BOOKS OF THE DAY
Forty Years of Journalism
Incidents and Reflections. By J. B. Atkins. (Christophers. 12s. 6d.) MR. ATKINS' preface is modest—not falsely modest, but truly and Urbanely modest, like the book itself. Unlike many writers of reminiscences, he has not merely assembled a series of anecdotes about well-known men. There are, indeed, plenty of good stories, and a number of famous people occur in the book ; but they follow each other, in decency and order, in conformity with the author's plan, and one feature of the plan is to offer critical appreciations only of those who are dead. The rule is observed with one snagnificently justifiable exception.
The opening chapters about home, school and college are refresh- ingly free from the spirit of patronage or of protest which frequently flavours the early pages of an autobiographical narrative. The por- trait of Atkins pere, whether as master of a sailing-ship or as con- ductor of family prayers, is convincingly drawn with quiet affection ; from Marlborough there comes no story of Philistine brutality, but a vivid sketch of the career of Denison Ross ; at Pembroke College, Cambridge, in the early 'nineties there were many personalities worthy of commemoration—the Master, C. E. Searle, for instance, who, after gating an undergraduate named Pollexfen for killing a marauding cat belonging to the neighbouring Master of Peterhouse, remarked : " Oh, Mr. Pollexfen, d'ye see, I- should like to say, d'ye see, I'm glad it's dead." There was H. G. Comber, too, " with his heart right on everything that mattered," and E. G. Browne, who came to mean to Persians what Byron meant to Greeks. There followed a year at the College Mission in Walworth, and some reflections on public-houses which were to bear fruit in later life ; then some coaching at Cambridge, coaching not only of pupils for examinations but of the college boat, for Atkins had come very near to a rowing blue. But his career properly began when, at the invita- tion of C. E. Montague, he joined the staff of The Manchester Guardian under C. P. Scott in 1896. " They were good days," and Atkins was shortly afterwards invited to go to Greece " to watch events." The events occurred, and in company with H. W. Nevinsop, Bertram Christian and others he found himself merged in the retreat of the Greek Army to Larissa. In 1898 he was in America for the purpose of following the Spanish-American War ; he followed it to Cuba and Porto Rico, and the small yacht in which he sailed from Porto Rico ran on to a reef.
But more interesting than any of these adventures were Atkins' experiences as a war correspondent in South Africa, and the title of the chapter which records them reveals the exception made to the rule laid down in the preface. Atkins sailed with Sir Redvers Buller, and soon became aware of " a most unusual young man. He was slim, slightly reddish-haired, pale, lively, frequently plunging along the deck with ' neck out-thrust,' as Browning fancied Napoleon . . . He told me that he was Winston Churchill." Their fortunes were linked together for the Natal campaign, and, after they had separated, Atkins, not knowing at the time whether his colleague was alive or dead, wrote to The Manchester Guardian: "He is that rare combination, the soldier, the reckless soldier even, and the bookman ; and it is strange to hear the young soldier speaking in words of the bookman to taciturn fellow-soldiers without a trace of embarrassment or self-consciousness. He has the ability —invaluable to an orator—to finish a spoken sentence in grammatical form, and so it happens that, as he has the faculty of quick literary imitation, he is continually practising it in conversation. This is the way to Parliament, whither he will carry, if he survive these perilous days, qualities that even his father had not. ' On to success through notable performances ; and if not through notability, then through notoriety ; but anyhow, on to success.' That is the motto and that the motive ; and the humorous candour of their adoption is the singular attractiveness of a strong character."
That judgement was passed forty-one years ago, and Atkins was accused of gross flattery. Time, as he quietly notes, brings its revenges.
After South Africa, Atkins was put in charge of the London office of The Manchester Guardian, and " in and out of London " he was familiar with the journalists of the period—James Bone, Ridsard Gretton, Auberon Herbert, E. V. Lucas, Owen Seaman and many others. He left The Manchester Guardian to become Paris cor- respondent of The Morning Post, and in Paris he met Arnold Bennett. He taught, or tried to teach, Arnold Bennett (who never tired of revelling in the pleasyses that money could buy) to be a yachtsman. Shortly afterwards he joined the staff .of The Spectator under St. Loe Strachey. His politics were the politics of all sensible men—Left Centre—and he took over Meredith Townsend's work as leader-writer con amore. In that capacity he worked for twenty years, and from 1931 to 1936 he was editor of The Guardian. But journalism did not fill Atkins' life. He was, and is, one of the hest of clubmen, and writes with affection of the Savile, the Travellers' and the Royal Yacht Squadron; what he describes as " an un- observed revolution," that is, the improvement which, in collabora- tion with Lord D'Abernon, he helped to effect in the English public house, remains one of his major enthusiasms.
The book ends on a note of quiet optimism ; and it would be difficult to conceive of a more informing and entertaining record of literary and social life in England during this century than is presented in its pages. Its appeal to strangers should be np less strong than the appeal it will undoubtedly make to the fortunate
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