Part 10 (1/2)

2

Jane came round with me after the meeting to the _Fact_ office, to go through some stuff she was writing for us about the meeting. She had to come then, though it was late, because next day was press day. We hadn't been there ten minutes when Hobart's name was sent in, with the message that he was just going home, and was Mrs. Hobart ready to come?

'Well, I'm not,' said Jane to me. 'I shall be quite ten minutes more.

I'll go and tell him.'

She went outside and called down, 'Go on, Oliver. I shall be some time yet.'

'I'll wait,' he called up, and Jane came back into the room.

We went on for quite ten minutes.

When we went down, Hobart was standing by the front door, waiting.

'How did you track me?' Jane asked.

'Your mother told me where you'd gone. She called at the _Haste_ on her way home. Good-night, Gideon.'

They went out together, and I returned to the office, irritated a little by being hurried. It was just like Lady Pinkerton, I thought, to have gone round to Hobart inciting him to drag Jane from my office. There had been coldness, if not annoyance, in Hobart's manner to me.

Well, confound him, it wasn't to be expected that he should much care for his wife to write for the _Fact_. But he might mind his own business and leave Jane to mind hers, I thought.

Peac.o.c.k came in at this point, and we worked till midnight.

Peac.o.c.k opened a parcel of review books from Hubert Wilkins--all tripe, of course. He turned them over, impatiently.

'What fools the fellows are to go on sending us their rubbish. They might have learnt by now that we never take any notice of them,' he grumbled. He picked out one with a brilliant wrapper--'_A Cabinet Minister's Wife_, by Leila Yorke.... That woman needs a lesson, Gideon. She's a public nuisance. I've a good mind--a jolly good mind--to review her, for once. What? Or do you think it would be _infra dig_? Well, what about an article, then--we'd get Neilson to do one--on the whole tribe of fiction-writing fools, taking Lady Pinkerton for a peg to hang it on? ... After all, we _are_ the organ of the Anti-Potter League. We ought to hammer at Potterite fiction as well as at Potterite journalism and politics. For two pins I'd get Johnny Potter to do it. He would, I believe.'

'I'm sure he would. But it would be a little too indecent. Neilson shall do it. Besides, he'd do it better. Or do it yourself.'

'Will you?'

'I will not. My acquaintance with the subject is inadequate, and I've no intention of improving it.'

In the end Peac.o.c.k did it himself. It was pretty good, and pretty murderous. It came out in next week's number. I met Clare Potter in the street the day after it came out, and she cut me dead. I expect she thought I had written it. I am sure she never read the _Fact_, but no doubt the family 'attention had been drawn to' the article, as people always express it when writing to a paper to remonstrate about something in it they haven't liked. I suppose they think it would be a score for the paper if they admitted that they had come across it in the natural course of things--anyhow, they want to imply that it is, of course, a paper decent people don't see--like _John Bull_, or the _People_.

When I met Johnny Potter, he grinned, and said, 'Good for you, old bean.

Or was it Peac.o.c.k? My mother's persuaded it was you, and she'll never forgive you. Poor old mater, she thought her new book rather on the intellectual side. Full of psycho-a.n.a.lysis, and all that.... I say, I wish Peac.o.c.k would send me Guthrie's new book to do.'

That was Johnny all over. He was always asking for what he wanted, instead of waiting for what we thought fit to send him. I was sure that when he published a book, he'd write round to the editors telling them who was to review it.

I said, 'I think Neilson's going to do it,' and determined that it should be so. Johnny's brand of grabbing bored me. Jane did the same. A greedy pair, never seeing why they shouldn't have all they wanted.

3

It was at this time (July) that a long, drawn-out quarrel started between the _Weekly Fact_ and the _Daily Haste_ about the miners' strike. The Pinkerton press did its level best to muddle the issues of that strike, by distorting some facts, pa.s.sing over others, and inventing more. By the time you'd read a leader in the _Haste_ on the subject, you'd have got the impression that the strikers were Bolshevists helped by German money and aiming at a social revolution, instead of discontented, needy and greedy British workmen, grabbing at more money and less work, in the normal, greedy, human way we all have. Bonar Law, departing for once rather unhappily from his 'the Government have given me no information'

att.i.tude, announced that the miners were striking against conscription and the war with Russia. Some Labour papers said they were striking against the Government's s.h.i.+fty methods and broken pledges. I am sure both parties credited them with too much idealism and too little plain horse-sense. They were striking to get the pay and hours they wanted out of the Government, and, of course, for nationalisation. They were not idealists, and not Bolshevists, but frank grabbers, like most of us. But, as every one will remember, 'Bolshevist' had become at this period a vague term of abuse, like 'Hun' during the war. People who didn't like Carson called him a Bolshevist; people who didn't like manual labourers called _them_ Bolshevists. What all these users of the mysterious and elastic epithet lacked was a clear understanding and definition of Bolshevism.

The _Daily Haste_, of course (and, to do it justice, many other papers), used the word freely as meaning the desire for better conditions and belief in the strike as a legitimate means of obtaining them. I suppose it took a shorter time to say or write than this does; anyhow, it bore a large, vague, Potterish meaning that was irresistible to people in general.