JOHN BULL BOTTOMLEY

Waikato Times, Volume 96, Issue 15033, 2 September 1922, Page 3

JOHN BULL BOTTOMLEY

A REMARKABLE CHARACTER. j ROGUERY ELEVATED INTO ART. j The following sketch of the career of Horatio Bottomley appeared in a recent issue of the "New statesman": Horatio Bottomley is now a convict, and his downfall lias caused regrets as well as rejoicings. He will he missed as no other living rogue would he missed. He had elevated roguery into an art, so that lie was a figure who amused the imagination much as a good actor does. He possessed the sort of genius that repeatedly drew our eyes from his victims, and even the moralist, could on occasion suspend his moral sense in order to admire

a brilliant display of effrontery. Then have not been either in life or ir literature many rogues who can attract us in this way. There are more perhaps, in literature than in life. A; the same time, Alcibiadcs fascinates us as Falstaff does. A rogue is usuall} a dull rogue, and so intensely do wc hate dullness that we are grateful even to a rogue for not being dull Horatio BoUomly was certainlj never that. Here was; a mar ■who, 'it was generally said, would have long ago been in prison but for his extraordinary cleverness, and yel he cheerfully talked about himself Ic large and cheering audiences as possible Prime Minister of England. He did not go so far as to propose himself as King, but he issued his respectful commands to the .King when he called during the war for the removal of certain German decorations from the Royal Chapel in Windsor. And he was obeyed, lie got his way, and in the . following week’s “John Bull” he always explained to an admir-

ing democracy “How I Did It.” No doubt he often claimed to have done things which would have been done quite as soon even if he had never raised his voice. But the British Government, at least, recognised him as a man of influence, and, knowing exactly the sort of man he was made eager use of him to 'recruit young men for a war for great ideals. Nevef had Horatio Bottomley' enjoyed such preslige. He would visit, the troops at the front with an air of a great personage engaged in a great event. He '.would visit Hie sailors and tell us all about it, in “Boltomley’s Visit to the Grand- Fleet." Beading “John Bull,” one would get an impression of him as the indispensable man to whom statesmen and field marshals as well as common soldiers and sailors always turned in times of trouble. “John Bull” was his .platform, and there was never any doubt as to who was the hero whom the limelight followed as he moved. The “Sunday Pictorial,” recognising his genius, called in his aid to fascinate another immense audience, to whom he would explain how the ■ war had depeened his belief in God.

A Highly-Paid Writer.

His weekly articles —which someone has said he never wrote himself —were the most highly-paid regular articles in the. London press. ,It was reputed - we do not know with what truth —that the “Sunday Pictorial” at one Lime dropped them, but found them sc- important to its circulation that it got them back again at twice the previous tigurc. There has been no other triumph of personal journalism to approach it in our time. Mr Bottoinley’s name was a household word to thousands of people who had never heard of Mr Garvin or evpn Mr Gardiner. Not that'as a writer Horatio Bottomley hud any gifts to entitle him to be named with these distinguished journalists. "Whether lie wrote his own arteles or not, he had neither matter nor manner that made it worth aiv intelligent , man’s while to read him. Had lie not made himself a public figure, he would never have been a great “draw” as a journalist. He had, however, succeeded in impressing his personality on the public mind to such a point that all most people needed was his signature. Any article appearing under his signature was good enough for them, lie seemed so like one of themselves —sharing their prejudices, defending their amusements, sympathetic with their complaints, with no“grcat love of parsons and with a great hatred of bullies. Whether he was venomous or genial, chivalrous or cruel, religious or sporting, he was all the time merely the sensational echo of the plain' man who sits in the gallery and enjoys the triumph of virtue in the melodramas, not forgetting to slip out for a glass of beer during intervals. One writer has said during the week that Horatio Bottomley was able to drink more champagne than any oilier man lie had ever known. Even so, it was as the defender of the poor man’s beer, not the rich man’s ■champagne, that lie made himselt a figure for the public imagination. He played the part of John Bull with immense success, beating even ChuChin Chow in the number of performances.

Born Gambler. How far Mr Boltomley’s John Bull was a bogus personality it is impossible to say. Was there some touch of sincerity in his art sueli as Browning found in Mr Sludge, the medium? We cannot doubl, at least, that lie had a genuine John-Bullish love of horse racing. The “Sportsman” declares that "the prevailing sentiment among race-goers at least will be one of* sympathy with Horatio Bottomley in the disgrace that he had befallen him,” and also that “we can none of us forget the good work he did for racing in the dark days of the war.” He was, we take it, a born gambler, and all life was a gamble to him. He liked a “flutter” above all tilings, and it was his attempt to introduce the element of “flutter’ into the sale of war bonds that ultimately brought about his rjiin. It is probable that lie was unable to understand how anybody could really enjoy life without the constant excitement of a gamble, lie was seriously convinced that all the objections to gambling were merely the cant of j kill-joys. There was in his character I more than a little of the recklessness j of the eighteenth century English- j man. That is one of the things that j gave him his hold on the public, who always prefer a spendthrift to a miser. I Lavish ness with money, even with ; oilier people’s money, gives many peo- .' pie pleasure, almost as if they were , spending it themselves. j it is probable that we dislike the : gambler less than many better men ! because there is an element of what may almost he called disinterestedness in his vice. He is as reckless with his

own I'atc ns with the fate of other people. He is not a cautious arithmetician of gains. He is a wild Croat- ; ure lolling Jhe bird escape mil of his band in order In pursue the I wo in the bush. Sinners may be divided into 'wo classes-—careful sinners and can'- ; ' -ss sinners; and il is an undoubted n’t. 111 at tin’ world lias always' liked e careless sinners I he better. The' 1 el'ul seducer, I lie careful thief, the "..'fill tyrant—how mean they seem in ; ■pan'san to the rake who ruins him- 1 as well as bis victims, llw gam- j :• who brings poverty on himself j well as ulliers, Hie billhead who I I strike a big man as eagerly as a I !e one! Most of us have a soft sor.._r in our hearts for Harry Richmond's i

father —the prince of imposters in English 'fiction. It enables him to walk along I hr; light rope for a time,’ but. he is never more secure than a light rope walker. We feci a sorl of sympathy for him because he, lives sci dangerously. One might regard him differently if lie 'were a member of one’s own family. But, at a distance, we can take a detached and artistic view of him, and bear his failings with equanimity. There is a common saying about a man who lias gone wrong-: “He is his own worst enemy.’’ ’Pile man who is his own friend lias made an alliance that, immediately rouses our suspicions. The man who is his own enemy lias, at least, divided his forces, and is proportionately less, dangerous. He is marching recklessly to disaster, unci one must be a very keen moralist to pursue him with bitter adjectives.

I Playing on Public Passions. j it may be, however, that Horatio ' Bottomley had a higher claim to a ■fifth-of-a share of disinterestedness than can be deduced from the fact that be was a born gambler. His politics did at times play on the ,lowest passions of the public, ?is in the things he wrote t about German women and children ’ during the war, and especially about those unhappy German pork butchers who happened to have made their homes in England. He wrote on many occasions in the, vilest mood of the persecutor. His influence on the pas-

j sions of the people in matters of this I kind was an exceedingly bad and ugly ; influence. He was on occasion the j most venomous "anti” in British journalism, and his anti-alien propaganda was. of a kind that might easily have , led to pogroms in a less excitable country than England. On ihe other ’ hand, how, except, by a theory of disinterestedness, are -we to explain his 1 altitude to Ireland at a time when Ireland was at its most unpopular in this country? Horatio Bottomley, had he only wished to play on the lowest i passions of the crowd, could easily ! have intensified anti-Irish mob feel\ing in the days of Sir Hamar Greenwood. Instead of this, he came for- , ward boldly with the assertion that the Irish had as much right to selfdetermination as the Czecho-Slovaks, and the proposal that Ireland, excluding Ulster, should be given a republic if it wanted it. Whatever may be said of this policy, no one can pretend Hull it was Hie sort of tiling likely to he . advocated by a man casting about for the most popular tiling to say lo the I mob. It seemed to us again, at the time of tile funeral of Terence Mao--1 Swiney, that Mr BolLomley interpreted the decent, feelings of an English crowd instead of appealing to their worst prejudices.. He was probably on many points in genuine sympathy with the feelings of Hie average man—with, their good feelings as well as their bad. He was John Bull,as well as a humbug. Some people, indeed, hold that John ; Bull is a humbug, and that Mr Bottomley was none the less representative

because of this side of his nature. “Cant of Anti-Cant.” We need hardly say that we do not ' write in defence of Mr Bottomley. We merely suggest that there may have been strands of good interwoven with the strands of evil in his nature, and that part of his popularity may have been due Lo something better than his demagogic cant. He chose, indeed, a highly popular form of can! —-the cant of anti-cant—the humbug of antihumbug. Englishmen .like a man “without any nonsense about him.” which usually means a man-who shares their prejudices and is at heart a bit of a pagan. Mr Bottomly was a pagan against the Puritans, and his cant was mainly pagan cant. But lie mixed his cant with appeals to the spirit of justice, and people liked to read exposures' of Magistrates who would give a heavier senecnce to a man who had stolen a few shillings than to a man who had brutally assaulted a woman. “John Bull was the plain man’s pillory for many malefactors who were pilloried nowhere else. It would be ridiculous lo describe it as a penny "Truth.” But it was Lo some extent' a vulgarised “Truth,” and gave the general public news of a number of petty scandals that might be ended by exposure. ,Alas! “John Bull” did riot expose the greatest scandal of all. it did nol expose Horatio Bottomley. That was left to “Truth.” Mr Bigland, and Hie process of the law. We cannot regret that the exposure has been made, but we cannot, without a tinge of regret, see this amazing figure disappear from the public scene into the silence of a ceil. It is not for us to pass sentence on him. That has already been done by the Judge. All we need comment on is that this energetic and enigmatic demagogue, who was clever enough to have built up a fortune by honest means, was foolisli t.o ruin himself and others by dishonest means, and that a fascinating, grey-haired actor has made his exit from the public life of England.