For those who went on there were moments of great elation. On 6 January, they crossed the line of latitude at which Shackleton had turned back and believed that they had reached further south than any other human being. On 13 January, they marched fourteen and a half miles in one day. Two days later they saw something on the horizon which looked like a snow-covered cairn or tent. They all agreed it must be a trick of the light or a heap of snow thrown up by the swirling wind. Then they noticed that above the heap of snow a flag flew from a broken sledge-iron. Amundsen had beaten them to the Pole. The paw prints explained part of the reason for his success. He had relied on dogs, not human indomitability.
The knowledge of failure made it more difficult to ignore adversity. Oates, Evans and Bowers all developed severe frostbite. Gangrene infected a cut which Evans had sustained the previous day. They put on a half-smile for the photographs and noted with satisfaction that Amundsen had left a letter, confirming his success, for them to send to King Haakon. He, at least, had never doubted that they would reach the Pole. Then they set off back, ‘800 miles of solid dragging – and goodbye to the daydreams!’38
They covered less ground every day. Evans was the first to die, delirious from the infection in his hand. Scott’s diary got very near to admitting that it was a blessed relief – not for Evans himself but for his companions, who could bear the burden of a sick and raging man no longer. A comparison of miles and rations led to an inescapable conclusion. ‘I doubt if we can possibly do it.’39
Oates, half dead from frostbite and scurvy which opened the scar on his Boer War wound, had to be pulled on a sledge. He speculated about the morality of suicide and decided that, although it was a sick man’s duty to relieve his friends of the liability, it was wrong to take his own life. So, on 17 March, having decided that he could go no further, and after being denied his request to be left in his sleeping bag in the snow, he walked out into the night. On the same day, Scott realised that his frostbite was so bad that, even if they got home, he would lose his right foot.
They did not get home. But somehow, Wilson, Bowers and the crippled Scott struggled on for twelve more days. They proposed to die like heroes. ‘We shall march for the depot and die in our tracks.’40 But that last dignity was denied them. The end came as the three last survivors lay in their snow-covered tent, too weak to move. It seems that Scott was the last to die. For his letters to the relatives of his comrades were written as if his companions were already dead. His message to the public was intended as a vindication. The expedition had been frustrated by bad luck and bad weather. In truth, that was only half the story. It had also been confounded by bad planning and poor preparation. Oates had written, even before the expedition had left Britain, that ‘it would not be difficult getting to the Pole provided you have the proper transport, but with the rubbish we have it will be jolly difficult …’41 He had identified ‘narrow chested and knock-kneed horses’, but thought it was not proper for him to question his commanding officer’s judgement. British indomitability had been confounded by British respect for rank.
Amundsen was first to the Pole because he had relied on dogs and took the shortest route. But Scott had achieved one of his aims. ‘… for my own sake I do not regret this journey which has shown that Englishmen can endure hardships, help one another and meet death with as great a fortitude as ever in the past … Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman.’ The Promethean dream had come true. Men had lived and died with the courage of the gods.
Scott was not the last Edwardian to feel the irresistible attraction of Antarctic exploration. The Pole itself had lost its fascination, but in the autumn of 1913, Ernest Shackleton boldly announced his intention to cross the South Polar Continent – from the Weddell to the Ross Sea. It was, he said, ‘the last great Polar journey that can be made’ and he added, as an afterthought for potential backers, ‘the complete continental nature of the Antarctic can be absolutely solved by such a journey’. The expedition, like Scott’s before it, was a heroic failure. Shackleton’s ship, the Endurance, was caught in the pack ice and crushed. The crew, stranded on an ice floe, seemed doomed, but after a forced march across the frozen sea found temporary refuge on Elephant Island. Then Shackleton, in one of the epic journeys of British history, navigated an open boat through the Antarctic Ocean before crossing the snow-covered mountains of South Georgia. None of the marooned men doubted he would return. It was another exhibition of the courage, hardiness and endurance which Scott valued so highly, and it marked the end of the Edwardian hopes of romantic glory. Shackleton’s second expedition had sailed south from Plymouth on 8 August 1914.
*Shackleton’s pride took a different form. After his first expedition he applied for a Royal Naval Commission but was turned down. An offer to promote him to lieutenant in the reserve was contingent on his passing a drill examination. He declined, without thanks, but continued to call himself Lieutenant.5
†Now called the Ross Ice Shelf.
*In the circumstances Shackleton can be forgiven for omitting several necessary full stops. I have taken the liberty of inserting them.
CHAPTER 19
Halfpenny Dreadful
Alfred Charles William Harmsworth, First Viscount Northcliffe, although inclined to moments of maudlin sentimentality, did not heap on others praise which he thought was rightly due to him. But an obituary which he wrote for The Times in 1910 modestly renounced all claims to be regarded as the father of twentieth-century journalism. The leader of the Fleet Street revolution was, he insisted, George Newnes. ‘Most of [his] earlier publications were new ideas hitherto untried in English journalism and their distinguishing mark was a striking unusual success. Mr Newnes had found a market which had been created by the spread of popular education and he proceeded to extend still further the operations of his publishing houses.’1
By identifying Newnes as the true begetter of what was called ‘New Journalism’ – a description which Matthew Arnold had first employed to distinguish the popular press from the more serious writing which bore his by-line – Harmsworth was uncharacteristically overgenerous. Newspapers had begun to change long before Newnes founded Tit-Bits in 1881. The press ‘campaign’, usually associated with a sensational cause, had been a feature of W. T. Stead’s leadership of the Pall Mall Gazette, first as deputy and then as editor in the 1880s. His demands had included ‘Send General Gordon to the Sudan’ and ‘Strengthen the Navy Now’. And what he had called ‘The Maiden Tribute Modern Babylon’ – the true story of a girl sold into prostitution – had aroused such passions that Stead was sent to prison after he demonstrated the ease with which a child could be procured by purchase.
The idea of campaigns, as a way of increasing circulation as well as changing the world, was taken up by T. P. O.’ Connor, a radical and Irish Nationalist MP. O’Connor founded the Star (an evening paper) in 1886 and the Morning Leader (its daily counterpart) in 1892. The Star claimed a world record by selling 142,000 copies on the first day of its publication. Each one of the papers subscribed to the ‘New Journalism’ as laid down by O’Connor himself. ‘Lifeless’ reports were condemned. Stories which described ‘the habits, the clothes or the home and social life’ of any famous person were exalted. According to O’Connor, the great Lord Macaulay was the pioneer of New Journalism. He ‘did not neglect … the smallest detail – the kind of wig his hero wore, the food he loved, the way he tied his shoe … Apart from the value of personal journalism to historical material, I hold that the desire for personal details with regards to public men is healthy, rational and should be yielded to.’2
George Newnes, writing to W. T. Stead, defended his school of journalism in language which was less pretentious and therefore more convincing.
There is one kind of journalism that directs the affairs of nations and makes and unmakes cabinets. It upsets governments, builds up great names and does many other gr
eat things. This is your journalism. There is another sort which has no such great ambitions. It is content to plod on, year after year, giving wholesome and harmless entertainment to crowds of hard-working people craving for a little fun and amusement. It is quite humble and unpretentious. That is my journalism.3
There were, in fact, two sorts of New Journalism. Both were intended for the consumption of the wider readership which, it was supposed, had been created by the 1870 Education Act. One hoped to present serious news more palatably. The other intended to entertain with items which were so inconsequential that they amounted to little more than trivia. Both realised that layouts had to be modernised in a way which matched the papers content. When, in 1895, the Morning Post adopted ‘cross heads’ to split up long paragraphs, W. T. Stead believed it ‘wonderful that such an innovation should be adopted by so conservative a journal’. The Times’s report of Goschen’s 1888 budget speech had covered eight columns without break. What, Stead wondered, ‘would have been thought of a publisher who should [sic] bring out a book without the relief of so much as a paragraph from start to finish?’4 Yet the habit persisted. As late as 1913 Lord Rosebery asked the London Press Club, ‘Did any leader of the last twenty years ever read the speeches which were reported? I have no doubt that those whose duty it is to criticise, laud or rebuke them in the Public press felt it their painful duty to read the speeches. But did anyone else? … I can conscientiously say, having been a speaker myself, that I could never find anybody who read my speeches.’5
Newnes felt no great obligation to report Lord Rosebery’s speeches in a way which guaranteed their wider dissemination and understanding. According to folklore, while working as a fancy goods salesman he had noticed a particularly arresting paragraph in a newspaper and said to his wife, ‘Now that’s what I call a tit-bit. Why doesn’t someone bring out a paper containing tit-bits like this?’6 A year later, that is exactly what he did.
Tit-Bits – or to give it the full title which appeared on its first masthead, Tit-Bits from all the Most Interesting Books, Periodicals and Newspapers of the World – was an instant success. Six months after it was launched, a publisher who had refused to give Newnes credit before publication day offered to buy the title for £16,000. The offer was refused. Circulation was increased by the innovation of special offers and competitions. Readers were given £100 free insurance against railway accidents. A series of clues, published in successive issues, led the way to ‘hidden treasure’ of five hundred sovereigns. Within a year, circulation had increased to 700,000. Newnes was ready to expand.
The Review of Reviews, a digest of other newspapers which was launched by Newnes in conjunction with Stead, was not his style. He sold his interest to his partner. But a vast market awaited the launch of the sort of periodical which appealed to his populist nature. The end of the nineteenth century was the age of new publications. Between 1866 (when the Companies Act eased the rules of limited liability) and the beginning of the First World War, 4,000 newspaper companies were formed in London and the provinces. Newnes pioneered and published (as well as Tit-Bits) The Strand Magazine, the Westminster Gazette, the Daily Courier, the Million, Picture Politics, Woman’s Life, Navy and Army Illustrated, Country Life, Ladies’ Field, World Wide Magazine, the Captain and C. B. Fry’s Magazine. During the years of his great expansion, he recruited and trained dozens of young journalists. Among them were C. Arthur Pearson, who went on to be the second most powerful newspaper tycoon of Edwardian Britain, and Alfred Harmsworth, the dominant figure in Edwardian journalism.
It was Tit-Bits that convinced Harmsworth that ‘the Board schools are turning out hundreds of thousands of boys and girls annually who are anxious to read. They do not care for the ordinary newspapers. They have no interest in society but they will read anything which is simple and sufficiently interesting. The man who started Tit-Bits has got hold of a bigger thing than he imagines … [I] could start one of those newspapers for a couple of thousand pounds. At any rate I am going to make an attempt.’7
He did not launch the new enterprise at once. By the time that he was twenty he had edited both Youth and Bicycling News, a publication with its headquarters in Coventry. Harmsworth lasted in the West Midlands for just over a year. Then, with £100 of savings, he decided that the time had come to move on. He was ready both for marriage and editing his own magazine.
The two initiatives went naturally together. Molly Harmsworth was required to perform the drudgery of publication while her husband wrote the copy. The first issue of the new venture, Answers to Correspondents, was published on 16 June 1888. Its masthead claimed that it was ‘number three’. For the idea of answers to readers’ queries to be plausible, it was necessary to invent a time during which the questions might have been asked. In fact, most of them were written by Harmsworth himself.
The format proved hugely popular. Circulation rose so fast that the Harmsworths found capital easy to raise. When Harold – Alfred’s brother, who was supervising the business side of the enterprise – found difficulty in working with the family which had provided the initial loan, the early investors were paid off and bought out with an annuity of £2,400 a year. Newnes met the competition by increasing circulation. Tit-Bits would increase its sales not by improving its journalism but by ‘promotions’.
A game – silver-plated ball bearings rolled into holes in the bottom of a two-inch-square glass-covered matchwood box – was available to Tit-Bits’ readers at the concessionary price of twopence. Its name, Pigs in Clover, helped to increase sales to 2,500,000. Over 700,000 subscribers entered a competition to guess the amount of gold held by the Treasury on a nominated day. The impact of the stunt was increased by requiring every entry to be validated by five other Tit-Bits readers. The prize, a pound a week for life, was financed by the investment of £1,100. Tit-Bit’s annual net profit rose to £30,000.
Money, and the confidence it bred, led naturally to new enterprises. Harmsworth retaliated against his rivals with new titles. First came Comic Cuts, ‘Amusing without Being Vulgar’. Then Illustrated Chips was launched, followed by Boys’ Home Journal, Pluck, Marvel, Boy’s Friend, Home Sweet Home, Forget-Me-Not and Home Chat, ‘The Daintiest Little Magazine in the World’. But he still lacked a daily newspaper to give him the power and prestige that he craved.
Although he was one of nature’s predators, Alfred Harmsworth did not prowl the newspaper jungle looking for carrion to bear away. The Evening News had been in deep financial trouble for years when two enterprising young men, Louis Tracy and Kennedy Jones, approached the Harmsworth brothers with the suggestion that it could make a fortune for an owner who dragged it into the age of New Journalism. Harold Harmsworth, always cautious, advised that it should be bought only ‘if it could be picked up for a song’.8 Alfred embarked on a more thorough investigation. ‘After a hard day’s work in editing, managing and writing our periodicals, my brother and I met Mr Jones night after night … in an endeavour to find out what was wrong with the Evening News and why that newspaper was such a failure.’9
The enquiry concluded that the paper lacked both ‘continuity of policy’ and ‘management control’. The Harmsworth brothers supplied both. They also changed the typeface from reticent to bold, reduced the coverage of politics and Parliament and, in a stroke of genius, introduced football pools. ‘Talking Points’ dealt with such varied subjects as ‘How Timetables are Made’ and ‘Should We Smoke in Cemeteries?’ The distribution system was reorganised, a system for verifying sales figures was introduced to justify increased advertising rates, and newsprint costs were cut almost in half.
Ownership of the most successful evening paper in London did not satisfy Alfred Harmsworth. Nothing ever did. The next step forward had to be a national daily. Planning began in 1894. Before the first issue went on sale, £40,000 was spent printing five dummy runs. It took two years to make sure that the new paper met the needs of an increasingly demanding public. On 5 May 1896, what had originally been called the Arrow went o
n sale under the name of the Daily Mail. It cost one halfpenny.
The first issue was heralded by a unique advertisement. ‘Four leading articles, a page of Parliament and columns of speeches will not be found in the Daily Mail,’10 It did, however, include ‘a story about the increasing cycle of crime’ (which contained not one new fact) and an article extolling the virtues of motor travel. The longest and the most serious piece in the whole paper explained why it could be produced and sold so cheaply. ‘Our type is set by machinery and we can produce thousands of papers per hour – cut, folded and, if necessary, with the pages pasted together. It is the use of these new inventions on a scale unprecedented in any English newspaper office that enables the Daily Mail to effect savings of 30% or 50%.’ Estimates of the exact speed at which the new machinery worked varied. Harmsworth himself claimed 96,000 copies per hour11 but Kennedy Jones, retained in the brothers’ service after the acquisition of the Evening News, put the figure at over 200,000.12
Lord Salisbury, the Prime Minister, sent Harmsworth a telegram congratulating him on the Daily Mail’s success. In private, he called it a paper ‘produced by office boys for office boys’. His attitude was no more ambivalent, some would say hypocritical, than the paper’s own attitude towards editorial policy. The Harmsworths spoke of, and sometimes actually believed in, their papers’ mission to educate. ‘One of the greatest forces, almost untapped, at the disposal of the press [is] the depth of public interest in imperial questions.’ The Daily Mail became ‘the champion of the greatness, the superiority of the British Empire … The embodiment and the mouthpiece of the imperial idea … If Rudyard Kipling can be called the voice of Empire in English Literature, we may fairly claim to be the voice of Empire in London journalism.’13
The Edwardians Page 48