Hugh McCrae (1876-1957) was an Australian writer born in Melbourne, the son of the Australian author George Gordon McCrae. He wrote a book about his father "My father, and my father's friends", which is largely a series of anecdotes about the men in George's life. One section is devoted to James Hingston.
JAMES HINGSTON, author of The Australian Abroad, was not an Australian. Born within the sound of Bow Bells, without the sound of an aitch, he grew up as sharp as a nail, and as eager to be thrusting.
Fired by the success of his brother E.P. (editor of Artemus Ward's books of facetiae), Hingston determined that, if there were any money to be made in journalism, he was the man to make it. Accordingly, in 1878, he presented himself at the Argus office; and, like a heavy luggage-train, the whole building seemed to pass over him, so that it remains a wonder that anything of him was left. But he refused to be juggernauted; and came back - always with the same results.
At last an article was accepted. An article on tramways!
This article brought in a flood of letters; and, among them, one from Julian Thomas, alias The Vagabond, who buffeted Hingston; but not without Hingston buffeting him again. The editor was of the opinion that the Lord had delivered Thomas into Hingston's hands; and, afterwards, the way was opened for a series of Travel Talks which the latter had conserved for the occasion in a corner of his sleeve.
Hingston worked hard and kept himself from intruders. Often his output put out his quality; but he could write on any subject, not caring for exactness, so long as he was sure of a reader's attention. His argument amounted to this: "People don't want to be instructed, and don't bother about truth ... 'What is truth?' said Pilate, astutely, who knew that not half-a-dozen people can ever be persuaded to agree upon any subject as true, or false."
Here is a letter so characteristic of Hingston that we seem to see him, with the expression on his face of a closed door, after it has snapped off somebody's finger.
Thursday Night: "You are evidently cut-out for a critic; if not for an author. The idea of your taking notice of a newspaper article stating on which side of the meridian a place is! What does it matter whether it is south, or north, of the equinox; so long as it is somewhere?
"Goldsmith put into the first edition of his history a battle between Richard the Third and Montezuma ... yet he wrote like a poet; as Virgil did when he brought together Dido and Aeneas, between the time of whose lives whole ages have been reckoned.
"It reads well and amuses those who read it; which is, after all, the principal part of the business.
"Ignorance is bliss, in more ways than one. The world has gone on for centuries believing that over the gates of hell is written `All who enter here leave Hope behind.' Why disturb such belief by disclosing the fact that the real inscription is 'Ici on parle francais'? One does as well as another.
"If I state that a ram's horn takes root in the soil of any of the Seychelle Islands, and grows into a pretty shrub, the public is pleased; and, if you don't know it is so, what does it matter? The commonalty believes that a hair of a horse's tail, soaked in a watertrough, will turn into an eel. I am stating that one of the Seychelle group is founded on the back of a kraken, and not on coral growth; and, I suppose, you don't know that much!"
All the same, my father well knew, and he showed me, afterwards, where Hingston had prigged it from: The Garden of Cyrus, or the Quincunx, by Sir Thomas Browne.
Our author continues: "The thing is to write what ain't in guide-books, and never would be in guide-books. That's the stuff the public appreciates, and remembers. The cutting of steaks from living Abyssinian oxen, for instance:
Strange-customed land, where men ... What loss, alas! Kill half a cow: then send the rest to grass.
That bosh made Bruce ... No answer will be read!''
Hingston cracks a whip through all his letters. Don't come near me. I know my business best.
But I'm afraid McCrae was sometimes a bit of a rogue elephant, and purposely baited Hingston for the pleasure of seeing him wince. In Hingston's room at the "George," off the St Kilda Road, my father might remark: "You are making a wrong statement when you say that the double coco-nut comes from Praslin alone." "Damn the double coco-nut!" he would splutter: "This precision stuff is going to ruin you! Why don't you write nonsense-the same as I do?"
Then, after a pause:
"Your offer to look for blunders in my next contribution 'as got me beat. It would mean doin' away with two-thirds of the harticle - perhaps the 'ole thing! - Why! God bless my soul! Don't you know? The mistakes are the staple of it!"
Having said this much, Hingston would begin to boil; and, at last, unable to restrain himself any longer, shout out: "I tell you what, McCrae; I'd love to see you correcting the manuscript of The Sentimental Journey, the most darling book of travel ever written." Thereupon George would get up from his chair, looking sadly towards Hingston, until he had brought the door between himself and his enemy, when his face would become wreathed in smiles and he'd trot away home.
Once George met him at Shillinglaw's; and thinking to make hay while the sun shone, told Hingston that in his last Saturday's article, he had confounded the Musa Paradisicaia with the common Chinese, or Cavendish banana.
Hingston made a noise like a knife skidding along the side of a tin plate. "You fill me with dismay, and I trembles!" he exclaimed. "My goodness me! If I 'adn't 'ave 'ad two woodblocks cut and given to the Hargus printer last week I'd cancel the harticle off'and! I shiver all over at the idea of your readin' it, because you must know five million times more about bananas than I ever 'ave in the 'ole of me life!"
Then Shillinglaw chipped in: "All the same, you were wrong about St Gothard in the Australasian."
"That's different," protested Hingston, "I didn't mean it to be right. Damn it! the main thing is to 'ave your stuff readable. Nothin' else matters a row of pins."
Not content with harassing Hingston in the street, McCrae would often top-up a conversation with a letter by next day's mail. This was torture for Hingston; and, after he had anathematized my father and reduced his arguments to the dust, he turned upon him in another way. "You have written on thin paper, and crossed the letter; and that, with an ounce weight going for one postage! The ink has soaked through, and the dreadful consequence is that one-half of your letter is scarcely decipherable. Foreign post paper went out of date long ago; and crossing letters is a thing of the feudal times, invented by monks for the punishment of the impenitent. Paper is now a penny a quire - good paper like that which I write upon."
As a sweet orange, covered by a fiery rind, Hingston had virtues within which never were superficially seen. Note with how reasonable a temper he accepted his fate when, in the financial catastrophe of the nineties, he lost everything he had.
"Truly Fuit may be written over half the houses in Melbourne and suburbs! About a third of them is empty - with the prospect of another third to follow, when two more years are gone. What a huge joke an income tax would be now! Who'd dare propose it?
"On 30 March I had good provision (for one like myself), from banks and other sources ... All swept away within a couple of month's time; and, instead of returns, calls amounting to £34 a week are due from me for six years to come. Fact. And no income to meet same. Verily he was right who wrote `Riches make themselves wings.' It remains to balance the account when taking stock of life - and what is left of it. The good lies in the residium: that one was wise to take two holidays while the chance was given: that the opportunity having existed, it was taken advantage of ... that youth and means were exploited before they were swept away.
"The remembrances remain to the good. In the picture-gallery of Memory scenes which are ineffaceable can be recalled; and a store of beautiful things is thus put by which the world's worst doings cannot obliterate." J.H.
So he goes out; and it's no unhandsome exit. Some had gone before him; others were to follow. To-day there is not one of the fellowship left. We can imagine them sitting together in a not very distant Elysium - a new "Cave of Adullam." And if we listen we shall hear their voices while they sing.
Return to Hingston One-Name Study
Added 17 Mar 2015 C J Burgoyne