The well-dressed gentleman smoking a cigarette, took the Tube from Sloane Square to Charing Cross near his home, then walked up the Strand and down Fleet Street to his office on Ludgate Hill in dingy Belle Sauvage Yard, an old coaching inn.

 

It was 1887, a decade before the Daily Express was born, and his refined and wealthy appearance on his way to work in an old building 100 yards from the crossroads to Fleet Street, hid the truth … Oscar Wilde was broke. He couldn’t afford the fare for a Hansom cab.

 

The man who was to become a literary legend had been forced by circumstance to accept a job as a magazine Editor at Cassell, a publishing house that pioneered cheap reprints of classic books such as Treasure Island and King Solomon’s Mines. It was to later become part of Harmsworth, of course.

 

I find it intriguing to think that this man of history, walked through the mud, slush and horse dung, like so many other Greats, past our Express home every day, even though it wasn’t built then. But he knew our patch as well as anyone and joins the ghosts of Johnson, Swift, Pepys, Dickens and others.

 

Wilde was 33 and had lived on freelance earnings for years while touring America, lecturing about house decoration, fashion and the arts. He returned to England with a reputation of being an amusing orator and planned to seek fame reviewing books and publishing essays.

 

I find it fascinating that he developed the habit of tearing off the corner of every page he read, screwing it into a ball, and eating it. But his heart wasn’t totally in book reviews though, he admitted himself that he never finished reading most of the tomes he reviewed.

 

And the big money never rolled in. With his wife Constance pregnant at their luxury Chelsea home every day was a struggle. Until one morning Wilde was offered the job of editor of The Lady’s World by Cassell at £6 a week.

 

He snapped it up and pledged to “take a wider view of life as a woman, not merely in clothes and fashion but with what they thought and felt. Their hopes and aspirations. It was to be called The Woman’s World and be about New Woman in the Victorian age.

 

Wilde wrote: “Our magazine will be the recognised organ for the expression of women’s opinions on all subjects of literature, art, and modern life, and yet it should be a magazine that men could read with pleasure and consider it a privilege to contribute to.”

 

He completely changed the format, and the last section became literature, art, and travel. Social studies went to the front.

 

“Music in a magazine is somewhat dull, no one wants it; a children’s column would be much more popular,” he ruled. Cross dressing became a regular theme with stories about men dressed up as women and he had a policy of almost anything goes.

 

 

 

Oscar Wilde cared about the poor in London and often wrote about them … so a man sleeping rough finds a comforting place to spend the night, on this statue of him. “We are all in the gutter,” Wilde wrote, “but some of us are looking at the stars.”

 

The new magazine editor was bold in his approach towards royalty. He wrote a letter to Queen Victoria, whom he considered an ideal contributor. The Queen was rumoured to write verse in her spare time and Wilde wanted to be allowed to use one of her poems.

 

“Really, what will people not say and invent?” Victoria replied. “Never could the Queen in her whole life write one line of poetry serious or comic or make a rhyme even. This is therefore all invention and myth.”

 

But one of Victoria’s ladies-in-waiting later reported to Wilde that the Queen had liked the magazine immensely and did indeed write a bit of poetry. She might not have contributed to it, but Victoria was a fan of The Woman’s World.

 

At first the press response to Wilde’s editorship was positive: ‘Mr Oscar Wilde has triumphed,’ declared the Nottingham Evening Post, when the magazine sold out. The Times hailed The Woman’s World as ‘gracefully got up…in every respect’.

 

Rival publication Queen (owned some 60 years later by Jocelyn Stevens of our parish) admired the improved appearance and impressive array of contributors. But it didn’t take long however for Wilde to get bored commissioning articles and doing a bit of subbing.

 

After a few months he went out socialising more and more and into the office less and less. When he did turn up, he spent more time in the office armchair scribbling ideas for his own essays and books to sell.

 

He gave his writers a free hand on issues of the day and would let them ramble on for up to eight pages, paying the best fees in Fleet Street.

 

One great problem with his job was that he was not allowed to smoke in the office. This irritated man who stated that “a cigarette is the perfect type of perfect pleasure.”

 

He enjoyed nothing more than lounging in a comfortable office chair talking about his thoughts to people, but the smoking habit was missing. He began to disappear to hostelries for a quiet fag (sound familiar?). And he became bad tempered. His disappearances and absences meant he missed deadlines. He was often spotted working on his own writings at the Café Royal, among them The Picture of Dorian Gray.

 

One of the magazine staff said: “A typical day towards the end of his tenure of Woman’s World would see him sink with a sigh into his chair, carelessly glance at his letters, give a perfunctory look at proofs or make-up, and ask “Is it necessary to settle anything today? Then he would put on his hat, and, with a sad: ‘Good morning’ to us, depart for the day.”

 

Wilde’s tenure was short-lived. He began to realise that he did not have a completely free hand on content. After a while, the Board began to insist on other content and objected to some of his literary ideas on the pages. They even spiked some of his stories and commissions. Circulation began to fall.

And when they refused to drop the price to sixpence so that he could bring in a wider audience, it was the last straw. He threw in the towel. The last edition bearing his name came out at the end of 1889 and the magazine reverted to its original content.

 

Many of his staff claimed that his downfall came because of his inability to function without a cigarette. Even his monument I have pictured, with the man sleeping on his lap, shows him with a cigarette in his hand.

He died of syphilis aged 46, on November 30, 1900, the year the Daily Express was born.

 

HOME FIT FOR A DAILY MAIL GENTLEMAN

Entrance hall to Quentin’s posh Savile club

 

I have always been a fan of the Daily Mail’s Quentin Letts. For me he is one of the best sketch writers on Fleet Street, and I always read him when I can.

So, I was thrilled to come across an old article by him in my hunt through the dusty archives of the past, as I dug into the history of London’s Gentlemen’s Clubs. 

 

I was searching for a lunch between Winston Churchill and Lord Beaverbrook at White’s the first Gentleman’s Club of them all but came across a copy of an old piece by Quentin on his club, Savile’s. It gave a wonderful insight into the world of Britain’s foremost theatre critic and parliamentary micky taker.

 

For 20 years, three nights a week, he had occupied the same bedroom at The Savile Club in Mayfair, he told a magazine. The club was established in 1868 by a group of the most distinguished writers and artists of the time and its home is an elegant 18th Century house from 100 years before.

 

“The club’s public rooms are opulent,” he said, “but my billet is simple: a single bed, sink, upright chair, squeaky wardrobe and communal khazi/bath.

 

“What else could you want? My wife saw the room on one of her annual runs up to town from our Herefordshire home. She pronounced it a horrid little cell and I told her she didn’t have to stay there. Couldn’t, anyway. Club rules.”

 

Quentin believes that living in a club brings obvious advantages. For a start he didn’t need a Hoover or to make the bed. Maids did that and he didn’t have to worry about domestic repairs or utility bills.

 

The clubhouse downstairs had a billiard table and was more apparently spacious and beautiful than most oligarchs could afford, with snugs and a library and free boot polish in the downstairs gents.

 

As darkness falls and the smoke from snuffed out dining-room candles drifts through the building, my clubhouse can acquire an agreeably ghostly quality, he said.

 

Conversation in the morning room, as in the dining room at breakfast, was officially ‘not preferred’.

 

Quentin added: “When I first took my room at the Savile, there was one other ‘permanent guest’, Colin Merton, the first member of UKIP.

 

“Late at night in 2008, when almost everyone else had left the club, Colin liked to play Chopin nocturnes on the piano in the ornate, 19th-century ballroom, lit only by the moonlight and the streetlamp outside, even though he was deaf. He died at 81, after being run over by a milk float, he never heard coming.”

 

Quentin added: “Even now, heading upstairs late after another West End play, I fancy I can still hear Colin’s nocturnes floating on the draught.

 

“In the day, nothing I told Colin had a discernible impact, not least because he was so deaf that he missed much of what was said around him and was inclined to fall asleep halfway through any conversation.”

 

Colin stood three times as a UKIP parliamentary candidate for the Cities of London and Westminster, never cherishing the smallest hope of a win, or even a place.

 

Quentin revealed that in the mornings, having grazed on the club’s decent if predictable breakfast, he would descend the handsome front staircase en route to the morning room and hear other guests settling their bills and buttoning overcoats, generally fretting over their bits of paper and belongings.

 

“This rhythm of arrival and departure is, to the permanent resident, soothing,” he said. “The world turns, and yet it stands still. Meanwhile, you learn the names of the staff and become an admirer of their resilience and tact, and thankful for their friendship.”

 

But Quentin reflected: “Personally, I don’t want to become a relic. I don’t want young members to gawp at my half-bent form and say, ‘He’s been here since the Ark, poor old lad.’

 

“The club’s rates are less favourable than they were (though still under £100 a night) and it will soon be time to find alternative digs.”

 

Did he, I wonder?

 

 

A ROUND … AT THE GOLF CLUB

 

Who remembers this seedy little doorway in the late 1980s? It became as much a part of our history as the doorway to the Popinjay and the Punch. 

The faded old picture of a golf fairway in the window, the chipped paintwork and the deep staircase to the cellar bar below in Bride Lane, became a Fleet Street drinking haunt of the thirsty hacks kicked out of their regular boozers at afternoon closing time.

 

This picture of the City Golf Club was taken in 1987 the year before British pubs were permitted to remain open through the day until 23:00. Forget the uniformed attendant. It may have been a members-only club, but no one ever seemed to join. I don’t think any golf was ever played there either, although they had a simulated screen fairway to tee off in the basement.

 

Mostly used by reporters and feature writers, this afternoon booze haven was so big it was also used to host Express Christmas party and leaving dos. Even the most earnest of Express executives, such as Dep Ed Paul Potts, was seen strutting his stuff on the club’s dance floor with some tricky moves.

 

 

TERRY MANNERS

 

6 January 2024