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".
Childhood
Morton was born at Park Lodge, Mitcham Road, Tooting. 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. His talent as a poet proved to be limited.
Career
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 war 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."
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 Lewis (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.