J. B. Morton
Encyclopedia
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
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
, he had "the greatest comic fertility of any Englishman".
, England
. 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
. 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.
in 1914. He enlisted as a private
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
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."
(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
propaganda
and British red tape
was recognised as a huge contribution to morale, and Morton became a CBE
in 1952. In 1965, the column was enlarged and made weekly.
The final column appeared on 29 November 1975 contained the headline "Lawnmower Used on Vet's Whiskers".
Except for a few months when it went out weekly, Morton wrote a column daily, six days a week, for fifty-one years.
A BBC radio programme Beachcomber by the Way
based on the column was broadcast for 18 episodes from 1989 to 1994.
, 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.
'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
.
This also introduced him to Hilaire Belloc, 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
. 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
's front doorstep with dozens of empty, quart-sized brown ale
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?"'.
government of the late forties, the couple moved to Dublin for two years, and then to Ferring in Worthing
. This moving around didn't interfere with the column, which Morton hand-wrote (never having learned to type) on sheets of blue Basildon Bond
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
. Richard Ingrams
, who edited some Beachcomber collections, and appeared as Beachcomber on BBC Radio 4
, described him as "heavy-going and uncommunicative" in his later years.
The couple was 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.
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
humorous
Humour
Humour or humor is the tendency of particular cognitive experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement...
writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
noted for authoring a column called By the Way under the pen name
Pen name
A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...
Beachcomber
Beachcomber (Pen name)
Beachcomber was a nom de plume used by surrealist humorous columnists D. B. Wyndham-Lewis and, chiefly, J. B. Morton as authors of the Daily Express column "By the Way" in the period 1919-1975...
in the Daily Express
Daily Express
The Daily Express switched from broadsheet to tabloid in 1977 and was bought by the construction company Trafalgar House in the same year. Its publishing company, Beaverbrook Newspapers, was renamed Express Newspapers...
from 1924 to 1975.
G. K. Chesterton
G. K. Chesterton
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, KC*SG was an English writer. His prolific and diverse output included philosophy, ontology, poetry, plays, journalism, public lectures and debates, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics, and fiction, including fantasy and detective fiction....
described Morton as "a huge thunderous wind of elemental and essential laughter"; according to Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...
, he had "the greatest comic fertility of any Englishman".
Childhood
Morton was born at Park Lodge, Mitcham Road, TootingTooting
Tooting is a district in south London, England, located in the London Borough of Wandsworth. It is situated south south-west of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London.-History:...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. He was an only child, and his father, Edward Morton
Edward Morton
Edward Morton was a British 19th century author. His works included the musical comedy San Toy. He was the father of humorous writer J. B. 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
Leslie Stuart was an English composer of early musical theatre, best known for the hit show Florodora and many popular songs. Stuart began writing songs in the late 1870s, including songs for blackface performers, such as "Lily of Laguna"; songs for musical theatre; and ballads such as "Soldiers...
. His mother, Rosamond Bingham, died when he was 12.
From the age of eight Morton attended Park House prep school in Southborough, London
Southborough, London
Southborough, London may refer to:*Southborough, Bromley, England*Southborough, Kingston-upon-Thames, England...
. In 1907 he moved on to Harrow School
Harrow School
Harrow School, commonly known simply as "Harrow", is an English independent school for boys situated in the town of Harrow, in north-west London.. The school is of worldwide renown. There is some evidence that there has been a school on the site since 1243 but the Harrow School we know today was...
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
Worcester College, Oxford
Worcester College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. The college was founded in the eighteenth century, but its predecessor on the same site had been an institution of learning since the late thirteenth century...
but failed to win a scholarship, and had to leave after a year to support his father after a stroke
Stroke
A stroke, previously known medically as a cerebrovascular accident , is the rapidly developing loss of brain function due to disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. This can be due to ischemia caused by blockage , or a hemorrhage...
.
Morton did not have an outstanding academic career, and left Oxford wanting to be a poet.
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 warWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
in 1914. He enlisted as a private
Private (rank)
A Private is a soldier of the lowest military rank .In modern military parlance, 'Private' is shortened to 'Pte' in the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth countries and to 'Pvt.' in the United States.Notably both Sir Fitzroy MacLean and Enoch Powell are examples of, rare, rapid career...
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
Somme
Somme is a department of France, located in the north of the country and named after the Somme river. It is part of the Picardy region of France....
he was sent home with shell shock
Shell Shock
Shell Shock, also known as 82nd Marines Attack was a 1964 film by B-movie director John Hayes. The film takes place in Italy during World War II, and tells the story of a sergeant with his group of soldiers....
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 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 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-LewisD. B. Wyndham-Lewis
Dominic Bevan Wyndham-Lewis FRSL was a British writer best known for his humorous contributions to newspapers and for biographies. His family were originally from Wales, but he was born in Liverpool and brought up in Cardiff...
(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
Daily Mail
The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...
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
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
and British red tape
Red tape
Red tape is excessive regulation or rigid conformity to formal rules that is considered redundant or bureaucratic and hinders or prevents action or decision-making...
was recognised as a huge contribution to morale, and Morton became a CBE
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
in 1952. In 1965, the column was enlarged and made weekly.
The final column appeared on 29 November 1975 contained the headline "Lawnmower Used on Vet's Whiskers".
Except for a few months when it went out weekly, Morton wrote a column daily, six days a week, for fifty-one years.
A BBC radio programme Beachcomber by the Way
Beachcomber by the Way
Beachcomber By the Way was a short-lived radio programme that aired from March 1989 to December 1994. It is being re-run on BBC Radio 7 at the moment. There were 18 half-hour episodes and it was broadcast on BBC Radio 4...
based on the column was broadcast for 18 episodes from 1989 to 1994.
Other work
Morton also wrote a few pieces on French history, in the style of his good friend Hilaire BellocHilaire Belloc
Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc was an Anglo-French writer and historian who became a naturalised British subject in 1902. He was one of the most prolific writers in England during the early twentieth century. He was known as a writer, orator, poet, satirist, man of letters and political activist...
, 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. SquireJ. C. Squire
Sir John Collings Squire was a British poet, writer, historian, and influential literary editor of the post-World War I period.- Biography :...
'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
Fleet Street
Fleet Street is a street in central London, United Kingdom, named after the River Fleet, a stream that now flows underground. It was the home of the British press until the 1980s...
.
This also introduced him to Hilaire Belloc, 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
G. K. Chesterton
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, KC*SG was an English writer. His prolific and diverse output included philosophy, ontology, poetry, plays, journalism, public lectures and debates, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics, and fiction, including fantasy and detective fiction....
-Belloc circle.
Morton applied his love of the surreal not just to his writing but to everyday life. Walking through Guildford
Guildford
Guildford is the county town of Surrey. England, as well as the seat for the borough of Guildford and the administrative headquarters of the South East England region...
one day with Gerald Barry
Gerald Barry
Gerald Barry is an Irish composer.Born in Clarecastle, County Clare, Republic of Ireland, he studied with Karlheinz Stockhausen and Mauricio Kagel. His music is notable for its inherent use of real thematic development. Although , paradoxically, Barry's music shifts between blocks of thematic...
, Morton stopped at a pillar box
Pillar box
A pillar box is a free-standing post box. They are found in the United Kingdom and in most former nations of the British Empire, members of the Commonwealth of Nations and British overseas territories, such as the Republic of Ireland, Australia, India and Gibraltar...
. 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
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
's front doorstep with dozens of empty, quart-sized brown ale
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 had a rather different meaning than it does today...
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 a stop to his exploits with his drinking pals, and to life in London. To escape the LabourLabour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
government of the late forties, the couple moved to Dublin for two years, and then to Ferring in Worthing
Worthing
Worthing is a large seaside town with borough status in West Sussex, within the historic County of Sussex, forming part of the Brighton/Worthing/Littlehampton conurbation. It is situated at the foot of the South Downs, west of Brighton, and east of the county town of Chichester...
. This moving around didn't interfere with the column, which Morton hand-wrote (never having learned to type) on sheets of blue Basildon Bond
Basildon Bond (company)
Basildon Bond is a British stationery company, founded by Millington and Sons in 1911.The company is named after Basildon, Berkshire, and took its name when some of Millington's directors were holidaying at Basildon Park and liked the alliteration of "Basildon" and "bond"....
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 Bentley
Nicolas Clerihew Bentley was a British author and illustrator famous for his humorous cartoon drawings in books and magazines in the 1930s and 1940s...
. Richard Ingrams
Richard Ingrams
Richard Ingrams is an English journalist, a co-founder and second editor of the British satirical magazine Private Eye, and now editor of The Oldie magazine.-Career:...
, who edited some Beachcomber collections, and appeared as Beachcomber on BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
, described him as "heavy-going and uncommunicative" in his later years.
The couple was 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.