PATRIARCH OF THE PRESS

by ECB Wijeyesinghe

The Ides of March are coming. Let them come. But before that fateful day, let us eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow, Herbert A. J. Hulugalle (whom God preserve) will celebrate his 81st birthday.

In the kingdom of journalists where Old Mortality takes a premature toll, Hulugalle, who is universally regarded as the grey eminence of the profession, has managed to thumb his nose at the Psalmist and to retain his enthusiasm for life.

When men younger than himself, with the ball-points running dry, are turning to get on the shelf, the Patriarch of the Press is busy at his typewriter rattling off the eventful story of his boyhood in the hamlet off Kurunegala where his father was the President of the Village Tribunal. When Herbert Alexander Jayatilaka was born on March 10, 1899, his grand-uncle, Adigar Hulugalle, summoned the astrologers, as was and is the custom even today among some Christian families. While the wise men conferred and cast his horoscope, they were horrified by the unusual features that appeared to dot the landscape of his life. Judging by the extraordinary position of the planets at his birth, young Herbert was built to defy convention all along the line.

His mother, a very conservative lady from the proud old Rakkawa Seneviratne clan was greatly worried. She was a devout Buddhist and had a little more faith in the occult sciences than her husband who was a Christian. She was a small-made woman who believed in maintaining the traditions of language, race and religion. Her husband was a domineering and sceptical six-footer, who wished to be known as a progressive. While the other people in the village went about in a hackery, Herbert’s father even at that distant period, rode an enormous Harley Davidson.

As President of the Village Tribunal this mode of transport gave him an immediate sense of importance and power even if he could not aspire to be a Dissawa or an Adigar like his uncle. According to his horoscope Herbert was destined to be a cross between Marco Polo, the Italian, and Ibn Batuta, the Arab. He had the characteristics of both men. Together with the inquisitive traveller’s lust for knowledge he had the scholar’s gift of describing his adventures in limpid prose, untouched by journalistic jargon.

HOROSCOPE

For once the astrologers were right. The young man who was groomed to be a Kachcheri clerk, was sent to Trinity College, the nursery of Kandyan chieftains. After a short spell under Fraser and Senior, he proceeded to S. Thomas’ College where he studied Science but narrowly missed the University Scholarship. He was beaten by M. V. del Tufo, the rotund but brilliant son of an Italian lady photographer. Then he took another unexpected step. Instead of building on his scientific foundation to become a doctor, he joined the Law College. He also read widely, and it is recorded that his knowledge of British politics and personalities. for a Ceylon boy fresh from school, was phenomenal.

When he took to journalism it was like the proverbial duck taking to water. Meanwhile he passed out as an Advocate and D. R. Wijewardene, who was just then dreaming of being the Napoleon of the newspaper world made Herbert his aide-de camp. He joined the staff of the Daily News in 1918 when the paper was only a few months old and stuck on patiently for 30 years. For 17 of these tempestuous years he was the Editor of the Daily News. He worked in close association with his Boss and together they moulded and mirrored public opinion until Ceylon attained her political freedom.

After that, of course, he was Ceylon’s first Information Officer and our Envoy in Rome and Athens. He has also written nearly a dozen books covering a wide range of topics, but his two biographies – those of D. R. Wijewardene and D.S. Senanayake – will probably be his most valuable contributions to the history of Ceylon.

EARLY DAYS

When Hulugalle joined the Daily News there was no Editor as such. The clever Jaffna lawyer, A. V. Kulasingham, obliged Wijewardene by sitting in the editorial chair and dictating his leaders to one of the junior members of the staff. Kulasingham was a facile writer, but not a newspaperman in the broadest sense. His sentences, according to Hilaire Jansz, the old Lake House stalwart, marched across and down the column with a certain staid dignity.

One of the things that amused the early inhabitants of the Daily News was the confusion created among people who came to the building and saw Herbert Hulugalle at one desk and Hilaire Jansz at the other. In their youth there was a striking resemblance between the slim Kandyan from Kurunegala and the gaunt Dutch Burgher from Dehiwela. Even their wives would not have been able to tell them apart. Luckily, they were not married at the time.

Both men, however, were endowed with a keen sense of humour and enjoyed the fun at being called the Heavenly Twins or the Dolly Sisters (then the rage in London). Even to Editor S. J. K. Crowther they were like Tweedledum and Tweedledee and he once reprimanded Hilaire for a mistake made by Herbert. Crowther was full of apologies later for not being able to tell the difference between a blue-blooded Kandyan and a red-blooded Dutch burgher.

As the years passed, old Father Time played havoc with Herbert’s head and the resemblance between the two men receded with their hairlines. Crowther left the Daily News in a huff owing to a potty dispute, but he retained the highest respect for Hulugalle who succeeded him as Editor. He even made him one of the executors of his Last Will and Testament.

TRAVELLER

Like the eminent Indian diplomat, K. P. S. Menon, Hulugalle had an irrepressible itch to wander throughout the world. One of the first things he did when he had saved up a little money was to take a slow boat to Palestine and the Isles of Greece whither he went later as Ceylon’s envoy. There was something about the Jews and their way of life that fascinated young Herbert. Perhaps this was partly due to his interest in the Old Testament prophets, but he carried his studies into the modem age and there was not a single Semitic celebrity with whose career he was not familiar.

Once, while roaming about in Syria he got off the train and asked a taxi to take him to Thomas Cook’s. The swarthy driver, with grizzled beard and stained teeth, drove on merrily for a couple of hours before he suddenly applied the brakes and asked Herbert to get down. “Is this Thomas Cook’s?” asked Herbert in mild protest, because there was no office in sight. “Yes, this is Damascus,” growled the driver who had brought him far, far away from his destination. The Arabs pronounce Damascus in the French style and “Damas-coos” can sound very much like Thomas Cook’s when spoken rapidly.

After his visit to the Holy Land and a close study of the Scriptures, it occurred to Herbert that it would be better to marry than to burn. About this time he had the good luck to fall in love with a good woman.

Her grand-father was a millionaire. So was her father at one time. but he had lost a vast fortune owing to a series of unwise investments. It was with a heavy heart that he had to part with his magnificent mansion, Regina Walauwa, in Thurstan Road, to appease some of his creditors.

When Herbert met Lillian.,her father, T. H. A. de Soysa was practically in penury. But the daughter had a heart of gold. Herbert had only a paltry income, but however unconventional and uncomfortable the circumstances, the couple were determined to go through with the wedding. It proved to be a copy-book marriage. Though the stiff-necked friends of both parties were at first inclined to look at it in askance, they have since then had nothing but secret admiration for the pair who defied the dead hand of caste prejudice and raised a family that is the envy of the aristocrats, plutocrats and all the other rats that tried to destroy their happiness.

Unfortunately, one month before their Golden Wedding, Lillian left Herbert in obedience to a higher call, but the fragrance of her life still lingers in her five sons and two daughters to whom she has passed on her sweet and generous nature. As his 81st birthday dawns tomorrow Herbert Hulugalle will rise with the birds to say a little prayer, tend his little garden and write a little note to his sons who are generally dispersed, like the Jews, in the four corners of the world. At present one is in Geneva, the other in Las Vegas, and the third in Stockholm. The fourth is getting ready to go to Kuala Lumpur, while the fifth commutes regularly between London and Colombo.

They are the Rolling Stones that gather the Moss.

(From Men and Memories first published as a newspaper article in 1980)