FROM WHITEHALL TO GRUB STREET.

Otago Witness, Issue 3803, 1 February 1927, Page 74

FROM WHITEHALL TO GRUB STREET.

Literature has claimed its recrutts from every field of activity (says a writer in John o’ London’s Weekly) . ; In previous articles’in these pages attention has b< ?.n drawn .to the number of famous men of letters who have practised either as doctors or .as lawyers. It may be doubted, however, whether either of the professions has given to the world so many distinguished . poets and prose writers as has the Civil Service. The literary traditions of the Civil Service go back to the Middle 'Ages. They may be said to begin with Geoffrey Chaucer, who for five years acted as Controller of Customs and Subsidies.

The Board of Trade—despite its prosaic title—can boast some ilustrious names—among them John Locke, the author of “The Essay on the Human Understanding,” who was a commissioner there—a post in which he was sucseeded by Matthew Prior. In more recent times, officials at the Board of Trade have included Sir Edmund Gosse, Austin Dobson, and Cosmo Monkhouse. Then there is the Admiralty, which still cherishes memories of its first secretary, Mr Samuel Pepys. In those days the Admiralty was known as the Navy Office, and Pepys—who took his' duties with great seriousness—was a daily attendant. The following entry occurs in his diary under the date Of July 9, 1660: “To the Navy Office, where in the afternoon we met and sat, and there I began to sign bills in the office for the first time.” Frederick Locker, the author of “London Lyrics,” was at one time an Admiralty official. The late Sir Algernon ■West, who was a colleague of his, has recorded that Locker “always wore his gloves in the office for fear he should dirty his hands with ink.” William Hale .White, who is better known to thousands of readers as “Mark Rutherford,” held for some years the responsible post of_Assistant Director of Navy Contracts, and Mr Edward Marsh occupied the position of private secretary to Mr Churchill when the latter was First Lord of the Admiralty. It may be recalled,-by the way, that Mr Churchill has himself written icoflsidcrably.

. Towards the end of his life Robert Burns obtained an appointment as an exciseman at Dumfries. His beginning salary was £7O per annum, which was subsequently raised to £9O. “With this appointment,” observes one of his biographers, “he obtained the summit of the worldly success that was to be vouchsafed him.”

The greater part of the adult life of Cllarles Lamb was spent at the East India House. It can*hardly be claimed for Lamb that he was an industrious Civil Servant. In this connection, one of his colleagues, John Chambers, has related a characteristic story:— An unpopular head of a department came to Lamb one day and inquired: “Pray, Mr Lamb, what are you about?” “Forty next birthday,” said Lamb. “I don’t like your answer, saifl the chief. “Nor I your question,” was Lamb’s reply. On March 28, 1825, Lamb retired from the East India House on an annual pension of £450. On his way home to Islington he dropped a note into the. letterbox of his friend, Crabb Robinson. It contained the following words: —“l have left the d d India House for ever! Give me great joy.”

The General Post Office would appear to be an appropriate home for men of letters. In the middle years of the last century Anthony Trollope was a Post Office official, and seems to have spent a considerable amount of his time quarelling wit’ Sir Rowland Hill, the “father” of the penny post. More recent acquisitions to the Post Office have been Mr W. W. Jacobs, who saw 16 years’ service in the Savings Bank Department, and the late A. B. Walkley.

Somerset House has numbered among its employees William Michael Rossetti, the brother of the famous poet, Mr Clement K. Shorter, and “C. K. Monro, the dramatist.

Matthew Arnold was appointed to an Inspectorship of Schools by Lord Lansdowne in 1851, and retained that position for 35 years. He owed the appointment very largely to the influence of his newly-created Educational Department. According to Mr Herbert Paul, Lingen “never made a better choice than Matthew Arnold.”

It is no disparagement of the many able men who havft been Inspectors of Schools to say that not one of them excelled Mr Arnold in his fitness for the post. He was very fond of children, he knew by instinct how to deal with them, and at the other end of the scale, he had ajreal scientific knowledge of what education "in-its highest sense ought to be.

Among the other shining lights of English literature who have been associated with the-Civil Service’may be mentioned Edmund Spenser and Joseph Addison. Spenser held the post of private secretary to the Lord-lieutenant of Ireland—no sinecure in those days—while Addison occupied for a brief period the important position of Secretary of State, which he was fortunate enough to relinquish for a pension of £l5OO a year. ■■ During the war a large number of writers gravitated to the Civil Service. At the War Office a propaganda department was organised by Major A. J. Dawson, the well-known novelist, -who had among his assistants Lord Dunsany, Mr A. A. Milne, Mr J. B. Morton, Mr Patrick Mac Gill, and Mr F. Britten Austin. Mr Edward Shanks, after being invalided out of the army, served for a time in the War Office, and he has left a recorl of some of his experiences in his first novel, “The Old Indispensables.” Finally, it may be pointed out that one of the most original of our younger poets, Mr Humbert Wolfe, occupies an important position in the Ministry of Labour.