The Post Office and Its Story. Edward Bennett
the result that an absolutely pure design has been converted into a nondescript of the most extraordinary character.” This was inevitable from the point of view of utility, but the constant patching up could not go on indefinitely. In later years the letter and newspaper branches of the service monopolised the whole of the old building, but in its early days it took in practically the whole of the Head Office. Here worked Colonel Maberley, who had been Sir Rowland Hill's chief official opponent; here worked later the two men together rather uncomfortably, and with little in common.
Just as in the case of Lombard Street, the story of St. Martin's le Grand would be incomplete without some attempt to realise the human elements which went to make up its life during the years of its prime. The Post Office has always suffered in reputation both in the eyes of the public and of the Treasury from the accepted idea that its duties are mainly confined to sorting letters. Gentlemen high up in the Secretarial Department have sometimes been asked seriously by their friends whether they had noticed some particular letter in the course of its transmission through the post. The public scarcely realise the amount of financial and technical knowledge required on the part of men who have to organise the service, to enter into contracts with railways and steamship companies, or to preserve the discipline of the vast staff in town and country. This was the kind of work done at St. Martin's le Grand, and the men of the early and mid-Victorian period were workers in the full sense of the word.
The old riddle, “Why are Civil Servants like the fountains in Trafalgar Square?” with the answer, “Because they play from ten to four,” has never applied to the Post Office. The needs of the service forbade any slackness, and punctuality has always been a realised ideal. West End offices have frequently looked on aghast at the zeal and industry of St. Martin's le Grand. I remember a post office clerk telling me one day of an official call he had to make at the Colonial Office in the days before Mr. Chamberlain put new life into that Department. “I arrived there at a quarter to eleven, and found the door shut, and as I was hunting around to find the visitors' bell, a milkman bore towards me and said, 'I don't think they're up yet, sir,' so I took a turn round the Park and at ten minutes past eleven I went back again, and finding the charwoman had just started work, I explained to her my errand, and asked her to tell the Secretary of State that I was on the mat. ‘Oh,’ said she, ‘I don’t‘Oh,’ said she, ‘I don’t think anybody's come yet. We don't begin till eleven.’eleven.’ But I merely ventured to point out that the Horse Guards’ clock was nearly a quarter past eleven. Then this pampered menial drew herself up, and with a look of scorn, replied, daresaydaresay you are right, young man, but the gentlemen in this orfis don’t bind theirselves to be ’ere on the stroke of the hour.’hour.’ That was the difference between the City and the West End; the gentlemen of the Post Office bound themselves to be at their posts at the hour, and to come early and to stay late.
Officials have worked at St. Martin's le Grand who were men of letters in two senses of the word. Anthony Trollope began his career as a post office clerk here, and the insistence on punctuality was his chief difficulty. He could not be punctual, and though he said he could write official letters rapidly, correctly, and to the purpose, the steady, young, punctual but much less efficient clerk was usually preferred before him. But Trollope was a very difficult official to deal with. He says in his Autobiography: “I have no doubt that I made myself disagreeable. I know that I sometimes tried to be so.” And yet for many years he was an exceedingly useful public servant, and was frequently engaged on special work for the department. An old colleague of his has described Trollope's method of doing his official work. “I have seen him slogging away at papers at a stand-up desk with his handkerchief stuffed into his mouth and his hair on end, as though he could barely contain himself.” He was very overbearing and intolerant in his manner, and was certainly not popular at the Post Office. There is on record, however, one occasion when he must have been unusually pleasant. He was the clerk in waiting one evening, and a message came to him that the Queen of Saxony wanted to see the night mails sent out by the mail coaches. This was one of the sights of London at the time, and Trollope acted the part of showman. When he had finished he was handed half-a-crown by one of the suite. This, he said, was a bad moment for him.
“Why don't you pay an old woman sixpence a week to fret for you?” he said to a postmaster who came to him with grievances. The postmaster left his presence with an additional grievance that Mr. Trollope was a brute.
Sir Rowland Hill might have agreed with this postmaster, for he could never get on with Trollope. We can scarcely be surprised. In his Autobiography, Trollope says of Sir Rowland that “it was a pleasure to me to differ from Sir Rowland Hill on all occasions, and looking back now, I think that in all such differences I was right.” Such a confession explains much of Trollope's unpopularity. There is no place where omniscience is less appreciated than in a Government office. Mr. O'Connor Morris, who was the Postmaster-General of Jamaica when Trollope visited the island in 1858, has left on record this judgment on the novelist's official conduct to him. “I believe Mr. Trollope had a thousand good qualities of head and heart, which were disguised in a most unfortunate and repelling manner.”
Edmund Yates also worked at St. Martin's le Grand, and he has described very graphically the kind of scene which usually took place when Trollope was interviewing Sir Rowland Hill. “Trollope would bluster and rave and roar, blowing and spluttering like a grampus, while the pale old gentleman opposite him, sitting back in his arm-chair and regarding his antagonist furtively under his spectacles, would remain perfectly quiet until he saw his chance, and then deliver himself of the most unpleasant speech he could frame in the hardest possible tone.”
There is a good story told of Yates himself. The Post Office Library was founded in 1858. There were many unredressed grievances among the clerical staff in those days, and when Mr. Rowland Hill undertook to give a lecture on astronomy to the Library subscribers, a practical if somewhat unfair opportunity seemed given to the clerks to bring their necessities before the chief. Mr. Hill asked for a shilling from his audience in order to illustrate an eclipse. He wished to pass it between the eye and a lamp. Busy fingers went diving into purses and pockets for moons. After two or three minutes waiting Mr. Hill beheld an array of blank faces and shaking heads, and he naturally looked puzzled. Then Edmund Yates arose. “I beg to explain, sir, that we are all very anxious to try the experiment which you suggest, but unfortunately we cannot find a shilling among us.” On the whole we may wonder what type of man Sir Rowland Hill found the most trying to deal with at the Post Office, the man of genius or the hidebound official.
In the days before competitive examinations and the abolition of patronage, there were more “characters” and “individualities” in the Post Office service than in these degenerate days. St. Martin's le Grand has had its share of officials who were men of the world, men of letters, and eccentric men. Frank Ives Scudamore, the author of Day Dreams of a Sleepless Man and much light verse, will always be remembered at the Post Office as a chief who did everything magnificently and on the grand scale: even in his failures he was great. And everybody who worked under him seemed to catch his enthusiasm for work.
But we must leave these personal matters and get back to the buildings. With the acquirement of the telegraphs by the State, and the necessity for devoting an entire building to the London Postal Service, the erection of another big office became imperative. The building known as G.P.O. West was completed in 1873, and for a long time it provided accommodation for the Secretary's, Solicitor's, Engineer-in-chief's, and Central Telegraph Offices, together with a portion of the Receiver and Accountant Generals' Department.
In twenty years the need for extension became again pressing, and in 1895 the huge building known as G.P.O. North was opened. G.P.O. West was then given up to the Telegraph Service, and all the administrative offices were transferred to G.P.O. North. But these three immense buildings even in 1894 were by no means large enough to hold all the activities of the Post Office. The Parcel Post, the Money and Postal Order Departments, and the Post Office Savings Bank Department were all housed in other parts of the City of London, and there were overflow premises in streets near St. Martin's le Grand.
In this chapter we are only concerned with St. Martin's le Grand, and it is not without regret for the severance of old ties that Londoners witnessed in 1910 the closing of Smirke's fine post office, and the migration of the staff to King Edward's Building, henceforth to