My life and loves Vol. 2

by Frank Harris

  Kennard hated the Morning Mail and would not hear of putting up the?. 20,000 needed for new machinery, so I persuaded Folkestone to go to Lord Salisbury, the leader of the Conservative Party, and put the matter before him, or rather to let me see him. A day or two later Lord Salisbury sent for me and I called on him in Arlington Street and talked to him for an hour. To me it was evident that The Times would soon have to reduce its price from threepence to a penny or better still to a halfpenny, for the many must be our masters if they were organized; and I went on to show him by figures that it was only the want of machinery that prevented me from getting a circulation of hundreds of thousands in a month or two. He was interested and put probing questions to me. As a young man he had been poor, and even after his marriage had earned his living as a journalist on the Saturday Review, and this vital discipline had made him. But when I told him of my experience in founding the Morning Mail and said that I could get a circulation of a million within six months and make a quarter of a million pounds a year out of the paper, he told me that all I had said had been very interesting, but there was an effect of "foreshortening" in all my enthusiasm. He thought it would take many years to get a million circulation; still he would help me.

  He would ask the Whips to call a meeting of the Conservative party and allow me to address them in the Carlton Club, and if I could get advances from them of the 15,000 or 20,000 pounds I wanted, he would be very glad and more. He said at the end, "I will back the project as far as I can. I think it very possible you will be successful."

  In due time I heard from the Whips and one afternoon I went down and talked about the new halfpenny morning paper to three hundred members of the Conservative party in the Carlton Club. They subscribed-at least they put down the moneys they would be willing to be responsible for — and the Whips came to see me, saying they had put down something like 5,000 pounds. I got up at once and said, "That lets me out. I will have nothing to do with the attempt to make bricks without straw; but within ten years some of you will be very sorry that you did not put money in the first halfpenny morning paper proposed to you. When you find in twenty years or so from today a halfpenny paper more influential than The Times and making half a million yearly, you will wonder why you did not take a flutter, at least, in it." I was cheered by one or two people, but I was disgusted at the idea that I had put the price as low as I could, and that I had got hardly more than one quarter of what I wanted.

  The first Whip came to me and said, "You ought to take the money and come back in six months and they would give you much more. You can get all you want; why throw the handle after the blade?"

  "I have come to the parting of the ways," I replied. "I was and am eager to go on with the work, but to go on crippled for a few thousand pounds and to beg and beg and make the plans obvious and expatiate on the proven is not my game; I had rather give it all up. I am going to Rome for six months' holiday."

  A big man came to me while I was talking to the Whip and said, "You know you interested me profoundly. My name is Henniker Heaton. I made my money on a paper in Sydney, Australia, and I think you and I might talk business."

  "I shall be delighted," I said, "but it must be very soon, for I am going to Rome unless I get 20,000 pounds down." He said he would come and see me in the office, and he came, and I more or less took to him, but he wanted time to consider the matter and I wasn't going to give him any time. Again and again Walter of The Times had told me that if I would take a position on The Times he would give it to me; but I had done three years of extremely hard work and in the three years had hardly grown at all intellectually. I wanted some new mental nourishment, wanted to see Rome and study it, and read Ranke and Mommsen and study them and try to grow a little. For travel and reading were already the bread and meat of my mind.

  This idea made Henniker Heaton grin. He thought making money and getting a position was the only thing in the world, and the moment I discovered this in him, I had no more interest in what he said. I went to see Lord Folkestone and after a talk with him I called a meeting of the directors of the Evening News and got four months' vacation, and forthwith left for Rome. Oh! I was to blame. Success had come to me too easily in London. I ought to have taken the Whip's advice and gone on with the paper. I should have got all the money I needed and made the Morning Mail the success the Daily Mail became ten years later, and founded my future on a secure basis of hundreds of thousands of pounds income. But I had won so easily that I took no account of money or the power that money gives, and I went away casually to the most delightful holiday in Rome, which led to my severing my connection not only with the Morning Mail, but also the Evening News, as I shall tell in due course.

  It was in 1887,1 think, that a little Jew called Leopold Graham came to the Evening News office with some piece of city news. He had no notion of writing and was poorly educated, but he had a smattering of common French phrases and a real understanding of company promoting and speculative city business. He interested me at once and we became friendly, if not friends.

  He told me he was working with Douglas Macrae on the Financial Times and there he had met Horatio Bottomley, whom he described as one of the wiliest men in the city of London. I was interested in the competition between the Financial Times and the Financial News, directed by the Jew, Harry Marks. I had got to like Marks; he had had his education as a journalist in New York and was an interesting personality: a man of good height and figure and strong face without marked Jewish features. We became friendly almost at once, though as soon as I took to reading the News I saw that Marks had few scruples and many interests.

  Macrae made the impression on me of being a harder worker even than Marks, and perhaps a little more scrupulous. I shall never forget how Macrae pressed me one day early in our acquaintance to lunch with him in his office.

  He could give me a good chop, he said, and a first-rate bottle of "fizz," and as the business we were talking over promised well, I consented. At once he called for "Harmsworth, Alfred Harmsworth," and a youth of perhaps twenty or so came into the room, a good-looking fellow whom Macrae commissioned to cook half a dozen chops and to get besides a salad and a Camembert cheese. It was all procured swiftly and deftly put on the table and we lunched fairly well. I hardly noticed Alfred Harms-worth at all.

  Bottomley made a far deeper impression on me than any other journalist: he was nearer my own age and Graham had already praised his ability to me enthusiastically-and Ikey was no fool. Bottomley was a trifle shorter even than I was, perhaps five feet four or five, but very broad and even then, when only seven and twenty, threatened to become stout. He had a very large head, well-balanced, too, with good forehead and heavy jaws; the eyes small and grey; the peculiarity of the face a prodigiously long upper lip: he was clean-shaven and his enormous upper lip reminded me at once of the giant Charles Bradlaugh. When I mentioned the fact to Graham afterwards, he replied at once, "Some say he's an illegitimate son of Bradlaugh. In any case, he has the most profound esteem and liking for him, thinks him one of the greatest men of this time."

  "He's not far wrong," was my comment. At the time, I was too busy with my own work on the Evening News to pay much attention to financial journalism, and some time elapsed before I got to know any of them at all intimately.

  In 1888 or '89 Graham told me that Bottomley had bought the Hansard Union and was going to bring out a great company. Everyone knew the name of Hansard as publishers of the debates in Parliament, and like most other people, I had imagined that Hansard had some official status or rights. To my astonishment I learned that Hansard was merely a printing and publishing firm to which Parliament had given the contract to publish a complete account of its proceedings. Graham made me see that a big public company with this well known name and function would certainly be supported enthusiastically by the investing public. One day Graham brought Bottomley to see me. We lunched together, I think, at the Cafe Royale, and almost at once Bottomley told me of the Hansard Union Company. "An assured
success," he declared, and then asked me point blank if I could get Lord Folkestone and Coleridge Kennard to be directors. I told him I'd think it over. Off-hand he said to me, "Get me those two names as directors and I'll give you a cheque for?. 10,000."

  "Big pay," I ejaculated, "and I love big figures. But tell me, what have you paid for all the companies you're going to amalgamate and what is the capitalization?" Without demur and with astonishing exactitude he gave me all the figures. I took notes and afterwards I said, "Practically, you are buying all the businesses for?. 200,000 and are selling them to the company for a million?"

  "I may add a quarter of a million debentures," he rejoined coolly. Needless to say, he added, the quarter of a million alone left him a swinging profit. Next day I put the thing before Folkestone. He said, "If you advise it, Frank, I'll do it: why not?" I told him that in my opinion the venture was overcapitalised and must fail, and he said at once, "That finishes it, Frank, so far as I am concerned; but tell me what Coleridge Kennard says." Coleridge Kennard, when I put the matter before him, said that the capitalization mattered nothing to him: everyone knew that one sold at a profit, if one could. I gave Bottomley Coleridge Kennard's name but refused to take any money for it.

  In a couple of years what I foresaw happened. At first the amalgamated companies paid large dividends-if I recollect aright, two in the very first year-and then the whole thing fell into bankruptcy and people spoke of it as "Bottomley's swindle." The failure came too soon, the ruin was too big; it shocked business people. Very soon it was brought before the courts and The Queen vs. Bottomley was the chief event of the day. I went to hear the criminal trial and was never more amused in my life or more interested. It came before Mr. Justice Hawkins, who was known as the "hanging judge," certainly the severest judge in half a century in London. What chance did Bottomley stand before such a tribunal? I was to learn what brains could do.

  At first the case went badly for Bottomley. It was very clear that the business had been overcapitalised and hundreds of thousands of pounds must have gone into Bottomley's pocket. But as soon as he stood up to address the court, all this faded to irrelevance. From the beginning by sheer genius he took the bull by the horns. "I'm glad," he began, "heart-glad that I'm before Mr. Justice 'awkins. He has the name of being a severe judge, but his ability was never questioned; it's his ability I rely on today in my hour of need, his power of getting to the bottom of a complicated business."

  From such compliments he went on to a detailed history of the purchase of the various companies. Time and again when he told of acquiring a new company, he drew the attention of the Judge pointedly to the fact that, though the price might seem high, this new business helped to complete and sustain the larger fabric he had in mind. "I want to make my idea clear to you, my Lud!" was the burden of his long, quiet and eminently persuasive exposition. His show of frankness was as wonderful as his detailed knowledge.

  Before he had finished, even the barristers in the court were won over to admiration: a Q.C. said, "I've never listened to so complete a statement." One and all forgot that Bottomley had lived for months with every business he had to describe; nothing was astonishing to me, save the point-blank compliments to the Judge he lavished in and out of season. Long before the end of the trial he had converted one of the strongest judges on the bench into his advocate and assistant. Bottomley not only won his case, but turned the judge into his personal friend, who believed not only in his ability but in his integrity. Some time afterwards Mr. Justice Hawkins gave Bottomley the wig and gown he had worn all his life as a Judge. The whole incident is unique in the history of the English bench and proves Bottomley's astounding cleverness as nothing else could. Clearly, he was a man of genius.

  But if the lights were high, the shadows were heavy. If he had guided the amalgamated businesses for five years, he might have earned the half million or so he made out of the amalgamation, but to drop his bantling almost as soon as it came to the birth showed cynical contempt, I thought, for public opinion, and indeed for anything but money. Moreover, his long speech at the trial discovered time and again an ignorance of grammar and a cockney incapacity to pronounce the letter h, which was astonishing in so able a man.

  The same Q.C. who had praised his long exposition turned to me at the end with the remark, "A d… d clever outsider!"

  I always thought that if Bottomley had gone for a couple of years to Germany or to France for hard serious study he might have been one of the masters and guides of the new time, but his ignorance kept his appeal always on a low level and directed it to the all but lowest class.

  He wasn't much more ignorant than Lord Randolph Churchill, but Churchill didn't drop his h's, and if he had, the English would have taken it as an amiable eccentricity in the son of a Duke.

  Look at Horatio Bottomley! What is the characteristic of that short, stout, broad figure, that heavy jowl and double chin? Surely greed. He was greedy of all the sensual pleasures, intensely greedy; even at thirty he ate too much and habitually drank too much. To see him lunching at Romano's with two or three of his intimates, usually subordinates, with a pretty chorus girl on one side and another siren opposite, while the waiter uncorked the fourth or fifth bottle of champagne, was to see the man as he was. He was greedy, too, of power, and vain as a peacock, wanted always to have a paper at his command, and of the half dozen he owned never brought one to success, save John Bull, which was a success simply through the blind patriotism excited by the World War.

  He went into Parliament, and I remember that he told me once in a moment of expansion that he would yet be Chancellor of the Exchequer. Rhodes a little later made much the same confession to me, and Rhodes had a better chance by far than Bottomley, for he had founded himself upon a great fortune, and though nearly as ignorant as Bottomley, he didn't drop his h's and had all the outward marks of a better class education. I told Rhodes he would hardly succeed, and I didn't disguise from Bottomley that he had no earthly chance. "There are half a dozen men of real ability in the House of Commons," I said, "of ability to be compared to yours; Hicks-Beach, for example, is of high character and has besides a touch of genius; Balfour has extraordinary charm of person and mind and much reading to boot;

  Chamberlain, too, has real ability and a great fortune acquired within ordinary rules: these three will all be against you with a savage injustice of antagonism, for they all look on the prizes of a political life as their appanage.

  On the other side, you have Gladstone, who is an aristocrat at heart, and Dilke ditto, and Parnell, and Redmond, and Healy: all will be down on you, for you neither represent nor care for their democratic gospel or their personal ambitions. Then there are John Burns and Cunninghame Graham, who will hate you because of your indifference to ideal causes. In fact, all the leaders of all the parties will turn the cold shoulder to you, and to get to the top from your stand-point seems to me utterly impossible."

  "You think you could do it?"

  "I have not so many handicaps," I retorted, "but I'm beginning to doubt whether the driving power of desire is there."

  "That's in me," he said smiling, and set his great jaw; and I could not but agree.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  The Ebb and flow of passion!

  All this while I've said nothing of my love affair with Laura, though it didn't slacken in any way; on the contrary, it grew with indulgence and frequent meetings. My passion for her is the explanation of a great part of my sex-life, so I must tell it here as honestly as I can.

  Love, they say, is blind, and if they mean thereby that the secrets of attraction lie too deep for discovery, they are right enough; but love sees many things, virtues as well as faults, unimagined by the ordinary observer.

  For years I used to take Laura to lunch twice a week in a private room; why I didn't marry her, I can hardly say. Again and again I was on the point of proposing it when something would come to check me. For example, I met a broker on the stock exchange who put me in one or two good thin
gs, while I got certain articles published that did him good. In 1886 already I had made some thousands, and as soon as I had banked it, I told Laura I would give her?. 10 a week; and of course I paid regularly, often supplementing the weekly sum with a check for?. 50. Once she asked me for?. 300. I gave it at once.

  And then Laura or her mother took it into their hands to go to the United States, and Laura sent me back photos of herself in bathing costume on Long Island that drove me crazy with jealousy and revived all my suspicions. But worse happened!

  On their return, while looking for rooms they stayed for a short time in the Charing Cross Hotel. It has always been my custom not only to tip liberally, but to take a personal interest in dependents, and so often I get extraordinary service. One evening I happened to come to the hotel with the news of a play that I knew would interest Laura. I was told by the head-waiter, whom I liked and often had a talk with, that Miss Clapton was in the small salon on the first floor; and he ran up obligingly and when we were at the door, he threw it wide open and turned away. Two persons, a man and a woman, were seated on the sofa opposite; the man must have had his arm round the girl from the startled way they sprang apart: it was Laura and some man who got up and stood waiting while she came over to me. "I am surprised!" she said, with that astounding naturalness of the woman. "What good wind blows you here?" I could hardly speak; jealousy seemed to have passed into cold, sardonic hatred: I could not trust myself to speak. I took out the tickets and handed them to her. "Won't you wait for Mother?" she asked, smiling. I wonder I didn't strike her; I turned and went without a word.

  I made up my mind then and there that I would never marry her. The mad rage of my jealousy frightened me; had I been married to her and had had the same shock, I might have killed her. All the way home I raged. I never knew who the man was; I never tried to find out: he was indifferent to me; it was her traitorism that counted. I sat down in my house and thought. "Why rage?" I asked myself. "Treat her as your mistress; simply tell her quietly that if you get one more suspicion, you'll never see her again. Let her know it's final. She doesn't want to lose your money and your little gifts: be ruthless."