Kingsley Martin and Gerald Barry

This article concerns two of my journalistic heroes, both dead: Gerald Barry and Kingsley Martin. The first died in the third or fourth week of November, 1968; the second on February 16, 1969. The public, however, knows more about Martin than about Barry. I know about both and have a softer corner in my heart for Barry than for Martin; if only because I have derived immensely greater profit and pleasure from him than from the other. But let me start with Martin.

The “New Statesman”

Mr. Kingsley Martin had the distinction of presiding over the destinies of the celebrated New Statesman of London for full three decades: from 1931 to 1961. He had been a leader-writer on the Manchester Guardian (his stable-mate was Mr. Malcolm Muggeridge) before taking over the editorship of the New Statesman. The story of his elevation to this highly onerous position makes hilarious reading. Arnold Bennett was the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the paper at the time: the prize-post was entirely in his hands. He gave an unforgettable luncheon-party at a posh restaurant in the metropolis, and Mr. Martin was one of the distinguished guests. Bennett, as is well-known, was a gourmet and he took enormous pains over the menu. He ordered (so the anecdote runs) a rare fish from (I believe) Italy and it was consumed with terrific relish by everyone. Bennett–as is the habit of alldiscerning hosts–asked his guests to guess why it had tasted so fine and fresh. Only Mr. Martin ventured the opinion that it might have been caught that very morning and immediately flown to London. He got the much-coveted editorship. Moral: set a gourmet to catch a gourmet! The story may well be apocryphal; but it shows that the future editor of the New Statesman knew his onions, as the colloquial expression is.

Clifford Sharp

But a word now about his predecessor, the first editor of the weekly as well as (in my view) its best to date: the late Mr. Clifford Sharp. I call him the best editor to date in spite of the incontestable fact that his politics were not my cup of coffee. He was really a Tory in his political outlook. But, somehow, the Webbs, who founded the New Statesman, were immensely enamoured of him and offered him the editorship which he held from 1913 (the year of its inception) until 1930: he could easily have held it for much longer had he not been an irremediable dipsomaniac (the bottle, it would appear, was never far from his reach). But, drunk or sober, he had, it must be confessed, a consummate flair for writing editorials; and, in my considered opinion, was a much more adroit hand at these than any of his three successors: Kingsley Martin or John Freeman or Paul Johnson.

There was a delightful quality of astringency about his writings that, so to speak, stuck out a mile. He had a knack of saying what he wanted to say with admirable precision, there never having been any pretence of beating about the bush, or of softening the impact of his hammer-blows. His aim, throughout, was to inflict the maximum amount of punishment on his opponents; and his instinct was unerring in the matter of choosing the most vulnerable spots for the infliction of such punishment. Nor had he any undue respect for hallowed names and for established reputations. He contrived to put even the redoubtable Bernard Shaw in his place more than once: Bernard Shaw, be it noted, who was one of the proprietors of the New Statesman!

Mr. Martin Takes Over

Mr. Sharp's regime ended in 1930. Thereafter Mr. Martin took over as editor of the New Statesman and Nation, which was, in due course, to incorporate Gerald Barry’s Weekend Review also. (I shall come to Barry and his paper presently.) Under Mr. Martin’s aegis N. S. & N. prospered prodigiously and, in fact, his name is more widely known than that of Mr. Sharp. His reign lasted for full three decades: full three decades, let us remind ourselves, of unprecedented strains and stresses in the international sphere. They were, unfortunately, noted for Mr. Martin’s agitated and confused handling of them. He was, we can now see, not seldom in two minds about the policy he ought to pursue: sometimes his wobbling became a thorough nuisance. For instance, he signally failed to the radical line that was expected of him on more than one critical occasion–the Sudetan crisis, to mention one such: this in no small measure, pricked the bubble of his socialistic reputation. Dr. Conor Cruise O’Brien thus summarises Mr. Martin’s predicament:

“This, surely, is the real treason of the clerks: that leaders of opinion, instead of showing to the very best of their ability and knowledge how things actually are, should, in the interests of something or other which usually looks pretty shabby in retrospect, present them with a version which is thought to be better for them or more suited to their limited capacity of understanding, their ‘wooden heads.’ Plato’s Noble Lie is really just another lie, the nobility being in the vocabulary of the liar.” (The N. S. of April 19, 1963.)

On The Credit Side

Credit, however, must be given where credit is due, and I think Mr. Martin’s two most glorious titles to fame were his tireless advocacy of India’s independence and the none too inconsiderable part he played in the promotion of the C. N. D. Movement in Britain, he having been one of its “founding fathers,” no less. The movement is now practically dead–the British being what they notoriously are, a race of only intermittently generous emotions; and the paper, under the editorship of his successor, Mr. John Freeman, had no compunction in reversing his heart-warming line on the monstrous “nuclear deterrent”. The present policy of the N. S. is as far from being “socialistic” as chalk is from cheese, or as Khorassan from Kidderminster. On India the journal has little, or nothing, to say; and, when it condescends to say anything, it is to conduct a veritable commination service on its policies vis-a-vis Goa and Kashmir. It has always “a rod in pickle” for the poor and hapless Hindus and an affectionate pat on the for the lucky Muslims. (In this, let me interpolate, Mr. Martin had been no whit different from his successors.)

Gerald Barry

The Twenties and the Thirties were the Golden Age of English weekly journalism. Among the editors of that period two stand out most prominently: H. W. Massingham of the Nation and Gerald (later Sir Gerald) Barry of the Saturday Review and, subsequently, of the Week-end Review. Massingham died in 1924; Barry in 1968. The journals they edited with so much verve and vivacity have also gone the way of “the many Ninevehs and Hecatempoli”. But, while they were in being, they made history, each of them having been a glorious landmark in English weekly journalism.

H. W. Massingham (“H. W. M.”), of course, stood in a class by himself: as Cowley said of Pindar, “he formed a vast species alone”. He was a genius if ever there was one. There was nothing on which he wrote which he did not touch to fine issues. As a leader-writer, as a “feuilletonist”, as a dramatic critic, and as a book-reviewer, he “flamed in the forehead of the morning sky”. When he left the Nation the paper, like an unwatered plant, drooped and languished. Gerald Barry, if the gods had been merciful towards him, could easily have been another Massingham. But the gods were not merciful. Both were “live wires”; both had what I may call the eternal freshness of youth. And both had to sever their connection with the weeklies they had been editing with so much distinction, with so much savoir faire, just when their services were most in requisition. Massingham had to leave the Nation on a matter of high principle; Barry had to do the same with respect to the Saturday Review and the Week-end Review. In so far as any English journalist could ever have been expected to wear the mantle of “H. W. M.”, it was, assuredly, Barry and no other. He was, however, not given sufficient time and opportunity, misfortune having continuously dogged his footsteps.

A Special Reason

I have, as it happens, a special reason for remembering him. His most distinguished contributor in both the weeklies he edited was the late Mr. T. Earle Welby, a one-time editor of the Madras Mail, who, after returning to England from the land he daily calumniated, in bewitching style, in the columns of that Madras daily, devoted himself wholly to literary criticism. When he died, and the correspondence columns of the Week-end Review were thrown wide open to his eulogisers, I too, wished to add my feeble voice to that mighty paean of praise. But the editor had, by then, “closed”, that correspondence. I was in Trivandrum at the time, and there was only “surface mail,” not “air mail,” to London. Still, I sent in my humble contribution and Barry published it, commenting that he had seen fit to “re-open” the “closed” correspondence to accommodate my eulogy as I could not have known that it had been “closed”. That, let me point out, gives us the measure of his broadmindedness.

Barry started his journalistic career as assistant to Filson Young, editor of the Saturday Review. In 1924, or thereabouts, he succeeded Young in the editorial gadi, continuing in it until 1930. During that short period he contrived to transform it out of all recognition. Every issue was a veritable literary feast, a battle of wits almost: it coruscated with brilliant writing, with such stuff “as dreams are made on.” He gathered together under his benevolent wing some of the finest journalistic and literary talent available: T. Earle Welby, and Ivor Brown, and Gerald Gould, and Edward Shanks, and, above all, J. B. Priestley. Barry himself wielded an exceptionally fluent and powerful pen. Earle Welby (“Stet”) was a host in himself. It was Barry’s singular distinction that he “discovered” Welby’s genius.

Barry Starts a new Weekly

As ill luck would have it, however, he had to leave the Saturday Review in 1930 owing to proprietorial zoolum. Lord Beaverbrook had just then inaugurated a furious campaign in favour of what he was pleased to designate as “Empire Free Trade” which Barry could not bring himself to touch with the longest of bargepoles. So he wrote straightaway in his paper that the noble lord’s newest stunt was not to his taste. Thereupon the proprietor, who found himself in the same political tabernacle as his lordship, demanded from Barry that, in the following week, he should, without fail, insert a leader rendering the fullest support to “E. F. T.”. That, predictably, let to his resignation–as well as to the resignation of his entire staff.

Within a fortnight he took the journalistic world by storm bybringing out a new weekly, the Week-end Review, which he edited with consummate ability. But in 1933 it had to stop publication. I cannot do better than quote from the late Mr. James Agate’s delightful autobiography, Ego:

“The rest of the story is tragic. For three years the Week-end Review was the best-written and the best-read weekly review in the country. It is well-known that all literary reviews which have not the immemorial ing of the country parson and whose opinions are not so non-committal that they offend nobody have a hard struggle for existence. The Week-end Review could not expect not to lose money during its first years, and the losses were diminishing. Nevertheless the proprietor felt that it was time for somebody else to hold the baby, failing which publication must be discontinued. Once more Gerald did his best to obtain support, but this time it was not forthcoming. So the paper died, or,rather it was merged into the New Statesman which, so far as individuality is concerned, comes to very much the same thing.” 

As one who had the privilege of reading the Week-end Review from its very first issue to its very last, I can testify to this magnoperative eulogy from the pen of the foremost dramatic critic then functioning. It was to the eternal credit of Massingham to have “discovered” John Galsworthy, as it was to that of C. P. Scott of the Manchester Guardian to have “discovered” C. E. Montague, and to that of Leonard Rees of the Sunday Times to have rendered a similar meritorious service to the redoubtable James Agate.

Barry’s “Discoveries”

Barry’s “discoveries” were many and varied. But by far the most sensational was that of “nurturing” so lovingly and painstakingly the genius (for it was nothing less) of the late T. Earle Welby–“Stet” as he used to sign his “Table Talk”, as distinct from his more serious literary criticism which he wrote under his own “patronymic”, as he chose to label it.

Bernard Shaw, lamenting the death of Massingham, wrote:

“I would lay my hand more readily on ten contributors for his successor than on one successor for his contributors. A first-rate editor is a very rare bird, indeed: two or three to a generation, in contrast to swarms of authors, is as much as we get; and Massingham was the first of that very select flight.”

This terrific encomium, this magnificent dithyrambic, fits Barry also to perfection: after Massingham there has been no editor like him. Others abide our question: he is free.