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After witnessing a bus conductor’s battle of wills with the London public, journalist Alfred Gardiner felt obliged to give him a little advice.
The conductor of an open-topped bus once told a lady carrying a little dog to take it upstairs, despite the lashing rain. The passengers backed her up, stopped the bus and summoned a constable. The conductor stuck to his position, however, and eventually got his way; but after everyone else had gone home he tried to win a little sympathy from journalist A. G. Gardiner.
Being a free citizen doesn’t mean that everyone else has to get out of your way.
In 1917-18, Arthur Ransome (who would later write Swallows and Amazons) was in St Petersburg, then named Petrograd, reporting on the Communist revolution for the Daily News. One of his tales tickled fellow journalist Alfred Gardiner, who nonetheless drew from it a serious lesson about liberty, a word bandied about as carelessly then as it is today.
‘Alpha of the Plough’ hoped Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did not treat his old friends as he treated his favourite books.
As a rule, people who write well are also well-read, but it should not be supposed that they keep up with everything new that hits the shelves or receives breathless praise in the press. Alfred Gardiner, columnist for the Star, was like many professional writers suspicious of new titles, and preferred the company of characters he had come to know well.
‘Alpha of the Plough’ thought the Victorians understood Christmas and New Year better than we do.
Writing in full knowledge of the horrors of the Great War, columnist Alfred Gardiner found early twentieth-century sneering towards the past a little hard to bear. The kind of progress we had made, he said, had not given us that right, and it was particularly grating to hear the moderns scorn their grandparents’ idea of how to keep Christmas and New Year.
The best holidays are the ones that make us long for home.
A. G. Gardiner was a columnist for the Star (later absorbed into the Daily Mail) during and after the Great War, under the pseudonym of ‘Alpha of the Plough’. The following extract opened a piece titled “On Coming Home”, in which he reflected on what it is that makes for a really good holiday.
‘Alpha of the Plough’ wished that he had been born with the gift of a winning smile.
For many years, newspaper editor AG Gardiner wrote short essays for the Star under the pseudonym ‘Alpha of the Plough’. The following passage is taken from a reflection on the value of the smile, a reflection that ended with a warning. “Smiles,” he wrote, “like poets, are born, not made.”
Social niceties are essential for the smooth operation of society, but neither boxing a man’s ears nor calling in the lawyers will bring them back.
Shortly after the Great War, a haughty customer entered a lift and barked ‘Top!’ Moments later he came tumbling out, ejected by the attendant on the grounds that he would not say ‘please’. A. G. Gardiner, who had watched in fascination, felt some sympathy for the lift-man, but feared the consequences for society if we began to think each man had a right to avenge every affront to his sensibilities.