Beachcomber and Timothy Shy

Lord Beaverbrook's bright and blasty London Daily Express last week reached the world's record daily circulation of 2,876,163. One reason: John Cameron Andrieu Bingham Michael Morton was providing the best possible coverage of the hasp situation. Reported he:

"The Ministry of Bubbleblowing denied yesterday, with an oath, that the 15,000,000 missing hasps had been found in a field near Asminster. Mr. Guffaw said, 'We know where these hasps are, but cannot reveal their whereabouts at present.' To reporters he hinted that the zoning of washerwomen was responsible for much of the confusion. 'These washerwomen,' he said, 'are left in heaps at the packing-stations, where they quickly go bad.' Asked if he was not confusing washerwomen with eggs, he said he was."

With such berserk intelligence J. C. A. B. M. Morton daily fills one-sixtieth of the paper-short Daily Express' total news-and-features space (about 600 inches). He writes his nonsense column under the name "Beachcomber." It is relentlessly clanky, scholarly, satiric--miles over the head of many of its readers.

Equal Hasps. "Beachcomber" uses the hasp* situation as a peg for the blithe puncturing of postwar planners, youth groups, aged conservatives, bureaucratic red tape, military dignity (a favorite character is "Captain Foulenough"), political coalitions (the Independent National Anti-Coupon Pro-Caucus Semi-Conservatives) and many matters British. Thus:

"Hitherto the Chagfield by-election has been a straight contest between 91-year-old Ambrose Fogge and six-year-old Master Tony Colt. But a Woman's Defence League candidate has stepped in, to demand equal hasps for wives, in order to end the serfdom of married women. This will probably have no effect on the election, as nobody knows what it means. . . . But everyone is rallying to youth. 'Experience isn't everything,' said Master Colt's nurse yesterday. 'Nor is inexperience,' replied Mr. Fogge's nurse."

"Beachcomber" devotes his learnedly loony style alike to science and the arts. "A fellow-hack," he writes, "recently drew a piteous picture of those wretched people who, far from being escapists, are merely trying to escape from escapism. But what of the sturdy independent realists who are trying to escape from escapism from escapism?" And, touching on a bit of British antiquity, he remarks: "Holborn Town Hall, where Cecil Rhodes was born, is a good example of Phibbs in his later manner. It is neo-Romanesque rather than post-Palladian, and the gargoyle above the gutter which runs along the sculleries is a very fine example of deep groining in the manner of Boutoflor, who also was responsible for the gadgets on the fagade of the old hand-laundry in Red Lion-square."

Gay Barkers. J. B. Morton (as his friends know him) is one of England's foremost versifiers (Who's Who at the Zoo, The Adventures of Mr. Thake, The Dancing Cabman) and a serious scholar specializing in the French Revolution ( The Bastille Falls). He has been the "Beachcomber" 20 years, but his success in whimsey is not unique.

In the same vein is his great, extraordinarily similar friend "Timothy Shy" of the London News Chronicle--who is Dominic Bevan Wyndham Lewis.* He was Morton's predecessor as "Beachcomber." Both Morton and Wyndham Lewis are short, plump, fiftyish, Oxonians and Catholics (Hilaire Belloc style). They often take long walks together, live deep in the country, avoid London as a plague. Like Morton, Wyndham Lewis is a French historian (King Spider) and versemaker (The Nonsensibus, At the Sign of the Blue Moon).

Lately London's Sunday Observer keenly summed up both: "Wyndham Lewis ... is one of those gay dogs who most enjoy barking at the hand that feeds them. Like his colleague in daily clownship, 'Beachcomber,' ... he believes that the British, being both Protestant and fond of cricket, are inherently ridiculous and facially repulsive."

The British respond by making them their favorite newspaper funsters.

* The Oxford Dictionary on hasp: a contrivance for fastening a door or lid; a clasp for fastening two parts of a garment, the covers of a book, etc.; a hank or skein of yarn, the fourth part of a spindle; an instrument for cutting the surface of grassland.

* Not to be confused with famed British Man-of-Letters-and-Paint Percy Wyndham Lewis (Time and Western Man).

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