Come Here Till I Tell You

The Dwarfs' Gazette

By PATRICK CAMPBELL

AT any moment—the state of emergency seems to have been in progress for months- Odhams will be taking over the Hulton Press and with it the Dwarfs' Gazette, or Lilliput magazine.

The Gazette may disappear altogether, or some version of it may be used in the Armageddon that's approaching between the giant publishing combines, but. before Odhams sinks it or shoots it I'd like to record something of the private life of this gallant little veteran, which has sur- vived the attentions of five editors in my time alone.

I became employed by Lilliput by a process which would put the London School of Journalism out of business if it ever became the norm. Work- ing for the Irish Times, I was going to the Aran Islands, at the mouth of Galway Bay, in pursuit of the Governor-General of the Belgian Congo, who was alleged to be on holiday in Kilronan for the purpose of brushing up his Irish—a totally improbable assignment, but a fair example of the lengths to which I was driven to fill a column every day.

On the Dun Aengus, the little steamer which plied between Galway and the islands, I saw a distinguished and obviously English citizen lean- ing over the rail, wrapped in the gloom that often comes to strangers in these parts when they begin to appreciate the full density of the Celtic Twilight. Soft Atlantic rain was drifting down. Behind the funnel a delirium tremens victim was having a kind of seizure, to the indignation of a nurse called Josie, who'd supposed that the sea trip would do him good.

Against his background of hoarse cries de- nouncing demons, I introduced myself to the stranger, who turned out to be Tom Hopkinson, the editor of Picture Post. I presumed, imme- diately, that he was after.the Governor-General too, and we had a short, confused conversation, Tom replying only in monosyllables to my specu- lations about the number of Irish speakers in the Congo Basin. In the end, when I discovered that he was merely on holiday and had never heard Of the Governor-General, he advised me to try my hand at writing for Lilliput. 'You seem,' he said, `to have something of the style.'

It was in this way that 1 wrote my first piece for the magazine not, as it turned out, about Irish- speaking natives of the Congo, but about the dangers of leaping naked out of baths and getting trapped in linen-cupboards with screaming maids while looking for a towel. 1 sent it by post and made a personal call some days later to see how it was getting on.

Lilliput in those days was in Colley House. a new office building off Shoe Lane. I was walking down the passage on my way to the Editor's room when another door opened and a gaunt, bearded tramp, dressed almost in rags, stepped out. 'Thank you so much, John,' he said, in a polished Oxford accent, 'I'll give your love to Mother:'

The man he'd called John was in shirt-sleeves. His grey hair came down over his ears in a bob, like Lloyd George. He showed the tramp to the stairs, and addressed himself to me. 'He's walked all the way from Blackheath, to touch me for nine- pence,' he said, with pride. 'Marvellous person- ality, hasn't he?' He went into his room again. I liked the feel of the place immediately, and knocked with high expectation on the Editor's door.

A short, prematurely grey young man opened it, stepping over a carpet of photographs spread all over the floor. This was Richard Bennett, who was to be my protector, companion and source of nearly all inspiration for the next five years. 'The mind,' he announced, 'is at the end of its tether. Can you possibly think of a caption for any of these cursed things?'

I'd run, head on, into the famous Lilliput juxtapositions—the photographs of, perhaps, the Red Dean on one side and a morose-looking camel on the other, waiting to be joined by some suitably acid comment. There were Spanish dancers and fighting cocks, sword-swallowers and spaghetti-

eaters. Mahatma Gandhi and a baby in a nappy and some men on the hands of Big Ben, doublec with others on the yardarm of a grain ship. 'What about Tick and Tack for that one?' I suggested for the sake of suggesting something.

'Thank God,' said Richard. do.' By the time we got back from lunch I was on the payroll, in a capacity that neither of us was able to define. The long voyage from the Aran Islands had reached its end. I'd become a member of one of the most compact little groups of eccentrics who were working together in Fleet Street at that time.

There was John Symonds, with the grey, bobbed hair, who was writing a life of Aleister Crowley, in a red blazer belonging to the departed Beast, and therefore in close touch with the fouler side of the Occult. 'I want to write a story,' John would say, 'about an old man who died in agony in the workhouse, aged ninety, having strangled himself upside down in his deceased wife's corset, It's sure to be popular with the masses.'

There was Mechtild Nawiasky, a volatile Austrian lady who looked after the photographs and shared a room with John. She wore clothes of the most astonishingly diversified character, and had a passion for zoos and clowns. She and John, working side by side, ceased to be on speaking terms for periods as long as a month. They com- municated with one another in terse memos, which they gave to Richard to be forwarded.

There was James Boswell, the Art Editor, a genial, almost white-haired Australian painter of what 1 used to call 'the hairy armpit, pockmarked nostril school.' He and Richard were suspected of being in the pay of Moscow by certain elements on the management side, for the reason, so far as I could make out, that Richard had taken some part in the Spanish Civil War, and had hired Boswell off his own bat.

It's fair to say that the only opinion I ever heard Richard deliver about that conflict was a mild censure of the excessive hardihood of Ernest Hemingway. He was sitting, he told me, in a bar in Madrid when the door burst open and an unidenti- fied citizen shot the stranger, on the bench next door to him, stone dead. When Richard recovered consciousness it was to find himself being rebuked by a henchman whom Hemingway had despatched from the other, and safe, side of the room. 'Ernie,' said the henchman, 'don't like guys who blink.'

We also had Maurice Richardson who, in addition to a devotion to reptiles, coloured boxers and dwarfs—he was responsible for the title 'The Dwarfs' Gazette'—was also indissolubly wedded to an endless entourage of female shop-lifters, gentlemen cracksmen, sneak thieves and confi- dence tricksters, who sidled in and out of the office, providing information for his monthly piece about crime.

One of his special familiars—described by Maurice as 'a rodent-type hominid'—was a small- time burglar called Blackie, who presented an appearance of such criminality that 'he couldn't even carry a pair of kippers home after dark with- out getting nicked.'

The rodent-type hominid regarded Maurice. whom he called `Morry,' not only as a source of income but also as a father, and on one occasion invited him to sit in on a deal, in a pub in Charing Cross Road, involving Big Kitty, the fastest shop. lifter in Kingston, and Little Elsie, her equivalent in Southend. When Maurice got to the pub bc

found that his function was to serve as stakeholder in a take-over bid. Little Elsie wished to purchase Blackie, as a going concern, from Big Kitty for the sum of thirty shillings, and further payment in kind, represented by a hot twin-set, two blankets and a plastic bath. 'On the concluson of the deal,' Maurice told us afterwards.—he looked drawn— emerged from the public-house with a feathered and bedizened beldame on either arm, while Blackie brought up the rear, carrying both ladies' shoplifting bags,' It was a measure of Richard's liberality towards all human beings that he took on Blackie as a houseboy when he'd ceased to serve any purpose as a source of information, and had, indeed, knocked off Maurice's typewriter while his patron was out at lunch. Blackie brought back another, better, machine when he heard that he was to be employed as a gentleman's gentleman, and went with the Bennett family on holiday to Devon. Sup- posing, however, that milk was still in short supply, in gratitude for Richard's generosity he knocked off nearly a dozen bottles a day when the van called, for the nourishment of Richard's four children. When it was explained to him that war- time shortages were over, and that milk could be purchased honestly, cheaply and in large quanti- ties, he disappeared in the middle of one night for ever, leaving a note to the effect that there was no real purpose in him staying on.

Another of Maurice's familiars was a stately, well-covered citizen called College Harry, who'd made a living in his pre-literary days by stalking circumspectly about unoccupied rooms at the better universities. Although the song was over for Harry the Memory certainly lingered on. Once, when we gave a party for our more distinguished contributors, Maurice induced Harry to put in an appearance in a mortar-board and gown. Towards the end of the proceedings I spotted Harry filling his pockets with cigarettes from a free-issue box on the table. I went up behind him and breathed in his ear, 'All right, College—it's a fair cop.'

He must have risen nearly a foot in the air. When he came down, clutching his heart, he rounded on me indignantly, 'Gawd, boy,' he said, 'don't muck about with things you don't under- stand.'

These unlikely elements were liable to fuse—or to split—without warning. Once, when the management expressed a fear that we were 'all too much of the same mind to give the magazine a proper degree of variety.' Richard arranged a lunch at which they could meet us en masse. By a happy chance, largely created by free port, we quarrelled so bitterly among ourselves that the proceedings came to a premature end, before someone was struck in the face.

We were solidly united, however, on the occa- sion when we inspected one of the largest insur- ance buildings in London. Lunch had again taken place, in celebration, I think, of the birth of Maurice's daughter. We werewwalking back to the office, smoking cigars and hailing strangers as friends, when as one man, seeing it open to us, we turned into the insurance company's marbled hall and, with a nod to the commissionaire, passed on,into a room the size of R railway station, filled shoulder to shoulder with typists and clerks; We separated. to examine and commend the work they were doing, explaining that it was a routine inspectiOn. The workers, despite the density of the Jamaica cigar smoke, accepted our congratu- lations without question, and even a measure of relief.

Encouraged by this, we mounted to the first floor, which turned out to be the executive suite. Selecting a %polished mahogany door at random, we opened it in a body. A harassed-looking director, with a carnation, was seated at a large desk, up to his ears in documents.

'Inspection,' we said. 'All well here? Got all you want?' He nodded humbly and eagerly. He thanked us as we left.

Crazed now with power, we mounted even higher, up a narrow staircase, opened an arched doorway, and found ourselves in what was, in- credibly, a private chapel. We remained there long enough for Maurice to give a short address, from the pulpit, on the Melchisedechian heresy, while I played the first eight bars of 'Trees' on the harmonium, the only, ones in my repertoire. The whole business probably marked the only time in the history of the printed word when the entire staff of a periodical could have been arrested on a bulk charge of sacrilege, trespass and false pretences. We escaped unchallenged, however, and returned, frightened stiff, to the office.

In this ambience the production of the maga- zine was, of course, the greatest and most exciting pleasure, particularly in the matter of the nudes. Iri the interests of popular appeal we had to carry several picture features every month, based upon what we called 'Crumpet.' There were several different kinds. There were the 'Sandhill Springers' —golden, naked girls leaping about, presumably in the very early hours of the morning, on Malibu Beach. There were the 'Scrutable Orientals,' all from Bali. There was also a much larger group. emanating from continental photographers, which we designated as 'Hake. The only thing between these girls and the unwinking eye of the camera' was yards of fish-netting, excitingly draped.

Later, we took to using old Victorian and Edwardian prints, and jazzing them up with con- temporary dialogue—an innovation which led to the holocaust.

Richard gave me six yellowing postcards, illus- trating popular songs. Each song, with a painted backcloth, had one or more persons demonstrating

'Nobody's gonna make a monkey onto me

the emotions involved, in costumes ranging from Rudolf the Gypsy Troubadour, to Mary, the Rose of Tralee. After two days'of agony I .decided that the only way to do anything about them was to give each medel a name and an identity. Thus, I called the first one Walter Frimpton, and indicated that a faulty rib-cage development had led him to give up modelling postcards in favour of selling them. The girl in the Loch Lomond postcard I called Maud Boyce, who. was always good for a laugh. A moment before the picture was taken, I wrote, she'd turned to her companion, who was wearing Highland gaiters, and said, 'Hello, Flannel Feet.'

The blow fell, with frightful force, two days after publication. All the people I'd written about were still alive. Richard was splendid. He tried to console me by pointing out that it had been a genuine mistake. But then the summons came for me to see Mr. Maxwell Raison, who was then the General Manager of the firm.

I'd never met any of the higher echelons before —a fact, I calculated, to which I owed my con- tinuing employment. But it looked like curtains, now that we were about to come face to face. The secretary said that Mr. Raison would see me. With some idea of getting my blow in first I burst in upon him, gabbling about how sorry I was about Maud Boyce and Flannel Feet, and Walter Frimp- ton and his faulty rib-cage development—and saw Mr. Raison, with a look of fixed horror, rise from his chair and raise it in the air, as though to ward off the assault of a maniac. I found out why a moment later. He had merely invited me over to discuss the possibility of founding a Hutton Press golfing society.

We straightened the thing out to the best of our ability, and parted' on mutually nervous terms. As I was leaving the building I paused to get some urgently needed nourishment from the cashier. When I emerged into Shoe Lane I saw Stephen Potter, who was then the editor of The Leader, sitting in his car outside the door. With some idea of re-establishing myself with the higher executives. I rushed forward to tell Steve about a notable piece of gaimsmanship that Brigadier- General Critchley had wrought upon me while we were playing golf together, some days before. Critch was two down at the time, but had alto- gether cracked my concentration with a long and beautifully involved' story about how he'd re- organised pigeon-racing in the West Indies by causing coloured silks to burst from the wing of each bird, for identification by the punters, as it crossed the starting line. I beat on the roof of Steve's car. 'Here's a beautiful bustle!' I cried. 'Critch has a story about coloured silks bursting out of pigeons—.' I stopped dead. The terrified face of Maxwell Raison was peering at me out of the car window again. He and Mr. Potter, it seemed, shared the same kind of motor-car.

I got the hatchet in the course of time, in a note from the Personnel Manager. In view of the fact that as Associate Editor I was associating only socially with the editor, I was in full agreement with the justice of the move. But it brought to an end eight marvellous years, in which work pre- sented itself in its proper guise, that of always exciting, infinitely variable and totally unpredict- able fun.

Take over softly, Odhams. You're treading on the happiest memories, not dreams.