelling place, in a sinister street with a railed sidewalk, where foreign-looking men lounged about in doorways, and young drabs with painted faces started out at dusk for the lighted highways. Eddy and I believed ourselves to be disguised adequately for East End life. We had put on our oldest clothes and cloth caps, but we were both aware that our appearance in Grove Street aroused immediate suspicion. After three knocks, the door was opened on a chain, and a frowsy woman spoke to me in Yiddish. I answered in German, which she seemed to understand. Upon my asking for a room, she undid the chain and opened the door a little way, so that I could see the crooked wooden stairs up which the man’s body had been carried by two of those men who now lay burned to death in Sidney Street.

The woman asked us to wait, and then went down a stinking passage and spoke to a man, as I could hear by the voices. While we waited, shadows crept up out of the dark street about us, and I saw that we were surrounded by the foreign-looking men who had been lounging in the doorways. The woman came back with a tall, bearded man who spoke English.

“What do you want?”

“A room for the night.”

“What the hell for?” he asked. “Do you know there’s been a murder in this house?”

“That makes no difference,” I said, casually. “It’s late and raining, and we want to sleep.”

“Not here. We don’t want no narks in this house. We’re honest people.”

“All right,” said Eddy. “We’ll go somewhere else.”

He was moving off, when the man took hold of his arm.

“Perhaps you won’t,” he snarled. “I may get into trouble about this, with the cops. You’ll stay here till I send a word round to the station.”

He gave a whistle, and the men lurking in the darkness about us pressed closer. They were young Jews of Russian type, anæmic and white-faced.

He shoved the man off, and pushed his way through the crowd. They jabbered in a foreign tongue, and followed a little way, but did not touch us.

“Let go of my arm, or I’ll hit you,” said Eddy.

The rain fell faster, and we were splashed with mud. With good warm houses in the West of London, it was ridiculous to be tramping about the East like this, homeless and cold. We knocked at many doors in other streets, and every answer we had was a rough refusal in Yiddish or German to take us in. Not even when we offered as much as a sovereign for a night’s shelter.

“These people don’t like the look of us,” said Eddy. “What’s the matter with our money?”

The truth was, I think, that the affair in Sidney Street had thoroughly scared the foreign element in the East End, and these people to whom we applied for rooms were on their guard at once against two strangers who might be police spies or criminals in search of a hiding place. They were not accepting trouble either way.

It was late at night when at last we persuaded an Israelite, and master tailor, to rent us a room in Sidney Street, next door to the house in which Peter the Painter and his friends had defied the armed police of London, and escaped capture by dying in the flames.

From that address Eddy and I wrote a series of articles describing our experiences in the East End, among anarchists, criminals, and costers. The anarchists were the most interesting, and we visited them in their night clubs.

We went, I remember, to a Russian hotel in Whitechapel, where the chief anarchist club in London had established its headquarters through fear of a police raid at its old address. Certainly they took no precautions to ensure secrecy, for even outside the hotel, down a side street, Eddy and I could hear the stentorian voice of one of their orators, and see the shadows of his audience on the window blinds. We went into the hotel and found the stairs leading to the club room densely packed by young men and women, for the most part respectably, and even smartly, dressed, of obviously foreign race--Russian, German, and Jewish.

Eddy and I wormed our way upstairs by slow degrees, sufficiently close to hear the long, excited speech that was being made in German. Here and there at least I heard snatches of it, and such phrases as “the tyranny of the police,” “the fear of the _bourgeoisie_,” “the dictatorship of the people,” “the liberty of speech,” and “the rights of labor to absolute self-government.” Such phrases as these were loudly applauded whenever the speaker paused.

“Who is speaking?” I asked of a good-looking young fellow sitting on the stairs.

He answered sullenly:

“Rocca. What’s that to you?”

Presently there was a whispering about us. Sullen faces under bowler hats held close consultation. Then there was a movement on the stairs, jamming Eddy and myself against the banisters.

“What do you want here?” asked one of the young men, aggressively. “If you’re police narks, we’ll turn you out!”

“Yes, or do you in!” said another.

“We don’t want any bleeding spies here,” said a woman.

Other expressions of hostility were uttered, and there was an ugly look on the faces of these foreign youths.

I thought it best to tell them frankly that I was merely a newspaper reporter on _The Daily Chronicle_, finding a little descriptive material. I should be interested to hear the speech upstairs, if they had no objection.

This candor disarmed them, or most of them, though a few raised the cry of “Turn them out!”

But an elderly man who seemed to have some authority raised his hand, and took me under his protection.

“That’s all right. We’ve nothing to hide. If _The Daily Chronicle_ wants our views, it can have them. Better come and see Mrs. Rocca.”

The crowd made way for us on the stairs and my companion and I were led to a narrow landing outside the room, where the orator still bellowed in German to a packed audience, and then into a little slip of a room which I found to be an ordinary bathroom.

On the edge of the bath sat a well-dressed, rather good-looking and pleasant-eyed lady, to whom I was introduced, and who was introduced to me as Mrs. Rocca. She was the wife of the orator in the next room, and, like himself, German.

She spoke English perfectly, and in the presence of half a dozen men who crowded in to listen, we had an argument lasting at least an hour, on the subject of anarchy. She began by disclaiming, for the anarchists in London, all knowledge of and responsibility for the affair of Peter the Painter and his associates. They were merely common thieves. But it was laughable, she thought, what a panic fear had been caused in middle-class London by the killing of a policeman or two. It filled columns of the newspapers, with enormous headlines. It seemed to startle them as something too horrible and monstrous for imagination. Why all that agitation over the deaths of two guardians of property, when there was no agitation at all, no public outcry, no fierce clamor for vengeance, because every night men and women of the toiling classes were being killed by the inhuman conditions of their lives, in foul slums, in overcrowded bedrooms, in poisonous trades, in sweated industries, as the helpless slaves of that capitalistic system which protected itself by armies of police. The English people were the world’s worst hypocrites. They hid a putrid mass of suffering, corruption, and disease, caused by modern industrialism, and pretended that it did not exist.

“What is your philosophy?” I asked. “How do you propose to remedy our present state?”

“I am an intellectual Nihilist,” said the lady very calmly. “I believe in the ultimate abolition of all law, all government, all police, and in a free society with perfect liberty to the individual, educated in self-discipline, love for others, and moral purpose.”

I need not here repeat her arguments, nor their fantastic disregard of human nature and the stark realities of life. She was well read, and quoted all manner of writers from Plato to Bernard Shaw, and I marveled that such a woman should be living in the squalor of Whitechapel as a preacher of the destructive gospel. We had a vehement argument, in which Eddy joined, and though we waxed hot, and disagreed with each other on all issues, we maintained the courtesies of debate, in which, beyond any mock modesty, I was hopelessly out-argued by this brilliant, extraordinary, and dangerous woman.

It was from acquaintances made in that club that we were led into other byways of Whitechapel and heard strange and terrible tales of Russian revolutionaries, who showed me the sores of fetters and chains about their wrists and legs, and swore eternal hatred of the Russian Czardom, which crushed the souls of men and women and tortured their bodies. They were, doubtless, true tales, and it was with the remembrance of those horrors that the Russian Revolution was made, in all its cruelty and terror, until the autocracy of the Czars was replaced by the tyranny of Lenin and the Soviet State, when the dream of Russian liberty was killed, for a generation at least, in the ruin and famine and pestilence of the people.

Eddy and I dined in the kosher restaurants of the East End, went to the Jewish theater, and explored the haunts of the Russian and Oriental Jews of London.

In our wanderings we discovered the most Oriental place this side of Constantinople. It was Hessell Street Market, in a deep sunken road, reached by flights of steep steps through blocks of buildings in the Commercial Road, and quite unknown to most Londoners. On each side of the sunken street were wooden booths which looked as though they had been there since the time of Queen Elizabeth, and at night, when we went, they were lit, luridly, by naptha flares. In these booths sat, cross-legged, old bearded men with hooked noses, who looked as though they were contemporaries of Moses and the Prophets. They were selling cheap Oriental rugs, colored cottons and silks, sham jewelery, rabbit skins, kosher meat, skinny fowls, and embroidered slippers. The crowd marketing in this place, chaffering, quarreling, picking over the wares, with the noise of a Turkish bazaar, were mostly of Oriental types. Some of the men wore fur caps, or astrakhan caps, like the Persians who cross the Galata bridge at Constantinople. Others wore fur coats reaching to their heels, and top hats of ancient architecture. It was the market of the London Ghetto, and thronged with flashy young Jews and Jewesses, starved-looking men of Slav aspect, and shifty-eyed boys who were professional pickpockets and sold the harvest of their day’s toil to the old villains in the booths.

It was a young thief who acted as our guide to some of these places, and he performed a delicate operation in the way of housebreaking for our benefit. We were eager to get a photograph of Peter the Painter, and he told us that he knew of the only one in existence. It belonged to a “young lady” who had been Peter’s friend, and naturally wished to keep secret her association with this bandit. It stood on her bedroom mantelpiece, and if we would give him half an hour, he would “pinch” it for us. But he would have to replace it after we had made use of it. At the end of an hour he returned with the photograph of a good-looking young Russian, and told us that it had been an “easy job.” This photograph was reproduced as the only authentic portrait of Peter the Painter, but I have grave doubts about it.

With this lad, who was an intelligent fellow and vowed that henceforth he was going to lead an honest life, as burglary was a mug’s game, he went into the cellars below a certain restaurant which were used as a library of anarchist literature. Doubtless there was more high explosive here, in the way of destructive philosophy, than one might find in Woolwich Arsenal, but we did not examine those dangerous little pamphlets and books which preached the gospel of revolution. At that time, before the advent of Bolshevism in the history of the world, that propaganda seemed to have no bearing upon the ordinary facts of life, and did not interest us. It was at a later period that the international anarchist in London translated his textbooks and touted them outside the gates of English factories, and slipped them into the hands of unemployed men.

In those pre-war days, the foreign revolutionaries in London kept themselves aloof from English life and, as I have said, generally avoided unpleasant contact with the English law. Living in the foulest lodgings--I sicken still at the memory of the stench we encountered in some of their tenement houses--many of these young tailors, cigarette makers, and factory hands dressed themselves up in the evening and came down West with their girl friends to the music halls and night clubs in the neighborhood of Piccadilly, leaving the older folk to their squalor and the children to the playground of the streets and courts. Now and again they stabbed each other, or cut each other’s throats, but, as a rule, such incidents were hushed up by their neighbors, and the London police were not invited to inquire into affrays between these aliens.... The war made a great clearance of these foreigners, and many of their old haunts have disappeared.

By the merest chance I saw the disappearance of one of the oldest and most historic haunts of London lawbreakers. It was the abandonment of the Old Bailey, before its grim and ancient structure was pulled down to make way for the new and imposing building where Justice again pursues its relentless way with those who fall into its grip. Ever since Roman days there has been a prison on the site of the Old Bailey, and for hundreds of years men and women have languished there in dark cells, rattled their chains behind its bars, rotted with jail fever, and died on the gallows tree within its walls. The dark cruelties of English justice which, in the old days, was merciless with all who broke its penal laws, however young and innocent till then, belong to forgotten history, for the most part, but as time is counted in history, it is not long since the judges of the Old Bailey condemned young girls to death for stealing a few ribbons or handkerchiefs, and my own grandfather saw their executions, in batches.

But on the last day of the Old Bailey, when the police were withdrawn from its courtroom and corridors, before its furniture and fittings were to be put up for public auction, the crowd I met there did not remember those old ruthless days. They were the criminals of a later generation who had been put in the cells as “drunks and disorderlies,” as pickpockets and “petty larcenies,” brought up for judgment with the knowledge that short sentences would be inflicted on them.

It was one of the most remarkable crowds I have ever seen. Some queer sentiment had brought all these crooks and jailbirds to see the last of their old “home.” Frowzy women and “flash” girls, old scamps of the casual ward and doss house, habitual drunkards, and young thieves, sporting touts and burglars of the Bill Sikes brand, had gathered together, as though by special invitation, to the “private view.” Laughing, excited, full of loquacious reminiscences, they wandered through the charge room and the cells where they had been “lagged,” pointed out the cell from which Jack Sheppard had escaped, and other cells once inhabited by famous murderers and criminals, and surged into the great court where they had stood in the dock facing the scarlet-robed judge and all the majesty of law. They stood in the dock again, lots of them, jeering, with bursts of hoarse laughter at the merry jest.

They crowded up to the judge’s throne. One young coster, with a gift of mimicry, put on a judicial manner, wagged his head solemnly, and sentenced his pals to death. Shrieks of laughter greeted his pantomime. An old ruffian with a legal-looking face, sodden with drink, played the part of prosecuting counsel, addressed an imaginary judge as “M’lud,” the crowd as “gentlemen of the jury,” and asserted that the evidence was overwhelming as to the guilt of the prisoner, who was indeed “a naughty, naughty man.”

“The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth!” screamed a girl with big feathers in her hat, and she laughed hysterically at her own humor.

There was something grim and tragic beneath the comedy of the scene. This travesty of the law by those who had been in its clutches revealed a vicious psychology lost to all shame and decency, but was also a condemnation of society which produced such types of men and women, for the most part victims of slum life, foul surroundings, and evil upbringing, tolerated, and indeed created, by the social system of England. It needed the pen of Dickens to describe this scene, and truly it was a hark-back to the days of Dickens himself. I was astounded that such characters as Bill Sikes, Old Fagin and Nancy, and Charley Bates should still remain in the London of Edward VII, as they appeared in the living image that day in the Old Bailey.

I wandered upstairs into deserted rooms. They were strewn with papers ankle-deep, and on the table I saw a bulky volume, bound in iron, which was the old charge book, dating from 1730. To this day I regret that I did not “pinch” it, for it was an historic relic which, with scandalous carelessness, was thrown away. But I was afraid of carrying off such a big thing, lest I should find myself on a more modern charge-sheet at another court. I did, however, stuff a number of papers into my pockets, and when I reached home and examined them, I found that they were also historical documents of great interest.

One of them, for instance, was a list of eighty convicts, or so, condemned to penal servitude and transportation to Botany Bay. Many of them--boys and girls--had been sentenced to death for the crime of stealing a few potatoes, a pinafore, some yards of cotton, or, in one case, for breaking a threshing machine, and had been “graciously reprieved by His Majesty King William IV” and condemned to that ferocious punishment of penal servitude in the convict settlements of Australia, which to many of them was a living death, until by flogging, and insanitary conditions, and disease, death itself released them. That was but a few years before the reign of Queen Victoria!

It was in the new Old Bailey, very handsomely paneled, nicely warmed, lighted with delicate effects of color through high windows--doubtless the clerks of the court thought it quite a privilege for the criminals to be judged in such a place--that I saw the trial of that famous and astonishing little murderer, Doctor Crippen.

It will be remembered that he was captured on a ship bound for Halifax, with a girl named Ethel le Neve, dressed up in boy’s clothes, with whom he had eloped after killing his wife and dissecting her body for burial in his cellar.

Crippen looked a respectable little man, with weak, watery eyes and a drooping moustache, so ordinary a type of middle-class business man in London that quite a number of people, including one of my own friends, were arrested by mistake for him when the hue and cry went forth.

I was at Bournemouth at that time, in one of the aviation meetings which were held in the early days of flying. It was celebrated by fancy fêtes, open-air carnivals, fancy-dress balls, and all kinds of diversions. The most respectable town in England, inhabited mostly by retired colonels, well-to-do spinsters, and invalids, seemed to take leave of its senses in a wild outburst of frivolity. Even the Mayor was to be seen in the broad glare of sunshine, wearing a false nose. Into that atmosphere of false noses and fancy frocks came telegrams to several newspaper correspondents from their editors.

“Scotland Yard believes Crippen at Bournemouth. Please get busy.”

That was the tenor of the telegram sent to me, and I saw by the pink envelopes received by friends at table in the Grand Hotel one night that they had received similar messages. One by one they stole out, looking mightily secretive--in search of Crippen, who, by that time was nearing Halifax.

With a friend named Harold Ashton, a well-known “crime sleuth,” I went into the hall, and after a slight discussion decided that if Crippen was in Bournemouth it was not our job to find him. We were, for the time, experts in aviation, and couldn’t be put off by foolish murders.

As we went upstairs, Ashton put his head over the banisters, and then uttered an exclamation.

“Scotland Yard!”

Looking over the stair rail, I saw a pair of boots, belonging to a man sitting in the hall. True enough, they had come from Scotland Yard, according to the tradition which enables any detective to be recognized at a glance by any criminal. One of those detectives had been sent down on the false rumor, and probably hoped to find Doctor Crippen and Ethel le Neve disguised as Pierrot and Columbine on the pier.

Ashton and I decided to have a game with the man. We wrote a note in block letters, as follows:

“Are You Looking For Doctor Crippen? If So, Beware!”

By a small bribe, we hired a boy to deliver it to the detective, and then depart quickly.

The effect was obviously disconcerting to the man, for he looked most uneasy, and then hurried out of the hotel. Doubtless he could not understand how anybody in Bournemouth could know of his mission. Ashton and I followed him, and he was immediately aware that he was being shadowed. He went into a public house and ordered a glass of beer which he did not drink. Ashton and I did the same, and were quick on his heels when he slipped out by a side door. We kept up this game for quite a time, until we tired of it, and to this day the detective must wonder who shadowed him so closely in Bournemouth, and for what fell purpose.

Curiously, by the absurd chances of journalistic life, I became mixed up in the Crippen case, not only by having to describe the trial, but by having to write the life story of Ethel le Neve. That girl, who had been Crippen’s typist, was quite a pretty and attractive little creature, and in spite of her flight with him in boy’s clothes, the police were satisfied that she was entirely innocent of the murder. Anyhow, she was not charged, and upon her liberation she was immediately captured at a price, by _The Daily Chronicle_, who saw that her narrative would make an enormous sensation. They provided her with a furnished flat, under an assumed name, and for weeks _The Daily Chronicle_ office was swarming with her sister’s family, while office boys fetched the milk for the baby, and sub-editors paid the outstanding debts of the brother-in-law, in order that Ethel le Neve should reserve her tale exclusively to the nice, kind paper! Such is the dignity of modern journalism, desperate for a “scoop.”

Eddy and I were again associated in the extraction of Ethel le Neve’s tale. Eddy, as a young barrister, now well-known and prosperous at the Bar, cross-examined her artfully, and persistently, with the firm belief that she knew all about the murder. Never once, however, did he trap her into any admission.

From my point of view, the psychology of the girl was extremely interesting. Just a little Cockney girl, from a family of humble class and means, she had astonishing and unusual qualities. It is characteristic of her that when she was staying in Brussels with Crippen, disguised as a boy--and a remarkably good-looking boy she appeared--because she knew that Crippen was wanted by the law for “some old thing or other,” which she didn’t bother to find out, she spent most of her time visiting the art galleries and museums of the Belgian capital. She had regarded the whole episode as a great “lark,” until at Halifax detectives came aboard and arrested the fugitives on a charge of murder. She admitted to me that, putting two and two together, little incidents that had seemed trivial at the time, and remembering queer words spoken by Crippen--“the doctor,” as she called him--she had no doubt now of his guilt. But, as she also admitted, that made no difference to her love for him. “He was mad when he did it,” she said, “and he was mad for me.” That was the extraordinary thing--that deep, sincere, and passionate love between the little weak-eyed, middle-aged quack doctor, and this common, pretty little Cockney girl.

I read Crippen’s love letters, written to Ethel le Neve from prison, immensely long letters, written on prison paper in a neat little writing, without a blot or a fault. All told, there were forty thousand words of them--as long as a novel--and they were surprising in their good style, their beauty of expression, their resignation to death. These two people from the squalor of a London suburb, might have been mediæval lovers in Italy of Boccaccio’s time, when murder for love’s sake was lightly done.

In a little restaurant in Soho I sat with Ethel le Neve, day after day, while all the journalists of England were searching for her. Many times she was so gay that it was impossible to believe that she had escaped the hangman’s rope by no great distance, and that her lover was a little blear-eyed man lying under sentence of death. Yet that gayety of hers was not affected or forced. It bubbled out of her because of a quick and childish sense of humor, which had not been killed by the frightful thing that overshadowed her. When that shadow fell upon her spirit again, she used to weep, but never for long. Her last request to me was that I should have Doctor Crippen’s photograph made into a miniature which she could wear concealed upon her breast. On the morning of his execution she put on black for him, and wished that she might have died with him on the scaffold.

I am certain, as the police were, that she was guiltless of all knowledge and participation in the murder of Mrs. Crippen, but she seemed as careless of that crime as any woman of the Borgias when a rival was removed from her path of love. Some old strain of passionate blood had thrust up again in this London typist girl, whose name of le Neve might hold the clue, if we knew her family history, to this secret of her personality.

I was glad to see the last of her, having written down her tale, because that was not the kind of journalism which appealed to my instincts or ideals, and I sickened at the squalor of the whole story of love and murder, as I sat with Ethel le Neve in friendly discourse, not without pity for this girl whose life had been ruined by her folly, and who would be forever haunted by the grim tragedy of Crippen’s crime.

VII

Although my reminiscences hitherto have dealt with my adventures as a special correspondent, I have from time to time sat with assumed dignity in the editorial chair. Indeed, I was an editor before I was twenty-one, and I may say that I began life very high up in the world and have been climbing down steadily ever since.

I was at least very high up--on the top floor of the House of Cassell, in La Belle Sauvage Yard--when I assumed, at the age of nineteen, the enormous title of Educational Editor, and gained the microscopic salary of a hundred and twenty pounds a year.

With five pounds capital and that income, I married, with an audacity which I now find superb. I was so young, and looked so much younger, that I did not dare to confess my married state to my official chief, who was the Right Honorable H. O. Arnold-Forster, in whose room I sat, and one day when my wife popped her head through the door and said “Hullo!” I made signs to her to depart.

“Who’s that pretty girl?” asked Arnold-Forster, and with shame I must confess that I hid the secret of our relationship.

That first chief of mine was one of the most extraordinary men I ever met, and quite the rudest to all people of superior rank to himself.

As Secretary to the Admiralty, and afterward Minister of War, many important visitors used to call on him in his big room at the top of Cassell’s, where he was one of the Directors. I sat opposite, correcting proofs of school books and advertisements, writing fairy tales in spare moments, and listening to Arnold-Forster’s conversation. He treated distinguished admirals, generals, and colonels as though they were office boys, so that they perspired in his presence, and were sometimes deeply affronted, but, on the other hand, as a proof of chivalry, he treated office boys and printers’ devils as though they were distinguished admirals, generals, and colonels, with a most particular courtesy.

I saw him achieve the almost incredible feat of dictating a complete history of England as he paced up and down his room, with hardly a note. It is true that his patient secretary had to fill in the dates afterward, and verify the “facts,” which were often wrong, but the result was certainly the most vivid and illuminating history of England ever written for young people, and Rudyard Kipling wrote to him that it was one of the few books that had kept him out of bed all night.

To me Arnold-Forster was the soul of kindness, and encouraged me to write my first book, “Founders of the Empire,” which is still selling in English schools, after twenty years, though I make no profit thereby.

At twenty-three years of age, I hear