Typographer royal
Derek Hudson
Stanley Morison. Nicolas Barker (Macmillan £10) Politics and Script. Stanley Morison Edited and completed by Nicholas Barker (Clarendon Press £6)
In his excellent biography of Stanley Morison, Mr Barker does justice to a most distinguished typographer and newspaper historian, a master of the craft of printing, while at the same time he throws light on an enigmatic figure obsessed by the mystique of power who was for several years the eminence grise of Printing House Square. The typographer can be praised unreservedly as a public benefactor; Morison the intriguer, always generous in his help to young people, made many friends (some of whom nevertheless had their misgivings). Mr Barker's book will however, be welcome to everyone, whether as a memorial of a great international specialist or as a means of posthumous reconciliation, in the spirit of tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner, with a doubtfully venerable sage.
Thanks to Mr Barker, we now understand the great poverty of Morison's boyhood after his father had deserted the family home; we can appreciate the strength of character that led to his imprisonment as a conscientious objector in the first world war, and the force of his radical intellect which made him both staunch Roman Catholic and convinced Marxist—a dangerously paradoxical combination. We learn, astonishingly, that he was a married man long separated from his wife, and unable apparently to marry the woman he really loved. With the help of Morison's incisive correspondence, Mr Barker traces his career from the editorship of The Fleuron to his posts at the Monotype Corporation, the Cambridge Press, and The Times. He establishes him as the leading spirit in the reform of British book production and newspaper design.
Much of this long book will appeal only to typographers, but Morison used his craft as a stepping-stone to political influence, finding endless scope for his talent for intrigue in the mystery and prestige of the anonymous Times in the thirties and forties. Coming to Printing House Square to transform the appearance of the paper, he remained to write its official history (anonymous, of course) and to rediscover its great early editor Thomas Barnes. Morison's first editor Geoffrey Dawson, like a later editor William Haley, appreciated his services in his special field, but had no need of an eminence grise. It was far otherwise with that conscientious idealist R. M. Barrington-Ward, who required continual intellectual reassurance during his editorship in the forties.
As a member of the Times editorial staff at that time, I well remember the tall gaunt figure with the thick spectacles, clad entirely in black, who advanced gravely along the passage from his own distant
room to the editor's, during the vital hours between five and seven — that unfrocked Jesuit!' pronounced one of his Catholic colleagues with scorn. Indeed, many of the staff, disconcerted to find the editor so dependent, were equally disturbed to see the paper turning decidedly to the left — not so much in its support of the incipient Welfore State, as for its condonation of the advancing Soviet tyranny in Europe, which culminated in The Times backing the wrong side in Greece. Their conclusions were accurate. Admitting in his enthusiastic biography of 'B-W' that Morison was his ' mentor ' and 'Grand Vizier ', Donald McLachlan seems to have failed to appreciate that great editors stand on their own feet.
Morison's artistic development was stunted. For him, it was Lettering, not Letters. He believed excessively in anonymity, an inartistic attribute in itself, of more value to newspaper proprietors and Jesuits than to writers, Despising ' culture ', his interest in literature, art or the theatre was minimal. The rare signs of artistic enthusiasm in his biography, apart from the predictable admiration of plainsong, are accorded to Eric Gill and Robert Bridges. His design for the latter's didactic Testament of Beauty led to an interesting correspondence, though Morison missed the Tupperish undertones of the poem. It seemed extraordinary that B-W should appoint him editor of the Times Literary Supplement; but the 'rational ' Morison proved effective for a short term, announcing his intention of making the T.L.S. 'entirely unreadable' and procuring a dramatic increase in circulation.
After Barrington-Ward's death, Morison's status at Printing House Square declined; and in his later years he hobnobbed with Lord Beaverbrook, a mischief-maker after his own heart; but always he went on working — books and monographs pouring from his pen in that graceful italic script. Forceful rather than fastidious, Morison's prose style tended to long paragraphs suitable for manifestos or encyclopaedias. His learning might be vitiated by partisan argument, but never ceased to impress by its depth of research. Mr Barker has edited and completed with great skill Morison's last book, Politics and Script, a history of lettering and its place in the western world, based on his 1957 Lyell Lectures. It is in many ways, Mr Barker believes, his greatest work, and should turn those new to Morison's scholarship to such books as The English Newspaper and Four Centuries of Fine Printing.
I cannot end without some personal thoughts about this remarkable man. His influence on others derived from an unmistakable authority compounded of intellect, arrogance, humour and human kindness. His hard early days may have left him with a chip on his shoulder, but in his long years of success he tempered asceticism with a love of food and wine. He was interested in Sherlock Holmes, and in some ways reminded me of him — with his odd passions (as for steam railway engines); his skill in searching out the old printing types; his fundamental loneliness and independence. Like Holmes in 'The Bruce-Partingdon Plans ', he scorned the honours list. Too, exceptional a man to be forgotten, Mr Barker's book will help those who knew Morison as a focus of controversy to think of him with understanding and sympathy, and countless others — readers of books and newspapers — to recognise a debt they have never realised.
Derek Hudson, once literary editor of The Spectator, has recently edited " Munby: Man of two worlds."
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