United States or Philippines ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Francis Lord arrived in New York in the usual prosaic way, and our enterprising friends, accompanied by a score of other hunters of "scoops," had to return hastily. It does not appear, however, that they would have gained anything had they remained, because the astute Lord Cholme had provided a press-agent.
It seems Cholme gave Carville a letter to Lord Cholme, in case anything happened, you know. Something did happen and Cholme was killed at Spion Kop. Carville never got a scratch. When he came home he took the letter to Lord Cholme, and the old chap told him to ask what he liked. Carville said he didn't want anything, but might have a favour to ask some day.
You know he was in the war with the Boers? I said, no I didn't, and he told me that Carville had rushed to South Africa, just as thousands of others had done. He, however, had the devil's own luck; saved an officer's life, a man in the Imperial Yeomanry, named Cholme. Cholme was a pal of Belvoir's at Charterhouse.
He handed out accounts of the lives of M. D'Aubigné, the inventor, Lord Cholme, the promoter, and Mr. Francis Lord, the airman. He handed out photographs of the three. He handed out plans of the triplane. The reporters grew tired of seeing the press-agent, for he invariably handed out some deadly-dull document without the ghost of a story attached to it.
Got to go south and wait for orders. He's got a pal in the Navy at Norfolk, and he's phoned that they'd just received a wireless from a cruiser in the West Indies somewhere to say she'd spoken an aeroplane going north-west. They think it's that chap you know? and Lord Cholme of the Morning's springing something on us.
"The Empire," wrote Lord Cholme, "can no longer afford to pass by one of her most brilliant sons. In the light of his magnificent achievement, the daring of a Peary, the nerve of a Shackleton, the indomitable persistence of a Marconi, dwindle and fade. We do not hesitate to say that since the capture of Gibraltar, the Empire has secured no such chance for consolidating her paramountcy in Europe.
Kipling's racy colloquial style and contained numerous references to the Empire, the White Man's Burden and our "far-flung battle line." I suspected that Monsieur D'Aubigné had supplied the basic "facts" which had been edited by Lord Cholme before being handed on to "Vol-Plane," as the biographer called himself. I set the paper down and resumed my cigar.
Well, it seems it was an interview with Cholme that he was after when I met him in Huntingdonshire, but he has his own ideas of the way to do these things. He approached Lord Cholme, not with a begging-letter, but with a proposal to finance this aeroplane scheme. Cholme jumped at it, D'Aubigné says.
The chief item on the news page was headed: AEROPHONE MESSAGE FROM CARVILLE; OVER HELIGOLAND; ALARM IN GERMANY. Copyright by The London "Morning." The special article of the day was headed: "The Napoleon of the Air; a Character Sketch," and the leader, signed by Lord Cholme himself, was a pæan, in stilted journalese, in praise of the Morning's enterprise in encouraging invention.
I explained why I had come to the opposite berth which was reserved. While my friend was settling with the conductor, I took the opportunity to sound Mr. Larkin, who was offering me a cigar. He nodded vigorously. "Sure. It's that whats-his-name guy Frank Lord he calls himself. I've been covering all that flyin' dope in England since 'way back, and I knew Lord Cholme had some stunt coming.
Word Of The Day