"MY SEVEN SELVES"

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 18, 20 July 1935, Page 24

"MY SEVEN SELVES"

A JOURNALIST'S CAREER

HAMILTON FYFE'S MEMORIES

(By "Quivls.")

It is a fairly long lime since journalists began to let the public into the secrets of newspaperdom and the mysteries of the "Fourth Estate," but Fleet Street still remains "The Street of Adventure," so well named by Philip Gibbs, with his flair for headIngs, in the title to one ol the best stories ever written about newspaper life in London. Equally good and more valuable as material for history Is Hamilton Fyfe's "My Seven Selves" (George Allen and Unwin, London), which shows a veteran journalist,' in his sixty-fourth year, looking back on a lifetime spent in "the game," with about as varied an experience as has ever fallen to the lot of any newspaper man. He started as a youth of eighteen On "The Times" in the year of the Pigott Letters and the Parnell Commission; became the youngest editor of a daily paper in Britain, when he joined the "Morning Advertiser" in that capacity, at a salary of £750 a year; was appointed to the Harmsworth staff a little later to resuscitate the "Daily Mirror" (£I2OO a year), and when that .was done, with the aid of the first process blocks to be printed on a rotary press, transferred to the "Daily.Mail" and until after the waxwas that paper's star correspondent and Lord NOrthclifi'e's special favourite. The war he saw as the "Mail's" correspondent oh the Western, Eastern, Kumanlan, and Italian fronts. After the war he took up the Labour cause, edited the "Daily Herald," and twice stood for Parliament, as a Labour candidate in rural constituencies where he had no chance of being returned. All through the piece he did "freelancing" at remunerative rates, wrote several plays and novels to little monetary gain, but did -well out of his "Life, of Lord Northclifl'c," whom he knew as well, as any man. He calls his book of memories "My Seven; Selves" on the principle, as he says in his introduction, that "in every seven years' ourj bodies renew themselves. ... SO it seems to me do

ourselves change as well, as their envelopes." ■ ('■ So he begins with "My First Self," with the sub-title "The Foolish Young Fellow," and the second, "The Fortunate Young Man," and so forth until he comes to "My Seventh Self," where he describes himself as "Poor and Content." Each "Self" has its contemporary and appropriate photograph, making up a gallery of the seven ages of Fyfe, always a handsome and impressive figure. The author is modest enough about his literary capacity and claims no genius, but no man could have had such an exceptional career without outstanding ability. To this Lord Northclifte himself paid many, tributes and was deeply aggrieved when Fyfe refused the title which was the great man's to offer after the war and which so many other journalists accepted. This "Apologia pro Vita Sua," as it is, explains Fyfe's attitude on this occasion and his readers will agree that it does him credit. Ho was not a careerist with social' ambi-tions,-but a writer and craftsman whose chief joy was in his job and in his hobby, which was gardening. SOME PEOPLE HE MET. In the course of his long career as a man of some mark in his profession, almost from the start, Hamilton Fyfe came into contact with most of the leading figures in politics, literature, art, the drama, music and science, and later in war. Of these he gives vivid impressions, many of them new to the ordinary reader, and,, perhaps, to the world. Thus he "speaks1 of the famous Flora Shaw of "The Times" who acted as CecU Rhodes's agent in England at the time of the Jameson Raid and kept the Colonial Secretary, the late Joseph Chamberlain, informed jof the preparations up to the final telegram on the day that was to see Jameson's little force on the; way to Johannesburg: "Today the crux is: Shall we win and South Africa will belong to England." Young Fyfe actually. carried the messages to the Colonial Office, yet Chamberlain denied having any prior information about the attack on. the Transvaal Republic! Of Arnold Bennett he says:— Ono 'evening at the Solio reataurntit, 'which n»od to be Roche's, ho sketched to mo the lines ho meant his career to follow. Ho would .write books to soil first of all, then he did not ■ know what to do after ho had tie would write plays, and so on. I paid little heed to It at the tuno. But his career did follow those lines exactly. Ho had the success he aimed at. ills, trouble was that he did not know what to do nftor he had won it. He mentions in his "Journals" that he and Marguerite met my wife and me one evening' to the Strand, Palace Hotel, where we both 'happened to bo dining. Ho rocords something I told him about hl3 work. .He docs not note, probably did not vemcinber that I (mid'to him, "I shouldn't Imvo expected to fjd you hero, Bennett," for already ho was *KOmint a rich man and inclined to lot people "Oh, yes," he said, "Oils is a, p-provlnclal place. Just right for us. Wc'ro p-provlnclal people." ' , i If only he had stuck to that—urnl to Marguerite—he would have been vastly happier in hla later years and might luivo been alive now. ■ Fyfe through his position on lite "Daily Mail" Northcliffe's enthusiasm lor aviation, was intimately associated with the early days of flying. Of the Wrights he says:— They were geniuses in their own lino, outside of .that luio they remained —or at any rate Wilbur remained —what they had boon whon they ran a small bicycle repair shop. . . . Wilbur until his death was tho hayseed inventor of popular American fiction. He was very much under the domination. In matters social, of his sister; a school-marm typo who meant welL When King Edward went to sco tho brothers fly at Pau, Wilbur was instructed by Ills sl3ter to wear gloves, so tlmt ho might receive the Royal visitor with proper ceremony. 'No tortured prisoner in si thumb-screw or "boot" was ever more miserable. They ■altered his whole bearing. They made him appear downcast, .awkward. It' ho hud mot tho King in his overalls and treated him, as he treated everyone else, with v wise-crack of a. story, be would bavo made- au excellent Impression. As it was, wellHAIG AND MACDONALD. Fyfe's ','Fifth Self" deals mainly with his war experiences and is the highlight of the book. iHe has no opinion of the "brass hats,". This is Haig:— Halg was, in truth, at close quarters very disappointing. He looked tho part. Ills face on a. post-card was not less lraprcsslvo than Kitchener's. But^-his face was his fortune. He had llttln general Intelligence no imagination. He belonged to tho McSycophant Clan. .When he took his first leave from tho Staff College.ho wrote In the book: "To ehoot with the Prince of Wales." No ouo who was there with him ever forgot that. When the official war correspondents, much against his will, first went out to France, he mada them a speech of "welcome." He said he knew what they wanted. "Something for Mary Jane in tho kitchen to read." Finally here is Ramsay Mac Donald:— "Mac Donald's character puzzles those who have not closely followed his career. Actually the strategy of that career has been simple and straight-forward. It is in tactics that he is tortuous. He has always aimed ■at his own advancement." These are just a lew samples of a book that is full of meat not only for 1 he'journalist, to whom of course it has a special appeal, but ior every, reader.

In it a man who has had unsurpassed opportunities of observing the world with impartial disinterestedness gives of his best with perfect frankness and sincerity, as one who has no longer anything to lose by telling what he knows. The author once or twice in his memories gives it as his opinion, based on experience, that reviews, however laudatory, do not sell a book, so in the hope that "My Seven Selves" will prosper without praise, one must be content with this brief commendation and say: "Read it for yourself."