Expressman Courlander: 

Disappeared 

WE call it The Street of Shattered Dreams. But for one Express journalist it was ‘The Street of Broken Men’ … and it probably killed him.

Alphonse Courlander, a teetotaller, was our Paris correspondent in times when the title sold around four million copies. He was hard-working, highly-strung, sensitive and always in the office early, going home late. He made time to write books too, which brought him wide acclaim for their realism about Fleet Street.

But one day in Paris, he left the office to go for a walk and never returned. He vanished. Four days later he was found alone in London, worn-out, beaten by life, purposeless and in a daze. 

Two weeks later he died of “exhaustion” aged just 33. Some people believed he committed suicide. Mystery still surrounds his disappearance and death. He worked for the Express as Paris correspondent at the time of the First World War and editor Ralph Blumenfeld regarded him as “the most conscientious of men with fanatical energy.”

Friends said of him: “If only he had let himself go sometimes, had a drink or two, unwound. He may have lived. He just couldn’t take the rigours of the game. If you are ambitious, working in Fleet Street can break your heart.”

Courlander’s book 

But Courlander left a lasting legacy. The key figure in his book Mightier Than the Sword, one of four he wrote, is a reporter like himself but named Humphrey Quain. It went into three editions in quick succession between May 1912 and October 1913. It is not well written but belongs to that fleeting golden age of newspaper novels.

Courlander goes into detail describing the work of the reporter, the sub-editor, ‘runner’, compositor, photographer, printer and the army of staff that went into bringing out a daily newspaper in the heyday of the new popular press. 

Here is his description of the composing room: “Row upon row the aproned linotype operators sat before the keyboards translating the written words of the copy and turning them into leaden letters. Their machines were almost human.

“They touched the keys as if they were typewriting, and little brass letters slipped down into a line, as mechanically an iron hand gripped the line, plunged it into a box of molten lead, and lifted it out again with a solid line of lead cast from the mould.”

On the final page of the novel, Quain, a reporter for the new popular halfpenny paper The Day, dies a lonely death, crushed by ‘shaggy-haired’ French agriculturists in the middle of a riot by French wine makers protesting against government tax.

His last thought is one of pleasure at his martyrdom, knowing he will make front page news for his paper. He is the ultimate journalist-hero, killed trying to get all the facts, and, in this, his final story, providing his paper with sensational ‘copy’.

Quain knew he had changed from a sensitive young man to a news hound who didn’t care about the people he reported on: “Everything in life now I see from the point of view of ‘copy’ he says in the book.

“Even at the funeral of my aunt, as I stood over her grave, and watched them lower the coffin, I felt that I could write a splendid column about it,”

SEAT KEPT WARM FOR DOYLE’S RETURN  



The empty chair next to Lady Doyle

AUTHOR Conan Doyle’s widow Jean sat next to an empty chair on stage at the packed Albert Hall. It was July 13, 1930, just six days after the death of her spiritualist husband and the Express had just published a long leader page on him calling him The Great Heart.

“He was half-brother to the pixies and the gnomes and the elves, and blood brother to all fighting men,” it said. “He had the passionate zeal of a great crusader and the simple heart of a big boy! He liked prize-fighting, and yet he was as gentle as a child.”

“Hundreds of thousands of mothers and fathers all over the world have dried their sorrowing eyes because of the words of comfort this man who preached and believed in life beyond the grave … he put consolation and the courage back into their lives.”

Thousands of life-after-death believers attended the Hall that evening, along with Express reporters, to hear the medium Estelle Roberts talk with spirits on stage. And his great friend Express editor Ralph Blumenfeld, who was said to be heartbroken, was believed to have been there too.

The empty chair had been left on the platform next to Lady Doyle, in the hope that the ghost of the author would join her. The air was full of expectancy. The audience is silent in thought and in prayer.

Suddenly the Hall’s organ struck up a religious but spooky selection of music as clairvoyants called on spirits to join the hall and the audience belted out Christian hymns or spiritualist songs such as There Is No Death.

Days before, Lady Doyle had told Time magazine: “Although I have not spoken to Arthur since he passed, I am certain that in his own time and his own way he will send a message to us.”

For some time, Mrs. Roberts did nothing more than rock back and forth on her heels, and soon the sounds of coughing and restless movement could be heard from the audience.

She seemed to realise time was dragging on and snapped into life. Shielding her eyes like a sailor on lookout, she stared over the gallery, tiers, and boxes. Her attention was fixed on the empty space above people’s heads.



Doyle: He had a message for his wife, it was said

“There are vast numbers of spirits here with us,” she announced. “They are pushing me like anything.”

She spoke with these spirits for about a half an hour before the audience became restless, and then, as people began to leave, she looked at the chair and shouted out “He’s here!”

Her eyes moved as if she were seeing an invisible form approaching her, and she added: “He is wearing evening clothes.” The crowd gasped.

She moved her head to one side and there was silence in the auditorium. Her head jerked up and she looked as if she was listening intently before staring at Lady Doyle.

The audience gasped again as she ran to her and said loudly enough for people near to hear: “Sir Arthur told me that one of you went into the hut on your estate this morning. Is that correct?”

Lady Doyle, faltering, beamed and replied: “Why, yes.” Her eyes opened widely.

Roberts went on: “The message is this: Tell Mary, your eldest daughter …” At that moment the audience rose in shock, and the great organ began to peal, the noise drowning out the message.

What was it? Did the ghost of Doyle really visit the Royal Albert Hall on that night?

Journalist Emily Temple later wrote in the website Literary Hub: “The medium appeared to receive a message from him, which she passed on to Lady Doyle, who later said she believed that it was truly from her husband.”

The couple’s son Adrian later told Time magazine that “The spirit message answers all the tests which my father and mother had agreed upon before his passing,” but added that it was “of so intimate a character it cannot be made public even to our closest friends.”

We must make our own minds up.

DAY DOBBIN BECAME A TROJAN HORSE 

Paras guard the beaten Argies before

sending them home on The Canberra

ONE OF the first sights to greet our troops as they approached Port Stanley during the Falklands war in 1982 was a mangy brown horse which had grazed in Ross Road uninterrupted and untethered throughout the conflict, writes the late great Express reporter Bob McGowan in his book.

It seemed to turn up everywhere during the fighting munching away, unfazed by the blasts and gunshots.

For those who might not have read Bob’s memories of his Express assignment to the islands 8,000 miles away in the south Atlantic, which I mentioned last week, I recall the story of Dobbin perhaps to bring Drone readers a smile, or a tear.

There are so many wonderful anecdotes in the book, and this is just one of them.

Bob writes: “By now, homesickness was becoming an epidemic among the combat troops. The Paras and the Marines had learned that the SAS and SBS had been given priority for the journey home. As one marine put it: ‘Old Maggie wants her personal bodyguards back!’

“The troops left behind had little to do but wait for the order that would mean they wouldn’t head north for leave until the end of the British summer.

‘Can’t be soon enough for me,’ said 3 Para Sergeant Tony Dunn. This is a fucking one-horse town anyway.’     

‘No, it isn’t,’ said fellow Sergeant Chris Phelan. ‘Some cunt hit Dobbin with a jeep last night and he’s lying with his legs up beside the secretariat. It’s an ex-horse town!’

Sadly, Phelan was right. Later that day Bob sees the late lamented Dobbin being carried in state in the bucket scoop of an Army bulldozer with its legs protruding out in front.

“I stood with a party of marines watching it go by,” he writes.

‘Poor old nag,” said one. ‘He was the only one to give us a real welcome.’

‘Don’t always assume that things are as they appear,’ said his mate. ‘I’ll bet you Dobbin is made of wood and the SAS is inside it on their way to Canberra with the prisoners, to do something evil in Buenos Aires!’

‘What the hell would the Argies want with a dead horse?’ asked the first marine.

‘The Trojans fell for it, and they were a bunch of dagoes, weren’t they?’ said his friend with a smile.

 

THE OIL SHEIKS GET THE SHAKES

THERE’S a lot more to war than just the fighting, as the Express revealed. 

In the dark days, months before the First Gulf War in the early 1990s, as Saddam Hussein threatened the West’s fuel supplies, the Express had a tip from the Foreign Office that the Saudis were taking his threats very seriously. The oil-rich sheikhs had the jitters. But they didn’t seem to fear for their lives.

The Express ran the story that they were flying out their luxury cars … for hundreds of Lamborghinis, Aston Martins, Porsches, Bentleys and stretched Mercedes were quietly arriving at Britain’s docks and heading for garages and safe storage in our leafy towns.

TERRY MANNERS

30 September 2024