The First Century

In this extract from his centenary history of The Spectator, published in 1928, Sir William Beach Thomas recalls the high principles of its Victorian editors, and the position it once held at the 'left centre' of public debate

The Spectator completed a hundred years of life in July 1928. It can now soliloquise in the words of one of the last of Thomas Hardy's poems:

Yes; yes; I am old. In me appears
The history of a hundred years

But it 'beats on' with healthy values and arteries; and has a scheme of dignified longecity, of which something has to be said. Its long and consistent career offers as good a view of the political and litereary activities of the period as Punch of the lighter social changes. It may be said of its annals that seriousness has been to The Spectator very much what wit has been to Punch.

Perhaps the pleasantest way to read and indeed to study history is through contemporary criticism and records, which colour it but do not distort it; and The Spectator has never been a mere mirror. Political and moral convictions have shone through its reflections, as a gracious humour through the satires of Punch; and these convictions have been singularly continuous. Except for one brief interlude, four minds, two of them working as one, have guided The Spectator for the better part of the hundred years: Rintoul, Townsend-cum-Hutton, and St Loe Strachey. Mr Evelyn Wrench took up the succession in January 1925. He too, in accordance with precedent, is editor and chief proprietor, both; and he advances into the second century with as strong ideals and high hopes as his predecessors had.

In the desire to maintain what may be called a spiritual continuity of the paper, he has followed the example of Major J.J. Astor [the proprietor of the Times], and wrote in an article on the independence of the British Press: 'We hope to ensure, as the Times has done, that The Spectator shall never be sold in the open market to the highest bidder, apart from other considerations.'

Now the Times, which had published its own scheme in 1924, described it as a 'plan to ensusre the future independence of the Times on the national interest', and gave the essential details of the nature of the trusteeship. The Spectator's scheme, though it differs in detail, has been worked out on similar lines and is being put into action. The gist of it is the formation of a Committee 'for special purposes of safeguarding future transfers of the controlling shares'. It is not in any sense to be identified either with the management or with the editorial policy. The sole object underlying its appointment is to ensure, as far as it humanly possible, that the ownderhsip of The Spectator shall never be regarded as a mere matter of commerce, to be transferred, without regard to any other circumstances, to the highest bidder, or fall - so far as can be foreseen - into unworthy hands. With this object in view, it is thought desirable for the members of the Committee to act ex officio, and that they should be precluded by their position from active party politics and that they should represent various elements, e.g., judicial, academic, scientific and financial, in national life.

How the present proprietor feels himself in apostoilc succession to a great tradition may be inferred from the pages of the paper, but may be mroe directly illustrated. What are the ideals for which he wishes The Spectator to stand? If they were to be the occasion of an affirmation - to use a popular word of the moment - they would perhaps seem to some almost ludicrously conservative of tradition. The comments made in The Spectator of 1 May 1858, in the obituary notice of the founder, Robert Stephen Rintoul, still stand:

'Such had always been felt to be the excellence of The Spectator as a reliable record of events, that even those subscribers who were most irritated by the course it pursued could find no substitute and continued their subscriptions. They swore at their leek, but they ate their leek too. By far the greater part of the regular readers of The Spectator have always been of a class that is not affected by partisan spleen: its circulation being chiefly, as it must always aim to be, among the men of culture, who like to listen to all sides of controversies, provided the argument is conducted with fairness and moderation.'

In writing of Rintoul that same week, The Spectator added: 'He redoubled his exertions to make this journal a truthful and attractive record of all social movements, and of all that was accomplished in art, science or literature. And he set himself to promote social and civil reforms irrespective of party.'

Rintoul, who though a fighter was never a party man, and set out to make what may be called a household paper, was soon forced, as any man of high conviction must be, to express his political faith. But like Townsend and Hutton, like St Loe Strachey, he waited for the great cause; and when it was present preached his faith without fear or favour of any political party; and what is more, of any public. What the Reform Bill and colonisation were to Rintoul, the cause of the North in the American Civil War was to Hutton and Townsend. Neither would have surrendered to his advocacy, if the paper had been reduced to a circulation of one.

Now most papers are not in a position to do this, however single their will. No journalist who is worth his salt can become a mere funnel for the ideas of others. It follows that in the expression of vital convictions, the editor and proprietor must be exactly of one mind or be one person; and the outstanding fact in the history of The Spectator, which has produced its continuity of tone and character, is the accident of organisation by which for the whole of the hundred years, excepting one very brief and inglorious interlude after the death of Rintoul, the owner of the paper has been the master of spirit. The paper has expressed personality. Very often, though Rintoul wrote less than his successors. the proprietor has himself written the articles of his creed, when any greater events were present.  That quality in The Spectator remains over into the second century.

St Loe Strachey made some attempt - the first in the annals - to name and label the politics of The Spectator. He said it belonged to the 'left centre'; and so far as the phrase has any definition, it is found today very much in the same place, and that a worthy place. After all, should not the left centre describe the whereabouts of the heart? At the left centre an intellectual admiration, a strong patriotism and zeal for the British empire, may coincide with a deep sympathy for 'those who live in houses', as a contemptuous autocrat once said; yes, and for those who live in the burrows and nest in the trees, as well as those who barely exist in slums. But it is no longer to separate social reform from political. The Spectator, in spite of some strong protests, is intent at the present in forcing the public to recognise the disgraceful state of the slums in our cities. Its motive has been the betterment of the race, the release of poorer citizens from misery and disease of both body and mind. At the same time the parallel conviction must be felt and expressed that the slums are the breeding-places, as dust breed flies, of the political creed of a perverted communism, which in Russia has attempted to found its New Jerusalem in murder; and, in accord with its gospel as expressed by Karl Marx, would force the community into obedience by the agency of a narrow oligarchy and a pervading police.

As the age grows more complicated with each year, a paper needs a wider and wider outlook. We can repeat today with cumulative conviciton Renan's dictum: 'Le siècle ou j'ai vecu n'aura probablement pas été le plus grand, mais il sera tenu sans doute pour le plus amusant des siècles.'It happens that the present proprietor and editor, Mr Evelyn Wrench, is the founder of the Overseas League and of the English-Speaking Union; and it may be inferred, even without a knowledge of the weekly contents, that The Spectator today stands for a closer friendship with the United States as well as an ever more cordial union between the nations of the British Commonwealth.

One of the strongest convictions behind the paper today is this: that friendly co-operation among the English-speaking peoples is essential to the peace of the world and the stability of the world. Tout connaître c'est tout pardoner; and it is the proper work of a newspaper to increase the knowledge between nations and people in order to put a date to petty misunderstandings and silly prejudices.

Such things are above and beyond politics, as the word is generally understood; but it is one of the dangers of the time that every sort of movement is given a political complexion. One of the permanent endeavours of the present Spectator is to dissipate the notion, now too prevalent, that the League of Nations is the favourite of any one political party or of any two parties. If it is worth anything, it is designed to promote peace, and 'peace in our time' is a creed belonging not to the Conservative, the Liberal or the Labour party, but to all.

In the late years of his editorship, St Loe Strachey came down very strongly in favour of the public ownership and control of the drink traffic. The subject is integral to any scheme of social reform; and the new proprietor is as strongly convinced as was his predecessor that a privately owned drink trade should not be permitted in a progressive democracy; and he is determined to continue to work for the extension of the Carlisle Sysyem to the rest of Great Britain.

There was never a time when the world was 'so full of a number of things' which call for action as well as information, and the evolution of The Spectator has been along the line of action.

A great journalist was aaked by a reformer, in the days before the war, what daily paper he should write to; and he answered, 'if you want people to think something, write to the Times. If you want them to do somthing, write to the Daily Mail.' Perhaps after all the distinction is a false one; for thought is the proper (though not inevitable) prelude to action. When Rintoul invented the phrase 'the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill' he was urging to action; but action of a rather different sort has been attempted since his day and since the days of Hutton and Townsend. A good example was the competition inaugurated by Mr Strachey for building a £150 cottage. Such an enterprise can accelerate action by setting up a concrete example; and in the future more action of this nature may be expected.

The need of a serious weekly paper was perhaps never so great as today (though the extinction of the class has been prophesised) if only because personality gets less and less chance of expression in the daily press. The best comment on news has the virtue that Matthew Arnold found in great verse. It is made 'in tranquility', and yet immediately enough to be actual and influential. Even the book-like form gives the paper a certain stability of its own; and it is a common experience today, as revealed by correspondence to The Spectator, that it is read and reread in places so remote from the office in York Street that any paper less stalwart in build could scarcely have withstood the transport and the handling. Individual numbers share the longevity of the organism itself.

In What's What, published in 1902, Harry Quilter, a regular contributor to The Spectator and a very lively author, wrote:

'It would be scarcely an exaggeration to say that no other paper has endured in like fashion; the Times itself is quite different from what it was 30 years ago. The whole tone of journalism has changed. Why has The Spectator survived unchanged?'

The celebration of its centenary is a suitable date for attempting to answer that question. Doubtless The Spectator, too, has changed much since that was written. It certainly suffered a short change in character after the war, though it returned to its tracks after a brief interval. But when all is said of its alterations and its evolution, it is more like itself than any other paper. The child has been father to the man. And there is more vaule than at first appears in tradition and continuity as possessed a newspaper. Mr George Haven Putnam, and old correspondent of The Spectator, writing in June 1925, recorded that he had been reading the paper continuously for 71 years. He recalled vividly its accounts 'of the battles which in those days boomed as great battles, of Balaclava and Inkerman'; and incidentally gives a quaint reminiscence of another Crimean battle. Dr Kane, the Arctic explorer, returning after three years in the Norht, was met with news of the capture of Sebastopol. 'Who, where and what is Sebastopol?' he asked. It indicates the great change in the nature of weekly newspapers, now too often wholly concerned with comment, that Mr Putnam took his information of the Sepoy Rebellion in 1857 from 'the thrilling articles in The Spectator'. Like all its reader who survive from those days, Mr Putnam (and he served as soldier in the War of North and South) remembers with gratiture The Spectator's championship of the cause of the North; and it is on this head that he most saliently illustrates the value of a tradition of honest and brave conviction. He wrote:

'Hutton and Townsend also held the maintenance of the Republic was something of continued importance for Great Britain and all the English-speaking peoples of the world. They realised that the American Republic stood for representative government and, as the English-speaking peoples had been responsible, from the time of Magna Carta on, for the organisation and maintenance of representative government, they held if to be essential that the great example of such government should not be crushed out of existence. The editors of The Spectator were wiser in taking this part in directing public opinion in their day than were John Delane of the Times, Lord Palmerston, Lord Russell and other English leaders, who were sympathetic with the attempt to break up the Republic. I recall the words of an old Major-General given to me in London in July 1918. The news had just arrvied of the fight at Chateau Thierry, the first fight in which American troops had been given an opportunity to show what they could do. The General came to me with a newspaper in his hands, and with the words "Major, those Yankee boys of yours can fight." I said that I thought they would fight; they had fought with me half a century ago. "And," continued the General, "there are one million of them in France." I answered: "There are two million, and eight million more ready to come." The General thought for a moment and then remarked, "Major, we are rather glad that we did not break up your Republic in 1861. We think you can be useful to us." The General's work in 1918 confirmed the wisdom of the position taken by The Spectator during the four years' struggle of 1861-65,'

The goof wrought by this sturdy conviction of Hutton and Townsend was certainly not 'interred with their bones'. It helped to bear fruit just half a century later. Such a tradition is one that neither public nor staff can escape, if they would; and they certainly would not.