The Press: The Beaver at 84

On the terrace of his villa, La Capponcina (Little Capon), overlooking Monte Carlo, William Maxwell Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook, leans on a Malacca cane. He looks as old as he is: 84. Age has bleached his skin to wrinkled parchment; one foot is shoeless, a concession to gout; a floppy, broad-brimmed straw hat shields him from the hot Mediterranean sun. But the sun has not been up much longer than the Beaver, and he is not there merely to bask.

A messenger arrives as bidden, with all the papers from London. The Beaver frowns intently through them all, giving special attention to the London Daily Express, the muscular morning giant of 4,300,000 circulation that is the cornerstone of his press combine. Soon the terrace is littered with newsprint that has been studied swiftly and as swiftly discarded. "Vines!" booms Beaver brook, and he begins firing orders to his private secretary at so rapid a rate that Vines, who is a mere mortal of 30 years, cannot keep up and sends for a tape recorder. Then off to London by air goes the latest batch of Beaverbrook commands.

Say It with Passion. But even running four newspapers—the Express, the Sunday Express (a separate newspaper), the Evening Standard and the Glasgow Evening Citizen—cannot absorb the Beaver's tremendous energies. Only this spring he took a second wife, the former Lady Dunn, widow of a lifelong friend. He was as excited as the youngest swain. "I am very glad to get her," he said. "It isn't often when you get 84, and find yourself still interesting to a woman." He has just published his twelfth book, The Decline and Fall of Lloyd George. Like most of his earlier volumes, it records the first-person impressions of a man who not only lived through more than half a century of British history but helped to make it. And the Beaver has by no means reached the last chapter. Gratified by the critical acclaim accorded his latest work, he has already set industriously to work on two more. "Making a good book, that's my passion now," he says. "I dictate day and night."

The words may be true as far as they go, but they hardly go far enough. No one activity has ever been able to contain the Beaver's passion; it burns in everything he says and does. "I am the victim of the Furies. On the rock-bound coast of New Brunswick," he said, recalling his Canadian youth, "the waves break incessantly. Every now and then comes a particularly dangerous wave smashing viciously against the rock. It is called The Rage. That's me." On reaching 70, a nice round retirement number, he thundered: "I'll not give up my temper. I'll not give up my passions. I've enjoyed them far too much to put them away. I'll not give up my prejudices, the very foundation of my strength and vigor." When a new acting managing editor was hired for the Daily Express in 1961, the proprietor had ionic characteristic advice: "Passion. That's the thing. I don't care what you put in the paper," he said, "so long as you say it with passion."