John Cameron Andrieu Bingham Michael Morton, better known by his preferred abbreviation J. B. Morton (7 June 1893 – 10 May 1979) was an English humorous writer noted for authoring a column called "By the Way" under the pen name '
Beachcomber
A beachcomber is a person who practices beachcombing.
Beachcomber or Beachcombers may also refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* ''The Beachcomber'' (1915 film), an American drama
* ''The Beachcomber'' (1938 film), starring Charles Laughton and a ...
' in the ''
Daily Express'' from 1924 to 1975.
G. K. Chesterton described Morton as "a huge thunderous wind of elemental and essential laughter"; according to
Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (; 28 October 1903 – 10 April 1966) was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books; he was also a prolific journalist and book reviewer. His most famous works include the early satires '' Decl ...
, he had "the greatest comic fertility of any Englishman".
Childhood
Morton was born at Park Lodge, Mitcham Road,
Tooting
Tooting is a district in South London, forming part of the London Borough of Wandsworth and partly in the London Borough of Merton. It is located south south-west of Charing Cross.
History
Tooting has been settled since pre- Saxon times ...
. He was an only child, and his father,
Edward Morton, was a serious journalist and dramatic critic. He introduced Morton junior to (watered-down) wine before he went to school, and to the sons of his friend
Leslie Stuart
Leslie Stuart (15 March 1863 – 27 March 1928) born Thomas Augustine Barrett was an English composer of Edwardian musical comedy, best known for the hit show '' Florodora'' (1899) and many popular songs.
He began in Manchester as a church org ...
. His mother, Rosamond Bingham, died when he was 12.
From the age of eight Morton attended Park House
prep school in
Southborough, London. In 1907 he moved on to
Harrow School and hated it. Harrow later provided the inspiration for the fictional Narkover, a school full of theft, gambling, drinking, and corruption. Morton was admitted to
Worcester College, Oxford but failed to win a scholarship, and had to leave after a year to support his father after a stroke.
Morton did not have an outstanding academic career, and left Oxford wanting to be a poet. His talent as a poet proved to be limited.
Career
Early career
Quickly realising that he could not make a living from poetry, Morton found a job writing for a musical revue, until he was interrupted by the outbreak of
war
War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular o ...
in 1914. He enlisted as a
private
Private or privates may refer to:
Music
* " In Private", by Dusty Springfield from the 1990 album ''Reputation''
* Private (band), a Denmark-based band
* "Private" (Ryōko Hirosue song), from the 1999 album ''Private'', written and also recorde ...
in the
Royal Fusiliers and was sent to the trenches the following year. The battalion was disbanded in 1916 and Morton was commissioned in the Suffolk Regiment. After fighting in the
Somme he was sent home with
shell shock
Shell shock is a term coined in World War I by the British psychologist Charles Samuel Myers to describe the type of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) many soldiers were afflicted with during the war (before PTSD was termed). It is a react ...
and spent the rest of the war in the intelligence service.
After the war, Morton wrote a novel, ''The Barber of Putney'', based on his experience of life in the trenches. It was published in 1919, and the same year, he started writing for the ''
Sunday Express'' newspaper. He had a weekly column which he filled with random jokes and poems, and wrote occasional essays on cross-country walking—his favourite hobby. In 1922, he was moved over to the ''Daily Express'' as a reporter, but did not enjoy straight reporting. Morton later recalled, "I remember being asked to interview the mother of a boy who'd killed someone. As I went along in the cab, I thought: 'D'you realise what you're doing?' Then I decided I couldn't go on."
Beachcomber
On 7 July 1917, the "By the Way" column first appeared on the
leader
Leadership, both as a research area and as a practical skill, encompasses the ability of an individual, group or organization to "lead", influence or guide other individuals, teams, or entire organizations. The word "leadership" often gets vi ...
page of the ''Express''. Nothing shocking at first, it was 900 words of gossip and topical comment previously appearing under the header "Gossip of the Day". Major
John Bernard Arbuthnot
Major John Bernard Arbuthnot, MVO (17 May 1875, in London – 16 September 1950) was a British soldier, banker, and journalist.
Life
Arbuthnot was the son of Colonel George Arbuthnot and wife Caroline Emma Nepean Aitchison.
He was commissi ...
MVO started the new column and the 'Beachcomber' pseudonym that appeared a week later. In 1919, he was promoted to assistant editor, and
D. B. Wyndham Lewis (the literary editor) took the column over. Like Morton, Wyndham-Lewis had also served in the ranks in the War, and the two shared a bizarre sense of humour, as well as being fellow Francophiles. Wyndham-Lewis set the surreal, comic style that was to become the column's identifying feature, and published the first collection of Beachcomber material in 1922, entitled ''A London Farrago''.
With so much in common, when Morton moved into his cubicle they quickly became friends, and their continual banter could be heard across the top floor of the building. Thus, when Wyndham Lewis moved to the ''
Daily Mail'' in April 1924, Morton was the obvious person to continue the column. He gradually lightened the tone of the humour, and introduced a range of recurring characters. Morton published his first Beachcomber collection, ''Mr Thake'', in 1929, and 17 more collections followed over the next 30 years.
Early on, Morton wrote his column in the offices of the ''Express'', and was known for laughing out loud and dancing after finishing each paragraph. As a day's column never took more than a few hours, and he always wrote a week in advance, his afternoons were always free for socialising. In later years, he despatched the (hand-written) column by post from wherever he happened to be at the time.
Morton viewed the Beachcomber sobriquet as a protective blanket of anonymity, and continued to enjoy this until his identity was revealed in the thirties. Drawings in the column depicted Beachcomber as a young woman, and the column was widely believed to be composed of many people's contributions. Behind this cover, Morton often indulged himself in opinionated rants about new inventions, motorists, Socialists, pretentious art, public schools, and whatever else aroused his wrath.
Under Morton's pen, ''By the Way'' continued for many years, surviving the Second World War paper shortages and consequent shrinkage of the ''Express'' to four pages. His mockery of both
Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
propaganda and British
red tape was recognised as a huge contribution to morale, and Morton became a
CBE
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations,
and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...
in 1952. In 1965, the column was enlarged and made weekly.
The final column appeared on 29 November 1975 containing the headline "Lawnmower Used on Vet's Whiskers".
A BBC radio programme ''
Beachcomber by the Way
''Beachcomber... By the Way'' was a radio programme that aired from March 1989 to December 1994. There were 18 half-hour episodes and it was broadcast on BBC Radio 4, and was later rerun on BBC Radio 7. It starred Richard Ingrams, John Wells ...
'', based on the column, was broadcast for 18 episodes from 1989 to 1994, with
Richard Ingrams
Richard Reid Ingrams (born 19 August 1937 in Chelsea, London) is an English journalist, a co-founder and second editor of the British satirical magazine ''Private Eye'', and founding editor of '' The Oldie'' magazine. He left the latter job at ...
playing the voice of Beachcomber.
John Wells,
John Sessions
John Marshall (11 January 1953 – 2 November 2020), better known by the stage name John Sessions, was a British actor and comedian. He was known for comedy improvisation in television shows such as ''Whose Line Is It Anyway?'', as a panellist o ...
and
Patricia Routledge
Dame Katherine Patricia Routledge, (; born 17 February 1929) is an English actress, singer and broadcaster. For her role as Hyacinth Bucket in the BBC sitcom '' Keeping Up Appearances'' (1990–1995), she was nominated for the BAFTA TV Awar ...
played supporting parts, in particular Wells as the impertinent questioner Prodnose forever asking Beachcomber what he meant by what he said.
[
]
Other work
Morton also wrote a few pieces on French history, in the style of his good friend
Hilaire Belloc
Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc (, ; 27 July 187016 July 1953) was a Franco-English writer and historian of the early twentieth century. Belloc was also an orator, poet, sailor, satirist, writer of letters, soldier, and political activist. H ...
, but these were not widely read and are now forgotten. After his retirement, he started work on an autobiography, but said it would be a "boring" read and tore up his notes. Another work is ''SPRINGTIME: Tales of the Café Rieu'', describing life on the Parisian Left Bank.
Friends and adventures
Morton fell in with
J. C. Squire
Sir John Collings Squire (2 April 1884 – 20 December 1958) was a British writer, most notable as editor of the ''London Mercury'', a major literary magazine in the interwar period. He antagonised several eminent authors, but attracted a coterie ...
's circle of acquaintances. Squire was the editor of the ''London Mercury'', and his reputation for helping young writers had caused him to accrue a posse of writers and poets, which Morton was happy to join on excursions to pubs in the area of
Fleet Street. Squire's amateur cricket team is described in ''
England, Their England
''England, Their England'' (1933) is an affectionately satirical comic novel of 1920s English urban and rural society by the Scottish writer A. G. Macdonell. It is particularly famed for its portrayal of village cricket.
Social satire
One of a ...
'' by
A. G. Macdonell; the exuberant character Tommy Huggins is based on Morton.
This also introduced him to
Hilaire Belloc
Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc (, ; 27 July 187016 July 1953) was a Franco-English writer and historian of the early twentieth century. Belloc was also an orator, poet, sailor, satirist, writer of letters, soldier, and political activist. H ...
, whose second son, Peter, became a close friend until his death in 1941. Belloc was 52 when Morton met him, and looked older. Both Belloc senior and Morton enjoyed cross-country walking, and improvising songs as they walked; the three of them sailed Belloc's cutter, the ''Nona''. Like Belloc, Morton was a Roman Catholic, and shared many of the attitudes of the
Chesterton–Belloc circle.
Morton applied his love of the surreal not just to his writing but to everyday life. Walking through
Guildford one day with Gerald Barry, Morton stopped at a
pillar box
A pillar box is a type of free-standing post box. They are found in the United Kingdom and British overseas territories, and, less commonly, in many members of the Commonwealth of Nations such as Cyprus, India, Gibraltar, Hong Kong, Malta, New Z ...
. He talked into its opening: "Are you alright, my little man? Don't worry, we'll soon get you out." Soon, a concerned crowd gathered to see who was trapped inside. Somebody summoned the fire brigade to help, while Morton and Barry made a discreet exit. Events like this were quite frequent: on another occasion he littered
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.
Woolf was born i ...
's front doorstep with dozens of empty, quart-sized
brown ale
Brown ale is a style of beer with a dark amber or brown colour. The term was first used by London brewers in the late 17th century to describe their products, such as mild ale, though the term has a rather different meaning today. 18th century br ...
bottles.
Wyndham-Lewis recalls that on their first meeting, the door 'burst open' and 'a thick-set, bucolic figure, all over straw and clay, strode in and banged passionately on the floor with a thick gnarled stick uttering a roar soon known and feared in every pub on Fleet Street: "Flaming eggs! will no one rid me of this stinking town?"'.
Married life and old age
In 1927 Morton married Mary O'Leary, an Irish doctor. This put an end to his spending time with his drinking friends, and to life in London. To escape the
Labour
Labour or labor may refer to:
* Childbirth, the delivery of a baby
* Labour (human activity), or work
** Manual labour, physical work
** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer
** Organized labour and the labour ...
government of the late forties, the couple moved to
Dublin
Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 c ...
for two years, and then to Ferring in
Worthing
Worthing () is a seaside town in West Sussex, England, at the foot of the South Downs, west of Brighton, and east of Chichester. With a population of 111,400 and an area of , the borough is the second largest component of the Brighton and Ho ...
. This moving around didn't interfere with the column, which Morton hand-wrote (never having learned to type) on sheets of blue
Basildon Bond
John Dickinson Stationery Limited was a leading English stationery company founded in southwest Hertfordshire. In the 19th century, the company pioneered a number of innovations in papermaking. It became part of Dickinson Robinson Group in 19 ...
and posted to the ''Express''. His new lifestyle did, though: Morton's writing became increasingly cynical, and he became "a gloomy little man," in the words of his illustrator
Nicolas Bentley
Nicolas Clerihew Bentley (14 June 1907 – 14 August 1978) was a British writer and illustrator, best known for his humorous cartoon drawings in books and magazines in the 1930s and 1940s. The son of Edmund Clerihew Bentley (inventor of the clerih ...
.
Richard Ingrams
Richard Reid Ingrams (born 19 August 1937 in Chelsea, London) is an English journalist, a co-founder and second editor of the British satirical magazine ''Private Eye'', and founding editor of '' The Oldie'' magazine. He left the latter job at ...
, who edited some Beachcomber collections, and appeared as Beachcomber on
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...
, described him as "heavy-going and uncommunicative" in his later years.
The couple were happy together until Mary's death in 1974; Morton lost his job the year after. His enforced retirement was not happy, and he lived alone, eating mostly bread and jam (Morton couldn't even boil an egg). He became quite confused and spent time looking for his wife, whom he believed to be still alive. Morton eventually settled in a nursing home, but insisted on addressing all the ladies there as Mary. After his death in 1979, aged 85, his house was demolished and all his papers destroyed.
Works
*''The Barber of Putney'' (1919)
*''Gorgeous poetry, 1911–1920'' (1920)
*''Penny royal'' (1921)
*''Enchanter's Nightshade'' (1921)
*''Old Man's Beard'' (1923)
*''The Cow Jumped Over the Moon: A Story'' (1923)
*''Hark Backward: A Sporting Novel'' (1929)
*''Sobieski, king of Poland'' (1932)
*''Maladetta'' (1932)
*''1933 and still going wrong'' (1932)
*''Who's who in the zoo'' (1933)
*''Hag's Harvest'' (1933)
*''Tally-ho! and other hunting noises'' (1934)
*''Vagabond'' (1934)
*''The death of the dragon: new fairy tales'' (1934)
*''Skylighters'' (1934)
*''The Barber of Putney'' (1934, revision of 1919 novel)
*''The Bastille falls, and other studies of the French revolution'' (1936)
*''The Dauphin'' (1937)
*''Pyrenean; being the adventures of Miles Walker on his journey from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic'' (1938)
*''The New Ireland'' (1938)
*''Saint-Just'' (1939)
*''St. Martin of Tours'' (193?)
*''Bridge over the rainbow: a survey of humorous sketches'' (1940)
*''The Gascon, a story of the French Revolution'' (1946)
*''Brumaire, the rise of Bonaparte; a study of French history from the death of Robespierre to the establishment of the Consulate'' (1948)
*''Camille Desmoulins, and other studies of the French Revolution'' (1950)
*''St. Therese of Lisieux, the making of a saint'' (1954)
*''Hilaire Belloc: A Memoir'' (1955)
*''Springtime : tales of the Café Rieu'' (1956)
*''Marshal Ney'' (1958)
See also under
Beachcomber (pen name)
Beachcomber is a ''nom de plume'' that has been used by several journalists writing a long-running humorous column in the '' Daily Express''. It was originated in 1917 by Major John Bernard Arbuthnot MVO as his signature on the column, titled 'By ...
See also
*''
The Queen's Book of the Red Cross''
References
Sources
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Morton, J. B.
1893 births
1979 deaths
English humorists
English Roman Catholics
Alumni of Worcester College, Oxford
People from Tooting
People educated at Harrow School
British Army personnel of World War I
Royal Fusiliers soldiers
Suffolk Regiment officers