The Press: Son of Scotland

In Denver, last week, a towering, stoop-shouldered, stub-bearded old Scotsman pushed back his chair from behind an ancient rolltop desk, clapped on his battered Stetson at a rakish angle, and ambled through the door. Lord Ogilvy, 79, ace feature writer on the Denver Post for the last 30 years, started down the street.

Scotsman Ogilvy, born in Britain, then and now a British subject, served the U. S. as a soldier in the Spanish-American War, but never got beyond Jacksonville, Fla. He served Britain as a captain of Brabant’s Horse in the Boer War and won the Distinguished Service Order. At 53 he served Britain again in World War I (1914-15) as a lieutenant of Scottish Horse.

Lord Ogilvy is in fact no lord. His proper name is Captain the Hon. Lyulph Gilchrist Stanley Ogilvy. He was the second son of the seventh Earl of Airlie, who took him to Colorado on a visit in 1879, when Lyulph was a wild young blood of 18, and bought him a ranch near Greeley. There Lyulph spent 20 years living on his patrimony.

His Denver hangout was the Windsor Hotel, where he once turned loose a bushel of rats, closely followed by a pack of rat terriers. They swarmed from attic to wine cellar, leaving havoc in their wake. Ogilvy’s best friend at the Windsor was its amiable, hard-boiled bartender, Harry Tammen, who in 1893, with a handsome, swaggering young gambler from Chicago, Frederick Gilmer Bonfils, bought the Denver Post.

Back in Colorado after the Boer War, Lyulph Ogilvy married an American girl of good but undistinguished Scottish blood. Cut off with a shilling by his long-suffering family, Ogilvy tried to make a go of a farm, finally lost it by foreclosure. In 1907 he moved to Denver, went to work as a night watchman in the freight yards of the Union Pacific Railroad. Next year his wife died, leaving Ogilvy at 47 with an infant son and daughter.

One day Harry Tammen woke up to the fact that his old friend and patron had fallen on hard times, gave Lyulph Ogilvy a job. The Post (now fairly sedate) was a bold, rowdy, unscrupulous journal when Ogilvy joined its staff in 1909. When Tammen asked what his first name was, Ogilvy answered, “Lyulph.” Said Tammen: “That’s a hell of a name. We’ll call you Lord Ogilvy.”

Ogilvy’s first story was headlined in bold red ink: “Stock show managers working like beavers; rapidly getting ready for exposition that means so much to western breeders; how to prevent horses slipping on streets.” He has been writing similar stories ever since, is a shrewd judge of horseflesh

In 1924, the story goes, he took his son, Jack David Angus Ogilvy, to Britain for a visit. His nephew, the ninth Earl, took him through the stables at Airlie, asked him to pick a winner for the Grand National at Aintree. Lyulph Ogilvy chose a scrawny, rawboned horse named Master Robert. Said young Airlie scornfully: “Why, that plug’s not good for anything but plowing—that’s what we are using him for now.” But Ogilvy’s choice was groomed for the Grand National, got home the winner.

An authority on sheep and livestock, Lord Ogilvy writes his stories in batches, five or six at a time, always keeps a week or so ahead, shows up at the Post when he feels like working. Son Jack, a Harvard graduate, Ph.D., is an instructor in English at the University of Colorado. His niece, incidentally, is the Hon. Clementine Hozier Churchill, wife of Britain’s Prime Minister.

Last week Lord Ogilvy, veteran of three wars, with his tobacco-stained white beard, ambled down a Denver street, turned in at the U. S. Army recruiting office. The startled recruiting officer asked his name, his age, his citizenship, said respectfully, “No, thanks.”