On a wintry afternoon, in 1867, just twenty-three years ago, I started from America for Africa, at the imperial command of one of the dollar-powers of America. I was as ignorant as a babe of the land I was going to. As I look back upon my stock of resources I am not unmindful that none could be poorer in what was fitting and necessary, but I possessed some natural store of good will, fondness for work, and a wholesome respect for the boss, the employer—the paying power. I learned down south what they mean by the saying "Root hog,or die!" They mean if you don't work, you shan't eat. It's another form of the scriptural saying: "In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat thy bread." In the America of my time they understood that.
In Abyssinia I acquired several lessons from English journalists, the most important being what chaff is, and the second—that black trousers in the daytime are not suitable. I learned, also, to distinguish good soldiers from bad, what kind of men made the best officers.... It takes longer to know an Englishman than to know any other Christian, or any pagan, that I ever came across. He does n't walk up to you, as the Yankee does, and pester you with questions about your private business and your conjugal experiences. He looks at you as if he did not care whether you lived or died, starved or rotted. Yet if you do him a little service, he is so grateful that he will remember it. Not effusive, like a Frenchman, nor gushing like a German, he does not regard you superciliously, as a Madrileno would, or look upon you as legitimate prey, as is the custom of the Greeks; but he has the knack of assuming a profound indifference to your existence.
I was sent to Spain to study Spanish war and politics. I discovered a defect, and I doubt greatly whether the Spanish leaders have yet become conscious of that defect. They could not execute the laws. They lacked the courage to do so. Therefore, the Republic, which could be sustained only by justice, was impossible.
It was necessary for me to wander further afield, to view cities and men, great works, great assemblies, many countries—Greece, Egypt, Palestine, Turkey, Russia, Persia, India, and then, after being well seasoned with experience, I entered Africa as a leader of men. According to the rules I was notripe, judging by what I now know and what less I knew then. I was still young and very rash, headstrong, I relied too much on force. Fortunately fate was propitious, I was not prematurely cut off.
Marching eighteen hundred miles into Africa, I had time to think. It was reflection I needed. Yet I was a dull pupil, and my blood was like molten lava. I must admit that while with Livingstone I saw no good in the lands I travelled through. The negro was precisely what he ought to be—a born pagan, a most unloving and unlovable savage. Nevertheless, much of what Livingstone expounded was unanswerable. I attempted to parry what he said by lavish abuse of the natives and their country.
In 1873 I was back again in Africa, on the opposite side of Africa, and after the brief Ashantee campaign, returned with a few more experiences.
The beginning of my real African education was in 1875 while sailing along the shores of the greatest lake in Africa. It came like a revelation to me.
Now I have shown you what a dull, slow, student I was. You can well understand how lightly the abuse and chaff of my brother journalists sit on my mind. For there were even duller and slower folk than I. It is not one lecture, or one speech, or even a hundred, that will suffice to infuse a knowledge of the value of Africa into the English mind. It took ten years for people to believe thoroughly that I did find Livingstone!
Only a few days ago one of the most prominent men in England said: "I do not know what you have been doing lately in Africa, Mr. Stanley, but if you are to lecture I will gladly go to hear you." And so I say that although in this assembly we may know what is going on in Africa, we must not suppose that the British public, or the journalism which is its reflection, is any wiser to-day than in the time of Mungo Park.
Rather neat scoring, I think. The world does not change much.
Stanley married and went into Parliament. One day I thought it might be interesting to see him try conclusions with an election crowd in London. He was contesting on the Surrey side of the river. I think it was in Lambeth. He got a new experience. The crowd heckled him, and tried to shout him down, just for the mere joy of living. But they could n't silence him. While they bellowed, he would stand calmly and look at them. After some minutes of this kind of thing, he managed to be heard.
"Is this my meeting or yours?" he asked. They were quite certain the meeting was their own. The interruptions were numerous. I was thinking what he would do with a mutinous lot in Darkest Africa, and presently he told them that the savages compared pretty favourably with "their white brothers in London"! The crowd yelled, but they couldn't disconcert him. He finished his speech; cut it short, no doubt, but did n't appear to do so. Only the persons near him could hear what he said, there was so much noise. As he left the meeting, the gentle souls began to throw things. I saw them trying to overturn his carriage. His wife was in it!
Stones flew. But Stanley lived to fight again. Knowing him, I think I know how angry he really was.
"But," said he when we met again, "I longed for a few seconds of Africa! My education is n't completed yet. I am learning about Britishelectioneering crowds. When they shout: 'Fair play, fair play', they mean 'Fair play for our side.' Come now, that's a fact."
It is unnecessary that I should incriminate myself.
I never could see what satisfaction Stanley got from being a member of Parliament. In his heart he would have been glad, once or twice, to lead them all, Government and Opposition and their followers, into an African jungle—and lose them.
I see I have not mentioned that he became Sir Henry. But I knew him as Mr.
A bright, warm, summer morning. I was working under pressure in my study in Cheyne Walk on an article which had to be finished that afternoon. Saturdays were my busiest days and this was Saturday, and only morning. The maid rapped at the study door and said, "Mr. John Burns to see you, Sir."
In came Burns, preceded by his great voice and hearty laugh, making apology for interruption. "Can you drop the work and come with me?" said he.
"Impossible," said I. "Sorry, but—"
"Well, I 'm off to George Meredith's," said he, laying a post card on my writing table. The post card was from Meredith, who appointed the meeting, and added:
"We 'll have a fine Radical day. Bring your friend."
"You are the friend," said Burns.
"I 'll come," said I. "Give me a quarter of an hour, and I 'll finish this article somehow." And so I made sacrifice to one of my gods, the god that dwelt on the sunny slope of Box Hill. The articlewas brought to a quicker turn than it had dreamed of, a hansom was called; we rushed to Clapham Junction and took train for Burford Bridge.
It was more than a quarter of a century ago, but it seems like yesterday. And yet, though it was more than a quarter of a century ago, the Great Dock Strike had seemed so long before that it was almost forgotten. In the dock strike, that is to say, in 1889, I had made John Burns' acquaintance. He says I "discovered" him, discovered the real John Burns under the red-hot agitator who was expected to lead a hundred thousand men to incendiarism and the sack of London.
I do not remember the year which brought this Meredith day to our spinning world. But it must have been in the early nineties, and Burns on the London County Council, and perhaps for a session or so a member of Parliament. The date, however, does n't matter. If it were not 1892 it may have been 1893 or '94. Let's get on.
Neither Burns nor I had ever met George Meredith. Burns and he had had some correspondence which resulted in the post card and our expedition to Box Hill that blossomy, fragrant morning when the England of dreams lay all about us, and the stream that ran by Burford Bridge "babbled o' green fields" and played with flowers.
We arrived at the little station in Surrey about noon. Whatever it may be now, it was then a little station. We strode off to Box Hill, and turned a corner, and there, trapping the sunshine, was Flint Cottage, George Meredith's home, at the bottom ofa sloping garden running over with roses. Roses, roses everywhere, and higher in the sloping garden, overlooking a valley that the gods had made for poets to dream in, was a little chalet where Meredith wrote, and slept, and had the muses to wait on him. To the chalet a gardener directed us when we asked for his master. We climbed the path. The chalet door stood partly open. Burns knocked on a rose trellis. "Come in!" cried a voice. In we went. There was George Meredith, in a Morris chair, with a rug over his knees, and sheets and sheets and sheets of manuscript over the rug. If he were to rise, the whole mountain of paper would tumble helter-skelter to the floor.
"No! don't move," said my companion. "I'm John Burns." Then he introduced me.
"I knew you, John Burns, I knew you. Your photographs are like you. The voice is what I imagined it would be. Sit, gentlemen, sit. There, by the window. No better view in England, I really think. I comfort myself with it. It is good enough for parliament-men and our scribbling kind," said Meredith, smiling roguishly at me. The grasp of his hand was firm and generous. His voice had rich, deep tones. But he looked a fragile being.
"Like the schoolboy, I can say, 'This is n't writin', it's readin','" and he pointed to the manuscript.
"Chapman and Hall-ing," I ventured to say.
"That's right," said Meredith, "you see the slave bearing his burden."
If John Burns' photographs were faithful, so were Meredith's, or so was the one with which I had been familiar.His beard and hair were grey, almost white then. He looked older than he was. He was only sixty-five. Only sixty-five, and I thought him old! He lived to be eighty-one. I liked his voice. I had been told that it was high and shrill. It was nothing of the kind. It was mellow, clear, and his speech was scholar-like, with quaint shafts of wit. They used to tell of his "artificial talk." I heard none of it. He was as natural as his roses. But there might be prickly thorns under the rose.
Meredith gathered his papers and put them aside. He leaned back in his big, comfortable chair, and said "now let's talk" as another man might say "let's have a drink." And we three sat, and talked and remade the world like a lot of youngsters. We knew better, each of us, knew that the dreams we were indulging would never be realised, that probably we would never call them up and look at them again—we would n't dare—they would be buried with us, no doubt. Some other youngsters might dream similar dreams by and by. No doubt they would. But to-day was to-day. And to-morrow I would be twice as old as Meredith, though half his years, and know in all my body half as much as his little finger knew. That very day he was the youngest of the three. He bubbled quietly, like champagne in a hollow-stemmed glass. The conversation capered. We might have been lads out of school, and we ragged the authorities. Meredith was the youngest and gayest of the three, Burns the most enthusiastic, and I came dragging on with not exactly timorous whoop-hurrahs! And it wasJune, and high noon, with roses everywhere, and still more roses, and the humming of bees. And the big world was far away—a million miles.
It was "a fine Radical day" no doubt, in more than the limited political sense. Burns was the only political Radical of the three. He called me "a crusted Tory." I don't remember what he called George Meredith, who left us guessing, I think, as some of his printed pages were likely to do. Anyway, we did n't talk books. Life was better. And there was a lot of life to talk about yet, at the end of an age. Besides, our host was pressing us to stay to luncheon.
Down the garden path we strolled, still talking. Meredith said, as we seated ourselves at table: "I 'm here alone at present: you come like a rescuing expedition. This talk is a shower on parched land." After luncheon the talk went on, under trees, and tea-time had come before we knew it. After tea a walk over Box Hill.
You will have gathered by this time that the talking was not about Meredith or his books. He guided us from those high pastures where we would have liked to browse to the lower marshes where we might stumble as we pleased over politics, Home Rule and no rule, free trade and protection, dear food and cheap food, municipal administration, the housing of the poor, socialism, and all those everlasting puzzles which England is discussing now as she discussed them thirty years ago. They were very dear to John Burns. They seemed interesting to Meredith. He enjoyed talking another man'sshop; at any rate, he enjoyed talking Burns' shop so much that the talk scarcely touched on books. It may be mentioned at this point that John Burns, even at that time, owned probably more books than Meredith, and knew the insides of them. Whether or not he knew the insides of more books than did Meredith is another matter. Meredith, you know, was a publisher's reader.
I did manage, while we were at tea, to get in a word about "One of Our Conquerors" and its tribute to good wine, certain passages which could have been written only by a connoisseur.
"Ah, I 'm that; yes, I 'm that! Burns would n't appreciate that, but you do." And I spoke of a certain description in the same book, a view from London Bridge, westward, in the late afternoon. And the man chasing his hat in a high wind. I said I had taken an American friend there recently, and he had had to chase his hat, and then, for solace, we had gone to the restaurant in the city, the one described by Meredith, and had had food, and cracked a bottle of the delicate wine which, with tender ritual, had been opened and served to the two men in the story.
"And," said I, "although you disguised the restaurant and the label, I will not disguise from you the fact that my friend is also a connoisseur of the bright and beautiful, the American celebrator of choice things and moments—Thomas Bailey Aldrich—and that he rose at a point in our simple feast and said, with reverence: 'I salute George Meredith.'"
Meredith's eyes twinkled. He rose, lifted his straw hat, bowed, and said: "The Author of 'Marjorie Daw', I am your obliged and humble servant."
And so the honours were even between Aldrich and himself.
Burns put in his word here. "We must go for the five-thirty train. Good-bye, Mr. Meredith, we have had the—"
"No, no, John Burns! It 's not to be heard of! Both of you are to stay for dinner! Mark you that, John Burns. Never, never shall I forgive you two if you leave a poor lone man of ink without dining at his table. The thing is forbidden, forbidden absolutely, John Burns."
Is it strange then that we stayed for dinner, having already taken luncheon, tea, and a stroll with the magician of Box Hill? Not only did we stay, but we stayed till nearly midnight, having just time to catch the last train for London.
And this is a very pleasant part of my recollections of the day:
Our host, when he had shown us to the dining room, excused himself for a moment, lighted a candle, and, opening a door in a corner of the room, descended to the cellar. In two or three minutes he reappeared, his delicate face lighted by the candle which he held in his left hand directly behind a dusty half-bottle of wine, through which the light shone softly in a ruby glow. One saw first the wine, then the light, then the face, as ascending the stairs they entered from below, mounting slowly withexquisite care lest the wine be shaken. Slowly, and with great care, Meredith wrapped a napkin around the bottle, and drew the cork, placing the bottle at my plate and saying, with the most gracious, old-world courtesy: "For one who knows and appreciates, from one who appreciates and knows."
There was "approbation from Sir Hubert Stanley!"
"John Burns is a teetotaller, they say," added Meredith. "Of such is not the kingdom of my heaven. Burns says you discovered him. What do you think of your discovery? Tell me how it came about."
"Burns does not embody my idea of a modest man," said I. "As for that, there seems to be some doubt, nowadays, whether modest men should be permitted to live. What does Gilbert say:
"'You must stir it, and stump itAnd blow your own trumpet,Or, bless me, you have n't a chance!'
"Well, I came upon Burns first, in '89, when he had London scared (of course London would n't confess that it was scared but it was) and he was 'stumping it' at the dock gates, and from cart-tails on Tower Hill, and was listened to by thousands and tens of thousands of hungry men, and their wives, and youngsters—"
"'Agitating the dregs of London', the newspapers put it," said Meredith.
"All for sixpence an hour," said Burns.
"You have the floor!" said Meredith to me.
"I told you he is not accurately described as a modest man. This ismystory," I continued, "the story as I see it. London had heard of him—when was it?—in '86, or so, when he led a crowd of East Enders to Trafalgar Square where mass meetings were not permitted, and the crowd got out of hand and smashed plate-glass windows, and Burns got his head broken, or nearly so, and went to gaol."
"'Serve the brute right!' I remember the run of thoughtful British opinion," put in Meredith.
"I was not in England at the time, but I remember the verdict," I said.
"The trouble was," said Burns, "I hadn't been introduced to the authorities. There I touched a fundamental British prejudice. The affair secured me the introduction, and opened Trafalgar Square—"
"To the mob," said Meredith.
"To mass meetings," said Burns.
"I am playing British chorus," was Meredith's rejoinder.
"Second chapter," said I. "There came the year of the Great Dock Strike. The casual labourer swarmed out of chaos, and struck for a sane, not to say 'civilised' method of hiring, and sixpence an hour."
"And the dock companies, or whatever they were, were not sane, and, also, they had n't a sixpence, they said"—thus Meredith.
"Which was absurd, Mr. Meredith, as you are on the point of adding," I went on. "We don't know how many thousands of men were thrown outof work. Nobody knows to this day, but here is what I am coming at; there were thousands of them, and there was great suffering in their families. Well, when I first saw Burns he was organising kitchens, and feeding women and children, and making ten speeches every twenty-four hours, and sleeping an hour or two when he could find time and a place to lie down. Some nights he did not sleep at all. The night before I met him he slept four hours in his clothes and boots. In three days he made thirty-six speeches; in three weeks he averaged ten speeches a day, out of doors. He is hoarse still, no wonder.
"I lost sight of him for a bit, and found him again on Tower Hill, speaking to a big crowd. His platform was a dray. When he stopped speaking and jumped down from the dray, I introduced myself to him, said I was mightily interested, and that I wanted to interview him.
"'All right,' said he; 'begin!'
"If he were not modest, I was. 'Not here,' said I, 'let's go where we can talk in quiet.' So I tucked him into a hansom and, followed by a yelling crowd which we soon left out of sight, we drove to a club of mine in the West End, where we had a long talk. The immediate results were—oh, well, some articles in which I tried to show the world the real John Burns."
"That was the discovery?" asked Meredith.
"Burns calls it so. He was no more modest about being discovered then than he is now. He has a way of telling you straight what he thinks, or what he 's at, or of telling you that he won't tell you."
"I 've noticed that. John Burns, are you under any delusions about popularity? I think you are not."
"I 'm not," said Burns. "When the crowds are cheering their loudest, I am asking myself how soon they will hang my carcass on the outer walls."
"A cheering and useful inquiry," observed Meredith. "My impression is that you have a long course to cover. But leaders of the people are wisest when they remember that thereareouter walls for the hanging of carcasses."
"The confessions of Radicals strengthen the soul," said I.
"These are not confessions; they are articles of faith," exclaimed Burns.
I intimated that my faith in a political sense was as a grain of mustard seed, human nature being what it was, and political stupidity unconquerable. Gladstone being mentioned by our host, I asked Burns to tell his Gladstone story, that is, what the G.O.M. said to him, and what he said to the G.O.M. at their first meeting.
"It was in the lobby of the House of Commons," Burns explained, "soon after my election. You know I was not what might be called a worshipper of that wonderful man. A bit too independent for his liking, perhaps."
"And the only thing he would dislike, perhaps," said Meredith, smiling.
"Well, you know. I was in the lobby, talking with a front-bench Liberal when the great man passed. The member with whom I was talkingtook me up to him and presented me. The G.O.M. bowed, and we shook hands. He said:
"'It gives me pleasure, Mr. Burns, to see you here, to welcome you to the House of Commons.'
"I replied, 'Believe me, sir, my pleasure is equal to your own!'
"A hit, a palpable hit!" cried Meredith. "I can see Gladstone drawing in his horns."
"He stiffened a bit, and we went our ways. That is all there is of the story," added Burns.
"The one about the docker and the matches is not bad," said I.
"Let me have it," begged Meredith.
"At one of my meetings near the dock gates, a fellow shouted: 'Burn the docks; break in and burn the docks!' He interrupted me two or three times with that cry. The crowd was sullen. It had n't got its sixpence yet. I must stop the roaring fellow, or his mates might get out of control. I borrowed a box of matches from the nearest man. 'Catch!' I cried to the noisy chap. He caught it as I flung it over the heads of the crowd. 'Now, then,' I called to him, 'if you are crazy, if you don't care what happens to all these men and their wives and children, and if you want to ruin this strike, go, fire the docks!' But the man did n't move. I waited, but still he did n't move. Then I said: 'Your hand has n't the courage of your mouth. Take the matches from him, men, hand 'em back to me. Make way for him. He 's shown that he 's a braggin' coward. Out with him!' He skulked away, hooted by the crowd. I suppose that was theorigin of the yarn that I was inciting the mob to burn the docks."
"That's the way history is written, John Burns. Have you found your dockers suspicious regarding you?" Meredith put the question with a naïve air.
"Of course. Men of their kind are always suspicious, until they know you. Why should n't they be? Whoever went among 'em before those days with any other purpose than to get the best of 'em?"
"They suspected your decent clothes," said I.
Burns laughed. "One morning I appeared in a new suit of blue serge like this, and a new straw hat, like that. 'Where'd you get 'em, Burns?' one man shouted. 'He 's makin' more 'n sixpence out o' us,' yelled another. Then I had to explain, anyhow, I did explain, that Madame Tussaud's had given me a new suit, so that they could put my old one on a wax figure of me. Tussaud's wanted my old hat, but my wife would n't part with that. She wanted it as a trophy."
We sat at table all the evening talking, George Meredith, John Burns, and I. Of all the men one had ever heard talk, I can't remember one who had a charm of voice and speech excelling Meredith's. I can feel its fascination now across the interval of nearly thirty years. It was, I have said, a musical voice, but it was more than that. It was rich and deep and delicate. The enunciation was perfect with a perfection that was rare and individual; his voice was an instrument with many banks of keys. Charm was its characteristic, charm that noone could describe, although many have tried to do so. And his eyes, you could say, were bluish-grey, or grey-blue, but you could not say—as they twinkled, or flashed, or seemed at rest like little lakes, pellucid, undisturbed, or lighted instantly as some humorous or sympathetic thought moved behind them—you could not say how, or why they held you, or had the power, a pleasant power, of searching you, looking through you. There was nothing that you could describe in so many words, but there was much that you could feel and like. Even when Meredith spoke of man, or woman, or deed that he did not like, and spoke with dramatic force, his gaze would not blaze or harden. He seemed to be searching serenely beyond the surface for the element of comedy, searching with sympathy and humour for the thing that he could understand, and understand better than any one else in the world. You could always touch him with a sympathetic humour. He did not like wise owls, or rather the owlishness which the run of humans take for wisdom.
His strength, George Meredith's strength, was in his perceptions, his appreciations; physically he was frail, or was frail then! You would n't have supposed him ever to have been a great walker and a man of athletic tendencies. But he had been. Now he walked rather slowly, with a stick, and seemed glad to stop every few minutes. His face made me think of a cameo, by the delicacy of its carving. There was exquisite beauty in it, and the voice enhanced that. But even the most delicate lineswere firmly carved. If you handled him roughly you might bend him, but you could not break his spirit. At the time I speak of, he was beyond his years, far beyond them; physically, but in no other way, he seemed an old and fragile man. And yet neither voice nor eyes suggested anything of the kind. In spirits and outlook he retained the keenness of mighty youth. When he talked with us he was of no age at all, the agelessness of the eternal; it was only when he walked with us about his garden, or over Box Hill, that the flesh betrayed, now and then, its limitations. If you had had his eyes, you might have looked through his body. A strong wind might have carried him away. But he lived sixteen years after that, and, for all his touch of melancholy, they were happy years.
Others could tell other tales of him and have done so; have said, for one thing, that he was quick and tempery. What they meant was that his highly sensitive make-up had n't its times or seasons, but were on and off quite unexpectedly, as is usually the case with highly sensitive folk. Men do not study such sensitive creatures with the object of avoiding trouble; they blunder and thunder on and then are amazed, when they have struck a nerve centre, to find that it has its own method of reacting. And then George Meredith had been more than half his life a reader for publishers. And all his life he was writing poetry and novels! Now if there is any act less likely than another to insure peace of mind, it is the reading of other persons' manuscripts. And to do that regularly, professionally, for severaldecades, while you prefer to be a poet and love to be a novelist, is to give oneself to occupations which not only jar upon each other, but upon the nerves of him that undertakes the triple task. Meredith must have had a rare power of concentration to preserve his own authorship from saturation in the flood of manuscripts in which he swam for forty years. His experiences would have paralysed the creative capacity in most men.
I can suppose only that they who found his talk "artificial" must have touched some spring in him that Burns and I did not press. We found him entirely free from artificiality. No pair of strangers could have been more agreeably entertained. And yet we inflicted upon him a long day. They say he was "gey ill to live wi'." Perhaps he was; perhaps he was not. But why should n't he have been? Most writers are. And why should n't they be? They are of a sensitive sort, in greater degree, or less. Their business is mainly to observe, to consider, to speak with ink. These things require concentration of mind. And while the world is running in and out, and kindly intentioned persons are making suggestions which have no relation to the business in hand, or wondering why their wish cannot have precedence, or why their opinion is not the most important thing in the universe, the poet's work, or train of thought, has to get on, or the novelist's, or the reader of manuscripts'. It may be true that no creative gentleman has a right to moods, but at least he has a right to tenses. No such plea is put forth for the rest of mankind.Probably the fact is that the person criticising considers his own mood the more important of the two. Artistic sensibilities are as difficult for their possessors to endure all the time as they can possibly be for any one else to encounter a part of the time. But who ever thinks of that?
We talked on through the evening, without leaving the dining room. I caught Burns looking apprehensively at the clock. "Yes," said I, "we can catch it if we go at once. It's the last train." There was a hurried leave-taking, and we were off. We left the kind old gentleman standing in the doorway, holding a lamp which lighted us down the path and shone full upon his face.
"Well?" said Burns, when we were seated in the train.
"A glorious day!" I answered.
"Never a better," said Burns.
Surely we never went through a better day together, and we went through many.
Late one afternoon in 1907, I was crossing the outer lobby of the House of Commons just as John Burns was crossing it in the opposite direction. He saw me first and called out to me.
"Where have you come from now?" he asked, when we had shaken hands. "And how long is it since we met?"
"America this time," said I. "I 've been there four years. But it must be seven years since I 've seen you."
"Gadabout!" said he. "Did you ever have another Meredith day?"
"No," said I, "nor anything like it. Let's go again."
"Let's," was his response.
But we did not go again, for, as it turned out, another ten days called me back to America. Burns, of course, was already in the Cabinet, but he wore a blue serge suit, just as of yore.
In 1913 when again I came to England, I did not see him. I had several months in the country but only ten days in town, when I fled with an attentive influenza which Freshwater drove away.
But in 1916, having come the day before from a liner at Liverpool, I was walking in Victoria Street just as Burns turned a corner.
"The oddest thing," said he. "I was just thinking of our day with Meredith. Let's talk. But don't talk politics. Which way are you going?"
"Any way," I said. And we strolled into the cloisters of Westminster Abbey.
The man most talked of in '88-'90 was not Mr. Gladstone but Mr. Parnell. The Parnell Commission "had shaken the earth", as an Irish writer said in a moment of unusual restraint. And during its long-drawn life, as during the events which immediately had preceded it, "the uncrowned king of Ireland" was the foremost topic of conversation and of newspaper attention. From the ordeal of the Commission he emerged with triumph, a triumph which in its turn caused some planetary commotion, only to be met with the divorce suit of Captain O'Shea, and the subsequent storms, and snarls, and hopeless desertions of Committee Room Fifteen. Thence to heartbreak and death was but a short and rapid decline.
I knew Parnell but slightly; no one knew him well. Lord Salisbury did not know him at all, had never taken the trouble to cross the lobbies between the Houses of Lords and Commons and look at him or listen to him. "I have never seen him," said Mr. Gladstone's rival. And it was common report that the men who knew Parnell least of all, and least of all about him, were his ownfollowers. Even that is possible, if it seems unlikely. One of his most conspicuous followers, who wrote conspicuously and talked about him and about Home Rule, I knew very well, and for years I wondered if he really knew as little as he said he did about his chief's ways and work and wisdom. He made a great mystery of them, as many of the Irish members did, or pretended to do. They told you that he kept them at arm's length, scarcely nodded to them, or, if he nodded, did so in a manner that was cold and distant beyond belief. They were the dust beneath his feet. But they told you that they did not resent this treatment; it showed the superiority of the man.
Whether they resented it or not, you may form your own opinion by what they did to him when they got the chance. But before the squalls and gales arose in Committee Room Fifteen, he had held them together; they were a disciplined body. No man before his day had been able to hold them together, to discipline them, to force his will upon them. No other parliamentary leader of the Irish before him produced results. But he produced them. His followers feared him, and they feared him because he was so unlike themselves, so un-Irish. His "mystery" lay in his immense capacity for holding his tongue; in his aloofness; in his concentration. He knew how to get from the rest of the United Kingdom, from the English and Scotch and so on, what he wanted; as a rule, his followers did not. He knew how to play the political game in the British way, with additions of his own; hisfollowers did not. They had not the patience; they may have had other qualities more captivating than his, but they had not the patience or the art of command.
There was a time when I doubted that he was really so elusive as political persons said. And if he were so, why? It could not be for the mere pleasure of eluding, or deluding people. There would be very little pleasure in that. Well, one day my doubt was dispelled.
Parnell had made an appointment to see me at the House of Commons. It was not for the purposes of a newspaper interview, for he would not have given himself the trouble on that account. It was not for any purpose or interest of my own. I had conveyed to him a proposal from an American editor. It was a proposal which Parnell had not only not declined, but which he was considering with some favour. I was to meet him again and discuss it further. The time and place were of his choosing. I was punctually there, only to be met with the message: "Mr. Parnell is not in the House."
That may have been technically true, as Mrs. A. may be technically "not at home" to Mrs. B. But he was somewhere on the premises, because I saw him enter them. There were good reasons for assuming that the appointment had not slipped his mind, or his memoranda. And so I thought that the person who told me Parnell was not in the House might have invented the reply he gave. He knew of the appointment, and, though he did not know its purpose, knew that Parnell had wished tosee me; why, then, should he give a reply which might put his Chief in the wrong. But then, why had not Parnell sent word or left word, making another appointment? He would scarcely have declined the proposal from America without the courtesy of another meeting. Indeed, he had promised that.
"Very well," I said, "I will wait."
But the agreeable gentleman could not assure me that Mr. Parnell would be at the House that day.
"Has he been here?"
"I believe so."
It was too early to go away. Question time was not over. I decided to wait. Mr. Parnell's representative withdrew. After a while I thought there had been a mistake somewhere. Then I remembered that the emissary "could not assure" me, etc. I thought this odd, in the circumstances, and concluded not to wait any longer. The affair was Parnell's, not mine. But if he had decided to decline the proposal concerning which he had invited me to call upon him, it was not particularly civil of him to take this offhand way of doing so. I left the House and went toward the Westminster Bridge station of the Underground Railway, just opposite the Clock Tower of St. Stephen's. Turning the corner by the gates of Palace Yard, I saw Parnell, ahead of me, cross the street and enter the railway station. He took an eastbound train. I was just in time to catch the same train but not to catch him.
He alighted at the next station, Charing Cross. So did I, intent on overtaking him. But there wasa blocking crowd at the exit stairs where tickets were collected, and he was away first. Up Villiers Street I followed him to the top at the Strand, where he turned into the South Eastern Railway station. This was interesting. Why had n't he, I wondered, taken the outside stairs that led from Villiers Street into the station?
"Possibly he has caught sight of me," I thought. "Is he trying to elude me? Let's see."
He entered the South Eastern station at the left-hand door. He left it presently by the door on the other side of the cab yard and crossed the Strand to the telegraph office, which at that time was exactly opposite the cab entrance to the railway. I withdrew into the tobacconist's pavilion at the gate and there awaited Parnell's exit from the telegraph office. But he didn't recross the Strand to the station. A hansom was passing the telegraph office door. Parnell ran out, hailed the cab, entered it, and drove eastward along the Strand. I took another cab and kept his in sight. His cab was held up by a block a little to the west of Wellington Street, where a long stream of traffic was crossing to Waterloo Bridge. Parnell left his cab in the crush and disappeared in the pack of humans and vehicles. I left my cab, walked back a short distance along the south side of the Strand, and there turned down by the Savoy Theatre, lingering a little, and then down the steps to the Embankment, keeping inside the gardens. My guess was right. Parnell passed within a few feet of me. He was walking westward. I walked inside the gardens,he outside and well in advance. He reached the Underground station again, passed through it to Villiers Street, walked up Villiers Street to the wooden stairs of the South Eastern, while I remained at the entrance of the Underground. Then I took a cab to my Club in Piccadilly.
If Parnell thought that he had the best of the chase, that he had given me "the slip", he had another opinion, probably, when, as he was about to enter a suburban train, he was approached by a courteous young man who introduced himself as my assistant and said how fortunate it was meeting like this, because it gave him the opportunity to ask if Mr. Parnell would send me the reply which he had promised for that day, as I wished to cable it to New York.
"Parnell did n't turn a hair," said my assistant, when he reported to me at the Club a few minutes later. "If he were surprised, he did n't show it. But he narrowed his eyes and said, in a frigid way that brought down the temperature of that cold station, 'I will write.' And then the train started."
"And he with it?" I asked.
"No. It left both of us on the platform. I bade him good afternoon and came here. I suppose he took the next train."
I made no comment, but calling for a cable form, wrote on it this message for New York:
"Parnell declines."
"But he has n't declined," my assistant exclaimed.
"No, but he will. You can keep that cable message in your pocket until he does."
The reason I had not followed Parnell into the South Eastern station was that in the train from Westminster to Charing Cross I had told my assistant what to do, and where I thought Parnell was going.
For Parnell's reply I did n't care one way or another. But I thought that I was even with him for his evasion of me at the House, of his treatment of an appointment which he had made, and of a courteous proposal. My method of letting him know, without having said so, that I was not entirely ignorant of his reasons was, in the circumstances, quite legitimate. He could not and did not take open exception to it. And for nearly thirty years I never mentioned it. I do so now simply to illustrate what I mean by his elusiveness. It may interest the few who remember some of his traits. It is quite erroneous to suppose, as many souls not altogether simple seem to do, that a journalist always tells all that he knows.
But I might throw in here this remark: In all that promenade and hide and seek in London streets, nobody seemed to recognise Parnell, nobody turned to look at him. He was merely a passerby like another. Crowds stare, they do not observe. They see only what is pointed out to them, what they expect to see,—and not always that.
Two or three days later, in reply to a telegram of inquiry, Parnell declined the proposal from America. My assistant sent both the inquiry and my cable. Concerning the latter, he asked me: